What Constitutes a Massurreality?

Paper presented at the 8th Annual Qualitative Methods Conference: “Something for Nothing”1 May to 30 September 2002 - Cecil Touchon

Paper presented at the 8th Annual Qualitative Methods Conference: “Something for Nothing”
1 May to 30 September 2002 - Cecil Touchon

What Constitutes a Massurreality?

Breaking it down into three components:

MASS:

This is a reference to mass media – Television, movies, electronic, digital, computer influence, ads, print, billboard & other means as art. A new generation of artists are living in the age of mass-media, the internet, nuclear devices, and genetic engineering and the perennial question of what does it all mean? The details of daily life.

SUR:

(Super) – Sur is interesting because it can have two meanings which are opposite of each other Transcendental / Superficial. If you combine these meanings you have the completion –

“Mind is Heaven and Hell. The akasha or accommodation is not so different from the sky. Sky we see at day or night: in the day there is a single torch yet all illumination; in the night there are many lamps, yet darkness. Sky at night is like the mind replete with knowledge of names and forms — it is still in darkness — while sky at day is like illuminated mind.” (Samuel Lewis)

In relation to the Massurreality we are mostly discussing night conditions – ‘many lights, yet darkness’.

REALITY:

This is a reference more to Consensus Reality than any other- the reality assumed to be experienced by all who use mass media – average, sensual reality, This is the one surrealism is ‘surring’ from.

Surrealism: of course, this is the original movement that is the basis of Massurrealism but taking into account the growth of advertising, mass media, widened perspective, Pop Art, capitalism, etc.

The Massurreality then, is an overarching surrogate humo-centric reality constructed by humanity which forms a part of and is intertwined within the Unified Field of Dogma.

The current modernist version is not unlike what Guy Debord calls the Society of the Spectacle. However, we shall refer here to the Massurreality in a more positive way than Debord’s more alienating and negative critique of modern society that he called the Society of the Spectacle.

The Massurreality is gradually growing into all economic and geographic sectors of humanity driven by the ubiquitous corporate desire for constant economic expansion. This expansion brings with it the program of the continuous, mantric repetition of positive advertising messages about the commodities that these corporate entities wish to sell to the general consumer population in order to inspire in it the sense of need for the commodities which are presented. A central theme of these laudatory messages is that through the purchase of these commodities the consumer not only receives the physical product itself but, by imbibing the product, is additionally imbued with all of the positive traits shown in the commercials and is tacitly accepted as a member of modern society.

But wait! That’s not all.

In order for corporations to manufacture a need for their products there must first be in place the instruments of communicating their persuasive arguments regarding those products which will bequeath the modern dream upon those who are assumed to so badly be in need of it and who, ironicly, come to regard themselves has having developed such a need.

These instruments of communication, in their most powerful form – television and radio – provide exciting and entertaining images that implant the dream of belonging in the mind of a receptive audience. This milieu of tele-visual mass media communication provides what has become the bi product of the corporate desire for expansion which is the knowledge of the cultural envelope – via news, entertainment and sporting events – that are provided as content between the central purpose of tele-visual media namely to transmit corporate advertising messages. Thus, the corporate process of manufacture, distribution and retail availability of the wide range of advertised products of modern society is the backbone of this spreading denatured, refined and enriched massurreality in which most are engulfed. The ‘content’ serving to flesh out the cultural context in which products may find their consumer base.

Through this massurreality we accept by default our individual identities chosen and built from a pre-established menu of dreams and social conventions at the center of which is our identity as a modern consumer of products. The messages within our massurreality are all orchestrated before us in a cacophony of seeming related information of various types.

However, upon analysis there is no relation between one message and the next other than the fact that they share the same form of media presentation giving a visual uniformity that we assume suggests an underlying unity of purpose.

Artwork by James Seehafer 1990

What better symbol then, for this human condition than that of the empty shopping cart – an empty shopping cart on an empty parking lot at night with a waning moon. As a sign, this image carries the revolutionary message of the Massurrealist. There are a number of interpretations of this sign and all of them are equally valid within our Massurrealist Society. Let us survey some of the possibilities.

The first and most obvious corollary that may be made is the image of the empty shopping cart and that of the Ox herding pictures from the Zen tradition. In particular the 8th picture

http://www.jaysquare.com/ljohnson/ox-herding.html

Additionally we can think of the massurreality as a contemporary appearance of Maya as it is thought of in the Hindu tradition:

http://hinduwebsite.com/beliefinmaya.htm

The empty shopping cart in this instance also represents enlightenment and to empty one’s self of elusive and illusionary desires and concepts artificially implanted in our minds through the massurreality we are immersed in.

The empty shopping cart symbolizes the mind emptied of desire; the self emptied of identity and the futility of reliance on the emptiness and bankruptcy of the material consumer culture, the commodities of which act in general as the talismans and icons that give us comport in our Massurrealist identities.

The waning crescent moon supports this conclusion since it is a symbol of receptivity and turning within symbolizing our nearly coming full circle in our relationship with the world as consumer, as spectator and participant in the construction and maintenance of the massurreality we find our selves in and seeking to master.

This by no means exhausts the meanings of this sign but serves only as a beginning of the dialog on the topic.