Translating the Real and the Symbolic in the Age of Instantaneity   It’s difficult not to be reminded of Jean Baudrillard in our contemporary moment, particularly in the context of war. In his essay, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991), the French theorist argues that the style of warfare used in the Gulf War was far removed from traditional methods involving actual hand-to-hand combat, and instead it existed as images on radar and TV screens relating distant conflicts and consequences. As such, most of the decisions made were based on perceived intelligence as oppose to actual seen-with-the-eye intelligence.   This dichotomy of perception also connects with Baudrillard’s distinction between two different types of reality in his essay Simulacra and Simulation written a decade earlier. Here he claims that our contemporary or post-modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, such that human experience becomes a simulation of reality. These simulacra are the significations of culture and media that construct out perceived reality. Ultimately Baudrillard believes that our lives have become so saturated by simulacra that meaning has been rendered meaningless due to it being infinitely mutable. The real real has been translated into and usurped by a symbolic real.   Baudrillard has always outraged with his ideas, especially when he voices them through the context of war; the reality of human suffering being a touchy subject. However after moving forward another ten years to a more recent conflict – the War in Iraq – his words seem now so uncannily accurate.   The Chicago-based artist, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, affirms this contemporary connection through his work Phantom Truck (2007). Originally made for Documenta 12 but revived early last year at The Power Plant in Toronto, the work is a full-scale steel construction of a mobile truck. It is a silent and static installation, barely discernible within a near-blacked out room. Four red light boxes are placed at each corner of the room and, like a photograph developing in a dark-room, our eyes adjust to the structure in front of us.   Phantom Truck is a physical manifestation of the digitally rendered image that the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, showed to the UN during his notorious speech in February 2003. In this image were coherent and convincing depictions of mobile trucks in Iraq, which Powell posited as containing biological weapons. As he said in his speech, ‘we have diagrammed what our sources reported about these mobile facilities. The description our sources gave us of the technical features required by such facilities is highly detailed and extremely accurate.’[1]   Phantom Truck exists in a condition of post-event where the truth is now known: Powell’s source was found to be inaccurate. The trucks that he had speculated upon had nothing to do with biological weapons and were in fact – as the Iraqis had claimed - for the production of hydrogen-filled weather balloons that were used to direct artillery shelling.   In light of this truth Manglano-Ovalle gives Powell’s fiction a palpable form. His giant truck occupies the entire space and towers above its viewer as they move around its exterior. The installation disallows passive spectatorship and instead pushes the viewer into a process of discovery that is reliant upon both sight and touch. With hyperaware eyes the truck is visible only via the sparse light source; it is seen in fragments like a hologram coming in and out of focus. The ephemeral is sharply countered by the cold physicality of the structure, which viewers are encouraged to touch as they guide themselves around the space. Manglano-Ovalle sets up a dichotomy between representation and reality and refuses to close the gap in between.   This tension between what we see and what we touch echoes the role that both fact and fiction have to play in Phantom Truck. Manglano-Ovalle paradoxically affirms Baudrillard’s thesis by inverting it: he translates the symbolic real of Powell’s digitised image into the real real. He gives physical form to something that only ever existed as a simulacrum. It is by touching the steel frame of the truck and being made aware of its tactility that we are reminded of the very concrete repercussions that this fictional image has had: war and death.   The danger that Manglano-Ovalle sees arising out of Baudrillard’s simulacra is it embroilment with politics, power and authority. When it is the sources in which we trust who disseminate these images, how can we reconcile what we know and what we are told? How can we translate the symbolic real back into the real real? By questioning the point at which fiction meets fact, Manglano-Ovalle creates an aesthetic object that encompasses this dilemma. Within its isolated space, Phantom Truck allows for these binaries to exist together; it is the spectator who must try and fill in the gaps.   In our age of instantaneity Baudrillard’s past claims should set our contemporary alarm bells ringing. Although many refute his assertion that the Gulf War did not take place or indeed that the Iraq war did not take place, if we extend his words to more recent times, such accusations miss the point entirely. Baudrillard did not intend a general denial of war’s reality; people have died and political maps have been altered. His is a critique of our passive consumption of images - be they real or digital - via technological mediums. Manglano-Ovalle reinforces this substitution of the real with the symbolic by expressing and inciting an awareness of the danger of these symbols, or images, being inverted and used as justification for actions that have very real consequences.    Joseph Constable  Image : thepowerplant.org   [1] Powell, Colin. “Full text of Colin Powell’s speech.” The Guardian. 5 February, 2003

Translating the Real and the Symbolic in the Age of Instantaneity

 

It’s difficult not to be reminded of Jean Baudrillard in our contemporary moment, particularly in the context of war. In his essay, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991), the French theorist argues that the style of warfare used in the Gulf War was far removed from traditional methods involving actual hand-to-hand combat, and instead it existed as images on radar and TV screens relating distant conflicts and consequences. As such, most of the decisions made were based on perceived intelligence as oppose to actual seen-with-the-eye intelligence.

 

This dichotomy of perception also connects with Baudrillard’s distinction between two different types of reality in his essay Simulacra and Simulation written a decade earlier. Here he claims that our contemporary or post-modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, such that human experience becomes a simulation of reality. These simulacra are the significations of culture and media that construct out perceived reality. Ultimately Baudrillard believes that our lives have become so saturated by simulacra that meaning has been rendered meaningless due to it being infinitely mutable. The real real has been translated into and usurped by a symbolic real.

 

Baudrillard has always outraged with his ideas, especially when he voices them through the context of war; the reality of human suffering being a touchy subject. However after moving forward another ten years to a more recent conflict – the War in Iraq – his words seem now so uncannily accurate.

 

The Chicago-based artist, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, affirms this contemporary connection through his work Phantom Truck (2007). Originally made for Documenta 12 but revived early last year at The Power Plant in Toronto, the work is a full-scale steel construction of a mobile truck. It is a silent and static installation, barely discernible within a near-blacked out room. Four red light boxes are placed at each corner of the room and, like a photograph developing in a dark-room, our eyes adjust to the structure in front of us.

 

Phantom Truck is a physical manifestation of the digitally rendered image that the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, showed to the UN during his notorious speech in February 2003. In this image were coherent and convincing depictions of mobile trucks in Iraq, which Powell posited as containing biological weapons. As he said in his speech, ‘we have diagrammed what our sources reported about these mobile facilities. The description our sources gave us of the technical features required by such facilities is highly detailed and extremely accurate.’[1]

 

Phantom Truck exists in a condition of post-event where the truth is now known: Powell’s source was found to be inaccurate. The trucks that he had speculated upon had nothing to do with biological weapons and were in fact – as the Iraqis had claimed - for the production of hydrogen-filled weather balloons that were used to direct artillery shelling.

 

In light of this truth Manglano-Ovalle gives Powell’s fiction a palpable form. His giant truck occupies the entire space and towers above its viewer as they move around its exterior. The installation disallows passive spectatorship and instead pushes the viewer into a process of discovery that is reliant upon both sight and touch. With hyperaware eyes the truck is visible only via the sparse light source; it is seen in fragments like a hologram coming in and out of focus. The ephemeral is sharply countered by the cold physicality of the structure, which viewers are encouraged to touch as they guide themselves around the space. Manglano-Ovalle sets up a dichotomy between representation and reality and refuses to close the gap in between.

 

This tension between what we see and what we touch echoes the role that both fact and fiction have to play in Phantom Truck. Manglano-Ovalle paradoxically affirms Baudrillard’s thesis by inverting it: he translates the symbolic real of Powell’s digitised image into the real real. He gives physical form to something that only ever existed as a simulacrum. It is by touching the steel frame of the truck and being made aware of its tactility that we are reminded of the very concrete repercussions that this fictional image has had: war and death.

 

The danger that Manglano-Ovalle sees arising out of Baudrillard’s simulacra is it embroilment with politics, power and authority. When it is the sources in which we trust who disseminate these images, how can we reconcile what we know and what we are told? How can we translate the symbolic real back into the real real? By questioning the point at which fiction meets fact, Manglano-Ovalle creates an aesthetic object that encompasses this dilemma. Within its isolated space, Phantom Truck allows for these binaries to exist together; it is the spectator who must try and fill in the gaps.

 

In our age of instantaneity Baudrillard’s past claims should set our contemporary alarm bells ringing. Although many refute his assertion that the Gulf War did not take place or indeed that the Iraq war did not take place, if we extend his words to more recent times, such accusations miss the point entirely. Baudrillard did not intend a general denial of war’s reality; people have died and political maps have been altered. His is a critique of our passive consumption of images - be they real or digital - via technological mediums. Manglano-Ovalle reinforces this substitution of the real with the symbolic by expressing and inciting an awareness of the danger of these symbols, or images, being inverted and used as justification for actions that have very real consequences.

 

 Joseph Constable

 Image : thepowerplant.org

 


[1] Powell, Colin. “Full text of Colin Powell’s speech.” The Guardian. 5 February, 2003