Burning as interface : Network formation with the otherworld
Eugenia FontEssay, Goldsmiths, University of London. Module Convenor: Anthony Faramelli
2022 (EN)
Extract from Otherworld Communication (2021) ©Prune Phi
After a trip to Vietnam, Phi found that the ancestral tradition which she had come to know through her diasporic grandfather was very much present in Vietnamese society. Nonetheless, with a few additional features concurring to modern times. The artist realised that beyond money and daily paraphernalia, all sorts of paper ephemera, from Gucci trainers to tablets and computers, were being offered to the departed ancestors.
In this tradition, the otherworld is grasped as a continuation of this one, meaning that all the needs in this world will also be desired in the other world. It is seen as a mirror image with similar necessities that we would have here. Therefore, if we feel the need to own a smartphone to relate to the world, the deceased will do so too. For instance, the Vietnamese proverb “trần sao âm vậy,” signifies that “The other world is similar to the one in which we live in almost every detail”. This newly attained awareness of the tradition conferred her with inspiration to develop the project Otherworld Communication. The artistic proposal is materialised through multiple formats such as sculptures, videos, and a performance, yet for our purpose, we will focus on the latter two.
In the performance, Otherworld Communication is envisioned as a company where the artist becomes a fictional operator. Phi embodies an administrative worker in charge of receiving people that want to send a message to a deceased relative. Visitors are invited to sit in a waiting room, fill out a form with the desired message, and are then welcomed into the office, where Phi records the note that they wish to send. Following the ancestral custom, these messages for the spirits will be printed into the screen of a cardboard iPhone – that Phi carefully constructs – to be burned or kept by the senders as desired.
Through the performance and with these electronic devices, Phi facilitates a link for people in this world to communicate with the hereafter, establishing communication between both realms. Or, as she describes it, “[as] something between a travel agency and communication store.”
On the other hand, Phi presents a series of videos that depict paper telecommunication objects such as an iPhone or laptop being burned in casual settings. This everyday ambience signals the mundane quality and less serious attitude towards this ritual that the artist found during her trip in Vietnam.
We consider the paper replicas of technological devices such as the ones presented to go beyond their inherent utilities, as they additionally work as a communication tool to connect with the spirits. Moreover, these technical objects are built to live as their 'original' counterparts; hence, we will accept them as simulacra and, as such, as part of global networks.
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Focusing on the artist's videos of a phone and a laptop on fire, there are two elements that are of interest in this transition. One is seen from an affective and phenomenological viewpoint, and the other is closer to the symbolic and virtual.
The first element that we wish to pay attention to is a feeling of intensity that emerges when the fire burns these objects of attachment. For many, especially in the West, the phone and the laptop are devices that go beyond their use as tools for communication. They have become a necessity or a basic need and, in some cases, an addiction, making the attachment deep and tangible. Looking at these objects on fire is an image that is frightening and, to an extent, aches. There is an instant response in the body that draws us towards the image as if we want to save those objects.
After having watched the video more than once, another sensation comes to the fore.
A feeling of gratification invades the previous affective response, and instead of asking us to move we remain still and watch the objects transform into ashes. A cathartic moment follows, where one questions the attachment that we have to these devices and wonders why they have become a necessity if they hurt us. The bright flames illuminate, transform, resist, destruct, but also create, allowing us to imagine other possibilities such as the following.
The fire's ability to open a breach between two worlds, allowing for communication and mobility to occur, is the second aspect that we wish to look at. We wish to consider whether this opening is behaving as an interface that enables us to connect with beings that are no longer in their material form.
Alexander R. Galloway in The Unworkable Interface gives us some insight into how the interface functions, highlighting the interconnectedness of elements operating within ecosystems of interplay. Although the interface has regarded itself as a threshold where one can step in to enter another realm, Galloway refutes this understanding. He argues that the interface is a medium without mediating, further rejecting the tendency to regard it as a neat and defined line of separation between things.
The fire burning then, far from a bridge that is concrete, becomes scattered with no clear beginning or end, allowing for communication to surpass temporal and spatial limitations, signalling between past, present, and future. Therefore, the interface is not the mediator between this world and the otherworld, but rather, opens the possibility for mobility and network formation to occur. Phi, also rejecting the idea of the bridge, envisions the fire as a 6G network, as something intangible that allows for wireless communication to occur.
While traditional paper offerings were made in villages by handicraft producers, the production of recent modern replicas such as the iPhones, laptops, and other paper devices – that Phi was surprised to find in Vietnam – are produced with vast machines and in provinces that do not hold a handicraft tradition in producing paper offerings.”