Did the visitors have the impression of being addressed as a ‘public’, instead of as a ‘community’ (from the art scene, from the art school); or even worse, as a scripted subgroup, strategically assembled, called up and prepared (as consumers, as tourists)?
With Michael Warner, again: ‘(as a public) We’ve become capable of recognizing ourselves as strangers even when we know each other’.
Did the visitors appreciate the space between people? In Warum 2.0 observation could hardly be reduced to its audiovisual elements and their presentation alone.
With Stephan Doesinger: ‘Wherever physical and media space fuse new spaces also evolve. Bastard spaces. In the force field between these two poles, a new awareness of space is generated in which the absence of presence has become normal.’
Because of its centrifugal structure, Warum 2.0 lacked a central space. Did it engage (trap?) the visitors within the circularity? Was is then the infernal character of the space that attracted them? In the way Italo Calvino suggests in his ‘Invisible Cities’?
We ask the question with Norman Klein: ‘At which point historically does the viewer begin to literally enter as a central character in the story – inside the electronic media, or inside shopping environments?
What then was the role of the viewer in Warum 2.0? Did the absence of presence contribute to the lightness of doom?
With Stephan Doesinger, once more: ‘As with all 2.0 driven media, all projects involve something we might term ‘the virtual home’. Wherever we are, we carry our media, our ‘home’ with us. ‘This is convenience space. An almost infantile feeling of security when the responsibility of accepting responsibility is taken from you’.
Warum 2.0 as the kind of cheerful nightmare, we know from computer games and immersive special effects cinema. A second stage ‘before the fact’; a kind of ‘utopia, as that what can be built after all hope is gone’. Klein: ‘Underneath, the pleasure remains that these spaces are pathologically dangerous. They are the war of all against all’.
(Quotes from Stephan Doesinger and Norman Klein, in ‘Space between people’, Prestel, 2008; and from Michael Warner, in ‘Publics and Counterpublics’, Zone Books, 2005).
However, during the presentation, and notwithstanding all these comments, Warum 2.0 did include some very outspoken warnings by Paul Virilio. There he addressed the visitors directly again and again, and talked to them about the (ab)use of these kind of pictures of war victims. He referred to techniques of ‘synchronization of affects’, of ‘storytelling’ and of ‘impact’ as fascist, and he introduced some alternative ways of dealing with this ongoing trend.
