In my presentation I wanted to touch on the connection between satire and illustrations produced utilising the form and language of maps. I was worried about the idea that obvious surface exploration of the absurdities of maps, can miss opportunities for a deeper utilisation of the satirical function.
I ran out of time to make this point on the day, but for my preparations I wrote down this statement;
"For me this is one trouble for artists or Illustrators; the absurd can not easily be utilised in order to highlight any greater truth because in our time it can already be understood in plain sight and to an extent is excepted as normal. Exposing such absurdities often only highlights what our world is already limited to, It hits the brick wall of this simple and expected absurd of our times, satire can no longer surprise and shock as it maybe once could, no light can shine past to greater truths."
This is what I wrote, it's a bit out of context and rubbish I'm not going to include it in my final essay;
A classical view of satire would be that it is a set of tools utilised within the arts in order to hold up to ridicule vices, abuses and the shortcomings of institutions or individuals who may be held to be responsible for negative or corrupt social practice. The aim of satire we would assume is to bring about improvement. A point to consider however as stated by Northrop Frye is that "in satire, irony is militant." This "militant irony" (or sarcasm) often professes to approve (or at least accept as natural) the very things the satirist actually wishes to attack. With reference to Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ I want to explore the view that all products and working methods of artists and image-makers is inescapably co-opted into the mainstream. It has come to be seen that any intentions that the creative practitioners might of had to break free from or to satirise the mainstream is irrelevant to a process of total assimilation, aided by the powerful force of free-market capitalism.
In light of this view, I will argue that satire need not only be seen to act as a cyclical device of a self-regulating establishment. It is on a secondary level I want to identify the ability of satire to expose new ways of looking and thinking into places the artist and the audience have not predicted. If the tools of satire on the first level exist in the realm of cynicism; irony and sarcasm I would also identify that on a deeper level parody, exaggeration, juxtaposition, analogy and comparison are utilised. I intend to make the argument that these secondary tools can operate covertly masked within the trojan horse of the primary function of satire. Utilising patternmaking and abstraction at the level of aesthetic form, language and narrative these secondary functions can suggest; ‘Have you ever looked at things this way’ alongside and perhaps subliminal to the primary and negated function of satire; ‘Look at this wrong thing this way, its wrong’
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The work Saul Steinberg would be a good example of the type of practice I am trying to propose in this statement "covertly masked within the trojan horse of the primary function of satire". Steinberg is very definitely a ‘Have you ever looked at things this way?’ type of artist.
