Aesthetic Distance

“It might be objected that . . . distance [is] another term for the imagination, or for a particular species of imagination.  That latter may indeed be an accurate description of distance . . . distance is not equivalent to all forms of imagination . . . clearly distance would be concerned with [responsive imaginations].  In a sense self-consciousness, knowing that one is “seeing as,” is the single unique feature of distance . . . distance is neither simply and on/off condition nor exclusively one of degrees but both: self-awareness, for instance, either exists or does not, but the self-awareness may be induced to a greater or lesser degree” (76)

Daphna Ben Chaim has brought together the work of several influential theater artists and pointed out the way that their theories related to the specific and essential aesthetic distance that good artwork uses to activate and affect self-consciousness towards a view of the “larger perspective” (72).  While I found the reading a little dense and difficult to follow—having not read the portions of the book that deal with the referenced artist’s individually, I found the idea very much an “of course, now there’s a word for that.”  The idea of aesthetic distance is similar to an idea I have about art.  In my sense, art is a protected way of telling the truth—communication, like Tolstoy—because it is at once personal and separate.  The fact that it is art gives it a tangible distance, especially theatre.  I appreciated the reference to Artaud, “For Artaud the theatre is a protected environment where one can permit himself [or herself] to be vulnerable only because one knows he is safe” (70).  I agree.  I think that viewing theatrical performance is both vulnerable and safe for an audience—this is part of what Chaim discusses with the distance.  For me, theatre is a tangible distance—just like Chaim talks about the productive tensions “between two extremes, total empathy on the one hand and its complete elimination on the other” (78)—because theatre/performance is live and happening right in front of the audience it is tangible and visceral in a way that film and other mediums aren’t, but it is also fiction/a deliberate performance, which makes it safe for the audience to participate in the ideas/feelings/truths being manipulated, displayed, and challenged (what Chaim would call the “larger perspective”).

I appreciated that Chaim discussed distance as an active response for the audience/viewers of a work of art (“An awareness of fiction is the most basic principle of distance in which there appears to be three distinguishable but interrelated components: 1) tacit knowing; 2) volition; and 3) perception as unreal.” (73).  Specifically that the audience believes and responds to the world of the play through volition, following Sartre “not freedom in imagination . . . but his discussion of the freedom to imagine: that it is an inherently free act of will” (74), which to me indicates that part of what makes art is the choice to participate with it as art.  And I’m back to subjectivity.  While we might get as much out of a particular page of manga as out of a Rembrandt, it is the agreement of large groups of people, or the right people, to participate with the Rembrandt (in museums & checkbooks) that leads to a group delineation of Art (vs art).  But then the distinction is also the responsibility of the artist, since the preservation of just the right amount of distance is accomplished not through any one particular technique but through the artist’s application of “a general stylistic context” (72).  This multi-sided equation, which is subjective (to social-actors in the art process, the particular stylistic choices, the subject, etc), leaves a lot of room for a cornucopia of works of Art, and gives a measuring stick for determining how a work of Art is one.  I would argue that this particular method works better on understanding pieces already delineated Art vs discovering them. 

It occurs to me that most of the methods for defining Art (whether what it is or when it is) are all best used retroactively—meaning to understand why a piece already (the Spanish word ya would fit here: porque ya arté) is Art not to identify it as Art before it becomes Art.  This reminds me of Blink, a book about correct snap decisions made by the subconscious mind.  Connecting that to Ira Glass’s comments about artistic taste, I couldn’t begin to say how it works cognitively, but—subjectively—as artists it happens for us.  We can feel/sense/subconsciously recognize art and not art as our senses, emotions & intellect come together around certain works.  Appreciation comes from understanding a work; Aesthetic response comes from this subconscious recognition. 

Now, I’ve wandered away from distance—or gained the appropriate distance from it to see the larger perspective . . . haha.

“Distance permits the involvement in the first instance and then is the condition for its development” (71).

“It is also probably true that there is no such thing as a “distancing technique” isolated from a general stylistic context” (72)

Distance in the Theatre: The Aesthetics of Audience Response.  Ann Arbor, MI; UMI Research Press.