Why do you want...
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| Why do you want... | |
| Jan Kaus and Hanno Soans | |
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Jan Kaus (JK): For example in literature the advertising world
is associated not so much with the publication of books, but with
relevant events, such as book launches. Hanno Soans (HS): This is a form of event marketing, and that market certainly has tough competition. JK: Yes, and it happens all the time that various good authors constantly refuse to participate in book launches, which in the wider context reflects how complicated it is to talk about advertising culture in Estonia. Quite a few cultural figures have developed a serious allergy to the media landscape. HS: This is a closed circle. JK: They are probably afraid that the world of fine distinctions where they live would be lost in the media - and they are not wrong there. On the other hand, if less and less people circulate in the public sphere, who can perceive fine distinctions and appreciate them, this is not a good solution either. HS: To me this primarily seems a matter of conscience or inner feeling. Those who do whatever they do earnestly and to the best of their ability, might feel uneasy when the messages they have sent out to the common cultural space are not discursive or complicated enough. Somewhere here runs the line where both value systems operate in parallel: the system of trade, which forms the basis of the economy and politics, and the system of fine distinctions on which cultural values rely. The vague area in between is in fact the most fascinating. The adverts and promotions made there probably have an impact first of all on a niche audience, and it is not advertising that would expand the circle of viewers or readers. If, however, we aim at increasing the number of viewers, then the so-called niche audience contains many who are not willing to accept an advert below a certain level of complexity, regarding it as totally worthless. JK: It also seems to me that there is a constant competition in the media that is both pro and against the marginalisation of culture. Culture is not something taken for granted by the press, it is mostly seen as marginal. An eloquent example here is the cultural supplement of the biggest Estonian daily, Postimees, which was axed and then restored after the protests. They still intended to get rid of culture anyway, but do it now more gently - more gradually. If we ask whether it is perhaps culture that uses the media, thenÉ this is what it should do, and much more too. I think that culture is not allowed to use the media enough, mostly because of the standard norms of presentation that are also imposed on the cultural pages: more large photographs and shorter stories. HS: Yes, but the problem here is that the Estonian press is full of uneducated people who are not able to make use of culture. The Sun or other british tabloids often run stories about culture - true, they look at it from a specific angle and may place people existing at opposing positions on the symbolic field of culture side by side, such as paulo coelho and salman rushdie, for example. But they are both there. You are right in that people who can perceive fine distinctions should not totally abandon the media space and the public domain. In his book Sur la télévision (1996), Pierre Bourdieu claims the same. He says, yes, we must go there, but we must tread carefully and demand certain conditions (eg the right to read the article again before publication) - act as toughly as the press acts with us. There is no point to automatically becoming masochists. It is not spite, after all, if we demand something from the media, because we have to live with our self-perception later, and in a sort of invisible way the media is always demanding something from us - we keep adapting to its rules. JK: The media constantly asks questions from us, and not the other way round. HS: But asks in a manner as if media rules were natural environment: "We are sorry, but it cannot be helped, it is raining here". Whereas in fact, this is a shower that can be regulated. We all have a duty to regulate it not out of spite but, rather, we and the media must keep in mind that how things are presented is a matter of agreement. JK: I once appeared on a morning television programme, and indeed, someone who thinks he represents the world of fine distinctions, has to take into account when facing a journalist that whatever you and he have agreed beforehand, the questions will always necessitate very wide generalisations. When the host asked me all of a sudden why I wanted to be a writer, I asked him in return: "Why do you want to run a tv show?" he was not able to answer. But I took pity on him and explained why I wanted to be a writer. HS: You shouldn't have had any pity. One thing that makes culture less attractive in the media is that culture so easily adopts a linear, endlessly explaining and assisting function. But this is not obviously the language of the media. Within the media, it would be possible to work with finer distinctions, namely like in the manner of performance, as you described. In sum, we should make mediabased countermoves that would block the emerged situation on the one hand (when you start explaining you are always secondary, following the media), pointing out the daftness of the question. But on the other hand maybe we should indeed be less merciful and simply leave some things unexplained. The media is not an expounding format. JK: In Estonia people involved in culture should realise that the battle waged in a public field is all for the criteria of values. We should oppose the notion that culture can be valued similarly with the economy, so that the result can be instantly measured. HS: There is indeed no reason to despise that sphere and scornfully reject it, but recklessly storming the advertising barricades does not seem useful either. We should probably act as we act in culture: there is a difference between a tailor-made and an ordinary suit, and equally there should be a difference between adverts for washing powder and culture. We ought to be careful and perhaps quicker and smarter than advertising agencies. The exhibition of Gints Gabrans led me to thinking how adverts increasingly adopt the strategies of contemporary art and turn them into market strategies. Gabrans is involved with questions of esthétique relationelle, ie relational aesthetics, which is based on the understanding that a work of art is opera aperta - open. This means that an artist can always alter the work and incorporate the interpretation of the work into it. The work is thus a cumulative organism, gathering additional meanings and these meanings depend on how people begin to formulate opinions around the work as a starting impulse. However, after receiving the Hansapank award, Gabrans suddenly decided to create an extremely fluid and abstract installation environment that is very difficult to put into words and only indirectly social. I think such a change was caused by a shift in modern advertising campaigns from 'stunningly attractive pictorial' adverts to adverts that correspond to the logic of relational aesthetics. The latter presents social schemes - social intrigues. It is clear that the relational aesthetics operating in art inevitably senses that it is being overshadowed by a hundred times more expensive and more megalomaniac relational aesthetics-based advertising campaign - art logic has been converted back to the applied art. Jan Kaus (1971), writer and critic; chairman of the Estonian Writers' Union Hanno Soans (1974), art critic and curator of the Art Auseum of Estonia |
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| Estonian Art 1/05 (16) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2005 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 | |
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