Time Caught by the Tail: Fast Forward: Pause

This thesis examines the effect of the new technology and the virtual time on the visual language, production and consumption of image, and in particular image of alterity. By revisiting works of 1960s artists and their relationship to the technological growth in post WWII, I examine the anxious subjectivity evident in their work in order to draw parallel with contemporary works of art, and their relationship to the new technology and notion of time. Relying on key debates, thesis explores the Modernist aesthetic dislike for representing the image of worker as political subject in Fordist mode of production (which measured time in blocks of production and cycle of consumption). It then addresses works of art that attempt to bring back the image of worker as political subject in recent years but face the shift from Fordist to Post-Fordist (with the new technology, time that it takes to produce an idea or the immaterial labor can not be measured). Therefore, the museums have become the new factories and viewers are producing unpaid immaterial labor (“meaning” making). With images readily available on Internet from the new global unrest, it is evident that there is a search for the image of the next political subject.

With this in mind, I examine the representation of the image of alterity through cinema and visual arts. I conclude that production of image of alterity, or image as evidence, is more of a factory production than a human production, with camera and new technology used by the military and Hollywood. Again relying on key debates, this thesis revisits the art produced by the Futurists and their obsession with the production of aerial images of cities, and their similarities to our everyday exposure to areal images (Google Earth) and how these images in general have shifted our view from a horizontal point of reference to earth, and stability, to a vertical and unstable position, which historically is associated with time of war and conflict.

Finally, this thesis explores the use of special effect in video editing, which turns aerial images of city of Tehran, into an intricate tapestry. This special effect signifies the similarities between baroque quality of Islamic art of 12th century and the fragmentation of image and information in our present time, urging us to re-examine the fast forward idea of technology and make an effort for a pause.