Faraway: Three video/photographic works
At first glance, Geoff Weary's Faraway installation seems a little superficial. This is only a first impression, however. A more thorough contemplation of the work reveals it, to the contrary, to be thoroughly superficial. This ought not be taken as a negative statement. 'Superficial' has a range of meanings, one of which has to do with the art of comprehending surfaces. This art of comprehending surfaces is what this work aspires to, and in large measure achieves.
Faraway is composed of a three part video and several photographs, all of which have to do with Japan, or more specifically the apprehension of images of Japan. The particular problem in the apprehension of surfaces is what might be called telesthesia, or the perception of images at a distance. In many respects Japan is coming to be a privileged site in the global image-economy for the problem of telesthesia.1 This is not difficult to explain. Structurally Japan is capitalist, postmodern, affluent but not western. Historically, it is an other which in the American or Australian perception has been perceived as an enemy and whose 'strangeness' we are on intimate terms with. In the contemporary time-frame, Japan is a site which can't help but appear to us in ways overdetermined by the superficial logic of contemporary post-Fordist struggles for domination in the world of advanced capital. For example, as I write this, my on-line newswire service has just reported to me the controversy over Nintendo's intentions to buy into an American baseball team. The problem of telesthesia has a privileged site in the American or Australian imaginary, in Japan. Likewise, one could take 'America' as such a site for a Japanese meditation on