This postcard haunts and is haunted.

In 1989, its utopian promise haunted a reality that was unable to make good on it, and in turn the postcard was haunted by the increasingly dystopian qualities of reality. In 2 9 this haunting!problem now haunts the present as an e"ample of the #ar"ist hauntology $errida wrote about. The problems of our imagined %topias and $ystopias ha&en't gone away ( the postcard is a ghost of the )$*, e"ploding like a spectre the neat symbolic binaries we put our faith in by being both nice and nasty, wrong and right, innocent and guilty, present and absent. It's also the ghost of childhood, of innocence personal or ideological, imploring us to know its killer, manifesting to us so as to haunt and correct in+ustice in the same way that ghosts traditionally do. It's a poignant lie about reality and reality is a poignant inadequacy compared to it I like that it's haunted and that it haunts me. ,ike a ghost it creates problems which are interesting and pro&ocati&e. It gets me thinking about the problems of art and cultural history in an open!ended way. It seems to e"press a melancholy frustration with The -ay Things .re. .s an o&erall aesthetic e"perience it deconstructs the historically utopian, romanticises the post!utopian, and yet the %topia it presents is stubbornly /undead'. In all this it has what we might call a /hauntological effect'. The hauntological effect of this postcard arises from the /real' conte"t that surrounds its status as a kitschy art ob+ect, but works of art can within themsel&es reproduce the hauntological effect that this postcard has. 0auntology is not a genre of art or music, but an aesthetic effect, a way of reading and appreciating art. ,ike wonky 1 wonkification, hauntology is a theme that can be read into many sub+ects, and which can be brought out in many different ways. 0auntological art 2i.e. art that permits a hauntological reading, art that has hauntological aesthetic effects3 can be thought of as ha&ing two stages, or layers. The first layer seems to present something that's in some way idealised ( this is often but not always an image in&ol&ing the past 2as I hope to show, this image is frequently depicts 4ature3. In the e"ample of the )erman postcard this layer is the perfectly charming, kitschy image as separate from its historical conte"t. The second, /hauntological' layer problematises, compromises and obfuscates the first layer, undermining or damaging it in some way and introducing irony into the work, and represents the opinionated &iewpoint of the present. -hile the first layer might e"press hope and confidence, the hauntological layer contradicts and undoes this by e"pressing a satirical doubt and disillusionment. In the e"ample of the )$* postcard the hauntological layer corresponds to the darker historical conte"t we're aware of that transforms our perception of the first layer. .s was the case with the postcard, the hauntological layer can result from a relati&ely unintended consequence of conte"t, but in the purposefully hauntological art I'll look at below, both layers are to a relati&e e"tent suggested in the te"t itself 2inasmuch as there is such a thing as /the te"t itself'3. This can be achie&ed using /lo!fi' effects 2such as fading, dirt, or low quality materials in plastic art5 noise, re&erb, filters and audibly decaying or broken technology in music3 and &arious forms of /unprofessionality', surrealism, fragmentation and collage, all of which is analogous to a traditional ghost's ectoplasm, pale colour and binding chains, signifying undeath. It's the key role played by this hauntological layer that distinguishes hauntological art from art that's simply retro or idealistic.

The hauntological layer /deconstructs' the first layer ( in this way hauntological te"ts deconstruct themsel&es. 6ust as it's impossible to pin down a ghost conceptually, it's not always easy to separate the two opposing layers of a hauntological te"t because they occur simultaneously. The first layer is /inside' the second layer 2/the past inside the present'3. The first layer 2/the past'3 can only be seen through the medium of the second layer 2/the present'3 so that we can't be entirely sure of the image portrayed by the first layer. This process of obfuscation is a metaphor for memory 2or more specifically an allegory of memory3, and more broadly an allegory of any sort of representation of the world or any inadequately 2/untruthfully'3 symbolic or imaginary conceptualisation. The hauntological layer shows the first layer to be /untrue' 2as k!punk puts it, /the origin was always spectral' to begin with3 and hints at some unresol&ed lack in this truth. The percei&ed inability of something to adequately e"press the /truths' e"pected of it is sometimes referred to as its /$eath', as in /the $eath of 7ainting', /the $eath of *ock', /the $eath of )od' etc. .ppropriately enough, hauntological art negotiates these sorts of /$eaths'. In doing this it's rather like the 8erfremdungseffekt or /8!effect' de&eloped by twentieth!century dramatist and theorist 9ertolt 9recht. #ost often translated loosely as the /alienation effect' 2/8erfremdung' could also be translated as /estranging' or /de! familiarisation'3, it aimed to disrupt the seducti&e, seamless and /trance'!like flow of sympathy from a play's audience to the characters portrayed on stage in &arious ways but most famously by /breaking the fourth wall', a theatrical metaphor that can be applied to other arts to describe any situation where the illusion of transparent artistic surface is broken. 9recht's plan was that the 8!effect would work satirically, denaturalising bourgeois notions of the /alleged :eternally human;' that supposedly remained permanent throughout history and the world and ser&ed to maintain the political status quo by implying that /it's always been this way<'= /The field has to be defined in historically relati&e terms< we must drop our habit of taking the different social structures of past periods, then stripping them of e&erything that makes them different5 so that our own period can be seen to be impermanent too' ( 9recht, /. >hort ?rganum for the Theatre', 19@8. The 8!effect can also demonstrate hauntology!like allegories of symbolic representation 2if /actor' is taken to be analogous to /artist' or /music!maker'3= /The audience identifies itself with the actor as being an obser&er, and accordingly de&elops his attitude of obser&ing or looking on< It is quite clearly somebody else's repetition of the incident= a representation, e&en though an artistic one' ( 9recht, /.lienation Affects in Bhinese .cting', 19CD. These ideas can help gi&e some particular insights into hauntological aesthetics, but they're only rele&ant up to a certain point. 0auntological effects certainly alienate and estrange the familiar and the idealistic so that it can be reassessed, but the question that could remain to be asked of any work of hauntological art is whether it makes a culturally satirical temporal dis+unction of a 9rechtian sort, or demonstrates and mourns the 2eternal3 tragedies of the human condition, or is simply a matter of personal nostalgia.

,ike a number of /problem painter' artists today, $oig's work negotiates the /$eath of 7ainting' ( he seems to paint about painting, each can&as becomes an allegory of the strangely beautiful problems, inadequacies and imperfections of creati&e &ision. In his /Eigure in #ountain ,andscape' series, each painting is a different realisation of the motif of a hooded landscape painter, demonstrating the precariousness of figurati&e painting, both in its content and its e"ecution. Its lurid colouration gi&es the appearance of a chemical decay in the pigment as on celluloid film 2working at different rates for different paints, causing the holes and une&enness3, the contours of the landscape the painter sees are far from clear, and any sense of distance and perspecti&e is con+ecture at best. It's not entirely clear where the painter is positioned, and no easel can be seen 2could the figure's /painting' be imaginaryF3. The oddly dark and threatening grass in the foreground, which seems to be taking the image o&er from the bottom up, has the logic of a child's drawing, and the tall point in painter's hood gi&es her1his task mystical air. $oig's damaged and messy painting technique argues that art is no transparent window onto the world, and cannot depict the ob+ecti&e /truth'. If, consequently, painting is /dead', then these paintings are decomposing. ?ther paintings are riddled with blotches and flecks, as if the can&ases had become giant 7etri dishes full of bacteria, mould and mildew brought on by rising damp. The grid< is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature. ( *osalind Grauss I do wonder if I'd paint landscapes if I li&ed in the landscape. It's a kind of per&erse idealism. I get an ironic pleasure working with the landscape while being remo&ed from it< I re&el in that ambi&alence, finding it fascinating how the more remo&ed from nature we are, the more our desire and yearning for it seems to increase. $epictions of landscape are a good substitute for the real thing ( the real thing being unattainable ( $an 0ays A&erything that we see disperses, fades away. 4ature is always the same, e&en though its &isible manifestations e&entually cease to e"ist. ?ur art must shock nature into permanence, together with the components and manifestations of change. .rt must make nature eternal in our imagination. -hat lies behind natureF 4othing perhaps. 7erhaps e&erything. ( 7aul BHIanne If a work is successful, I ha&e feelings of doubt towards it. There's something left that I'm not sure about ( $an 0ays I probably don't need to emphasise the relationship between ghosts and aging technology, but it's no surprise that since the late twentieth century, as $8$, digital radio, digital recording, digital cameras, digital tele&ision and mobile phones were coming onto the scene, noisy ghosts started coming out of &ideotapes 2the *ing3, analogue radio 2Erequency3, analogue noise on tele&ision and audio tape 2-hite 4oise and Eissures3, cameras 2>hutter3, telephones 2?ne #issed Ball3, tele&ision transmissions 2$ead -a&es3 and e&en the internet 27ulse3. 4or is it surprising that films like these often originate from 6apan, a culture traditionally de&oted to both frontline technology

and all kinds of spirits and &engeful ghosts. ?ne day soon we'll probably be haunted by ghosts made of +peg compression artifacts once they too become a thing of memory and nostalgia, but in one case they're already here. $an 0ays's pi"elated paintings of Bolorado speak a figurati&e language not unlike those of $oig, .l&areI and Tuymans and like them these paintings are based on photographs. >ee, $an 0ays has ne&er been to Bolorado ( but his doppelganger li&es there. In the late nineties 0ays, from the %G, found a website run by a Boloradoan who was not only also called $an 0ays but was something of an artist too. The website of the %> $an 0ays documented the natural beauty of his home state with digital photographs, but it was the low resolution and relati&ely poor compression of these images that caught the attention of the %G $an 0ays, who transmuted them, pi"el by pi"el, into paintings much larger than the originals. The results are a breath!taking and baffling technical achie&ement 2in many cases it took months to complete these poor!quality, ostensibly futile images3 gi&ing rise to all sorts of cultural and metaphorical resonance. The rather dysfunctional dialogue between the two $an 0ayses, both &ery different artists in certain ways and yet similar in others, reflects the two!step process of hauntological art ( the %> $an 0ays pro&ides the first, /original', idealistic layer, the %G $an 0ays, using only a process of appropriation and relati&e augmentation, demonstrates a second, deconstructi&e layer. The %G $an 0ays presents the images produced by the %> $an 0ays as problematic, garbled communications from the wilderness of the *eal. 0ays's Bolorado style is an ironic parody of the modernist idioms of impressionism 2note the title /Bolorado impression'3, post!impressionism, pointillism, cubism and $e >ti+l. These dead painterly ancestors are dimly &iewed through the glitchy representational technology of +peg. In particular, the /Bolorado Impression' paintings D and 11 recall BHIanne's late paintings of #ont >aint!8ictoire in 7ro&ence made o&er the turn of the twentieth century. BHIanne aimed to represent an essence of nature in its idealistic permanence, and did so, perhaps parado"ically, with a &isual language that was unwilling to represent nature in precise detail ( while BHIanne turned away from reality so as to paint nature in the Imaginary, 0ays reproduces nature as seen through the lens of today's technological >ymbolic. .s with 9oards of Banada's warped, eroded tape, 7eter $oig's rotting celluloid and $!, .l&areI's graphite pi"elation, $an 0ays demonstrates the failure and decay of technological media during the task of re!presentation, and, once again, allegorises the ultimately tragic endea&our of human art2ifice3 in doing so ( 4ature becomes a ghost. -hither hauntologyF 0auntology as aesthetic strategy 0auntological art is a characteristic e"pression of postmodernity, that is 2in this case3, the cultural scenario in which the utopian aesthetic and political ideals of the Anlightenment and the &arious twentieth!century modernisms no longer seem entirely &alid or trustworthy. The hauntology aesthetic can be seen as a self!aware &ariation on the usual relati&ely retrograde and conser&ati&e idioms that dominate the postmodern landscape in that it makes a point of deconstructing the old, defunct and /untrue' rather than merely re&i&ing it. .mongst the assorted collapses of idealism that ha&e undermined the dri&e towards modernist and utopian alternati&es, the percei&ed dissolution of communism as a &iable alternati&e to capitalistic democracy was one of the most powerfully resonant, and led $errida to use the term /hauntology' to describe the current status of #ar"ist ideals. 0auntological art lea&es us wanting to ask a highly

important question of idealism= is %topia dead or ali&eF It cannot be denied that much hauntological art seems to regard twentieth!century progressi&e ideals with irony and e&en suspicion. In this way it's a kind of satire, yet it's rarely e"plicitly or decisi&ely clear one way or the other whether the ghosts are satirising us by accusing us of betraying and derailing the future, or whether we're satirising the ghosts by accusing them of being tragically idealistic or /wrong'. 9ut a ma+or part of hauntology's nature 2indeed, its aesthetic power3 is this ambiguity o&er who's haunting who and why, or more specifically, the finality that that which haunts is irresol&able, unreachable, always ambiguous, suspended in time. In the end, hauntology certainly won't directly show the way to %topia, nor will it e&er be able to truly /show' anything e"cept a lack. This lack is represented by the ghost, and can ne&er be remo&ed ( genuine hauntology is the awareness that the ghosts will always win. 9ut surely this ghostly lack will show its witnesses that our current e"istence is left wanting something, namely an aesthetic1political %topia, and inspire us to do at least something about it 2e&en if, in the end, we won't truly escape the ghosts3. >o what about the ability of hauntological art to bring that irresol&able lack to our attentionF Is it carrying out this task well, or is it too easily resol&ing into sentimental nostalgia, romanticism, defeatist tragedy, an illustration of the permanent failure of Anlightenment and modernity ( in short, a post!%topian 29recht might ha&e called it /bourgeois'3 ideology describing a /tragically permanent human condition'F .re the ghosts winning in this hauntological art, remaining stubbornly dead!yet!ali&e so as to accuse usF ?r are they actually losing out to the post!idealistic /wisdom' of the present day, resol&ing back into the safely, morally!+udged deadF Is it hauntology, or is it merely post!%topian romanticismF $oes it dare us to belie&e that things could be different, or does it show us that life always has been and always will be tragically sub!%topianF Juestions like these would e&aluate any progressi&e aspect to hauntological art on a case!by!case basis ( a fiddly interpreti&e task. 9ut I wonder if in many cases it's too easy for the post!%topian &oices to come across louder than the %topian ones. If hauntological art were truly alienating us from the temporal status quo, as it should, wouldn't it be more difficult to swallow, angrier, more confrontationalF . great deal of art and music shows hauntological characteristics, but unlike the spectre that #ar" claimed was haunting Aurope, hauntology's re&olutionary potential has generally remained weak. -hat might 9recht ha&e said about how well hauntological art is doings its +ob of alienating audiences from the temporal status quoF This is from /. $ialogue about .cting', Eebruary 1929= The actors always score great successes in your plays. .re you yourself satisfied with themF 4o. 9ecause they act badlyF 4o. 9ecause they act wrong. <0ow do they KactL at presentF 9y means of hypnosis. They go into a trance and take the audience with them. )i&e an e"ample. >uppose they ha&e to act a lea&e!taking. They put themsel&es in a lea&e!taking mood.

They want to induce a lea&e!taking mood in the audience. If the sHance is successful it ends up with nobody seeing anything further, nobody learning any lessons, at best e&eryone recollecting. In short, e&erybody feels. That sounds almost like some erotic process. -hat ought it to be like, thenF -itty. Beremonious. *itual. >pectator and actor ought not to approach one another but to mo&e apart. Aach ought to mo&e away from himself. ?therwise the element of terror necessary to all recognition is lacking. True hauntology doesn't merely show or recall an image of the past, it shows the present ( or more specifically, it shows the past as it e"ists and is percei&ed from inside the present. 0auntological art is a present!day construction that illustrates the present's problems as it approaches the future. In its current form, hauntological art's moment seems to be passing5 it'll always be a fascinating and pertinent mo&ement, but in aesthetic culture as a whole it's starting to feel like the focus has been on the past for rather a long time now, e&en if it was wrapped in our problematic present and 2as it seems to stand at the moment3 weakly, only implicitly an"ious about the future. It feels like the past is practically e"hausted and the future is getting impatient. .re there better, more direct ways of addressing the future through art and music ( more striking and effecti&e ways of creating something newF Mou may ha&e noticed that #ordant #usic, ,ittle ."e, The Baretaker, -illiam 9asinski and more are missing from the abo&e essay, that's because they'&e been co&ered elsewhere 2I'll be posting a hauntological bibliography up here soon3 and I'&e got nothing new nothing to add about them. 9urial is also missing, but that's because his music is the sub+ect of the following essay.