Abstrakt
The presentation will depart from the premise that interface as a phenomenon is not merely a point of connection free of discursive burdens. While Jean-Francois Lyotard has posited 'the third mediative element' as an essentially regulative rather than constituted within a system,1 the phenomenon of interface should be seen neither as an abstraction, nor as an element un-constituted as a system.
The next proposition to follow is that the visual constitutes culture more than anything else. However, in contrast to the critical view on transgression of visual codes as more than an aesthetic event but rather as an attack on cultural code itself,2 this presentation is focused on the consequences of abiding to the cultural codes and locating such an abiding act within the space of the visual and of the body.
The art of Kara Walker, an American silhouettist, manipulating the neutrality of the silhouette as a medium against unsettling scenes of violence feeding to the Western's fantasy of Africa will be taken as an example to support the argument that abiding by the demands of the body and the visual brings afore what culture is as interface, socially and aesthetically.