26ª Bienal de São Paulo (2004) - Representações Nacionais / National Representations

presented technologically. Even in these masks of denied self-production, however, the question remains how A (the artist) reaches the imagination of B (the beholder), when even the classical paradigm of the work is no longer present. And even in a statement of social criticism, the question arises as to who is expressing the criticism and what position is it based on.

Outside the art scene in the narrow sense, admiration for what used to be the creator role is now directed at the wonders of technology, although these are emancipating themselves from their inventors and luring us to leave the frontiers of the human world, ostensibly on our own. Walter Benjamin was once able to say that art was the governo r of utopia. This was a position of the artistic avant-garde whose objectives were geared toward revolutionizing society. Today, utopia has migrated to technology, which makes things seem feasible that remained the stuff of dreams in art. This gives utopia a different meaning, which is manifested in the fact that technology is often driven by the impulse to testify against people and their "antiquatedness" (G端nther Anders) by working on the self-invention of a new person.

3 I The coexistence of art and technology, which are no longer pursuing the same project, today sheds new light on the old antagonists Prometheus and Sisyphus. The two myths of Prometheus and Sisyphus have had a long life in artistic literature, in the course of which they have repeatedly changed their topical meaning. In the meantime, Prometheus is claimed solely by technology, while Sisyphus re-enters the scene as the new prototype of the human being. Prometheus was the epitome of the artist for a long time, so the suggestion that his role be replaced by Sisyphus requires a satisfactory explanation. A long time ago, Prometheus, who personifies the inventor, gave mankind "fire and freedom, technics and art:' which were privileges of the gods, as Albert Camus writes in 1946 in "Prometheus in HelI:' He says that while Modernity admired only the machine, regarding art as an obstacle and a "sign ofbondage:' Prometheus did not want to "separate the machine from art:' With this memory in view, Camus asks a question that still moves us, i.e. "whether it is still permitted to save today's man:' The theft of technology appeared as an act of revolt against the gods, which is why Prometheus was punished by being chained to the Caucasus. Sisyphus was punished for a different kind of creative act, which most of us have forgotten because of the type of punishment he received. "If we believe Homer:' writes Camus in his famous essay, "he was the wisest of all mortaIs:' He incurred the anger of the gods when he tied up Thanatos and for a time blocked the stream of people entering the kingdom of the dead. After staying with the dead for a while, he used a ruse to return to the human world for a short time. Only then did he find the punishment waiting for him: to eternally roll a huge boulder up the mountain of futility. In Modernity he was understood as a figure who symbolized the repetition compulsion in every human life that is led in the face of death and cannot be overcome by a virtual world, but remains tied to its burdens even in the underworld. Karl Kerenyi interpreted his punishment as a metaphor of the fatefullimits of personallife.

In a conversation with three artist colleagues in Basel in 1985, Joseph Beuys asked about the meaning of making art in today's changed world. Instead of Prometheus, who had so often been enlisted for the role of the artist as a revolutionary and an antagonist of the gods, Beuys insisted on the new model of Epimetheus, who, as a reconciler, "maintains the semantic contexts of culture." He said the former revolt of art had worn itself out, because the thing it opposed was itself disintegrating. One would have to ask Prometheus and Epimetheus to appear together, but this would then be "a form of art that we must first invent:' But has art not always been repeatedly re-invented to renew its meaning and dynamics?

In a similar way to Epimetheus, Sisyphus signals a role change by the present-day artist. In terms of role, he stands in contradiction to Prometheus, in the same way that the artist stands in contradiction to the producer of technological utopias. Artists do not find this role by refusing the offers of technology, but by rejecting its claim that it overcomes people. The opposite standpoint lies in repeatedly making the inadequate, imperfect human