Recently many cities around the world have experienced a rash of what are being called Flash Mobs - groups of people using the Internet and cell phones to organize seemingly nonsensical gatherings at random locations everywhere from Minneapolis to Tokyo.
Examples include a group of 200 crowded into a Harvard bookstore all pretending to look for a card for "Bill," then bursting into applause on cue. Or, a crowd convening at a Manhattan Macy's around a large oriental rug, claiming all of them lived together and wanted the $10,000 "Love Rug." Or in San Francisco, hundreds of people together walking endlessly back and forth through a busy downtown crosswalk, waving their arms in the air and spinning in circles.
First, as Howard Rheingold, the author of the recent book "Smart Mobs - The Next Social Revolution" (the text credited with starting the flash mob craze) states on smartmob.com: "One of the main themes of Smart Mobs is the battle over our future: are we to be active users who shape our media, or passive consumers whose only freedom is to choose which prepackaged brand of media content to purchase?"
This seems enormously relevant at the moment. It is critical for us to remember that the Internet is still very young, and its potential as a tool for anyone to affect and be affected by its collective power still remains relatively unrealized. At the moment we are witnessing huge surges in the popularity of on-line dating and personal networking, as well as creative breakthroughs in commerce, communication, and, ultimately, art.
The Internet is our creation, and thus a reflection of our desires - however obscure or uncalculated - for change and progress. In some sense, the Internet shows us as much about ourselves - and how connected we are to each other - as art can at its best. Therefore it could and should be studied as an artpiece in and of itself.
Rob Zazueta, who is creating an online meeting place called FlockSmart.com for organizers and wannabe flash mob participants, says the practice counters arguments that evolving digital communications tools like text messaging or e-mail are depersonalizing.
"With smart mobs, these same tools that used to push us apart, are now bringing us back together," he says. "It takes the concept of chat rooms and brings it into the real world."
They also force upon us the question of whether a little Internet-induced depersonalization could be beneficial to us. That is, it fosters a mentality that may help us to work more cooperatively, with less of the unseen obstacles fostered by the individualism our over-comfortable lives allow us to cherish.
Second, if we look at art historically - in particular the dadaist movement of the previous century - we must acknowledge the critical role played by the absurd, the insane, the nonsensical, the mystifying, in art. By creating objects and actions that are not immediately interpretable but that captivate through an aesthetic of challenging (even reversed) logic, we are compelled to question all in our world which we assume as "sensical" - such as the structure of our political and economic system.
Flash mobs carry great "sensible" meanings because they signify a new and growing collective will, as well as the necessity and inevitability of real catharsis in the face of so much frustration. Let's face it: With terrorism, heat waves, oil shortages, massive power outages and smoke-filled skies, we are fairly consistently confronted with the telltale signs of an apocalyptic era in which the only possibility to gain real pleasure and satisfaction is, not surprisingly, the real relief that "non-sense" can provide.
Taking considerations even further, it is worthwhile to consider such actions in the wake of our new developing paradigm - the age of terrorism - because the structure and organization of the flash mob is a benign mimicry of the more dangerous actions that drive us white with fear, and which Americans by and large have too simply reduced to nothing but cowardice and violent nonsense. The affective meanings of organized terrorism can and should be "read" in the same way as we "read" meaning in art. If we could only manage to shed our emotions enough to think in such a way, we might really help ourselves.
In his classic novel "The Plague," Albert Camus makes clear how the protagonist, Dr. Rieux, realized that the only way to defeat an abstract force as powerful and ruthless as plague is to take measures that - in the moment - seem extreme to an almost nonsensical point. To save the town from utter decimation, he has to complete his professional duties with a cold objectivity that - in the present moment - appears inhumane. His solutions, however tragic or extreme, are creative enough to fend off a "monstrousity." The appearance of heartlessness thus masked the biggest heart of all. Nonsense may just work the same way.
Ben Bloch, co-owner of the Goatsilk Gallery in Missoula and a free-lance writer, writes about art trends and art in and around Missoula. His column appears twice a month in the Entertainer.
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