Michel Foucault suggests in his article, ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias
and Heterotopias’ written in 1964 and published shortly before his death in
1984[i],
that today we live in an era of space. Furthermore, ‘we are in the age of the
simultaneous, of juxtaposition, the near and the far, the side by side and the
scattered.’ (p 1) In our era, Foucault suggests, ‘space presents itself to us
in the form of patterns of ordering.’ (p. 2) Today, time may appear to us as
‘one of the many possible patterns of distribution between elements that are
scattered over space.’ (p 2) Social
media art galleries very much depict the simultaneous and the scattered, a
pattern and ordering, visually and algorithmically. The distance and proximity
of such display is represented by its users uploading and the hybridity of the
material.
Foucault observes that ‘our lives are still ruled by a
certain number of unrelenting opposites, which institution and practice have
not dared to erode. He refers here ‘to opposites that we take for granted, such
as the contrast between public and private space, family and social space,
cultural and utilitarian space, the space of pleasure and the space of work -
all opposites that are still actuated by a veiled sacredness.’ (p.2) Similar to the erosion of the sacredness of
‘time’ since Galileo he suggests the sacredness of space may also evolve. Here
we may suggest that social media disturb the provenance of its sources whereby
the institutional and private are inter-mixed with the personal and public.
Space as a heterogeneous concept is characterised by
relationships. And here, Foucault sees two sets of relationships, represented
on the one hand by utopia, a fundamentally unreal space, and on the other hand
heterotopia, an effective space, a sort of ‘counter arrangement’ (p. 3),
counter in that these are realised utopias.
Heterotopias, Foucault explains (p. 4), are best understood
as systematic descriptions for which he identifies five. Some of these
descriptions are relevant to our discussion here, including one could argue if
social media websites (as part of principle one) represent a ‘deviation’, in the case for
viewing for example graffiti, a counterpoint for viewing in real life
locations. As a second principle, Foucault considers those spaces which have changed
over time. Here we see the development of web 2.0 into the participatory role
of the user, away from its previous non-participatory effect as the main
example. Similar to Foucault’s example to a cemetery, the engagement with
online spaces has been re-located and undergone some important changes. The
cult of the individual, increasingly reflected in what he refers to as
bourgeois cemetery occupation, can also be observed in social media
proliferation, with the presence of personalised plots such as Facebook, Twitter, ‘myspace’ and
indeed Trover, Artstack and Pictify as we shall see later on and to name but a
few.
For his third principle (p. 5) he refers to the juxtaposing
of single real spaces and locations that are incompatible, and for this he gives
the example of cinema, theatre and gardens, where different ‘microcosms’ spaces
meet. Social media spaces have similar folding of hybrid spaces, through its
architecture and hyperlinks and the way users use bricolage for creating new
artefacts.
For the fourth principle, Foucault concentrates on time,
libraries and museums for instance usurping time constraints and representing
the universal archive. This clearly is a main feature of social media spaces
which, by crowd sourcing practice, is in the process of becoming a universal
archive:
‘The idea of accumulating
everything, on the contrary, of creating a sort of universal archive, the
desire to enclose all times, all eras, forms, and styles within a single place,
the concept of making all times into one place, and yet a place that is outside
time, inaccessible to the wear and tear of the years, according to a plan of
almost perpetual and unlimited accumulation within an irremovable place, all
this belongs entirely to our modern outlook.’ (p.5)
Similar to Foucault’s observation that museums and libraries
are heterotopias typical of nineteenth-century Western culture, I would like to
suggest that social media spaces are heterotopias of the 21st
century.
In the fifth and final description of heterotopia, Foucault
refers to colonies and how these spaces bring together two opposites: the real
space of the home land, and the recreated colony, an illusion of the perfect
homeland. Social media gallery spaces recreate the routines of museum life,
with labels and categories, explaining styles and medium, sizes or provenance,
recreating the perfect museum life. Here we can curate our personal
explorations and discoveries.
[i]
There are a number of translations of the article available which seems to vary
significantly. For the purpose of this research the article available in
‘Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory’ from 1997, edited by Neil Leach and published
by Routledge was used. Available online, retrieved 21/3/2014. http://www.vizkult.org/propositions/alineinnature/pdfs/Foucault-OfOtherSpaces1967.pdf
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