Document Type
Article
Abstract
In The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre analyzes the “geometric—neutral, empty, blank—mental space” that is posited in order to avoid the unpleasant, contradictory nature of social space, which it displaces. Abstract space is “also the locus of all the agitations and disputations of mimesis”, and the space is where books are canonized, genres are fixed, and university departments are calcified, a process that not only hierarchizes texts but fixes their context. Even avant-garde and purportedly subversive art and criticism is easily subsumed in the abstract space required for the functioning of capitalism. As such, I look to a popular art form, the rock concert, for strategies in reconfiguring space and time more in line with Deleuze and Guattari’s vision of a non-hierarchical, non-filial, rhizomatic production of meaning and critical impact. I will look at artist Willie Williams’ collaborations with rock group U2 on the ZooTV and Popmart stage shows to see whether a multimedia popular production of this sort, in contrast to avant-guard art or academic criticism, affords unique possibilities for the subversion of capitalist time and space. These shows will be construed as the kind of tactical media tackled by Rita Raley, on a larger scale. I will address both the cross-genre—music, theater, television, installation art, pastiche, film, painting, music video, agit-prop—format and the spectacle’s representation of author, audience and nation in order to outline a critical praxis for popular technocultural music productions.
Repository Citation
Cristofani, Anthony. "The Subversion of Abstract Space in U2’s Rhizomatic 1990s." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 12, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1–21. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol12/iss1/6