IF 19|20

Distracted Society
Cinema Must Not Be Left to the Market
Lars Henrik Gass
Rarely did a documenta have worse reviews, never more admissions. In 2017,
some visitors had to put up with several hours of waiting. In the fall of 2017,
during the Sculpture Projects exhibition in Münster, I myself waited ninety
minutes in front of a decommissioned ice rink in a queue with others who were
passing the time with parlor games, only to look for ten minutes into a hole that
friendly local art mediators explained to me. How can this demand be explained?
The art establishment offers identification and presentation areas that literature,
theater or cinema can hardly create. Above all, however, the art establishment
has one thing in advance: that I can do something at the same time as viewing
art. I can talk to others, I can look at others, and others can look at me, I can
use my smartphone and post photos of the exhibition and follow the reaction to
it, I can relax in the sun with a latte-to-go, I can determine the rhythm, my time
individually. So the art business is not only extremely connectable, but also has
a high degree of possible self-determination and self-representation. It does not
dictate duration to me; it is part of a new society of distraction.
We all thought that the Internet could not diminish the demand for culture,
because the Internet cannot replace social contact and sensual experience.
That’s true, but not quite; what we overlooked: We are investing more and more
life time on the Internet. The frequency of communication is increasing to such
an extent that there is hardly any time for exchange. Exchange disturbs. Voice
telephony on the new Apple iPhone X is apparently very difficult to achieve and is
said to occupy only 5 th place of all activities on the smartphone. In the last seven
years, voice telephony in Germany has dropped from 295 to 238 billion minutes.
Above all, the Internet has taught us a new perception of reality. I can therefore
integrate an exhibition into my busy life better than two hours of literature,
theater or cinema. Literature, the performing arts, music, but also cinema,
which are based on permanence, i.e. demand time, have a disadvantage over
exhibitions, which always leave individual freedom, but especially literature.
According to a 2018 study by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association
(Börsenverein des deutschen Buchhandels), over six million sales were lost to the
German book trade between 2013 and 2017 alone, more than half since 2000: