We live in a time where our experiences with reality are overtaken by our consumption of images portraying reality. “We live in a society,” said Guy Debord in 1967, “of the spectacle.” Seven years ago, Jean Baudrillard posited that reality has been replaced with a hyperreality, built of symbols and signs that may never have represented an original real thing in the first place.
Who might be the culprits here stealing our understanding of the real away from us? Icelandic poets? The television, perhaps? Thankfully, Björk has some answers.
Thinking of the television may lead one to follow in McLuhan’s consideration that “the medium is the message.” We must therefore learn how the television operates and how it can put us into such bizarre circumstances. On the prospect of revealing this knowledge, Björk says, “it’s about time.”
Armed with a table, chair, television, inquisitive mind, and no fear of becoming electrocuted, Björk takes the stage to perform a physical and intellectual deconstruction of the television set. Not content to merely examine the screen and the rest of the device’s exterior, Björk bravely takes us inside the television. She frames its composite parts as a representation of the urban environments it conjures images from and for, while also highlighting the channels of care that bring its projections to light. If we are to understand reality and image-based depictions of the real, we must know the television, inside and out, just as well as the television knows us. In conceptually adjusting the bunny ears of technologically-augmented knowledge, Björk’s performance makes the picture of the television look a lot clearer than it did before.
References
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation.
Debord G. (1967). The Society of the Spectacle.McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man