Rhetoric Machine: Political Art

Political art is very difficult to pull off. It often wavers between heavy-handed propaganda and pallid criticism. At the end of long-standing debates about the relationship between aesthetics and politics, one is often tempted to throw one's hands in the air and simply demand that the two remain independent of each other - it's better for both. But a recent exhibit reminds us not only that political art is not a contradiction in terms, it is a challenge more than worth the effort. Noah Fischer's Rhetoric Machine, on exhibit at the Oliver Kamm gallery in New York City, is an astonishing, multimedia display that tackles big themes - American militarism and the presidency. The title refers to the central topic: the means by which the government, especially presidents, use sound, image and words - in a word, rhetoric - to produce acceptance of their war-making aspirations.

Fischer's installation is laid out in a room divided by a white partition. In the first space is a small cut out of a presidential figure standing behind a podium. Projecting outward from him, on telescoping pedestals that grow gradually larger, are various mechanized sculptures. Each has a carefully scripted role to play in a multimedia cinematic experience that begins, quietly, with a montage of wartime speeches, beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and rapidly moving through to Lyndon Baines Johnson. As the speeches play over loudspeakers, different Top 40 music snippets play in the background, and the figures move, as if responding to the presidential oration. The sound swells and builds, becoming more intense, almost overwhelming, as the sounds of war, bombs, sirens, and roaring jets, overpower speech and music.

But before the experience becomes intolerable, it suddenly quiets for a comically ironic solo performance by the eagle, flapping its metal wings to the sound of Whitney Houston. As the initial segment draws to a close the other half of the room begins to light up, and you move over to discover the 'brain' of the installation. It turns out the movement, flashing lights, and different sounds are all precisely coordinated by an incredible, spinning barrel with pieces of variable length magnetic tape on it. When the tape comes in contact with different switches, it closes the circuit, and tells the eagle to flap its wings, or the siren to spin and let out its piercing sound, and so on.

By calling attention to the means by which his installation produces its piece of theatre, Fischer seems to want to remind us of how rhetoric is produced generally. In doing this, he cleverly avoids the typical, didactic quality of political art. His medium is the message, not in a superficial way, but by emphasizing and even demanding that we reflect not just on the message, but on the production of messages - including his own. He obviously has a specific set of ideas he wants to convey - that war is senseless, that we have generally been misled into war, and that this is an ongoing problem. Even in the pure sense of message, Fischer's is far better than most artistic and propagandistic images these days, which tend to focus almost exclusively on Bush. In fact, thankfully, George W Bush is nowhere to be found in this installation. The last president to be heard is Clinton. Here again, even as he almost overwhelms the various senses, Fischer forces us to reflect and think - to step back from our immediate experience of politics, and to think about its history and its underlying structures. But again, it is not just this specific argument that Fischer wishes to represent in an artistic form; rather, it is the artistry of politics that Fischer wants to draw our attention to and to think about. The medium is the message, in other words, because the installation forces us to reflect upon the immediate world of appearances by creating images that make reference to their origins and essence. The 'brain' of the installation is itself integrated into the art, and is physically as well as temporally separated - the twenty minute piece presents you with about fifteen minutes of sound and image before drawing attention to what is producing the rhetoric.

One thing that makes good political art especially difficult is that most art in some way tries to be beautiful. Political criticism, on the other hand, is rarely beautiful. But Fischer resolves the challenge by creating an extraordinarily rich and complicated sensory experience. The installation is not quite beautiful, but it is nonetheless extremely creative and imaginative, and in that sense a work of art. The sheer logistical complexity of coordinating the various pieces is remarkably inventive. Even more, Fischer uses a wide range of different media to create his images - paper mache, woodworking, lighting, electronics, wire sculpture, photography, plastics, paper cut-outs, painting - to name a few. He is clearly in love with the creative process, and as committed to the craft as he is to the message itself - which is why the installation comes off as good political art.

Rhetoric Machine reminds us that rhetoric is not just speech, but sound and image too. If the thrust of the installation is to suggest that rhetoric is generally used to manipulate publics into supporting destructive, illegitimate wars, it is not an attack on rhetoric itself, and in that avoids the cynical tendency to equate all rhetoric with manipulation. The Greeks believed that the true citizen must master the art of rhetoric, because politics is about persuasion, and must engage more than just the rational mind. They of course believed it could be used badly, for manipulation and self-serving ends, which is why it must be yoked to rationally informed, public ends. By using his own 'rhetoric' against the rhetoric machine, Fischer reminds us of the art of politics, and the possibility of using it for better ends.

Noah Fischer's Rhetoric Machine runs through January 6, 2007 at the Oliver Kamm Gallery, located at 621 West 27th St., New York City.