Interviewed: Adelheid Mers on Vilém Flusser

Adelheid Mers is a visual artist living in Chicago. Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, she graduated with an MFA from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She moved to Chicago with a stipend from the German Academic Exchange Service to attend the University of Chicago, has exhibited and lectured widely, curated and co-organized exhibitions, and received numerous grants. She is currently Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I recently asked Mers to comment on the late media philosopher Vilém Flusser, and to give me an overview of his ideas as they relate to visual communication and photography.

Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography with the publication of his book, "Towards a Philosophy of Photography," in 1983. Before we get into that, some background, who is Vilém Flusser and where did he come from?

Extensive biographies can be found here, here and here.

Flusser wrote mostly in German and in Portuguese, but also in Czech, French and English. By far not all of his work, but some significant books and essays have been translated into English. In 1983 "Towards a Philosophy of Photography" was published in German, making him a sought after lecturer throughout Europe. His style of writing is non-academic, playful, and often provocative. His subjects include media and communication theories and thought about emigration that is rooted in his experience.

In 2003, you created "Home," a series of interpretive diagrams based on Flusser’s essays on home, habit and communication. Can you tell me more about how this project came about, and what you hoped to achieve?

I was introduced to Flusser while on a visit to Düsseldorf, my hometown, where a friend gave me a small German publication she thought I might like, "Krise der Linearität" (Crisis of Linearity) by Flusser. That short text, a lecture in which Flusser sketches out his signature movement from image through writing to number and concept, provided me with a much expanded context for my existing interest in diagramming concepts. One of the ideas I found particularly meaningful was his description of maps and diagrams as forms of techno-images, structural images extracted from texts which themselves of course contain the traces of traditional imagery. Collecting as many of his books as I could find, I took notes as I usually do when reading, and finally decided to pull out the ideas that intrigued me most and to create diagrams based on them, using Flusser’s linear texts as the foundation for techno-images. What I hope to achieve is, in Flusser’s words, that images like mine can serve to 'create a space for human intention in a world dominated by apparatuses'. Besides regularly using them as lecture notes in my seminars, I have exhibited these diagrams in various settings that include galleries in the US and in Germany, the InOut Festival in Prague, and the Vilém Flusser Archive at the Media Academy in Cologne, and my website.

In "Towards a Philosophy of Photography," Flusser defined the photograph as: '[...] an image created and distributed automatically by programmed apparatuses in the course of a game necessarily based on chance, an image of a magic state of things whose symbols inform its receivers how to act in an improbable fashion' (76). Can you explain Flusser's main insights on photography in a simple way?

I see three main subjects, all embedded in the context of the changing relations of images, texts and concepts: (A) the camera as an apparatus, (B) the photographer as a stalker of potential realities, and (C) contemporary society as a higher order apparatus that contains an abundance of photographs, the photographic universe, that conceals its functionality.

• The invention of writing was a response to the failure of magical, circular, image-based, pre-historic thinking, that promoted linear, systematic, historic, scientific thinking. A way to make sense fails when it becomes self-referential and stops to explain the world. In this case magical thinking became idolatry (adoration of images), and the response performed an iconoclasm (the breaking up of images). The camera is an apparatus invented towards the end of that era, that can be manufactured because humans systematically researched optical phenomena and have learned to manipulate metal, plastic and glass in a way that expresses them. A photograph can be fixed because humans explored chemical reactions and standardized chemical processes. Anyone who picks up a camera engages with an object that represents that history, its functionality and the science textbooks and institutions that preserve it.
• Each particular camera has certain limits, for example if my camera has a telephoto lens, I can use it to create different images than if it had a wide angle lens. A camera has movable parts the user can manipulate to create a series of effects, which are described and explained in a manual. Thus, the user is guided to operate the equipment across a certain range that has been programmed by the manufacturer. The camera and its user become the ‘apparatus-operator complex’. Photographers explore the camera’s inbuilt programming by stalking the world. Each photograph becomes a realized possibility. Naive observers assume that a photograph reflects reality, though.
• The invention of photography occurs among signs of the failure of linear, systematic, historic, scientific thinking. Historic thinking is failing to make sense as it is becoming inflexible and self-referential. The response to textolatry (the adoration of texts) is textoclasm (the breaking up of texts). As writing was a way to bust magical thinking, photography can be a means to bust linear thinking for a fresh approach to making sense by using a new kind of images. Photographic images are technical images, but they induce ‘a secondary magic spell’ if consumed uncritically as if they were traditional images. That places us in a time of profound change and confusion, and in need of developing a philosophy of photography that may enable us to reap the liberating potential of newly emerging media.

Do you agree with the assessment that Flusser denigrates the role of the amateur photographer in his philosophy? How do you think he would react to the proliferation of photosharing communities, like Flickr, that exist today?

An amateur may be, but doesn’t have to be someone who naively assumes that his or her photographs simply reflect the world. A person in this condition misses the complexity photography has introduced into the world and may be susceptible to manipulation by those who are aware of it. Thus, an amateur is in a position of weakness in relation to others who may be ‘in the know’, mindlessly and to his or her own detriment perpetuating existing relations of power. This is not a denigration of the amateur photographer, but a plea for education.

Flusser theorized, 'As objects (the value of photographs is) negligible; their value lies in the information that they carry loose and open for reproduction on their surface. They are the harbingers of post-industrial society in general: interest has shifted in their case from the object to the information, and ownership is a category that has become untenable for them' (56). Do you agree with his sentiments on the value of photography, and how effective is our current legislation in protecting this intangible value?

Flusser’s entire argument supports open-source software, sharing, the ‘other program’ (see “Celebrating” in the anthology “Writings”, edited by Andreas Ströhl). In Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Flusser addresses various channels of distribution, which contribute to the encoding of images (which would include Flickr) and are used among other things for making a living. In a society that insists on ownership and merit as the basis for subsistence, sharing and mutuality are complicated subjects. You ask if I agree with Flusser’s sentiments. Personally, I wish I could convince sponsors to support my artwork financially through annual stipends, in exchange for the acknowledgment of that support. This would enable me to do something I would like to be able to do, which is to make source files I create available to the public, free of charge.