GROUP SHOW
Un mundo Feliz
Date
March 26 – April 27, 2009
Artists
Alex Hernández, Fernando López, Frency, Jairo Gutiérrez, Jorge L. Del Valle, José R. Rivero, Luis Gómez, Mauricio Abad, Nahomi Ximénez, Naivy Pérez, Nuria Güell, Olia Lialina, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Rewell Altunaga, Rubén Ortiz, Vuk Ćosić.
Curated by
Rewell Altunaga
Gallery
National Library, 10th Havana Biennial
Location
Havana, Cuba
Curatorial Statement
Un mundo feliz, as a curatorial project, proposes a dialogue between new media and their relationship with the Third World, considering that they catalyze the globalization process while simultaneously creating a state of illusory happiness in people by bringing geographical and cultural boundaries closer through media-driven virtuality.
It includes key artists within new media from the Cuban and international art scenes, creators who have fundamentally shaped this phenomenon from the early 1990s to the present, alongside emerging artists who establish continuity in this type of morphology.
Globalization has usually been analyzed as an invasive process, contaminating the integrity of native cultures through the filtering of information disseminated by new media as one of its most effective channels. However, this curatorial approach examines the phenomenon through an analysis that reclaims its validity with a sense of irony—an irony that stems from the “happy alienation” experienced by individuals as they apprehend a mediated world they cannot access. A world that is more democratic, in terms of the equality established on the internet, where individuals enjoy full freedom to express themselves and interact; smaller, by fostering close connections with people living on the other side of the globe, enabling exchanges of traditions, thoughts, and interests; and more aesthetic, as reality is pre-designed and filtered through representations of images and sound, rendering all things worthy of contemplation (see the full Project Annex).
Slowly, very slowly, like the needles of a compass, the feet turned to the right: North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, South-southwest; then they stopped, and, after a few seconds, turned with the same calm to the left: South-southwest, South, Southeast, East…
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
**1. “I’m the good guy here. Save your world.” (Sam Fisher)**¹
When Walter Benjamin coined the concept of the impacts of technical reproducibility on the work of art in 1936, he laid the foundation for what is now understood as reflections on the transformations brought about by the incorporation of new technologies in knowledge and artistic creation.
Although Benjamin may not have foreseen it, his debate has extended over time, evolving as new dilemmas emerged, surpassing the realm of photographic reproduction that he addressed in his era. The passive dichotomy of work versus reproduction, which could be understood as sculpture/painting (work) versus photography (reproduction), was challenged in the subsequent chapter of the process, with the duality of photography (work) versus photography (reproduction). Unlike the earlier stage, the paths between original and copy no longer diverge; instead, they occupy the same physical space and level of quality. Thus, the work and its reproduction can be one and the same, differentiated only by the paradoxical notion of the artist’s authentication.
This marked the beginning of an art form that has now expanded worldwide, establishing a relationship between uniqueness and multiplicity, blurring the boundaries between original and reproduction in a work that has lost its singularity and now exists as an infinitely reproducible entity within the non-place that the internet represents. This connection to the internet also pluralizes the work’s location in relation to the viewer, who can “visit” it in its processual unfolding from their own computer—not as information or reproduction, but in its natural state as a work of art.
In this fragmentation of the field of operations, presentation, and representation of the artistic object, it is not only the work that is affected. The viewer, along with their accustomed levels of interpretation, collapses first under what Rosalind Krauss termed “dematerialization” and later under the concept of “de-objectification” in the context of virtual spaces and artworks, assuming the internet and virtuality as the highest categories of non-place. These changes define the attitudes of artists involved in its development. In a very essential way, technology alters human thought and our relationship not only with art but also with the world and its objects. This shift sometimes gives rise to hyperreality or hyperspace, producing an almost addictive level of alienation—not in isolated individuals, but in entire social groups. Media reproduction fosters a form of collective thought closely tied to its consumption.
¹Sam Fisher is the protagonist of Ubisoft’s video game Splinter Cell. This text is an excerpt from an “interview” conducted for the third installment, Chaos Theory.
2. “We are living in America… America… America…” (Rammstein)
The utopian ideal of human equality, pursued by Hitler and National Socialism, was critically examined in 1931 in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World. This text reveals an epochal parallel with Walter Benjamin’s reflections on art. Huxley’s idea of a system that multiplies a single egg through technology to create up to ninety-six twins seems to align more with printmaking series than with human birth—especially considering that the science of the time did not solidly address human genome research. While The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction examines reproduction as a nascent process applied to art, suggesting artistic progress, Brave New World projects humanity’s decline, masked by the fantasy of social perfection.
In these times of rapid upheaval, immersed in multiplicity and cultural pluralism, Benjamin’s debate over the loss of aura in the work of art—linked to the distance between the unique and unrepeatable work and its reproductions—has diminished in relevance due to the erosion of this dividing line. Enabled by new channels of information and communication, the work of art and its clones have begun to establish an increasingly intertwined relationship of sameness.
Similarly, societies have drawn closer, partially dissolving cultural and identity boundaries. Beyond mere information, this creates a transmigration and exchange of philosophies, customs, and traditions. With this exchange comes the assimilation of social desires and life ideals. These collective vices are received much like the news of a catastrophe through the internet, advertising, press, and television—delivered at a spectacular level. Events once perceived as sensationalist fiction, such as the World Trade Center disaster, the Waco massacre, or a tsunami in India, now rival the scenes of any science fiction or disaster film.
The detachment and impersonality inherent in these images are accentuated by the homogeneity with which they are presented. They coexist with advertisements for products increasingly consumed worldwide, transforming into false necessities for much of the global population and creating a hypnotic state of satisfaction upon their acquisition.
Rewell Altunaga
Havana, Cuba