Page 269 - Cyberculture and New Media

260 Desistant Media
______________________________________________________________
massive collapse of recognition – forming something like a (mis)recognition,
as Lacan would suggest – or, as Dixon believes, the body appearing as “lines
103
of fragilization”.
Inasmuch the active mimesis of the viewer is not radically changed,
historical change in our trajectory lies in repetition of a passive mimesis that
former thaumatic machines could not yet produce. Still we can argue that
mise-en-abyme has been a commonly repeated (de)constructive visual motif
in media art not just since the daylight of video but already from the mirror
culture of Baroque. Thus the history of the use of the motif goes far deeper in
the history than those remarks concerning the relations between
contemporary media art and historical avant-garde, as an example of art’s
own historical understanding.
Lacoue-Labarthe stresses that we cannot miss the repetition from
which the division might be made between the mimetic and the non-mimetic:
a division between the recognizable and the non-recognizable, the familiar
and the strange, the real and the fantastic, the sensible and the mad – life and
104
fiction. Lacoue-Labarthe says that mimesis is by definition active, virile,
and formative; according to the very logic of paradox, it presupposes no
preliminary subject. This is played against passive mimesis, which is an
involuntary possessive role as nothing other than mimetic passivity itself:
105
pity or sympathy, compassion, the catharsis of passion, reflecting the
general Aristotelian idea of catharsis. Toni Dove argues that in a traditional
film the position of viewer (voyeur) is physically passive – the process of
106
spectatorship is physically still. The film becomes the eyes and point of
view of the viewer and the body is left behind or even forgotten – in this
though much alike Lacan’s point concerning the eye as a camera – we enter
the screen. Even in “action movies”, as Dove calls this genre, which use the
eyes as a visual trigger into the internet of the sensorium to produce physical
thrills, the body is largely left behind: inactive. In a responsive interface, the
body is active and the experience becomes embodied. A viewer is
simultaneously aware of their body – “in” their body and “in” the screen. The
space between the two activated. This charged space is a key characteristic of
telepresence. It is the space through which the body extends itself into the
movie or virtual space. It is the invisible experience of the body’s agency
107
beyond its apparent physical edge.
Within this mise-en-abyme installed by interface, any sympathetic
108
identification with mirror image would simply be a narcissistic operation.
This the desistant mode of media denies by arguing that with writing also
comes madness, the uncanny sense of the Other.

3. Definitions
In terms of desistance, it feels wrong to speak about a conclusion for
a text. In no way can one article cover a field that is (historically) expanding,