“There are times when reality becomes too complex for Oral Communication. But Legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.³ Alpha 60, Alphaville, Jean Luc Godard, 1965.

“Betaville³ refers to Godard´s film “Alphaville³ (1965). Betaville looks back to the questions and answers offered in Alphaville. In short: “Alphaville³ represents an image of the city of the future controlled by Alpha 60, a computer designed by Professor von Braun. Alpha 60 only decides on the basis of rational and logical conclusions ­ the product of the totalitarian surveillance of the city´s inhabitants. Words refering to emotions ­ like love, tenderness, to weep ­ and to history or future are excluded from the so-called “bible³ ­ a dictionary listing the permitted words in Alphaville. Alpha 60: “No one has lived in the past and no one will live in the future. The present is the form of all life, and there are no means by which this can be avoided. Time is a circle which is endlessly revolving. The descending arc is the past and the rising arc is the future. Everything has been said.³ (Film Script, 43.)

Lemmy Caution, an agent from the so-called “Outerlands³ and instructed either to bring back or to kill Professor von Braun, not only confuses Alpha 60 by talking about poetic ideas or irrational habits and by that complicating his identification, but finally destroys the computer by confronting it with a riddle, with the immanent contradiction of the computer´s own relation to time and temporality. At the end Lemmy Caution escapes with the seductress offered to him,  the Professor´s daughter Natascha von Braun. And Natascha, who felt in love with Lemmy, gives utter to her feelings by stumbling or performing the words: I love you ­ echoing a reactivated and formerly forbitten memory.

The reason to refer to Godard´s “Alphaville³ is based on different interests.  First, from the point of view of the late nineties Alphaville still offers a lot of vivid questions: Fore sure, the political implications and frames inscribed in the plot are different nowadays. What was meant to be totalitarian in the 60-ies is quite close to our contemporary notion of the so-called global. E.g. reading todays arguments for the inevitable need to calculating and to follow along the lines of a global economy including its immanent and merely functional logic reminds of Alpha 60´s conception. Its presumption that “everything has been said³ anticipates a postmodern dictum. Especially postmodernism´s problematic relation to time and temporality, the common assumptions of an end of history, the death of the author and the death of the subject, are already indicated in Alphaville. As well as signifiers that´ve postmodernly lost their signifieds, words that have no meaning anymore, are at work in Alphaville: The common and invariable answer of the inhabitants is always: “I´m very well, thank you, not at all³. Their pronunciation and voice have to do less with expression than with an anonymous citing of someone´s else words. Even the character of Alphaville does not differ between cities in the West or East: Alphaville is shot in Paris, but it could be everywhere, representing a modell of a dystopian and depersonalized global city. Ironically Alpha 60 is the last personality, but already a legend from its beginning. The similarities to our reality are evident ­ as well as the differences.

Betaville does not intend a remake of Alphaville. Betaville just assumes and reflects totalitarian aspects in our presence ­ and this is its only common denominator with Alphaville. In a way one could say Betaville is the complete opposite of Alphaville ­ considering the present regime of consumption, its postulated free choice and the complexity of heterogeneous interdependencies. It seems to be clear, that there is no hope for a super agent or autonomous subject like Lemmy Caution who´s able to destroy or at least to disturb a whole system. Especially the weapons that Lemmy Caution used for his mission ­ like poetry, riddles and love ­ do not seem approriate for contemporary strategies of global economies and global players. In the meantime they professionally include and even produce something like advanced aesthetics ­ let´s say at least something like the rhetorics of poetry and aesthetics, e.g. in advertising. They are provided with enough money to offer different and seemingly oppositional versions of the same. Nowadays hegemony is based on the the production of difference and diversity. That means totalitarianism is not related to the restriction of choice and articulation anymore - as in Alphaville´s daily reduced “bible-dictionary” ­ but it is represented by the opposite power to produce and ­ by that ­ to control difference. Considering a form of critic that was mainly based on its evident difference to the dominant structures raises the question of a contemporary form of critic. How can critic mediate its difference to the hegemonial difference? Is it possible to express diversity via formal differences? Is it possible to go on with the classical dialectic between the Old and the New? Wouldn´t a search for new forms of critic just perpetuate the modern logic of including the critical difference into the dominant and expanding circle of a mainstream difference?

Betaville refers to Godard´s Alphaville in another sense. Though Alphaville was shot in Paris in the sixties, it appears as a studiocity of science fiction. In that sense Godard used the atmosphere of science fiction to create a critical and different description of his present. One could say science fiction with Godard does not mean the construction of a possible and frightening future ­ as a consequence of present tendencies like George Orwell´s “1984³ ­ but the documentation of the invisible or hidden constraints of the present. Godard imputes his present to the character of science fiction in order to construct a parallel image or language of difference.

According to Alphaville, Betaville focuses on the character of science fiction and the description of an imaginary city in order to document its contemporary constraints. Instead of a computer like Alpha 60 we´re facing a logic of a global economy and its control of power mainly via images. A point that may not be missed is the fact that the flexibility and interchangeability of images does not imply a lack of power, the opposite is true. In that sense Betaville is a city under the regime of images: Images define the character of urban structures, images define the politics of identities and images define the realms of critic. Maybe Betaville just offers an atmosphere of science fiction not only to testify the politics of images but also to suppose an imaginary escape. As it seems a paradox, but not a mission impossible.

Andreas Spiegl