oincidence and arbitrariness, have come into being

8/14/2019 Oincidence and Arbitrariness, Have Come Into Being

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oincidence and arbitrariness, have come into being and have been repeated. Forthis collection of remaining fortuities one is usually prepared to fight and die. The most powerful one, can impose his culture and undo the other. Culture asnon-nature, claims the incontestable genuineness, linked to the concept of nature, for itself. This is what Roland Barthes calls the principle of the mythical character of culture : She turns history into nature. (3) A cover photo of Paris-Match serves as a good example for this. A young black in a French uniform salute

s the French flag. This content of the image (the signifi) becomes a form again (signifiant) in a second semiological system, through which connotations arise. With regard to this photo it means that France is a big Empire, that all itssons, regardless of their skin, serve its colours faithfully and there is no better answer to them who make accusations of a so-called colonialism, than the diligence of this black man to serve his so-called oppressors. The French Empire becomes a fact since that good negro salutes in the same way as our boys. Throughthis equality the French imperialism gets a foundation. The image becomes a contemporary myth from the moment the French imperialism passes for something natural in stead of a historically developed situation. What makes it in fact possible for the reader to consume the myth naively, is that he does not see a semiological, but an inductive system in it. Where there is only talk of equivalence h

e sees a sort of causal process : in his eyes the signifiant and signifi have anatural connection. This confusion can be expressed in another way. Each semiological system is a value system. The consumer of the myth however considers the meaning (signification) as a factual system. Therefore the myth is born as asystem of facts, while she is only a semiological system. This example and Barthes theory about todays myth, namely as speech, explain the mythical character ofstatements or images that want to depict those cultural identities as natural facts.The example of the cover-picture also says something about how Charif Benhelimadoes not work. Just because he does not , as mentioned above, adopt an ideological (pro or con) attitude, but aims at raising a political philosophical phrasing, his pictures dont immediately initiate mythical reading. Charif claims nothing, he observes and records. The surroundings determine a great deal, eventuallypresent as emptiness, as a blind wall ; but more often as revealing signs : a w

indowpane as a surrogate mirror ; sitting in front of a window without desire towatch ; where did the hairdresser go ? He does not photograph the outside worldas objects. On the contrary, he shoots himself as a shadow, as fiction in search of his own past. The photographed people are like brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces. They are masks, behind which he himself is hidden, looking for his own biographie draisonne. It makes me think of a comment by Roland Barthes :Since all pictures are contingent (and therefore exactly beyond significance (hors sens)), photography can only generate a meaning (aim at generality) by putting on a mask. (4) According to Barthes the mask is the meaning (sens) to the extent that it is completely pure, like in classical theatre. He puts a picture ofAvedon as an example, who in a portrait of a native slave reveals the essence of slavery, because his face has turned into a mask.We regularly find such masks in Charifs work. For instance the series about Hl

na Benjouira. She plays the part of a foreigner without legal documents. Finding herself weakly in this situation without documents, is making her complete existence suspicious. Charif depicts her humanity through her maternity in indeedunexpected circumstances. However it is not a report on the adventures of a certain Hlna. She stands for the Outcast Foreigner himself.Another Barthian mask is the picture of a man who, with is trousers down to theankles and leaning back on a chair in the middle of the asylum room shows his naked member. The theatrical connection is clear. Obscene comes from the Latin ob that means in front and scaena that means stage. On stage one has a good overview onings. Theatre and theory have the same stem that refers to seeing. With regard to his unashamed pose the theory is quite clear. The impudent attitude of the Belgian government towards asylum seekers makes it unnecessary to hide the genitals. The humiliation is already too big anyway. Facing the cynicism of politicsthe asylum seeker places his own revolting cynicism. The attitude of the man is

literally obscene ; any sexual or erotic connotation is absent. The game he shows represents the game that is controlled by the Belgian government. He could bean antisaint, a not yet tortured martyr. The German cultural philosopher Peter


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Sloterdijk has described these two forms of cynicism at length. In order to distinguish them from each other he suggested a different spelling. He interpretscynicism as humiliation out of power. The reaction against this through obscenegesture by the oppressed, he calls kynicism. I may not withhold the next extractfrom the reader, because it clarifies Charifs photos so well :Even amongst the powerful one can find something that comes down to half freedom.They allow themselves this normally only under pressure, because by doing so

they betray themselves to the consciousness of the opposition. The rulers awaren

ess knows its own impertinence : the rulers cynicism in the modern meaning of theword, is something different than the kynical offensive. The classical kynicism, that was primary and aggressive, stood in plebeian antithesis to idealism. The modern cynicism on the other hand is the rulers antithesis to the own idealismas ideology and as masquerade. The cynical ruler lifts up his mask, smiles upon his weak opponent and oppresses him. Cest la vie. Noblesse oblige. Ordnung muss sein. The pressure of circumstances often comes before the insight of thoseconcerned, doesnt it. Forced power, forced circumstances ! The hegemony lifts acorner of the veil in its cynicisms, only informs itself half and tells tales.The power cynicism is an impertinence that has chosen for the opposite side. Not Goliath is provoked by David here, no, the Goliaths of all times from the arrogant Assyrian soldier kings to the contemporary bureaucracies rub in the brave y

et desperate David what stands above and what is below ; cynicism in public service. The witticism of those who are already at the top leads to odd excesses.When Mary-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVIth, inquired after the reasons of the peoples agitation, she was answered : The people are hungry, Your Majesty, they haveno bread to eat. Her reaction : If the people have no bread, then why dont they eat biscuits ? (5)Indeed the category of the obscene by no means complies with the dictionary definition any longer : Statements and representations in which the sexual aspect isbrought to the attention, deliberately and especially out of proportion. All proportions of the obscene in its narrow meaning are surpassed. In this context there is no more. On the other hand obscenity in the widest sense has spread as an omnipresent feature of the entire society. This is a guideline for Jean Baudrillards philosophy. Obscenity appears in all shapes of modernity, in the hyperreality of everything that is continuously being filmed, filtered, reviewed and co

rrected by the wide-angle lens of social life, morality and information. To thesituation of the foreigners seeking asylum, the following judgement of Baudrillard applies : Something can only be meaningful if there is a scene, and there canonly be a scene if there is an illusion, a minimum of illusion, of fictitious movement, a challenge to the real thing that thrills, temptsand upsets you. Without this highly aesthetic, mythical, playful dimension there is not even a political scene where something could happen. And this minimal illusion has disappeared to us : the events in Biafra, Chile, Poland, terrorism, the inflation or theatomic war have no necessity nor plausibility to us whatsoever. What we possess of it is an overrepresentation by the media, but not really an impression. All of this is simply obscene to us because it is made by the media to be seen andnot to be looked at, to become hallucinatory transparent, to be absorbed from a

distance just like the genitals absorb the voyeur. We are no spectators nor actors, but voyeurs without illusion. (6)This criticism on everyday watching through media-eyes does not apply to a photographer like Charif Benhelima. He does not cheat our eye, but he makes us part,even accomplice of the event. I would like to call his method of working a photography of in-discretion to indicate the relation between the object (what is photographed) and subject (the operator). One or more chapters in the history of photography could be written about the way the knowingly photographed people assume a pose. They thus adopt an air and show how they dream or think they are. August Sander is a school example here. In Charifs work the pose does not arise,all but a few exceptions in the series Displaced children in a foreign urban environment Brussels Antwerp (1990-1996). The photographer and photographed person have become one. He is not a hunter but a housemate, a trusted relative, with athird mechanical eye, a prothesis that one has gotten used to. The resignation

to be photographed is big. The camera is merely a sympathetic smile or a cheerful wink of a companion.It might be surprising that for these situations, photographed in good faith, Ido use the term in-discretion. Indiscretus means not to be distinguished nor separ


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