Peter Moosgaard - Interview about the Postdigital #vaporfolk
1. What fascinates you about the historical Cargo Cults and how has their translation to the present come about?
I am fascinated by the unsolvability, the eternal approachability of these phenomena. Since no one in the world can say what what “real faith” is. Do anthropologists learn more about their own methods of observation in this investigation of cultures? Are tourists and anthropologists deceived by the natives by getting their own pre-conception of exoticism? Has the observation of the cults contributed to the emergence of the same cults, or are the indigenous practices to be considered original? The chicken became the egg, so to speak: oppositions between observer /performer, technology /magic, facts /fiction lack a solid basis when approaching the cargo cults. They show an amazing approach towards the unknown, an “otherness”. It is neither rejected nor adopted, it is re-formulated under the circumstances of their own beliefsystem. Nothing else than what art and science is doing.
The other component is over-identification: the rejection and criticism of present ideology, techno-capitalism so to speak, has always been an integral part of the system itself. One is tempted to say the rejection of ideology today only consolidates its supremacy. Therefore, I find it exciting to take a system more seriously than it takes itself. This would mean to accept Prince Philip not as an alien king but as a local deity. To feed only from McDonalds, to bring public animal sacrifices to popstars, and always quite literally do what the boss tells you to do. Overidentification is an interesting way of dealing with capitalist schizophrenia. If the art world asks for commercial products then give them “cargo” a thousand times. If an artist should always repeat the same, then make a sacred rite, a perfected loop.
2. What promises do digital technologies make today? What is our “Cargo”?
My professor at the time said the Internet was the biggest death-suppression project in human history. So when we understand communication as an “maneuver against loneliness towards death”, all publishing, tracking and posting is a bulwark against death. The men who always need a GoPro, are afraid to forget. The promise of immortality by “going down in history” was virtually democratized by digital technologies - now to “enter the cloud”. Of course, digital technologies are used for practical purposes, but you can´t explain it as a global phenomenon that way … In the networking of all communications, an old hermetic dream is reflected: The technology follows a collective longing and not primarily its everyday use. I think the “cargo”, that is the divine freight that digital technologies promise, is the fulfillment of connectedness as an artificial concept. The promise to be able to transcend a group as rituals or political movements do. One could summarize this gnostic dream with the phrase “to be of one mind”. We want to live in an imperishable picture-world. The VR and AR is a logical consequence to this.
3. With “Digital Natives” it has been felt for some time that the enthusiasm for technology is subsiding. Especially in the metropolitan milieus one can observe a regular retreat into the analogue / manufacture. Is this a kind of counter-movement or good content for Instagram?
It is a form of counter-movement, however apolitical and “idiotic” in the original sense of the word. The problem with the first screen generation is that you can avoid problems at first. You can escape pain and trouble if you only live on the Internet. Everything goes as fast as it can be used. Nevertheless, on a real journey through Europe, people have died before and new ones were born. When one identifies with systems of such speed, one becomes nervous, frustrated, and therefore it seems now beneficial to identify with slow processes: with growth and decline of nature, manual production, material transformations which take time, etc. One has to notice that the speed of light is only applicable on mental processes. Here the gnositic dream, the dominance of information over matter, comes to its pre-set limits. These trends contribute to mental health, sadly they equal a balance to the “rest”, that is a neo-liberal agenda. However, this is not a public stance against techno-solutionism and boyish innovation mythology. I would find it more exciting this counterculture to devote itself to the physical as a re-finding of the real. It is therefore a new way of thinking that there can be no “back to nature”. Nature has always been a construct, which is why you can speak of “reanimation of the real. Matter is Mother
4. Your blog is often mentioned in connection with the “post-digital” art scene. The work that is formed by this concept is very different in form and design. What connects “postdigital” art and what attitude is expressed in it?
It’s about the radicality to see the bigger picture. After the digital has turned from a tool into a total environment, it will also be invisible (similar to a fish as the last to describe the water). There I found it exciting to create a speculative future (http://cargoclub.tumblr.com) - for example after a violent solar wind - in which information is erased, every electronic device remains disfunctional. Bruce Sterling also later proposed to consider this present through an Atemporality.
This postdigital speculation shows us a life in which everything material, all things mechanical remain the same, only information is gone. How would people react? Would you keep the gestures and rituals of the digital out of habit? Linking the forest, show photos to strangers in the street, adore broken devices as totems? As postdigital I would coin the “already internalized technology”. If the signs and grammar of a technology have already translated into flesh and blood. As something which is not external to humans and therefore cannot be rejected. In this case, the postdigital is a speculation, even if one were to abandon all things Hi-Tech, one would have already internalized all the varieties of the digital.
In general, I would say the postdigital is more of a condition than an art form or some intermedia practice. Crossing the virtual to ultimately return to the material world. But everything has changed with this crossing: thinking, contemplation, values - reality is no longer the same. I call it Xenorealism, which is when after years on the Internet you turn the head from the screen: you recognizes the things, but nothing looks the same anymore. In my practice, this shift is expressed, because if you decide to work with tangible, primitive materials as a “digital native”, this is something quite different from “Arte Povera”. The reasons are of significance. To summerize, a state of postdigital can also create new ways of accessing human behavior: cooking, walking, building, gathering, etc. These practices are not new, but are now performed for other reasons. When my grandmother used to boil juices, it was tautological, it was exactly what it was. When you start to make juices today, spiritual things are resonating: this is independent, artisanal, cleansing, local, for your soul and direct experience, etc. What was once everyday routine is discovered today as a ritual. Work from earlier times are re-emerging and perceived as semi-spiritual practices.
5. What are the prospects for these projects in regard to the relationship between man and technology?
The utopia has already been formulated, anchored firmly in the collective psyche. Humanity wants to be in augmented reality! And also meld with its components, the myth of cyborgs as “superhuman” and genetic improvement is already running. (See Critical Art Ensemble) But I am hoping that there is a counter-movement to this “propaganda of innovation” and of Eurocentric techno-solutionism. A desire for technology, which is not just self-optimization and escapism for the white man. I think there is currently a perspective on the Anthropocene emerging, an age in which humanity comprehends his role on the planet merely as a geological factor. For example, technologies that work in choreography with organic life. It could possibly be a new global imaginary (NGI), a global utopia, if you will, which is drastically different from today’s. For this, artists and designers are needed, art as propaganda for this new concept of globality.
Interview: Daniel Bogart, MSD Münster School of Design (DE)