The future worlds or the futures of the world that Okwui Enwezor points out at the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale are not exactly optimistic, but dark, confusing, motley, unjust and full of inequalities. We are heading towards George Orwell’s 1984, thirty-one years later than the British writer predicted and with a more colourful but equally totalitarian appearance. The power of corporations and the control to which we are all subjected grow by leaps and bounds in parallel with the ease of access to information, although not necessarily to knowledge. And this maximum control is directly proportional to the infantilisation of society. Promoted by the rise of the digital environment and video games, there is a process of gamification, that is, the use of techniques and dynamics typical of games, which affects all fields, from education to the business field, passing through communications. Everything must be pleasant, playful and entertaining, it must guarantee immediate enjoyment and reward and, above all, it must not make you think too much.
The world of culture and art are not immune to these processes and dichotomies: very large and powerful institutions or very small and fragile initiatives fighting for their survival. And in between, almost nothing. The Venice Biennale itself is a perfect example of a machinery of legitimation and assured profitability, of noise and rapid consumption and entertainment for hordes of visitors/tourists, and depending on who the guest curator is, of more or less rigorous content, but always in relation to this background.
While it is true that this polarization of which we spoke occurs in society and culture (the example par excellence would be the construction of the Louvre or Guggenheim franchises in Abu Dhabi) it is also true that detecting these mechanisms and making them public is the best way to raise awareness and take action. The artist Daniel García Andújar was aware of this some time ago when he started the Technologies to the People project in 1996, a fake of a company that allowed access to new technologies and the information society and that showed its strategies of control and repression. There is no doubt that there is a gamification and infantilisation of society, but it is also a fact that access to communication technologies makes collective organisation and reaction possible. We see it in culture and we are also seeing it in politics.
Apple made an advert in 1984 to present its first model of Macintosh computer. It was directed by Ridley Scott and featured a sportswoman dressed in red shorts and a white T-shirt who, carrying a hammer, appeared running among a grey, uniform audience, throwing it and making a large screen explode on which “Big Brother” appeared with his authoritarian and hypnotising speech. “You will see that 1984 will not be like 1984” was the slogan that we should now make our own so that the 21st century is not like 1984.
[Article published in Bonart, 2015]
