Language is a multi-dimensional practical experience. In the
interaction between individuals who produce something (in this
case, works of art) and those who consume them,
self-constitution through language makes coordination possible.
Production and consumption are other instances of human
self-constitution. Frequently, integration takes place in the
process of exchanging goods or, at a more general level, values.
Drawing something, real or imaginary, and looking at the drawing,
i.e., trying to recognize the drawn object, are structurally
different experiences. These two practical experiences can be
related in many ways: display the drawing and the object drawn
side-by-side; explain the drawing to the onlookers; attach a
description. Here is where difficulties start to accumulate. The
artifact and the experience leading to it appear as different
entities. Descriptions (what is on paper or on canvas) lead to
identification, but not to interaction, the only reason behind
the artistic experience. Language substitutes its own condition
for the entire physical-biogenetic level of interaction. It
overplays the cultural, which is consequently made to represent
the entire experience.
People speak about works of art, write about art, and read
writings about art as though art had no phylogenetic dimension,
only a phylocultural reality. Language's coordinative function
is relied upon because of the dissimilarity between the practical
experiences of making art and of appropriating it in the cultural
environment. Through cultural experiences, the coordinating
function of language extends to facilitating new forms of
practical experiences associated with making art: instruction,
use of technology, and cooperation peculiar to artmaking. It
also facilitates experiences of appropriation in the art market,
the constitution of institutions dedicated to supporting
education in art, the politics of art, and forms of public
evaluation. Art implicitly expresses awareness, on the part of
artists and public, of how persons interacting through artistic
expression are changed through the interactions.
Language, especially in forms associated with literacy, makes
this awareness of reciprocal influence explicit. In the
civilization of illiteracy, all non-literate means of
information, communication, and marketing (e.g., songs, film,
video, interactive multimedia) take it upon themselves to
reposition art as yet another practical experience of the
pragmatics of high efficiency peculiar to a humankind that
reached yet another critical mass. It was not unusual for an
artist in the literacy-dominated past to go through very long
cycles in preparing for the work, and for the work itself to
unfold after years of effort. It is quite the contrary in the
case of the instantaneous gratification of a video work, of an
installation, or of gestural art. Within the pragmatics of an
underlying structure reflected in literacy, art was as confined
as the experience of language, which represented its
underpinning. The pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy
makes the experience of art part of the global experience.
Many people wonder whether the basic, though changing, relation
between art and language, in particular art and literacy, is
unavoidable-furthermore, whether coordination can be assumed by
a sign system other than literate language. In prelude to
answering this question, I would like to point out that the
influence of language on the arts, and even on the language arts
(poetry, drama, fiction), was hailed by as many as deplored it.
To account for attitudes in favor of or against an art connected
to, or resulting from, high levels of literacy, i.e., of
favoring an art emancipated from the domination of language,
means to account for the change of art and its perceived
meaning. The entire artistic effort to transcend the figurative
and the narrative, to explore the abstract and the gestural, to
explore its own reality, and to establish new languages
testifies to this striving towards emancipation. Ascertaining
that the art- language relation is not inescapable does not
purport the invention of a new relation as an alternative to
what culture acknowledges as the relatively necessary dependence
of the two. As with the case of other forms of practical
experiences discussed against the background of literacy,
examination of directions of change and the attempt to conjure
their meaning is required.
Human beings are agents of change and, at the same time, outside
observers of the process of change. An observer can distinguish
between the recurrent influence of the human biogenetic
structure and the interactions based on this structure. An
observer can also account for the role of the phylocultural, in
particular the interactions this triggers. Restricted to the
literate means of communication that I chose for presenting my
arguments, I want to show that art and its interpretation are no
longer the exclusive domain of literate language. Alternative
domains of creation and interpretation are continuously
structured as we project ourselves in new practical experiences.
Moreover, the eternal conflict inherent in art experiences,
between what is and what unfolds, best expressed in the quest
for innovation, integrates aspects of the conflict between
literacy-dominated pragmatics and pragmatics dominated by
illiteracy. Were I an artist, and were we all visually attuned,
this topic could have been explained through one or several
artworks, or through the process leading to an artwork. The role
of processing current practical experiences of art needs to be
properly highlighted. Exacerbated in the self-consciousness of
art in the age of illiteracy, artistic processes take precedence
over artifacts; the making of art becomes more important than the
result. Artists would say that we exist not only in the
environment of our language projections, but probably just as
much (if not more) in the environment of our art projections.