videoludica. game culture 

Mauro Ceolin's "Contemporary Emblems".

The irresistible rise of reputation systems in the age of massive user-generated content requires new hierarchies, thus new insignia, symbols, and emblems.

This proliferation is not to be feared, but to be welcomed as it celebrates the mass production of uniqueness. Agent provocateur Mauro Ceolin is clearly amused by the didactic intent of the emblem. After all, he offers a tongue-in-cheek criticism of the military-entertainment complex that shapes the contemporary imaginaries, from cinema to digital media.

Hence the abundance of [images of] guns, shields, and weapons Boom! Headshot. Ceolin, a logo-factory disguised as an artist, chronicles the rise of invisible and visible companies ruling our very existence. In fact, insignia are conventionally used as emblems of a specific or general authority.

Q. What kind of authority are we dealing with here? A. The authoritative power of images, their ability to evoke powerful ideas with the simplest, almost childish traits. Ceolin's emblems carry layers of meanings, just like the Christian cross is both a symbol of sacrifice and emblem of the Crucifixion.

Today, secular emblems such as corporate logos have acquired a magic, almost omnipotent nature. They are pervasive and intrusive. Their simplicity hinders arcane complexity. Like every other emblems, they carry a secret code, a code that has to be deciphered. But they communicate something only to the cognoscenti.

Symmetry = dynamism = panta rei = comic strip = Flash.

The fact that Ceolin is reinventing the very notion of the emblem should not surprise us at all. The 1531 publication of the first emblem book by another Italian, a jurist named Andrea Alciato, inaugurated a fascination with emblems that lasted two centuries and spread to many European countries.

Alciato wrote the epigrams contained in the Emblemata, published by Heinrich Steyner in 1531 in Augsburg. Esoteric associations of emblems could transmit information to the culturally-informed spectator, a characteristic of the 16th century artistic movement called Mannerism.

Similarly, Ceolin's emblems are intelligible only to those who know that a penguin or an hedgehog are not just animals, that Maxis and Marxism are different yet similar, that leashes are not just for dogs, and that headshots could be amusing [in the sense of "Above all, have fun!"].

Emblems combine texts and images have for moralizing (moralistic?) goals: the viewer cannot keep a neutral stance when confronted with these artworks. A gun and a crown invite further reflection, maybe (gosh) even mortification. Fuck? Reload!

matteobittanti, San Francisco, May 2006

Link: Mauro Ceolin's "Contemporary Emblems".