The Death of the Author

The Death of the Author is an important text from structuralist and critic Roland Barthes, published for the first time in 1967. But more imporant the Death of the Author is a concept in art theory about the giving of meaning. Barthes argued that the viewer was the one who was important for the making of meaning. The author was the one who wrote the story down (or painted it on a canvas) and afterwards his job was done. He might have put his own meaning in it, but a viewer could still extract a totally different meaning. Barthes believes that a viewer normally makes meaning by examining signs in an image. The viewer creates a interpretation of a text, he is not looking for a final definitive meaning. An interpretation starts with a viewer objectively looking at a text and describing what he literally sees in or reads from the text. This literal description of the text is what Barthes calls denotation, a descriptive and literal level of meaning shared by virtually all members of a culture. What these signs mean for a person calls Barthes the connotation; the personal associations a viewer has with the signs.

Does this mean that an author or artists leaves the work of art behind after the completion? Wouldn’t an author have any influence on the signs the viewers are going to see? Or does an artist consciously leave traces behind, a path he wants the audience to follow? Can he make certain signs more noticeable and with this steer the interpretation in a desired direction?

Document

What is a document?

What does it mean to document something?

How does Documentation differ between different fields and practices, e.g. law, science, media and art?

I have included the dictionary definition of ‘Doctrine’ in the image below as although this may not seem relate to the word ‘document’ at first glance, both have the same root in the concept of ‘to teach’.

Dictionary Definitions

‘The document’ strives for objectivity, for officialdom, for a particular status. A document is a clear guide that separates fact from fiction and often right from wrong.

Alfredo mentions Foucault and Benjamin in relation to the document and states that; (for Benjamin) ‘accepted views are formed by the organisation of documents in a system of truth that are established no matter how verifiable or real the content may be.’ pp. 72.

Traditionally, the mass media hides its system of truth, or perhaps it presents itself as the only system, and for that reason remains invisible. Art has the potential to reveal systems; others and its own, through illustrating, excavating and manipulating them.

What is a document’s relationship to truth? Does a document record history or construct it?

Lyndsay Seers

Documentary

Documentary as a form or genre contains an inherent tension between observation and direction, reality and performance, recording and editing, fact and fiction, education and entertainment.

Documentary; documentary style / docudrama / docusoap …

Documentary forms (in their widest sense) are interesting in relation to aesthetic journalism as they are present across the field of cultural production: from prime time television to biennials.  In one way you could argue that the ‘documentary’ (both as an individual work and a genre) is in fact a system of ‘truth’, a form that carries authority- yet it is a system that inherently grapples with definition of truth itself, a system with the potential to reveal itself through the gaps in its essential paradoxes. Artists, journalists and media producers have the potential to question the authority and purpose of the documentary form through acknowledging the subjective viewpoint of the author and revealing their methods of production.

Looking for Langston - Isaac Julien

Nanook of the North - Robert J. Flaherty