The Play of the Real and the Real Play:
Beautiful Technology and the Dream of the Social

1. Art has always dreamed of the beautiful, sometimes it has said that only the beautiful is real and at other times it has insisted that only the real is beautiful.

2. Reason was the beautiful dream of the 20th century. Before terror became the handmaiden of the enlightenment, art and politics could still be thought of as dialectically related. After terror it became more difficult to dream.

3. In this sleepless state, at the point at which the exhaustion of Utopian social energies reached their zenith, technology re-invented (once again) the beautiful dream of reason.

4. Dreaming once again, we no longer dream of desire. Our dreams are exponential. We have abandoned depth and somewhere in the distance laugh at the future.

5. The social sphere may at times be hysterical (that is: serious and even demanding) on other occasions it may appear inflated beyond all recognition - in excess of its representations. A third possibility will be contraction. The social formation will dance to the tune of administrative logic. Whatever the context politics has discarded its pursuit of the good life and now seeks either the intimacy of economics or the nostalgia of history. At the same time it is clear that the political sphere itself has expanded.

6. The colonisation of the social life process has been made in the name of political transparency. The politics of everyday life must conform to the rules of universal exchange. The market is the mechanism by which the goals of transparency will one day be achieved. The state and its agencies promote and police the new vocabularies of transparent exchange.

7. The play of the real and the real play requires no mystery, no participation, no system of state coercion - perhaps not even an Audience - paying or otherwise.

8. But this is not to post notice of yet-another- crisis. Theatre and the arts generally will continue to dazzle. Technology will be developed to observe and record the spectacular constellations of the arts. Explosions will be seen. Stars will be declared unfit for human habitation. Other solar systems will invite intrepid adventurers. The state may support some exploration and denounce others. The public may get involved, but even if they greet these great social experiments with silence don't be downhearted. Be happy that the beautiful dream of the arts lies somewhere out there, in deep space re-forming and disintegrating with all its potential.

By Paul Davies