| Bill Beirne
by Cynthia Henthorn
The Cell(f) Police
Utopian planners generally wind up with a paradise that is
anything but utopian. Makers of gated communities, religious communes, theme parks and
cyber technologies are regularly lambasted for brewing Orwellian scenarios. The
unequivocal satisfaction they guarantee allegedly masks an insidious side. Even the U.S.,
with its sacred sound-byte of "liberty-and-justice-for-all," treads a fine
dystopian line when the artificial consumer choice is celebrated as the hallmark of
democratic freedom.
Though the end products may appear different, manufacturing
paradise is not so radically removed from devising systems of capital punishment.
Architects of utopia, like those who plan ideal prisons, construct their perfections with
the same basic ingredients: discipline, conformity and surveillance. Bill Beirne unmasks
this chilling irony with his installation "Time-less (Cell)" (2001). Not unlike
other theatrical installations, the viewer’s presence completes the work. But this is
where similarities end. Here, the viewer is the spectacle, but one who submits to
stringent criteria. After signing a "Consent & Release" form, a volunteer is
escorted into the "cell." Other museum-goers watch the "caged"
volunteer on two tiny monitors imbedded in the cell’s exterior wall. (The
screens’ smallness suggests peepholes rather than TVs.) A video tape records the
viewer’s ever action, but these are also limited. Liberties, such as wireless phones,
pens, books and watches, are "checked" with the attendant on duty. The
participant must agree to be "frisked" for all potential distractions and
confined for no less than fifteen minutes – definitely a life sentence in a society
where fast is too slow.
Rarely does the intellectual and artistic elite analyze the
many faces of today’s "Big Brother" without referring to the writing of
Michel Foucault. Foucault noted that we submit to rules and authority because we are
disciplined by the meticulous, yet invisible, codes of instruction imbedded in various
"institutions," from the mass media and professions, to family, religion,
government, workplace, school—even science and medicine. These structures of
authority possess micro powers which induce "proper" behaviors by molding us to
comply with "a regime of truth." Learning "truth" means instruction in
the pre-determined paradigms of the "normal" versus the
"pathological." Fictions of normality, the permitted, can only be understood by
having parallel narratives of the pathological, the forbidden—which includes
everything from rudeness to anarchy. This "normalizing" process is an
educational tool through which we are drilled like soldiers. Such regimentation compels us
to conform, and thus adhere to customs, belief systems, laws, manners, bureaucracies, etc.
Foucault asserted that these manipulative mechanisms are so subtle that we wind up
internalizing a policing system.
To illustrate his point, Foucault turned to the Panopticon
– a type of prison guard tower devised by Jeremy Bentham in the late 1700s. The
Panopticon was an all-seeing apparatus, built within a peripheral series of prison cells.
Bentham’s idea was that fewer guards could have control over several prisoners if
surveillance were conducted from a centralized vantage point where authority could also be
concealed. Surrounded by cells, but hidden in the tower, a guard could observe without
being seen. Because the prisoners could never be sure when they were being watched, they
were compelled to behave. They internalized the guard’s role and surveyed themselves.
This self-subjugation to authority is how Foucault says modern civilization operates. We
are taught to become our own "Big Brother."
On the surface, Beirne’s Panopticon looks harmless and
clean, much like everything else in our consumer culture. It consists of a tall, white box
centered in a standard gallery space. The nefarious features, however, are (typically) in
the "fine print." The box is entirely enclosed and its door secured with a
padlock. What makes it more along the lines of a Panopticon than a retro-Minimalist cube
is the surveillance camera pointed at the seat where the participant will sit, obeying the
rules, knowing he’s being watched.
We embrace the illusion that our consent is not
manufactured. Advertising coercion, we say, can’t really make our superior intellects
pant for products that superficially enhance our ideal selves. We also like to believe
that our lives are more than target markets, or mere data collected and scrutinized for
trans-national corporations. Yet, the individuality we value is made possible today by
standardized, mass-produced desires, anticipated by marketing watchdogs and fueled by a
hunger that is never completely fulfilled. Beirne’s "Time-less (Cell)"
confronts us with a reality check – whether we enter his box or not – about the
distopian side of "paradise" we are, so effectively, trained to ignore.
Cynthia Henthorn teaches design and art history in New
York. Her published work includes: "The Impact of War on Advertising." The
Encyclopedia of Advertising, edited by John McDonough, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn
Publishers, 2001; "The Emblematic Kitchen: Household Technology as National
Propaganda, U.S.A., 1939-1959." Journal of Knowledge and Society 12 (Fall 2000);
"Commercial Fallout: The Image of Progress and the Feminine Consumer from World War
II to the Atomic Age." In The Writing on the Cloud: American Culture Confronts the
Atomic Bomb, edited by Alison Scott and Chris Geist. Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 1997.. |
