Copyrighted Material
Introduction 5
one that has received comparably little attention. This understanding of reproducibility—what one might term circulatory reproducibility—has to do not with the production of a trace of reality but with the way the image may be copied and copied and copied, transforming that singular trace into something multiple that is primed for circulation. It is not enough to understand the specificity of the moving image as residing in the trace alone; rather, its power resides in the ability to take this singular sign and render it mobile through the production of potentially innumerable facsimiles. It is the moving image’s circulatory reproducibility that Parreno investigates in Precognition. He forgoes the questions of indexicality, documentary, and verisimilitude that so often get asked in relation to the image’s referential reproducibility and instead takes on the issues of authority, authenticity, and access that stem from its status as a copy in circulation. Despite its interest in digital abundance, Precognition is also marked by a form of extreme limitation: the exhibition guide informs the viewer that the disc erases itself after a single viewing. Parreno is here following in the footsteps of William Gibson, whose book Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) (1992) was fabricated to be readable only once.4 Precognition was issued on a DVD-D, a disposable disc format engineered by the Swiss company FDD Technologies to play a single time.5 A number of disposable DVD formats, including DIVX and Flexplay (also known as EZ-D), were introduced in the first decade of the twenty-first century in an attempt to provide a convenient rental option while limiting the possibility of piracy, with many lasting up to two days before being rendered unplayable. In the case of DIVX, special players were needed to handle the encrypted discs, which would require an additional key after two days if the renter wished to extend the viewing period. Flexplay and DVD-D, by contrast, needed no digital rights management system: both coat the disc with a chemical that causes the disc to disintegrate after it is exposed to the air. Flexplay’s standard was a forty-eight-hour window of functionality—akin to video store or iTunes rentals—but the technology can be calibrated to variable durations; Parreno chose an extremely brief period of playability. The versions of Marilyn and C.H.Z. installed at the Palais de Tokyo are distributed as most moving image artworks are today: as limited editions accompanied by certificates of authenticity and sold on the art market to private and institutional collectors for large sums. Quite differently, the versions of those works found on the DVD-D are both free and ephemeral.