Regarding the Pain of Susan Sontag (Notes on Camp) gets its name from two pieces of writing by Susan Sontag: her last book, Regarding the Pain of Others, a meditation on empathy and the photograph as document; and the highly influential essay, now close to fifty years old, Notes on Camp . The exhibition is, in large part, a collaborative process. We begin with a core of works by three individual artists, and by introducing a fourth entity, Fennel Plunger Corporation, establish a space in which works can be collaboratively, collectively authored. This tri-partite, four-headed essay reflects the structure of the exhibition, as well as the processes by which it is coming together.

Fennel Plunger Corporation Presents a Manifesto, an Essay, and a Platonic Dialogue by, respectively, Steve Reinke, Jean-Paul Kelly, and Anne Walk.

Manifesto

What is a manifesto? And, above all, what is a manifesto in relation, for instance, to the art to which it belongs? It is not a theory of art or a conceptual rendering of art. A manifesto is an integral part of works of art; it belongs to the (new) process of artistic practice. It is an artistic act . One cannot easily separate or oppose art and its manifesto. Without simply coinciding, they are bound together in an inherent and essential way. Perhaps the most concise formula for their relationship would stipulate that the manifesto is the "speech of art." Manifestos constitute and introduce a singular point of enunciation. In them, art speaks in the first person; their form of enunciation is always something like "I, the (new) art, am speaking." The manifesto does not usually declare: "This or that happened in art, and art will never be the same again. This is an event." It says: "I (or we ) happened (are happening, will happen)."

Alenka Zupacic The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two

Fennel Plunger Corporation endorses Zupacic's characterization of the manifesto, though we wish to extend it so it does not pertain solely to art, let alone new art. For new art must surely be a horribly unnecessary thing. Hasn't the old art already exceeded sufficiency? Isn't it already enough already? Do we really want more? Let every gesture be an old gesture, preciously antique. Via camp we extend art into life. What is the difference between art and life? Very little, provided one reduces one's life to a glittering surface. According to the tenets of camp -- a quaint, if remarkably resilient, form of social expression -- every gesture is a manifesto. It won't get you laid and it won't get you loved, but at least you'll be spared that particular Hell Jesus has reserved for ordinary hypocrites. And what of the tired indexicality of the photographic image? Enough said! Do we have anything to declare as we cross the borders of propriety? Only our genius, tired customs officials.

Our work may not always seem artificial, and in spite of everything you might recognize in it the call of the blood. The reason is that in the night we may become roused by some dream-mangled memory of the previous day and rise and strike our foreheads at some door, freeing an anguished memory that had been haunting us since the world began. Forgive us for it. Our work aims to be without blood.

Jean Genet Our Lady of the Flowers

Small in all our parts but large in abstract virtue.

Essay

Susan Sontag's On Photography and its revisitation, Regarding the Pain of Others, are often read in the shadow of the most influential text on photography, Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida .   And, while both writers fuse the personal and the political into their analysis, Barthes' work, more than Sontag's, systematizes the connections between reception and photographic apparatus.   In Camera Lucida , we find terms or phrases that are now inseparable from the discourse of photography: punctum, studium , " This will be and this has been ."   And though it continues to provide stimulus, Camera Lucida can be restrictive to the discourse surrounding photography's relationship to current technologies.

Whereas, Laura Mulvey's recent essay in the 2004 Whitney Biennale Catalogue, originally published in 2003, asks that more attention be paid to the study of the still image given its relation to digital media.   She bases her argument on the supposed indexical attributes of photography: "This process of inscription, the physical link between the object and its image, is, in semiotic terms, an index.   The index is the source of the image's place in time, its relation to the past that gives it...its characteristic 'there-and-then-ness.'" 1 Building from an essay by film critic Raymond Bellour, Mulvey examines how our idea of the photograph as indexical marker of a singular moment changes when placed into moving images.   Barthes had seen a decisive divide between the two:

In the cinema, whose raw material is photographic, the image does not, however, have this completeness (which is fortunate for the cinema).   Why?   Because the photograph, taken in flux, is impelled, ceaselessly drawn toward other views; in the cinema, no doubt, there is always a photographic referent, but this referent shifts, it does not make a claim in favor of its reality, it does not protest its former existence; it does not cling to me: it is not a specter .   Like the real world, the filmic world is sustained by the presumption that, as Husserl says, "the experience will constantly continue to flow by in the same constitutive style"; but the Photograph breaks the "constitutive style" (this is its astonishment); it is without future (this is its pathos, its melancholy); in it, no protensity, whereas the cinema is protensive, hence in no way melancholic (what is it, then? - It is, then, simply "normal," like life).   Motionless, the Photograph flows back from presentation to retention. 2

While Bellour had questioned Barthes' privileging of the index in relation to photographs when seen in the diegesis of narrative cinema, Mulvey extends this inquiry through the implications of digital media. 3   Like Mulvey's text, the work in this exhibition asks: when still images are placed beside -- become part of or inseparable from -- moving ones, does the index still apply?   Does our interaction with still images, our manipulation of them, negate the index?   And, furthermore, if the indexicality of the photograph disappears, do the responses that we have to imageswith that presumed index disappear as well?

The layering of media provided by digital technology and its rapid saturation of all things visual has made the interaction of multiple practices accepted, commonplace, even regard-less.   Long before the digital announced a possible "collapse" of media, interdisciplinarity had a firm grasp upon the thought processes of artists and art writers.   It is quite doubtful that all mediums and practices will merge into something called "digital," but technologies have allowed media to circumvent certain rigid precepts that have plagued their divisions.   Given these new intersections, drawing or online chat-rooms can critique photographic indexicality as well as any other medium.   Possibilities are opened that give photography the future that Barthes denied it.    

Sontag's work often questions photography's ability to elicit empathy within the viewer. She analyzes whether personal topics, such as gender and disease, can be addressed given the vast dissemination of photographic images.   And, while Barthes makes it clear that all photos have a melancholic response, he allows the viewer to participate in little more than what Freud has called pathological mourning.   Camera Lucida often tempers our response as one of loss.   But if the index is called into question, so must its affect.

Freud wrote that the melancholic must be ambivalent to their loss, that, "the patient cannot consciously perceive what he has lost..." 4   The loss of the object combined with this unawareness makes the mourner unable to move beyond.   As Barthes mourns his mother in front of her photograph he is caught in this loop between "then" and "there."   He is written into his own definition of the index, in-between and ambivalent, with no way out.   But when the index disappears, when concentration on the medium specificity of photography is broken, the closure perpetuated by loss is opened.   And, there is space to regard photographs again.

Susan Sontag's pain - her collected texts written through years of cancer and political activism - is the pain of others.   It bounces back to meet the reader - just as might happen when encountering a still image.   But writing is no index.   It cannot be.   It too is mediated through reflection, practice and interaction.   And, as political or personal as it might be, Sontag's pain is written for an audience.   It is like theatre.   In the end, pain is her role, her "author function." 5    It is her style.   And perhaps it can be called "a certain mode of aestheticism." 6

1 Mulvey, Laura. "The "Pensive Spectator" Revisited: Time and Its Passing in the Still and Moving Image," 2004 Whitney Biennial Catalogue. NY: Whitney/Abrams, 2004.   pp. 125.   Excerpt from the original text of the same title in David Green, ed., Where is the Photograph? (Brighton and Kent: Photoforum and Photoworks, 2003), pp. 113-22.

2 Barthes, Roland.  Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography , trans. Richard Howard. NY: Hill and Wang, 1981. pp. 89-90.

3 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, diegesis is, "The narrative presented by a cinematographic film or literary work; the fictional time, place, characters, and events which constitute the universe of the narrative."   In this case, Bellour is referring to photographs within the narrative rather than celluloid or digital stills edited into the film, outside of the narrative, ie., extradiegetic.

4 Freud, Sigmund, "Mourning and Melancholia," trans. Joan Riviere. The Freud Reader. ed., Peter Gay. NY: Norton, 1989. pp. 245.

5 A reference to Michel Foucault essay "What is an author?" (from Language, Counter-Memory, Practice , ed., Donald F. Bouchard. NY: Cornell, 1977). Foucault suggests that the name of an author and their oeuvre can stand in as a reference to the discourse that that author has written within: "the role of the author disappeared as an index of truthfulness and, where it remained as an inventor's name, it was merely to denote a specific theorem or proposition, a strange effect, a property, a body, a group of elements, or a pathological syndrome." (pp.125)

6 Sontag, Susan.  "Notes on Camp," Against Interpretation, and Other Essays . NY: Picador, 1964. pp. 277.

A Platonic Dialogue

Last year, I had a porn site. It was my goal to try out various fetishes as I came across them and document them through images, stories and interviews with fetish practitioners. I think I only made it to four fetishes before I fizzled out.

I attempted to create Miss Mew in the image of the online "Pro" Dommes. I incorporated a Tribute button so that my admirers could send me money via Paypal, unsure of what I would do if there was a response.

Enter Tony P.

I began receiving tributes of twenty-five dollars U.S. from someone by the name of Tony P. I had never had contact with him in the chat rooms before. During our brief encounters, we exchanged money and pics and text conversations.

After five payments of twenty-five dollars U.S., Tony vanished.

**********

Dear anne walk,

This email confirms that you have received a Payment for $25.00 USD

from Anthony P.

**********

tony,

thankyou so much for your Tribute to Miss Mew. this is a labour of love for me. i enjoy providing viewers such as yourself with thought provoking material to arouse and inspire.

attached is a picture i took after speaking with you today. just for you, tony!

Miss Mew

**********

Miss Mew,

thank you very much for the pic...i am now both aroused and inspired...i

look forward to seeing and hearing more from you in the future...have a

wonderful day...tony

**********

Dear anne walk,

This email confirms that you have received a Payment for $25.00 USD

from Anthony P.

**********

Thankyou once again Anthony!

Miss Mew

**********

omg!

i've been looking at you for a good part of the day...and whenever i do, i

find my hand touching myself...you are such an incredibly sexy lady...i feel

so taken by you...

yours...drooling... tony

**********

Dear anne walk,

This email confirms that you have received a Payment for $25.00 USD from Anthony P.

**********

hello Tony,

my computer has been down but is back up now. a little gift for you...

Miss Mew

**********

i was away til today...i was thinking about you while i was away...to come

back to this...yum...look forward to seeing you again soon...

thank you, naughty one....lustfully, tony

**********

Dear anne walk,

This email confirms that you have received a Payment for $25.00 USD

from Anthony P.

OMG!

*********

tony,

apologies for the delay in sending this to you. Hope your day is going well.

Miss Mew

**********

ty for the very very hot pic....i hope you don't mind if i substitute something for the soap when i fantasize about you later...

you are perfect...tony

**********

still think of you...hope you are doing well....tony

For more on Tony P., please visit my blog at:

http://nopractice.blogspot.com/2005/05/hunt-for-tony-p.html

And: http://nopractice.blogspot.com/2005/05/hunt-continues.html