Deconstructivism: a Briefing and Some Thoughts

                                                                       (Pictures are of deconstructivist architecture)

“There is in deconstruction, a self-explanatory figure which imposes its necessity in accumulating the forces trying to repress it”

        -Jacques Derrida

   There have always been correlations between movements in art, music, writing. (Take Surrealism for example. It started out as a literary movement). One movement that is easy to find in modern-day art conservatories and among emerging young artists is some form of deconstructivism. The originator of the movement was Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), a french philosopher who formed his theories regarding deconstruction in the 1950’s. Deconstructionists did not believe there was a universal or independent standard by which anything can be judged. The meaning of the work was constantly shifting depending on who was looking at it. They saw art as a means to reveal the inconsistencies in what were otherwise apparently self-vendent truths. It was often art institutions, or occidental culture itself that insisted on consistent meaning and truth in art. This mindset was the fuel for the post-structuralist approach; the breaking down of way we observe form. 

   Derrida questioned the ideals of structuralism, claiming that they were chasing a myth, their goal being to expose or find an ideal, true underlying structure. In fact, Derrida considered any and all desire for truth and meaning in art, writing, or life, ‘logocentric’ (refers to the western take on getting to the core; center of things). Derrida believed most things were an illusion and that relationships between objects and people were too complex to be so simply deciphered. For Derrida, there are two feasible approaches to analyzing a text. One is ‘naive’ and the other ‘deconstructionist’. He believed straight-forward thinking and consistent meanings in literature or art were ludicrous.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: I  often find myself thinking about how everything is so haphazard outside of our systematic worlds. How we have no control over anything, except a fragment of our lives that none of us even have considerable control over. There are infinite ways to look at a piece of art. What the viewer thinks may depend on what they think of the artist, or not. Whether they had a bad day or it rained (or not!). Maybe the meaning they found was purely dependent on them hitting the snooze button this morning. How could any conclusion anyone makes about anything be correct, if their ‘true’ thoughts on something depends on petty or unknown factors? We cannot choose the influences in our daily lives, and for all we know, they might cause us to find certain meanings in things, or think different thoughts. And so we all live in our little realms, but no one can be more correct than another, since there is no independent universal standard by which we can compare our literature or art to. Instead, we all have our momentary, personal ‘truths’. Who’s to say these are not illusions, as what standard supports their supposed truth? Can they not be as true as they are false?

Sane Smith, Brooklyn Bridge

 Above is the infamous Sane and Smith, on the Brooklyn Bridge in '88. Carlo McCormick reminds us:

"Location is everything; context and content are ultimately the most measurable difference between what is written in the bathroom stall and and the profound bravado of more heroic feats like Smith and Sane's landmark subjugation of the Brooklyn Bridge, a move so balls-out it still stands out as the single greatest escalation within the graffiti wars."

McCormick also touches on the origin of a word very relevant to public art today. Trespass.

"... the original meaning of trespass was all about transgression, offense, and sin, as it's use in the Bible will remind us. It took until the middle of the 15th Century for trespass to acquire the meaning of "unlawful entry," as it was first recorded in the forest laws of the Scottish Parliament. We can thus appreciate it's longstanding, almost erotic proximity to transgression, which indeed only begins after trespass becomes more a matter of law than of morality." 

McCormick, C., Schiller, M., & Schiller, S. (2010).Trespass, a history of uncommissioned urban art. Taschen.

Man with a Movie Camera & Movement

   The common error in lack of movement can be seen among amateur and professional photographers alike. However, in the early days of photography this did not come across as dull and lazy, but was a necessity due to long exposure. Now there is no excuse not to crouch and climb; doing so is necessary for a dynamic range and can greatly help with composition. The photo that we all want to avoid is the one that would have been brilliant, had you simply moved this way or that. This is doubly important for the fashion photographer, since an attractive model won’t simply provide them with unique and worthwhile imagery, without great input on the photographer’s end.

"Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (1929) is a stunning avant-garde, documentary meta-narrative which celebrates Soviet workers and filmmaking. The film uses radical editing techniques and cinematic pyrotechnics to portray a typical day in Moscow from dawn to dusk." [LINK]

  Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is a stunning film, definitely worth watching if you are interested in photography... or it's history. It's quite easy to find the entire film online, with a little effort. This film was quite revolutionary, thanks to cinematographer Dziga Vertov. (1896–1954)

I am kino-eye [film-eye]. I am in constant motion. I draw near, then away from objects, I crawl under, I climb onto them. I move apace with the muzzle of a galloping horse. I plunge full speed into a crowd. I outstrip running soldiers, I fall on my back, I ascend with an airplane, I plunge and soar ...

 One could take this as excellent (albeit unintentional) advice considering his movie is now one of the staples in the education of film and photography students today.
  Vertov himself was quite the patriot; the aforementioned "Kino-Eye" was  a communist propaganda group. "Dziga formed a propaganda unit... [that] launched a massive campaign of newsreel coverage. This massive propaganda campaign was an attempt to break down the social barriers of the different Russian ethnic groups by blending propaganda and art."[LINK]     
   Man with a Movie Camera received bad press during it's release. This is not surprising, since today's revolutionaries and cultural leaders were often caused scorn and confusion in their day. Experimental art was (and still is) not the most respected genre in our contemporary timeline. Although it was subject to some negativity, it was also an undeniable stepping stone for the film medium. In a short amount of time thereafter, film speed had become standardized at 24 frames per second; this was for the accommodation of sound projection. This led to film becoming a big business and therefore being accessible to more people. This surely pleased not only Vertov and his communist friends, but all the world's citizens interested in the growth and evolution of technology.