Towards Détournement

In 1967, French political theorist Guy Debord published the book The Society of the Spectacle, which argued that the expansion of capitalism and mass media fostered a passive lifestyle. Everyday life experiences, he argued, were replaced with experiences and relationships mediated through images and commodities. Debord termed this phenomenon “the spectacle” and proposed détournement, which translates to “hijacking” or “rerouting” in English, as a strategy to divert the spectacle and the social structures it upheld. Détournement takes the forms through which capitalism and mass media reach people—products, newspapers, advertisements, art—and exposes them as tools for presenting and affirming the ideas, institutions, and narratives that benefit a ruling class. In Towards Détournement, fifteen artists interrogate the role of power in images; they ask how images can dismantle other images and the values they affirm.

The included artists work across mediums to position familiar forms in new, unexpected contexts, undermine artistic tropes, and create works that resist categorization and reflect the nuances and ambiguity of reality. In several works from the Reduction/Redaction series (2001–), Simon Leahy-Clark cuts text from newspapers, dissecting and revealing their structure. In Josiah Brown’s Judgement, abstracted oil paint marks melt the symbolic compositions of Baroque art. In the video work Country (2024), Tiffany K. Smith layers increasingly pixelated B-roll footage from popular country music videos until it becomes illegible, pointing to how images lose the specificity of their original context over time. Beyond these works, each artist in the exhibition demonstrates ways images can be used to dissect other images. Towards Détournement invites viewers to engage with visual culture as a way of understanding critically and negotiating their positions within a complex society.

Towards Détournement is co-curated by Josiah Brown, Amalya Graham, and Eric Petty.

Artists
Nathan Anthony, Josiah Brown, John DeSousa, Rosie Ganske, Amalya Graham, Calhan Hale, Tyson Humbert, Ariana Kimball, Simon Leahy-Clark, Charlie Mura, Sub Net, Chloe Pruett, Tiffany K. Smith, Olivia Wallace, Will Wilson

This exhibition is organized by Center Space Project (CSP), an undergraduate student-run arts collective that works collaboratively with the Visual Arts Center (VAC) to provide students with opportunities to participate in an interdisciplinary arts community. Exhibitions are selected through a call for proposals open to UT Austin students each spring, and selections are made by the CSP student committee in collaboration with VAC staff.

Support for Center Space Project is provided in part by the Robin and Trey Hancock Endowment.