Conclusion: Performative Images as Objects of Philosophical Inquiry

Summary

Abstract: As a mirror reflection of the performative dimension of the video image, with which the book begins, the conclusion considers the increased discretization of imagination and engages the concomitant narratives about history, knowledge, and technology. I pay attention to video as a technology of the imaginary and formulate the concept of the “discrete imaginary” as an attempt to tackle the often pervasive if not addictive effects of dominant video technology on the informational structure of society.

Keywords: video art, philosophy, technology, cultural critique

If we are willing to entertain the hypothesis that capitalism can be periodized by the quantum leaps or technological mutations by which it responds to its deepest systemic crises, then it may become a little clearer why and how video—so closely related to the dominant computer and information technology of the late, or third, stage of capitalism—has a powerful claim for being the art form par excellence of late capitalism.

– Frederic Jameson

Minding the image of the world is one of the most concrete and yet abstract tasks we perform daily according to sets of informational values that often operate outside of our conscious choices to act and respond. As such, our creative mind, the one that feels emotions and creates affects, is made of these moving images that inhibit our capacity to focus and pay attention. Images from movies, ads, and social media are now creating the discursive structure through which we make sense of the world and belong to it. Not only have moving images populated the fabric of our environment, but also the media support of communication has infiltrated the ways in which human beings make sense of their life: how they belong to earth, to its history, its various presents, and potential futures. There are the images we absorb and the ones that we create via the incessant movements of our bodies in time and space. In our increasingly digital world, images become traces, signs, symbols, and often a-semantical figures that populate the collective imaginary of our time. Not only are our brains more addicted than ever to audio-visual stimuli, but our mind itself is now operating according to visual and auditory movement much like in a movie.

More than fifty years after the launch of the first public video technology, electronic moving image devices are now everywhere in most societies.