Page - 82 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 01/01

82 | sigrid schade www.jrfm.eu 2015, 1/1, 75–88 concept.24 Translated into modern technical or media terms, artists are considered to be “mediums” – seismographs or other technical recorders of the spiritual.25 arT as CriTiCal CUlTUral aNalysis Of The PrOMises Of MeDia aND reliGiON, aND Their effeCTs: Vera freNKel’s ViDeO This Is Your Messiah Speaking (1990). Unlike to art production, which sees itself in the quasi-religious tradition, modern and contemporary artists have developed artistic practices as critical means of inquiry into the functioning of powerful discourses of culture(s) and into the structures of communication which remain unknown to the individuals subjected to them. Using the means, the materials and the medial tools of art – itself part of the communica- tion processes – their research and inquiry take forms other than in the humanities, yet their practice also can be regarded as a conceptual and methodological approach to analysis of (visual) culture(s). Medial self-reflection makes it possible to question the unconscious interactions between image and gaze, self and other, not only on the level of technical apparatus and machines but also on the level of the mental ap- paratus of perception, in the context of the long tradition of applying to body im- ages in visual art the meanings of gestures, miming, movement etc. “The body” is affected by such productive mechanisms even in those aspects that (in retrospect) cannot be completely grasped medially. Media technologies and their applications (in correspondence with technical and social implications) are always also objects and locations of fantasy and desire – thus creating another field for media-related artistic interventions. in the following paragraph i will introduce the video This Is Your Messiah Speaking (1990) by the Canadian artist Vera frenkel26, an example of such interventions, which represents a reflection on the history of media as a history of its linguistic associa- tions, as a history of the failure or betrayal of its messianic promises, and, finally, as a challenge to viewers to arrive at a clear understanding of these relationships. Frenkel created the videotape and the first installation of This Is Your Messiah Speaking while an artist-in-residence at Newcastle Polytechnic in 1989/90.27 The deci- sive factor in the concept was a new shopping mall – the “Metrocentre” – built on a former industrial site outside the town. The Metrocentre was made up of theme parks – little Greece, little italy, little england – that simulated urban representations of lo- cal and immigrant cultures; it also featured Disneyland-like amusement parks. In the Metroland amusement park, Frenkel found carousels, clowns, and artificial palm trees provided for children accompanying their shopping parents. Queues of people lined 24 schade 2009, 146–167. 25 schade 2011. 26 schade 2013, 120–153. 27 The video is available on DVD: Of Memory and Displacement: Vera Frenkel Collected Works (Toronto, 2005), http://www.vtape.org/.