DAMN° 85 – Deceived Deceivers
In the opening scenes of Blood Sucking Freaks, a controversial mid-70s splatter film set in New York’s SoHo, the self-proclaimed master of the theatre of the macabre, Sardu, has just interrupted his assistant who was excitedly applying thumb screws to a restrained, naked woman on stage. Speaking like a knockoff Vincent Price, Sardu addresses the meagre audience:
Later, unsurprisingly, it’s revealed that Sardu truly is mutilating, murdering and dismembering women during his shows; there is no “playacting” on his stage.
To a degree, isn’t this also what we see in David Blaine’s style of magic performance? Far from the greasy-slick razzle-dazzle of Lance Burton at the Monte Carlo Resort in Las Vegas, Blaine’s late 90s handycam-filmed street magic looks almost without illusion. The more disturbing and absurd the performances are, the more the audience wills for deceit and trickery, despite there appearing to be none.
More recently, for instance, in Blaine’s 2013 show Real or Magic, he is sitting with comedian Ricky Gervais in what looks like a corner booth of a restaurant. From the white table cloth Blaine takes a needle, at least 15 inches long, and he slowly but forcefully pushes it through his bicep. All the while, he coolly mumbles a not-so-pithy patter: “see how the needle looks like it's going into the arm, see how it really looks like it is actually going in.” It’s a grotesque scene. Gervais squirms in his seat. “That's real”, he says after the show is over, “he stuck a needle through his arm, but he couldn't of because nobody would do that, so how did he do it?”
Gevais does as Sardu suggests, he is disturbed by what he has seen so he acts as if it were not real, as if it were a trick. When there is a trick, a deception, there is a rational answer, so to speak, because there is a mechanism in operation, we just don’t know (yet) what the gimmick is – a prosthetic rubber thumb, a stooge, wires, pulleys, hidden trap doors, perhaps. But when it is not certain that there is a trick being performed at all, and what we see appears to be truly real, there is no simple way to understand it, so we make up naïve semi-fictions, just as Sardu asks of us; we decide, almost by necessity, to act “as if” it were one thing or another. In this way, our sense of concrete, lived reality is magicked away by willed self-delusion. It’s curious to think, with this in mind, that the notions of trickery, deception, illusion and deceit are all ingredients in the root of the word “design”.
The enigmatic writer Vilem Flusser’s short etymological essay About the Word Design should, by now, be better known. To briefly rehearse: it is written in a style typical of Flusser, he hastily journeys across seemingly disconnected territories, the only common thread being the trace of his roaming curiosity. He surveys aspects of Latin, Greek, English, and German languages, to give the word design context in “cunning” and “craftiness”, “machine” and “power”, “art” and “technique”; he describes designers as “wily” and as “plotter[s] setting traps”. In short, design, he says, is treacherous.
After concocting these unique origins of the word design, Flusser pointedly asks: “whom and what do we betray when we involve ourselves in this culture [?]” In an oblique retort, he warns that the abundance of design signals a loss of “truth and authenticity”. This makes sense if we think of designs, as Flusser does, as contrivances and strategies that manipulate how things authentically and truly are. He describes a lever, for instance, as an artificial arm that tricks gravity and dupes the laws of nature. However, circling back to Sardu, what happens when there is no trick, or (like in Houdini’s case) a trick goes wrong? That is to say, what happens when we are faced with the obscenity of something that is really real?
This question is for the reader-as-audience, as critic, as commentator, not for the designer-as-magician, as tricker, as deceiver. In our abundant culture of design we seem poorly equipped to respond to this kind of question because we tend towards misdirecting our attention rather than embracing and carefully expressing our more matter-of-fact, idiosyncratic and banal experiences. The sort of attentive design writing we are in need of now must express the visceral, tangibility of the real. Of course, what is “real” is not the same for everyone. The romantics found reality to be romantic, the naturalists natural, surrealists surreal, and so on. It would be a grave mistake, though, for design writers to only see design as what is truly real. To write “realistically” about design requires a kind of articulation that savours an enduring focus on the particularities of lived life with design. What we need to happen in design writing now is attention to what Flusser thought of as the true and the authentic, which is something like the malady of the human condition. We need something more confessional, a kind of writing that sticks with the problem of feeling sick in the stomach. That would be a kind of writing that isn't so eager to act "as if" what is really going on may not actually be so real at all.
If you find what you see a little upsetting to your stomach, then just pretend we are playacting. But if you are sceptical or bored then just pretend that what you see is real.
Later, unsurprisingly, it’s revealed that Sardu truly is mutilating, murdering and dismembering women during his shows; there is no “playacting” on his stage.
To a degree, isn’t this also what we see in David Blaine’s style of magic performance? Far from the greasy-slick razzle-dazzle of Lance Burton at the Monte Carlo Resort in Las Vegas, Blaine’s late 90s handycam-filmed street magic looks almost without illusion. The more disturbing and absurd the performances are, the more the audience wills for deceit and trickery, despite there appearing to be none.
More recently, for instance, in Blaine’s 2013 show Real or Magic, he is sitting with comedian Ricky Gervais in what looks like a corner booth of a restaurant. From the white table cloth Blaine takes a needle, at least 15 inches long, and he slowly but forcefully pushes it through his bicep. All the while, he coolly mumbles a not-so-pithy patter: “see how the needle looks like it's going into the arm, see how it really looks like it is actually going in.” It’s a grotesque scene. Gervais squirms in his seat. “That's real”, he says after the show is over, “he stuck a needle through his arm, but he couldn't of because nobody would do that, so how did he do it?”
Gevais does as Sardu suggests, he is disturbed by what he has seen so he acts as if it were not real, as if it were a trick. When there is a trick, a deception, there is a rational answer, so to speak, because there is a mechanism in operation, we just don’t know (yet) what the gimmick is – a prosthetic rubber thumb, a stooge, wires, pulleys, hidden trap doors, perhaps. But when it is not certain that there is a trick being performed at all, and what we see appears to be truly real, there is no simple way to understand it, so we make up naïve semi-fictions, just as Sardu asks of us; we decide, almost by necessity, to act “as if” it were one thing or another. In this way, our sense of concrete, lived reality is magicked away by willed self-delusion. It’s curious to think, with this in mind, that the notions of trickery, deception, illusion and deceit are all ingredients in the root of the word “design”.
The enigmatic writer Vilem Flusser’s short etymological essay About the Word Design should, by now, be better known. To briefly rehearse: it is written in a style typical of Flusser, he hastily journeys across seemingly disconnected territories, the only common thread being the trace of his roaming curiosity. He surveys aspects of Latin, Greek, English, and German languages, to give the word design context in “cunning” and “craftiness”, “machine” and “power”, “art” and “technique”; he describes designers as “wily” and as “plotter[s] setting traps”. In short, design, he says, is treacherous.
After concocting these unique origins of the word design, Flusser pointedly asks: “whom and what do we betray when we involve ourselves in this culture [?]” In an oblique retort, he warns that the abundance of design signals a loss of “truth and authenticity”. This makes sense if we think of designs, as Flusser does, as contrivances and strategies that manipulate how things authentically and truly are. He describes a lever, for instance, as an artificial arm that tricks gravity and dupes the laws of nature. However, circling back to Sardu, what happens when there is no trick, or (like in Houdini’s case) a trick goes wrong? That is to say, what happens when we are faced with the obscenity of something that is really real?
This question is for the reader-as-audience, as critic, as commentator, not for the designer-as-magician, as tricker, as deceiver. In our abundant culture of design we seem poorly equipped to respond to this kind of question because we tend towards misdirecting our attention rather than embracing and carefully expressing our more matter-of-fact, idiosyncratic and banal experiences. The sort of attentive design writing we are in need of now must express the visceral, tangibility of the real. Of course, what is “real” is not the same for everyone. The romantics found reality to be romantic, the naturalists natural, surrealists surreal, and so on. It would be a grave mistake, though, for design writers to only see design as what is truly real. To write “realistically” about design requires a kind of articulation that savours an enduring focus on the particularities of lived life with design. What we need to happen in design writing now is attention to what Flusser thought of as the true and the authentic, which is something like the malady of the human condition. We need something more confessional, a kind of writing that sticks with the problem of feeling sick in the stomach. That would be a kind of writing that isn't so eager to act "as if" what is really going on may not actually be so real at all.
See Gabrielle Kennedy’s Editorial intro to issue 85 here
