- 3 I Fashion a Nest Between Spines & Stories
- 4 Sonic Beirut, Displaced
- 5 The Translation Institute
- 6 Air as Commodity, Image as Spectacle
- 7 Auditory Escape
essays
2 Between City and Self
American University of Beirut * Fall 2019
Air as Commodity, Image as Spectacle
Collaborators: Ralph Karam & Karim Rifai
Locations: Beirut Seaside Corniche, Downtown Beirut, Martyr’s Square, Riad el Solh Street
Advised by Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh
Locations: Beirut Seaside Corniche, Downtown Beirut, Martyr’s Square, Riad el Solh Street
Advised by Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh
Edited excerpt of an essay
Narrative-building underlies the conception and realization of the Beyye’ El Hawa (Seller of Air) performance. By reflecting on the spectacle of images that permeated public squares during the Lebanese revolts of 2019, the performance enabled us to script and participate in what became a spectacle of its own. The act of selling air represented a body of critiques that were communicated in our interactions with fellow citizens in the urban environment, a setting that allowed for the appropriation of its spaces for dialogue and protest.
The rise of the October 2019 Lebanese revolts has transformed city spaces in Beirut into diagrams generating a multiplicity of images. According to Deleuze’s reference to Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish, to define a diagram is to say “a functioning, abstracted from any obstacle… or friction [and which] must be detached from any specific use. The diagram is no longer an auditory visual archive but a map, a cartography that is coexistensive with the whole social field. It is an abstract machine.”1 What Foucault refers to as abstract machines is “conceptually and ontologically distinct from material reality, yet they are a fully functioning machine nonetheless, that is, they are agencies of assemblage, organization and deployment.”2 In the context of the Lebanese social movements, waves of images emerge as new realities, distorting and redefining the direction of an attempted revolution. A network of images generates new meanings and strengthens the capital market, which profits from influxes of advertisements and commodified assets.
In Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, he remarks, “everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”3 One’s experience of the real world transforms into an illusory experience defined by images. Both material products and abstract ideas are manifested in images that people consume and interact with firsthand, rather than living the actual reality of them. Consequently, images create a new reality that is defined by a series of advertised and sold commodities. Not only do these images transform the way we live, but they also monetize people’s emotions, opinions and relationships. Debord introduces the concept of the spectacle as the social relation between people mediated by images.4 As the spectacle transforms even our internal thoughts into commodifiable assets, through social media for instance, it becomes the manifestation of capitalist driven phenomena. Advertisements, marketing and constant bombardment of images fortify modern day societies with the ability to dictate mass opinion and lifestyle, controlling what people will assert value to, with the illusive façade of consumer choice. This system deceives individuals by giving the impression of factual objectivity, causing the spectacle to be passively accepted.
Accordingly, the spectacle exploits images to maximize profit and monetization of products, which, in turn, generates a series of contradictions and inconsistencies.5 The hypocrisy lies in the very desire to sell anything and everything to the spectator, even when commodities are in perpetual competition that renders their existence inexorably inhomogeneous. This results from a widespread commodity fetishism in a society that will overlook commodification’s ontological contradictions in order to make profit. In light of the 2019 Lebanese revolts, one can identify a paradigm for the bastardization of a socio-political movement through market exploitation. In fact, an example that exemplifies the market’s abuse of the movement is a self-advertising luxury jewelry brand lining the protesting squares with billboards that are in constant dialogue with a group of people fundamentally protesting high poverty rates and miserable living conditions. One notices a great dissemination of advertisements that exploit their context and the impressionable condition of protestors in order to sell products that are in absurd contradiction with and inherent opposition to the core values of the sociopolitical revolts.
Narrative-building underlies the conception and realization of the Beyye’ El Hawa (Seller of Air) performance. By reflecting on the spectacle of images that permeated public squares during the Lebanese revolts of 2019, the performance enabled us to script and participate in what became a spectacle of its own. The act of selling air represented a body of critiques that were communicated in our interactions with fellow citizens in the urban environment, a setting that allowed for the appropriation of its spaces for dialogue and protest.
The rise of the October 2019 Lebanese revolts has transformed city spaces in Beirut into diagrams generating a multiplicity of images. According to Deleuze’s reference to Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish, to define a diagram is to say “a functioning, abstracted from any obstacle… or friction [and which] must be detached from any specific use. The diagram is no longer an auditory visual archive but a map, a cartography that is coexistensive with the whole social field. It is an abstract machine.”1 What Foucault refers to as abstract machines is “conceptually and ontologically distinct from material reality, yet they are a fully functioning machine nonetheless, that is, they are agencies of assemblage, organization and deployment.”2 In the context of the Lebanese social movements, waves of images emerge as new realities, distorting and redefining the direction of an attempted revolution. A network of images generates new meanings and strengthens the capital market, which profits from influxes of advertisements and commodified assets.
In Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, he remarks, “everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”3 One’s experience of the real world transforms into an illusory experience defined by images. Both material products and abstract ideas are manifested in images that people consume and interact with firsthand, rather than living the actual reality of them. Consequently, images create a new reality that is defined by a series of advertised and sold commodities. Not only do these images transform the way we live, but they also monetize people’s emotions, opinions and relationships. Debord introduces the concept of the spectacle as the social relation between people mediated by images.4 As the spectacle transforms even our internal thoughts into commodifiable assets, through social media for instance, it becomes the manifestation of capitalist driven phenomena. Advertisements, marketing and constant bombardment of images fortify modern day societies with the ability to dictate mass opinion and lifestyle, controlling what people will assert value to, with the illusive façade of consumer choice. This system deceives individuals by giving the impression of factual objectivity, causing the spectacle to be passively accepted.
Accordingly, the spectacle exploits images to maximize profit and monetization of products, which, in turn, generates a series of contradictions and inconsistencies.5 The hypocrisy lies in the very desire to sell anything and everything to the spectator, even when commodities are in perpetual competition that renders their existence inexorably inhomogeneous. This results from a widespread commodity fetishism in a society that will overlook commodification’s ontological contradictions in order to make profit. In light of the 2019 Lebanese revolts, one can identify a paradigm for the bastardization of a socio-political movement through market exploitation. In fact, an example that exemplifies the market’s abuse of the movement is a self-advertising luxury jewelry brand lining the protesting squares with billboards that are in constant dialogue with a group of people fundamentally protesting high poverty rates and miserable living conditions. One notices a great dissemination of advertisements that exploit their context and the impressionable condition of protestors in order to sell products that are in absurd contradiction with and inherent opposition to the core values of the sociopolitical revolts.
Notes
1 Gilles Deleuze, Foucault trans. Sean Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), quoted in Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries. (Universe, 1999), 127.
2 Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries. (Universe, 1999), 124.
3 Guy Debord, Society of Spectacle, trans. Fredy Perlman (Detroit, Michigan: Radical America, 1970), 1.
4 Ibid, 4.
5 Ibid, 63.
1 Gilles Deleuze, Foucault trans. Sean Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), quoted in Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries. (Universe, 1999), 127.
2 Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries. (Universe, 1999), 124.
3 Guy Debord, Society of Spectacle, trans. Fredy Perlman (Detroit, Michigan: Radical America, 1970), 1.
4 Ibid, 4.
5 Ibid, 63.