INVISIBLE SPACES
For decades, Ken Schles has followed humanity’s invisible traces, its ticks and traumas, innocence and imbalance. He has searched behind the city’s façade in his pursuit of the naked human’s existence where it stands alone, in all its fundamentality. But he realizes too that various forms of social control unconsciously bind our existence, allowing the individual a place in the flock. Yet recently he’s curtailed photographing people and their social interactions. “I have begun to photograph landscapes, which might seem far afield from my previous work. I think it’s a reaction to the fact that people today are so overly conscious about presenting themselves for the camera that a certain kind of innocence – the mystery that I was once so drawn to – is not so readily apparent.”
He gained worldwide recognition for photographic depictions that have been described as “milestones in the history of photography.” In his award-winning books Invisible City and Night Walk, Schles collected his wanderings through a pre-internet subterranean New York. It was a time before Instagram, Tumblr and other social media. A time before we were “so pre-eminently and self-consciously obsessed with our social relations,” according to Schles.
“In my work, I am eager to explore uncertainty. I see the other primarily as a mystery: a mystery that is often suppressed and that only peeps out involuntarily, despite it being an undeniable part of what it is to be human. The failure of social media, however, is that we tend to program and project a particular (and rather finite) definition of self, eliminating both mystery and revelation. In many instances, the other becomes an impenetrable facade.”
A fundamental shift in the function of social space
Ken Schles senses that the need of others to be portrayed in certain ways disables his ability to reveal the unexpected: “Perhaps it’s my own failure, but I feel that many of the tropes of street photography have become cliché, and rarely go beyond a depiction of surface. Additionally, there’s been a fundamental shift in the function of social space. People want to share their presence on social media. Activity exists to be transacted as image, and so it now serves cross-purposes: on the one hand it is of the moment, but it is theatrically self-aware and presented in order to be represented as an image. As something prefigured and self-aware it often mimics other self-similar images. Further, because social spaces (including social media spaces) are mostly controlled by profit making entities, commercial activity becomes the predominant operational mode for social engagement. We should also remember that because these are private spaces they are not forums for protected free speech: they are areas of corporate influence, and they reflect projections of corporate rules to fulfill economic mandates.”
He is interested in the flock – in the way we humans interact with each other as social animals and not least when we don’t – in those moments when we, good and bad, stand outside the flock. According to Schles, nature reminds us that we need the invisible spaces – the landscape is confrontationally honest in its unimpressive presence – it’s not posing. Schles quotes Rousseau: “Social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his existence merely from the judgement of others concerning him”.
The desire for freedom and the fear of missing out
”Social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his existence merely from the judgement of others concerning him.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
As early as the late 1700s, the Enlightenment’s natural philosopher and freedom campaigner, Rousseau, described the paradox of the civilised human – the desire for freedom and the fear of not being part of the flock. An immensely talented media industry has gained access to this primitive-psychological state – smart technology offers us a means of escaping the loneliness via the constant opportunity to be part of the many flocks that we search for together in various social media outlets. We have become hyper social – always available and always only a click away from loneliness. But the problem is that there is also a freedom in the loneliness of the confrontation with social structures and systems. ”The quote seems to presage our obsession concerning how we appear to others in the larger world. I say, “seems to” only because we think our current obsessions for things such as selfies and “likes” are somehow new. They really aren’t new. They simply amplify extant tendencies through the use of new technologies. I find the quote fascinating because it refers to how we exist to ourselves “merely” because of our impact or reputation in the thoughts of others, while savages, without language or alone in the wilderness, cannot have this kind of self-knowledge simply because they don’t have “social standing” or language to externalize certain essential qualities of their being to others”.
Schles emphasizes that this notion of the savage has been scientifically found to be false as we find that other creatures do indeed possess language and the social structures necessary to pass along such notions. “Regardless, Rousseau’s idea is radical because it points out the role that culture plays in disseminating ideas/concepts and reminiscences — and the essential qualities of our being — through the guise of, one could even say, cults of personality. How often do we say upon learning about the death of someone that they will “live on in the thoughts of others”? In Rousseau’s later work, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau seems to totally reject that idea. In fact, he seems to reject the opinions of the world and “others”, by and large, as he turns inwards to ask himself important questions by seeking self-knowledge. “He did this, I believe, because towards the end of his life he felt misjudged and that his reputation was grossly mischaracterized and that he was wrongly vilified in the mind of others. These walks that he conducts amount to his reveries of self-discovery and are done as solitary acts. He retakes possession of his existence by not caring about what others think or say of him. His “solitary reveries” gave him peace of mind before he died.”
Self-censorship relies on one’s own moral compass
According to Schles, censorship and, more perniciously, self-censorship based on the need to seek approval are only symptomatic of our society’s inability to move beyond a paternalistic and capitalistic society. “I hope it is only symptomatic of a developmental stage – a developmental stage that we, as a society, are going through. But how long will it last? And do we, or does life on this planet, have the luxury of time?”
He refers to a Chinese proverb that says laws are for the unenlightened. “Censorship exists in the realm of laws, in the realm of the big stick. Self-censorship relies on one’s own moral compass. In itself self-censorship is actually a necessary and good thing. It is a way to create order. And without order, one cannot operate and one cannot prosper. But it is vital and necessary to understand the source of that order and the underlying beliefs that the order is based upon and on that which it supports. If one is not enlightened, self-censorship simply internalizes paternalistic ideas and ideations. It seems that every generation has to deal with censorship and self-censorship on different terms that are reflective of their time and milieu. And every coming generation will need to revisit the issue on its own terms. We will never outgrow the need to grow up and move beyond what separates us and divides us and holds us back from fulfilling our potential”.
“To look for the consciousness of existence through the judgement of others, we open ourselves up to manipulation and control. We self-censor for approval and acceptance. One’s moral force and voice is relinquished — transferred to the whims and manipulations of others as we seek some sort of approval. Finding one’s existence through the judgement of others is a dead end. It is trying to fill an abyss with praise or acceptance of some sort. It is a narcissistic dead end. It is an infantilizing proposition. It invites groupthink and self-censorship in the worst ways. Without a foundation of core beliefs and an already developed sense of what feeds the soul, a need to find one’s existence in the eyes of others will become a constant and unfulfillable prospect. It can only reach a sorrowful end. It is like the child looking for the approval of their mother. The praise will never be enough. Happiest is the child when they are off exploring the world, deep in discovery. It is then that they can mature and find meaning and purpose”.
Schles emphasizes that technology and social media have brought the world closer to us but also abstracted it – and our relationships. All our status updates and visual expressions are projections – they are abstract spaces, not real social spaces; at least, not in a traditional sense. “The essence is that we are always going to be alienated – maybe it gives us more of a drive, more of a desire. But we need to see each other as mysteries to be discovered, not as projections of egos – we need the invisible spaces free from self-censorship and self-editing. Some try to pick up the pieces of this abstraction. But in the end in our society it is more often than not in the service of corporations, in service of our egos and our narcissism, and it seems as if we have kind of lost the boundaries of reality. These simple tools of the Internet feed all sorts of complex psychological pathologies. They are designed that way. They feed the coffers of multinational corporate concerns. They are destructive and disruptive to both political and market systems, and the community and the individual. But they have an upside, too. There is great potential. In the end, these tools can be (and are) used for instructive and useful ends. We just need to be aware of what they are, how they operate and how they can be leveraged positively. We need to remain conscious of what their pitfalls are. And we need to remember that social spaces on the internet are not public spaces in any true sense. They are fora operated by entities for their own purpose and advantage and they develop norms and standards that benefit them most”.
This conversation was published in Pan & The Dream #1