Compressure: A case study of time-pressure and the capiltalist mode of production in "I'm Not the Girl who Misses Much"

In reading Hito Steyerl's interview, I instantly began thinking about Marx's theory of the capitalist mode of production. Workers produce labor in exchange for money. With this money, they can then purchase goods which fulfill their wants and needs. This is in contrast to a more direct connection between labor and production, such as in farming where a farmer produces the crops they will end up using to feed themselves. While this enables workers to work in a field removed from what they need to survive (a farmer can purchase a car instead of producing a vehicle themselves), it opens the door for exploitation: income inequality, for example. This process acts as the spine to industrialization and delivers us to our current status of post-industrialization. This is particularly the case in the art world, where industrial advancements have adapted and expedited artistic processes, freeing artists to focus on the content and ideological underpinning of their work.

Here comes Totaro's essay on Tarkovsky. Totaro picks up on the time-pressure of cinematic elements as they aim to reproduce the visuals and time-pressure of life. To this, Pipilotti Rist undoes Totaro's analysis of time-pressure by expanding time in her sped-up singing. While at times her cacophonous movements are more frenetic and the visual reaches a fever pitch, the video is consistent in its distant energy. While we can discern a performer and her movements in the picture plane, it is distorted by distance and blur. This choice both alters the viewers understanding of the performer's action and censors the performer's body. This suspense, unending, maintains the air of this pressure as we view. We understand what is happening, but unable to make sense of it, we are on edge. In this, Rist at once deflates the time-pressure by applying the same pressure throughout, but evokes an anxious response. This could be, in part, because the kinetics and phonics of the piece are so markedly dissonant from the context of the gallery space - even when seen on youtube, it is so unique. Perhaps Rist has understood the concept of time-pressure as something which can exist within the world of the artwork, or it can exist within the world of the viewer.

In a way, Rist has constructed an expression of Marx's theory. The producer - Rist - has distanced herself from the consumer - we as viewers. The physical screen, its presence heightened through editing, represents the psycho-economic process of dissociation between producer and consumer, or artist and viewer, who are at once the same and opposite, pitted against each other. We are left with an enduring image of this separation, and once the video is turned off, all we are left with is the monitor - a symbol of industrialization's rise and of contemporary complacency, of armchair politics, of watching a Cheeto deliver a joint address while we eat cheetos and have a beer.