It Ever Only Tastes like the Real Thing

Exhibition notes for the 3rd installment of ‘The Imagination is an Overused Cliché’
Antares Gomez b.

The title of this exhibition series points to the artistic imagination as an

overrated process inasmuch as the terms inspiration, creation, originality and
genius point to an ineffable realm of magic and build the myth of the artist as the
sole agent in artistic production. The situation presented by such a myth is similar
to the story of Genesis in relation to the theory of evolution in that the processes of
artistic production are mistakenly attributed to a self-created (and therefore
ahistorical) creator—the autonomously inspired imagination of the artist. The
imagination as such is purely imaginary and hence, the notion of the artist as
genius is merely an imaginary discourse, unfounded and unreal.

Contrary to the notion of the artist as a masturbatory font of creation is the

assertion that artists and their imaginations are partly conditioned by their
obtaining histories and social processes. More specifically, the imagination and the
painterly eye cannot be taken as self-sufficient systems since they rely heavily on
already existing communication technologies and conventions of visual language.
In other words, the imagination and the imaginary discourse of ‘the artist as genius’
are primarily situated in and structured by the symbolic realm of language.

This is effectively what Ralph Lumbres clues us into when he paints a photograph
form the show’s previous installment. Titled “Painting, Painting!,” it plays off the
common phrase of “picture, picture!” and jabs at how Filipinos take pictures of
ourselves in every imaginable location. Apart from the possible arguments coming
from the framework of ‘the photograph as a tool for the acquisitive eye’ [i.e. that
this obsession with picture-taking is likely a tactic for citizens of a backward country
to lay claim to objects of desire well outside their economic reach (e.g. real estate,
food, leisure time, etc.)], there is also the immediate sense of displacement that
comes from the looping relay of a-painting-of-a-photograph-of-a-man-taking-a-
photograph-of-paintings-from-photographs, and so on. In the show’s previous
installment, we discussed Lacan’s theory of the human being as a decentered
animal, which renders the “I” of identity as born of the “other” of representation. In
other words, it is only through our introduction to the Symbolic Order of language
that we are able to constitute ourselves as distinct individuals. Hence, it is this
entrenchment in the Symbolic Order that renders us alien to ourselves or, as
Lumbres alludes to: tourists in our own backyard.

Again, identity is a construct of language. We are not who we are, or at least,

the person in the mirror is not your self. This brings us to the work by Francis
Commeyne, which depicts a photograph of the Cultural Center of the Philippines
cropped by masking tape in a paper viewfinder. This depiction of the editing
processes involved in image production places the CCP within the discourse of a
linguistic construct. In fact, the CCP is a prime example of the ‘big Other’ of the
Symbolic Order at work insofar as it has made every attempt to write up a
“Philippine Identity” and especially given its historical placement as part of a whole
complex of excessive pomp constructed to produce a prosperous image for a
country mired by massive corruption and inequality. Keeping step with its own hype
(the initial source of its eminence), the CCP in turn, with all its influence and capitals
(in Bourdieu’s sense), served to construct the Filipino as a noble race, a proud
people, a reformed society (Bagong Lipunan), and so on, as opposed to the more
pervasive truths of its destitution as a neo-colony. This isn’t an effort to discredit
any or all achievements in the cultural field that may have been made with the
CCP’s patronage, but rather it is an attempt to disclose the role of such institutions
in the formation of illusory discourses of prosperity, national unity, and democracy,
among others.

An equally fictitious discourse is that of the subject as dead end, or more

specifically, as one who is helpless in the face of history. As such, Aldrin Olaguer
draws a parallel to the idea of a paper tiger, a false threat, by depicting a cage
containing a bird drawn on paper—a false captive. Apart from those who are
actually ignorant of capitalism (largely the uneducated and mostly from the third
world), there are those who, despite being conscious of its workings and
contradictions, are quite content to be carried along. The Slovenian Slavoj Žižek
argues that these figures are the dupes of “ideological cynicism.” He posits that the
operation of today’s ideology is no longer that of Marx’s notion of false
consciousness: “they do not know it, but they are doing it”. Rather, it is the false
choice implicit in “they know it, but they are doing it anyway” or, in other words, the
illusion that their unfreedom is really the result of ‘their own free choice.’ Hence,
cynics are placed in a contradictory double-bind where, thinking that the precise
reason they are not free stems from their free choice, they make themselves
unaware of the fact that free choice always stems from an illusionary autonomy
from the Symbolic Order. Perhaps it is better to say “I have no choice in my
unfreedom.” But even this is an illusion in that the perceived lack of alternatives is
only due to the fact that the Symbolic Order offers nothing outside of itself. Thus,
Olaguer portrays the position of the cynic as one of false and self-defeating critique
insofar as their immobility is caused by insisting on missing the point: that they are
but fictional captives in painted cages.

Appropriately, by presenting a blackboard and providing chalk with which to

write/draw on it, Jerome Suplemento makes a counter-offer, albeit with some irony.
Whereas blackboards are predominantly a domain monopolized by teachers and
other figures who occupy privileged positions in the field of knowledge production,
Suplemento hands it over to anyone who might wish to write. The irony here is that
this freedom to write is really only available by the permission of the author.
Moreover, the author himself has already written on the board, in paint nonetheless,
thus dissolving any illusion of equality among the writings on the board. This
condescending accommodation is simultaneously an imperative: “Write whatever
you want!” Faced with this command, any real exercise of freedom in writing would
have to be formulated inversely, that is, one should write precisely what the
author(ity) doesn’t want. Hence, we find the narrow horizon of possibility of
resistance. Insofar as the dominant order only ever accommodates forms of
resistance that it finds acceptable, these paths will never quite manage to break
past its limits.

Joseph Soliman’s work brings this matter to the specific field of art production.
On his canvas, we see a church and pedestrians depicted upside-down with the
figures’ heads replaced by upright Brillo boxes. The images here unerringly bring
together the two worlds of religion and art. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
made the observation that the two are quite similar in that they both rely on a
profound mystification or misrecognition. He likens museums to churches and art
objects to saintly relics, noting that not only do they evince identical notions of
sanctity, but also, that in most cases a divine reverence replaces the objective gaze.
More specifically, Bourdieu observes that the field of artistic production is
characterized by an inherent need to deny its own objective operations, to mystify
them. This mystification is the result of misrecognizing the underlying operations of
capital for such iffy substitutes as genius, the sublime, inspiration, and so on.
Capital, in Bourdieu’s sense, extends past the economic sense of money or property
and includes capital in the social sense (personal networks, family, etc.), and the
cultural sense (education, a European accent, fashion, etc.) to the extent that these
are able to confer status and other advantages upon their bearers. Hence, his
depiction of the art field as a social field with inverted hierarchies where ‘real
money’ is looked down upon in favor of ‘cultural relevance,’ ‘aesthetic value,’ etc.
To put it succinctly, Bourdieu asserts that it is this failure to recognize capital as the
driving logic behind the artistic field that makes artists the “dupes of society”
insofar as they fail to realize their subjugation to capital, and furthermore, proceed
to spread the illusion that ‘capital doesn’t really matter’.

Returning to the matter at hand, Soliman’s reference to the work of Warhol thus
alludes to the absurdity of post-modern thinking. By denying the existence of meta-
narratives, post-modernism effectively ignores the presence of capitalism,
globalization, and imperialism. Instead of confronting the reality of the world as
generally unified under a dominant order, artists working within a post-modernist
framework most often operate under mockeries of relativism such as, “it’s all in the
way you look at it” or “well, you know, everybody’s entitled to their own opinion.”
Observably, it is precisely this sense of entitlement as an ahistorical phenomenon,
as something from nothing (not capital, God forbid), that allows for the artistic
illusion of creative freedom in the absolute sense. As pointed out by Suplemento’s
work, this kind of freedom is illusionary in that it only ever comes in the form of an
accommodation that is inevitably under the control of the dominant order of
capitalism. As such, it is in relation to this “permission to communicate” that we
turn to what the philosopher Alain Badiou asserts in his ‘Fifteen Theses on
Contemporary Art’ as a necessity “to become the pitiless censors of ourselves.”
Censorship here is not in that general sense of prohibiting obscenities pertaining to
violent or titillating content because, in truth, all of these things are allowed and
legitimized by the market. Censorship in Badiou’s sense refers to the necessity of
painstakingly removing any sense of safety from one’s work, of making damn sure
to take the position on the knife’s edge.

This knife’s edge can be taken as what constitutes Lacan’s Real. Those instances
where the Symbolic Order is rendered incomplete or inconsistent. It is by the Real
that the illusion of the Symbolic is exposed as a fiction. For example, to the
Imaginary discourse of Imelda Marcos’ pretenses of prosperity and unity we may
present the Real of the Philippines’ poverty or of the people’s struggle against
martial law; to artistic freedom, the Real of the dictates of capitalism. Hence, we
arrive at the challenge of the artistic imagination—that of employing the tools of the
Symbolic (art, language, etc.) to plot itself out; to find its limits and present the
truths of its fiction. In Badiou’s own words “to render visible to everyone that which
for Empire [capitalism] (and so by extension, for everyone, though from a different
point of view), doesn't exist.” Raphael Daniel David echoes this call to artists with
his portrait of the abstractionist Romulo Olazo. David portrays his subject in a vivid
and exaggerated photorealism as if to better bring the abstractionist to form. The
challenge posed is simple enough: “Get Real.” As you should. 
The Curators