Literary criticism丨How are images and landscapes transforming us?

Nowadays, whether an art exhibition can be popular and sought after depends largely on whether the exhibition can provide a stunning visual effect, whether it creates a charming landscape, and ultimately whether it can become a dazzling background for the audience's punch-in photos. What causes people to read and understand art exhibitions more and more superficially and superficially? What drives people to focus only on the appearance of the exhibition, only on the visual, but often ignore the real connotation of the exhibition and the true meaning of the artists' creations?

The reason for this is the increasingly rampant and serious trend of visualization and landscaping on a global scale. With the development of science and technology, the popularity of mobile Internet, and the wide application of new media technology, we are surrounded by various display screens such as mobile phones, computers, television, movies, and advertisements all the time. These static or dynamic images permeate all aspects of our lives, corners and corners, and more and more become an important part of our daily lives, constituting the landscape of our lives today.

At the same time, the use of smartphones as the main medium has made the production of images more and more simple and convenient, and everyone has become a producer and publisher of images. As a result, images and landscapes are no longer just a reflection of real life, but have brought about a profound change in the way human vision is carried out, that is, a complete transformation from a language-centered print culture to an image-centered visual culture. As Heidegger said, "The world is grasped as an image." We are increasingly relying on images to understand and interpret the world. Specifically:

First of all, with the rapid advent of the era of reading pictures, it is rapidly changing people's reading habits and reading methods. People's eyes are increasingly shifting from simple, boring and abstract text reading to images that replace or interpret words. People love to see images far more than words, and images are more seductive than words. In the current world, the image is the protagonist, the text has become a supporting role, it is no exaggeration to say that the text is gradually becoming a footnote to the image. In the past, literature was the foundation of cinematography, but now literature seems to have to attract readers through film and television. Platforms such as blogs that stay in the text era are gradually being eliminated, while image platforms such as B station, douyin, Kuaishou, etc. are rising rapidly, and WeChat circle of friends and public accounts are occupied by a large number of images...

The transformation of contemporary culture from language-centered to image-centered has also promoted the vigorous development of art museums to a certain extent, and spawned more and more art museums and exhibitions. Right now, it's an obvious fact that people are willing to go to an art museum to see an exhibition than to go to a library to read a book. For most people, it is easier to see the exhibition, after all, images are a more superficial and popular language than words. What's more, watching the exhibition can also punch in to take photos, send a circle of friends or beautifully bask on douyin.

Second, visuality has become a dominant factor in contemporary culture. In contemporary life and culture, the increasing demand for visual effects has become an overriding goal. Today, many people, whether he or she travels, visits, plays, meets friends, eventually transforms into images. The basis and reason for judging whether an exhibition is worth seeing, whether a place is worth visiting, and even whether a thing is worth doing is whether it can be transformed into exquisite pictures and dazzling landscapes, whether it can attract the attention and appreciation of others, and then converted into traffic, into the most powerful statistical indicators in this digital age. In this regard, the French contemporary thinker I de Boe once said that almost every detail of life has been alienated into the form of a landscape: "All living things have become mere representations." We are in an upside-down era in which "the image is better than the physical, the copy is better than the original, the appearance is better than the reality, and the phenomenon is better than the essence."

Countless new visual forms and visual techniques profoundly shape contemporary people's understanding and interpretation of the meaning of the world in which they live. It can be said that no era has completely transformed the appearance of the world we live in as completely as it does today, technically, conceptually and materially, to suit people's increasingly demanding visual pleasure. In addition, the relationship between people and commodities is transformed from the traditional "possessive relationship" to the "conspicuous relationship". A commodity is not only the use value, but more importantly its symbolic value. So what is important is not to have, but to be seen, to be noticed. It is in this sense that the so-called "eyeball economy" and "attention economy" are produced. At the same time, it promotes the contemporary consumer society, which is increasingly tending to the aestheticization of daily life, a superficial aestheticization.

Moreover, visual culture is more inclined to sensual, intuitive pleasure, so the display of sexual goals and alienation needs to be unconsciously replacing the reality of our hearts. Academically, language is linear, abstract, and thoughtful, and reading words not only provides readers with the possibility of reflection, but also provides more space for their own imagination. The transmission of images is one-way, and the moving image transcends the static nature of the text, providing a perceptual and intuitive experience of the moment, but does not provide the reader with the opportunity to pause and meditate for a moment. In language, through the reading of linear logic, a rational subject is constructed. And the images and landscapes let people see a world that is both present and not present. More importantly, images and landscapes are actually a new machine for production and whitewashing alienation, a kind of implicit control and guidance, which unconsciously dominate the structure of our desires, and are currently the most powerful and effective means and tools for generating fan traffic. Through them, the domination of capital over man has been greatly expanded in both space and time. The result is that material life is further removed from the real needs of man and more directly serves the appreciation of the surplus value of capital.

It is worth paying attention to the various images and landscapes that are full of modern society, whether it is immersive 3D movies, commercial advertisements that arouse customers' desire to consume, or female stars with nearly perfect body proportions in posters and magazines... These image messages covet our eyeballs all the time, and although Wittgenstein's reminder that "images capture us" is still in our ears, we have to admit that our thinking patterns and visual habits have become more and more "pro-pictorial". In fact, the landscape separates everything that is explicit from its context, history, intentions, and influences, and is therefore completely illogical. The greatest benefit of the landscape is the ability to hide its historical attributes, its own false presence. Therefore, it can be said that the landscape fogs out life itself.

What is even more alarming is that man can only face what the landscape imposes on himself, and he is only a passive audience that receives images. If we are completely submissive to the impact of today's images and landscapes on us, then we will gradually move away from all possible personal experiences, and it will become more and more difficult to find personal preferences, and we will become more and more lost in a landscape world that pervades people's daily lives constructed by cultural facilities and mass media. We can no longer listen to our own personalities, or even know our true needs. Creativity and initiative cannot be stretched in leisure time, and all modes of leisure life are created in advance by the landscape. It can be said that everything is carried out under the invisible instigation and preset control of the landscape, which is a kind of pseudo-initiative and passivity, the essence of which is still no personality. Man is implicitly controlled in the landscape and has to unconsciously submit to the rules of the game created by the landscape. Once we really internalize these images into our own desires, we lose the real needs of our hearts.

The knowledge of the individual is limited, and the information conveyed by the landscape is infinite. In this common situation, the identification of personal information becomes extremely difficult, and it is impossible to explore its essence through appearances. Adults are still so much so let alone teenagers. The prosperity of the mobile Internet has given teenagers who are still in the period of value construction the opportunity to contact the landscape from different perspectives, but it has also made school education and parent guidance more and more lack of freshness and attractiveness, and a large number of teenagers blindly pursue the landscape they yearn for.

So how do you make a person's life a moment of real existence again? How to liberate people's true desires? How can we substitute our true desires for existing supplies to construct a whole new situation of life? All of this is worth thinking about.

Author: Fu Jun (Deputy Director of shanghai oil painting and sculpture institute art museum)

Editor: Fan Xin

Planner: Fan Xin