Seven years ago, on December 21, 2012, the World was supposed to end. It didn't, and I require finding relevance to a prophecy I expected to materialize. With the ensuing critical distance since this non-event, I believe that what the Mayans predicted was the end of History. Vilém Flusser, probably unaware of this Mayan prophecy, proposed a similar scenario fueled by technology, more specifically, by technical images. Flusser's interest in the End of History parallels José Argüelles' theories of a posthistorical period. Both thinkers used the term Posthistory in the same manner. Simultaneous to Flusser's coining of the universe of technical images, Argüelles was putting together a narrative that revolved around the Mayan Calendar and its cycles. Flusser believed that information was negative entropy, increasing order and originality in processes which fight against the universal descent into disinformation and chaos. For him, technical images were destroying the linear nature of History and causal effects, leading to a new epoch in human life characterized by the exhaustion of conventional linear, causal, narratives: History.
First photograph I took after the end of the cycle. December 26, 2012.
Respectively, Argüelles thought that the effect of energy factored with the passage of time resulted in what we call Art. His formula A=t(e) summarizes that both humankind and the universe tend to create beautiful entities, beings, processes, ideas, even dreams; when given enough time. Argüelles was obsessed with Mayan Calendrical inscriptions and interpreted them as pointing to the end of a 5,200-year cycle in 2012. He saw the completion of that cycle as the end of the historical domain on Earth, not the end of the World. Argüelles envisioned a post-technological world in which humanity was able to finally connect to the center of galactic knowledge, the Hunab-Ku. This cosmic center would be in flusserian language the utopic scenario of absolute human playfulness (homo ludens) facilitated by technology, the center of our cosmos being the cloud of infinite information at our disposal. The adverse outcome in Argüelles' worldview is the fall of humanity caused by a mechanical, money-driven, anti-natural mindset, in which human energy diverts from its creative destiny and engenders asynchronous, harmful, destructive happenings: entropic Art. In flusserian terms, this would mean an unbearable increase in entropy and disinformation that leads to darkness and extinction. In short, conscious energy creates, in the flusserian view, Information; in Argüelles' perspective, that same conscious energy creates Art. The World runs on Art, Information, and their opposites.
Argüelles' most dramatic action was his campaign for calendrical reform. He viewed the Gregorian Calendar as an irregular measuring tool that was not in accord with natural cycles. He even blamed the increasingly worrying disconnect of humans to nature as a result of the mental program established by the Gregorian Calendar, a program based on accounting and a military mindset, not on natural cycles. He saw a better option in the lunar calendar used by the Maya, composed of thirteen months of 28 days each, evenly distributed, with a Day Out of Time, happening at the end of every cycle (July 25). With this reform, human life would be more attuned to nature again, and we would all have a lunar, feminine, regular calendrical backdrop for experience.
José Argüelles’ Katun historical cycles. The Mayan Factor: The Path Beyond Technology. 1987.
Photography, the first flusserian post-Historical image, has a peculiar relation to the calendar. It has no direct connection to it, and the dating of images happens either in the metadata of the photograph's file or in the date imprint in film cameras (in this case the picture gets a permanent textual mark). Hence, by being an image, Photography operates partially outside of the historical domain. Yet, photographs are generated based on the foundations of the calendar, and they are created in fractions or increments of seconds, the very fabric of the calendar is embedded in each photograph, they are energy factored by time, technology that abstracts scientific texts and the calendar to yield an image. In Argüelles' terms, Art; in Flusser’s, Information. Posthistory has enthroned the photograph. Photography has become a bored and cruel ruler. Never has Photography had so much power to alter our lives: instill desire, envy, exert influence; it keeps us scrolling endlessly. It establishes the image of the epoch, an image of endless unfulfilled, uncomfortable, algorithmic desire.
Out of focus On Kawara, November 11, 2011.
The new channels of Image+Text distribution have rendered traditional ones (journalism and Art) impotent. Photographic delivery happens primarily on the web, replacing traditional media and the even older visibilization of images in the public space. Public photographs are now experienced privately in our customized screens. They constitute an Image+Text construct composed of an image, calendrical information, and text. The Maya created objects with the same formal features. They erected stelae carved in stone, displaying images, dates, and events for their inhabitants to view, establishing official narratives and propaganda. The stelae are transitional objects created by a pre-historical society that lived in a magic and mythical World. They are transitional because they began to introduce a historical consciousness into a myth-driven civilization in which authorities controlled image production and inserted a historical consciousness by dating their monuments. They determined the number of images to be displayed publicly to build an identity and reaffirm power. Stelae served the purpose of reinforcing the connection of the ruler to the supernatural, to the gods. Therefore, only the ruler was worthy of being represented. Gradually, the aspiration was to win the ruler's favor to achieve representation worthiness. The progression of this was the dilution of the influence of these images by their proliferation, the more images displayed publicly, the less power both image and ruler could exert. That principle could still be applied today. Power is as fragmented as the number of photographs that circulate in the world.
Alfred Percival Maudslay, Centrali-Americana, or, Contributions to the knowledge of the fauna and flora of Mexico and Central America. 1889.
The electronic universe of technical images is the new public square; it is the flusserian photographic universe, filled with mostly impotent pictures. All viral imagery that combines photographs, captions, hashtags, and dates are the new stelae. They exemplify the emergence of the Image+Text epoch, a period characterized by the powerful yet irrelevant seductiveness of the image. The image, commonly believed to be worth a thousand words, now leans on written language to corral its polysemous and anti-historical nature. It is almost as if photographs do not want to be images anymore; they aspire to the specificity of both documents and text. The first post-historical image longs for its historical genesis. We want them to be worth just a couple of concise and persuasive sentences, informative poetry. Like the stelae, which marked the transition from mythical to historical, Image+Text photoworks are transitional objects as well, marking the shift from History into the uncharted, potentially chaotic realm of Posthistory.
The diversion of History is ending, and we go back to a non-linear two-dimensionality, one that is merging magical thinking with a degree of historical consciousness that empowers technical images and creates new beliefs. The new imagined realities, along with its constructed narratives will shape the future of the World. We abandoned the rules of linearity and decided everything by delaying the inevitable and prioritizing the improbable. We compute our way into the future, assessing our increasing personal, social, and environmental technical debt. The universe of Image+Text objects are reservoirs that trick us into claiming a parcel of both immortality and morality. Resorting to text aims to refute the automatism inherent in image production, it is a cry to reclaim the agency and insert information into our projects. We all want to have the cake and eat it too. Predictably, we want to demonstrate how improbable we are, how informative we are. Since technical images brought contempt towards depth, text is needed to attest to the depth of our thoughts, little do we know that this depth is coming from within the confines of our technological programs.
Syracuse, NY. November, 2011.
In an epoch in which images run wildly, reflection and philosophy can only happen by engaging in that dialectic practice of creating images to inspire language, so we can conjure the stories that lead to redemption. Flusser and Argüelles represent how we must never cease to prophesize. We all are posthistorical oracles.