Index in Several Mediums

Both Krauss and Doane seem intent on preserving the physical relationship between index and matter. Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America makes the physical representation of the cause a prevalent theme and as well as the process of creating the indexicality of the photograph in other mediums. While Doane argues against the development of media past a stage where it not longer possesses a physical causality. The recapturing of the constraints of the medium puts society back in touch with contingent relation of subject and index. As digital medias become obsolete the material nature of info becomes hidden and the production of labor denied. The decay of the film in Decasia is symptomatic of the distress posited by Doane’s article. The mutation addressed in the second part of seventies art in America relating self-presence or matter without the discontinuity of discourse is empowered as part of the order of the natural world as un-institutionalized.

In developing the evaluation of the 70’s art Krauss denotes the sign is not as powerful as the trace; where the trace is an element of physical causality while sign is referent. The various different art techniques seem to be referring to the continuity of image and the discontinuity of language. 70’s artists explore the trace in their attempts to create a cutting away of what was there through cropping. It forces what was there into a specific field, inducing the field as the medium of reproduction. Disconnected from temporal context, the ways in which de Duve expands upon the concepts of the splitting versus defection of time (as well as reduction and expansion of temporality) are probably where I could use the most clarification.