Les modalités de captation d’attention dans l’art immersif à l’ère de l’anthropocène

Abstract

Our attention, targeted by the hyperindustrial society (Bernard Stiegler) is the object of an economy (Yves Citton), and its modalities of capture take the form of strategies annihilating « (…) the processes of psychic and collective individuation that characterize the life of the mind.  » (B. Stiegler). We will observe how contemporary artists, through their immersive art devices, capture our attention on these disruptive phenomena and strategies of de-individuation of the human being. In Tino Sehgal’s work, the capture of attention becomes a mode of creation that is quick to fill the space of the Palais de Tokyo with visual poetry, sound, and imaginary narratives. The spectator becomes a cog of an immense performative « machinery », driven by actors-performers to live different gratifying immersive experiences, tinged with inter-human relationships. For Maurizio Cattelan, the diversion of attention is used as a process to delay perception in order to, in the end, astound us and denounce genocidal policies. Trapping the spectator in the heart of a scripted white cube, while shocking consciences, in tantamount to alerting them to the dangers of the de-individuation produced by « a shadowless world, illuminated 24/7, devoid of otherness (…). » (Jonathan Crary). Finally, in the era of the Anthropocene, the societal disruption and the de-notisation planned by the cultural industry, a humanist alternative on the fringes of international speculative markets rehabilitates the psychic individual : the one of The New sponsors society. The spectator is established as a co-author of a piece based on « trust to get along and no longer by an act of authority.  » (François Hers).