March 16 to April 27

Zeigam Azizov

Hard Spell: A Promise to Generations

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It is becoming increasingly apparent that the contemporary global economy operates by adopting the radical inventions of science, philosophy and arts in order to organize a new division of labor (or so-called intellectual labor). One aspect of this division of labor is an optimality of choice based on traditional notions of competition and confidence. That optimality of choice is taken over by the media which build upon highly organized technological inventions and creative forms derived from different forms of knowledge, particularly linguistics. Everyday one comes across media programming which has a strong psychological impact on the viewer. Media does this by regarding confidence as a force to overcome competition. It is said to educate the viewer’s affects and emotional strength in leisure time. The media has become even more of a surveillance machine to ensure that the viewer’s dreams and work potential coincide and are inseparable.

With the installation “Hard Spell: a Promise to Generations,” I would like to problematise the dramatic transformation of radical linguistics into the managerial language of media. The language of media plays an educational role as it increasingly controls the popular consciousness of developing generations.
The initial idea for the project came from the BBC1 entertainment program ‘Hard
Spell,’ which was broadcast daily at 5.30 pm. in the UK in 2005. ‘Hard Spell’ was a program devoted to a spelling competition between young children, and it featured the slogan, “Spelling is Compelling!” I perceived this program as a spectacular way of training children for the emergent global economy. In this economy, constraints provide new, restrictive methods of managerial learning and computability which are inseparable from their linguistic as well as ‘intellectual’ foundations.

The installation consists of a film (the managerial worker advertising the professional spelling training), an image (advertising the ‘Hard Spell’ program), and a list of terminologies linking the linguistic moment to corporate ethics. The film and the image of ‘Hard Spell’ will be installed face-to-face to create a dialogue between the manager and the young generation. The list of terminologies printed directly on the wall reflects the transformation of radical ideas into business.

In much ‘media talk,’ most political dilemmas are justified as promises to improve life and opportunities for the generations to come. But it is also well known today that media is a platform for promising the “future” of the coming society.

The rapid spread of new technologies has given rise to a rapid spread of the popular narrative. After Althusser, we may review this paradox of subjectivication by saying that ‘subjects speak by themselves’ because of the political message interpellated in the birth of the contemporary person. If ‘subjects speak by themselves,’ that means power is “shifted” from governmental houses to the popular mind, as if people are physically possessed by the message of power. The condition of surveillance is internalized and enters into the means of perception. This is also called ‘biopolitics’. In the climate of ‘neo-liberalism,’ ‘giving a voice’ to the larger population to narrate their own stories is a strategy widely practiced by the media. Yet even a cursory glance at this kind of ‘freedom’ helps us to understand that the liberty to speak is nearly the same thing as delivering the message of power. Previous radical gestures have very quickly become institutionalized and adapted for the purposes of ideological operations of power, and especially the control of people’s right to speak. Neo-liberalism is notorious for this trait: it seems that everyone is free to speak, but the control of that freedom is increased at the same time. The forms and styles of radical art movements are now disseminated elsewhere in the spectacular society.

With these questions as its basis, “Hard Spell” is the first of a series I am planning to create as an examination of the complexity of our times.
(Zeigam Azizov)

Zeigam Azizov, born 1963 in Salyan, Azerbaijan, lives in London since 1992. Solo exhibition: ICA, London (1995). Group shows: “Global Photography now: Post Soviet States”, Tate Modern, London (2006); “Global tour”, W139, Amsterdam (2006), “Utopia Station”, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2004); 50th Biennial Venice (2003); “Becoming Global”, Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau (2003); “Routes”, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2002); “Outsourcing”, inIVA, London (2002); “Never look back”, Shedhalle, Zurich (2001).