Intensive Thinking

Manuscript from my talk on Neurophilosophy and Synthetic Materialism

2012-02-24T13:01:00.006-08:00

Here is the manuscript from my recent talk at Goldsmiths, which was my first attempt to come to terms with neurophilosophy/philosophy of mind from within the context of my own project. Undoubtedly, there is a lot more to be said about this, and I probably won't start working on it seriously until after the summer, but this was nevertheless a nice opportunity to start thinking this through more in-depth, and something that I look forward to taking up again, in relation to cinema and new media, in my dissertation.

The first group of quotes (against Husserl) are from Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound (chapter 1, on Churchland and Sellars), and the second group (on distributed representations) from DeLanda's Philosophy and Simulation (chapter 6+7, on insect intelligence and mammalian memory). I basically organized the presentation around the arguments that one can explain consciousness objectively and that experience is non-linguistic, alongside criticisms of the noetic-noematic correlation and the language-referent correlation, with a bit of cultural- and affect theory thrown in towards the end.

Neurophilosophy and Synthetic Materialism

In the first pages of his After Finitude (2006), Quentin Meillassoux defines correlationism as the doctrine according to which “we [can] never grasp an object ‘in itself’, in isolation from its relation to the subject, […] a subject that [conversely] would not always-already be related to an object”. This compelling diagnosis served as the unified starting point for so-called “speculative realist philosophy”; in fact, perhaps the only unified point, considering that the term “speculative realism” has come to refer to a number of vastly different philosophical programs. Nevertheless, what does unite these various philosophical approaches is their hostility towards correlationism, and its tendency to reduce philosophy to the relation between thinking and being. Undoubtedly, this correlationist circle needs to be, and indeed has been, demolished, although this does of course not mean that human minds do not exist or aren’t important. On the contrary, once we have stepped outside the circle what is clear is that we need a different account of what a mind is – a problem which undoubtedly not only will have consequences in philosophy, but in other related disciplines as well. Here I of course need to point out that to this date no one actually knows what a mind is, so it is still one of the holy grails of philosophy, nevertheless there have been a number of recent developments in neuro-science which are incredibly interesting from a philosophical context, and it seems to me that a speculative realist perspective is the kind of approach that we need in order to come to terms with these scientific insights from within a philosophical framework. In this presentation I will therefore concern myself with sketching an outline for one such perspective in particular, while also criticizing two of the principal forms of correlationism in 20th century philosophy: the noetico-noematic correlation (phenomenology) and the language-referent correlation (neo-Kantianism).

First of all we need to come to terms with why 20th century continental philosophy in general is inadequate to deal with contemporary questions related to the problem of consciousness, and a useful starting point here is Edmund Husserl. As is widely known, Husserl created his phenomenology as a response to the so-called “threat” of the natural sciences, particularly experimental psychology, and the claim that philosophy would soon die out and be substituted by the sciences. As a response to this, Husserl argued that science cannot give account for our immediate access to the experienced world, and he thus created phenomenology precisely for this purpose, but since he was so afraid of the natural sciences he ended up being an idealist (or correlationist) in the process and consequently dismissing science altogether. Clearly, this approach to consciousness is inadequate today, and we consequently need something different; that is, a philosophical conception of mind which comes to terms with science, rather than shielding itself against its “threat”. Because whereas correlationist models, like Husserl’s, position themselves against science, many of the speculative realist programs currently in development rather make creative use of its progressions and developments. This doesn’t of course mean that we should accept scientific insights blindly, or believe that current science gives us some kind of “final truth” (or that science can give us such a final truth at all), such as in the form of the ultimate structure of the real, but rather that we can, and indeed should, draw ontological conclusions from science. In this case, the first step would be to break with phenomenology’s claims for the “unobjectifiable transcendence” of phenomena, or Husserl’s “appearance of appearance”, in favour of what the speculative realist philosopher Ray Brassier calls the “immanent objectivity” of consciousness (i.e. the fact that we can explain subjective experience from an objective point-of-view). To put this differently: many philosophers, and not just phenomenologists, have argued that the “appearance-reality distinction cannot be invoked short of occluding the reality of the phenomenon of consciousness altogether, for ‘the appearance is all there is’”. In other words, this distinction becomes impossible to draw when discussing the nature of consciousness, since the appearance is the reality (the appearance of appearance); as Brassier puts it when summarizing Husserl’s axiom of phenomenology (his “principle of principles”): “appearances can only be understood in their own terms. But what are ‘their own terms’? Precisely the terms concomitant with the first-person phenomenological point of view”. Consciousness thus becomes precisely “unobjectifiably transcendent”: something that goes beyond the reach of scientific objectivity and scientific explanation. But this ahistorical approach undoubtedly leads to a number of philosophical problems, as Quentin Meillassoux has pointed out with his concepts of “ancestrality” and the “arche-fossil”; for what the principle of principles remains incapable of explaining are basic common-sense problems regarding 1) how mind is produced in the first place, and 2) if there ever was something before the appearance of human minds. Indeed, continental philosophers have long been surprisingly oblivious to these questions; perhaps because they have, as Meillassoux and Brassier have pointed out, the capacity to demolish the correlationist position altogether.

It is consequently in this context that I would like to introduce the work of the philosopher Manuel DeLanda (who is, I would argue, one of the most important of the speculative realist philosophers, and perhaps the principal theorist of emergence today). Although he has never associated himself openly with speculative realist thinking, it is quite obvious that DeLanda should be positioned within this group, and that he in fact also was an important forerunner of these emergent philosophical positions. This is perhaps most obvious in his book Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002), which is dedicated to reconstructing Gilles Deleuze’s ontology from a realist perspective, and in which he argues that Deleuze’s (and, implicitly, also his own) project is both realist and speculative. But today I will instead focus on DeLanda’s latest book, Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason (2011), since it is here that he sketches out a conception of mind which is vastly different from the appearance of appearance, or any other correlationist model. It should be pointed out, however, that this is not the main topic of the book, which rather is dedicated to questions of scientific epistemology and emergence in history, yet it seems to me that the brief sketches of a philosophy of mind presented here are incredibly relevant from a speculative realist perspective, and I am consequently interested in unpacking this in my own work.

Philosophy and Simulation attempts to trace the emergence of life, mind, and social relations from inorganic matter itself, and the book consequently argues (against correlationism) for the historicity of life and thought (i.e. the fact that human beings are historical and that there was a time – what Meillassoux calls “ancestrality” – when there were no humans on this planet), and (against Meillassoux’s radical contingent emergence of life and thought) for the synthetic emergence of human beings with cognitive capacities. This approach is of course deeply informed by DeLanda’s reading of Deleuze as what he calls a “neo-materialist” philosopher; that is, someone who not only believes in the mind-independent existence of matter, but also that matter has a spontaneous morphogenetic capacity to self-organize and self-differentiate fully formed individuals (the word “individual” here referring not only to human individuals, as in individual persons, but to any entity that populates the material world). Matter, according to this position, is thus morphogenetically charged, or potent with synthesis, which may be reformulated as a philosophical inversion of Kantianism, where synthesis becomes primary, although not as the synthesis of transcendental form and empirical content anchored in a subject, but rather as the self-synthesizing potency of mind-independent matter (matter in-itself). Thus, for DeLanda, synthesis is not manifested in the mind, but it is rather the mind which is generated through the synthetic capacities of matter as such. His position may consequently be summarized as an account of how the phenomenal self, rather than being given in some arbitrary sense, is generated through fully objective material processes, and thus that “the reality of consciousness is independent of the subject of consciousness”. In other words, what DeLanda’s work argues for is that the mind is produced by processes which themselves are mind-independent, and thus that “the appearing of appearance can and should be understood as a phenomenon generated by sub-personal but perfectly objectifiable neuro-biological processes”. Let me consequently give a brief account of how he argues that the brain emerges from the connection strengths between neural nets and how the mind emerges from the synthesis of inner and outer sense-impressions.

DeLanda positions his theory of the emergence of mind against the language-referent correlation, or what he calls the “neo-Kantian” theory of experience, according to which arbitrary signifiers produce the subject. Also known as the so-called “linguistic turn”, the neo-Kantian model argues that it is language which gives experience structure, and that this gives an account of the fundamental arbitrariness of experience, since all cultures have different languages, and thus literally “live in different worlds”, as he puts it (this is of course the famous Saussurian position). It thus ends up with an epistemological relativism, where cultures which don’t have words for past tenses don’t have a conception of the past, cultures which don’t have words for colours literally see in black and white, and so on. Against this slightly bizarre relativism, where perception is structured by language, DeLanda (here drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and David Hume) defines the subject as a synthesis of raw sense-impressions (i.e. intensities of colours, intensities of sounds, intensities of textures, and inner intensities of fear, love, hate, etc.) given structure by habit (i.e. the habitual association of ideas), rather than arbitrary categories. In other words, against the idea that experience is organized by linguistic systems, he argues for the importance of raw sense data in the production of the subject. Thus, it is not linguistic symbols which are primary, but rather the non-linguistic practices which give rise to these symbols in the first place. An Eskimo would consequently not see 29 (or whatever the number) kinds of snow because he has 29 words for snow, but he would have 29 words for snow because of the fact that every day he lives, hunts, socialises, and so on, in 29 real, mind-independent kinds of snow (i.e., experience precedes signification, rather than the other way round). And furthermore, unlike linguistically oriented models of experience, he also argues that memory is fundamentally non-linguistic. This does not mean that remembering linguistically coded facts is an illusion, but rather that this specific form of memory overlooks an even more fundamental one (fundamental in the sense that it precedes linguistic memory), and which both Hume and Henri Bergson had theorized in their conceptions of subjectivity. According to this model, mental representations are not simply linguistically coded concepts, or some kind of photographic snapshots of a complex reality, but rather the means to reproduce a lived sensation at a lower intensity. Thus, rather than being a mere network of linguistic signs, or a collection of photographic snapshots, the brain is here conceptualized as a machine with the capacity to dynamically reproduce the complexities of lived experience. To put this last point in neuroscientific terms: “with the massive divergence that multicellular organisms underwent roughly six million years ago, and the progressive differentiation of their cells, a new kind of biological material, a neuronal material with the emergent capacity to develop internal models, began to accumulate”. This neuronal material is evident already in simple multicellular organisms, such as the hydra and jellyfish, which both have a few separate neurons linked together into a simple network, and the internal models that emerge from these neural networks are not just snapshots of the outside world, but rather a prototype extracted from experience and stored as a non-symbolic and dynamic representation. Here it is in particular two points which needs to be emphasized: firstly, that, unlike in various correlationist models of the mind, this theory of how the mind emerges from the interactivity of neural nets and inner and outer sense impressions does not draw a sharp distinction between animal and human cognition. Thus, against the ahistorical approach of correlationism, this model argues that there is continuity between animal minds and human minds, and that by investigating how the former developed, we might increase our understanding of the latter as well. In other words, the difference between animal and human cognition is in complexity but not in kind. Secondly, the idea of a prototype extracted from experience and stored as a non-symbolic and dynamic representation is, I would argue, a very important philosophical point, which must be further elaborated on.

As DeLanda points out, a dynamic, or emergent, representation is not explicitly stored as such, the product rather being a configuration of connection weights that can recreate it given the right input. “In other words, what is stored is not a static representation, but the means to dynamically reproduce it”, as I argued earlier. Also, “unlike a photograph these representations are distributed in all the hidden units [of the brain] and are thus closer to a hologram. This means that they can be superimposed on one another so that the same configuration of weights can serve to reproduce several representations”, and they are thus referred to as distributed representations. “These stable activity patterns are representational because their content is a prototype extracted from a sample of a population of similar entities that is sensed by the organism”, prototypes “that an assemblage of neurons can transform into a subjective but non-linguistic category”. On the other hand, these prototypes are also fundamentally emergent, since they cannot be reduced to “neurons or their physical connections, because they are not stored as such: all that is stored is a configuration of connection strengths in a neuronal assemblage [...], or a set of properties that give an assemblage of neurons the capacity to produce the prototype”. This means that “when the neuronal assemblage is not actually stimulated a distributed representation exists only as the potential product of an unexercised capacity”. The brain thus becomes a fundamentally dynamic unit, rather than a simple reservoir of snapshots and linguistic categories, and we may consequently define the subject that emerges from the synthesis of sub-personal, material components as “an assemblage that emerges within populations of distributed representations and their associated subjective gradients (pain, anger, hunger, thirst). [And] the stability of [...] subjective identity may [subsequently] be explained as an effect of habitual behaviour: habits territorialize behaviour, making certain patterns relatively uniform and repetitive, and under their influence a relatively deterritorialized field of extracted prototypes become[s] consolidated into a more or less coherent [...] subject”.

There is undoubtedly a lot more which needs to be said about this very brief sketch of how a synthetic materialist conception of consciousness could be formulated, but I will leave that aside for now and instead conclude with a few remarks on the relevance of this model for cultural theory and new media. It seems to me that the two main arguments driven here – the historicity and objectivity of subjective experience and its non-linguistic, or sub-representational components – are incredibly relevant for anyone involved in cultural and aesthetic production precisely because it gives an account of the immediacy and contingency of lived experience – prior to representation. To put this differently: while contemporary cultural theory has produced a lot of analyses on ethnic representation, gender representation, class representation, and so on, surprisingly little work has been done in the realm of what is generally known as “affect theory”. This is of course the logical consequence of philosophical correlationism and the linguistic turn, which undoubtedly generates analysis only at the level of text, metaphor, representation, and so on. But with emergent theories of consciousness and subjectivity like the one I have discussed in this presentation, what we have is nothing less than the philosophical foundation for a different form of cultural theory – that of nonlinguistic and sub-personal experience. This is important precisely because it is a mode of existence which operates prior to representational categorization, and is concerned with “how something directly affects one’s nervous-system”, as Deleuze would have said. Notice that I’m not trying to say that theories of representation aren’t useful, since they certainly are, but rather that these theories fail to take into account modes of power and exploitation, but also of resistance, which simply don’t fall into neat representational categories. This is rather what the philosopher Brian Massumi calls “affective modulation”: that is, the mode of cultural operations through which the body constantly is being plugged-in to, and carefully modulated by, the many forms of new media that operate in our society today. For Massumi, this cultural body is something like a “networked jumpiness, a distributed neuronal network”, constantly traversed by impersonal forces, in the form of affective attunements and distunements. And with the constantly increasing modes of mediation in contemporary culture it is quite obvious that the dangers and possibilities of these operations are something that we are just starting to understand.

Outline for PhD-talk on DeLanda, Neurophilosophy and Synthetic Materialism

2012-02-13T06:24:00.000-08:00

This is an outline for a talk that I've been invited to give at an interdepartmental PhD-forum (entitled "Theories of Emergence") at Goldsmiths. It's open for everyone, though, so anyone in London is welcome to attend. I don't think that any booking is required, but I would suggest to show up early to get a seat. This is the outline for my talk:

Neuro-Philosophy, Synthetic Materialism, and New Media

This presentation will address the problem of how to conceptualize the mind using the combined resources of recent neuro-science and the rise of so-called 'speculative realist' philosophy. More specifically, it will investigate how the synthetic materialism of the philosopher Manuel DeLanda could be mobilized in order to understand the functional (i.e. non-linguistic) operations of the mind within our increasingly hyper-mediated network-culture, and the possibilities and dangers implicated by such an understanding.

I will present alongside a fellow PhD-student engaged in Object-Oriented Performance Studies, so it should be an interesting session. The talks will last around 20-25 minutes each, with a general discussion towards the end.

Room 3/4 Ben Pimlott Building
Thursday 23rd February
6-8 pm

Manuscript from Presentation on DeLanda

2012-01-26T11:12:00.001-08:00

Here is the manuscript from my talk on DeLanda from the PhD-seminars at Goldsmiths. It's basically an attempt to introduce and contextualize his work drawing upon his appearance in the 90's and current association with speculative realist thought. I did present another paper as well, which focused more on my own work, but I don't want to put it up here right now for various reasons. It should appear in some form sooner or later, though. In the meantime, here is the DeLanda-text (sometimes the formulations might be a bit off, since I wrote it for an oral presentation, so in that case apologies):

The Neo-Materialism of Manuel DeLanda

I will begin by talking about Manuel DeLanda’s work, and my approach will be philosophical, since my project is very much philosophically-oriented, and I consider myself first and foremost to be a theoretician rather than an artist. So rather than using theory as a way to better understand my practice, I’m using art as a way to enrich my theory. My approach is therefore very much a Deleuzian one, in that I’m not thinking of art as something “to do philosophy about”, but rather as a form of thinking in-itself. In other words, art is a form of practice which already is pregnant with thought, so the philosopher of art should not so much reflect on it, as much as extract the potency of thought that always-already belongs to it. It’s in this sense that my approach is a distinctly philosophical one, and why I will talk from a philosopher’s perspective. But this should not be misunderstood as an anti-practical approach, since I believe that theory not only is useful, but indeed inseparable from, practice. In other words, theory is less a representation of the world as much as the condition for practical interventions in it, and in this way an enabling condition for practice. Indeed, it seems to me that theoretical contradictions don’t just end up having negative effects within some kind of purely theoretical register, but also lead to similar contradictions at the level of practice, so this is where I see the importance of critical theory as such.

But before I go into the main theoretical discussion, I will just briefly introduce DeLanda and the theoretical context from which he emerged. One thing that is important to notice about him is that he doesn’t have a degree in philosophy – not even an undergraduate degree – since he started out as a filmmaker and then became a software designer, and somehow has managed to climb the academic ladder without having any actual academic credentials (he is a professor of philosophy today). He became known in the early nineties for his particular reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy – a reading which I think still is one of the most productive ones – and this was at a time before Deleuze and Guattari became big names in the academia. But his influence has not been very high in cultural studies and the arts, which probably has to do with the fact that his writings rather concentrate on those parts of Deleuze and Guattari’s work that concern themselves with science, metaphysics, and epistemology. Nevertheless, it seems to me that his take on D/G is incredibly useful even from an aesthetic perspective, and this is in many ways what my current project is about; although not so much in terms of introducing his work in cultural studies and the arts, but rather by extracting certain lines of thinking present in the neo-materialist corpus and elaborate on them from within the context of my own theoretical programme. In this regard, I also draw upon the collective work of the so-called Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Ccru); which was a group of graduate students at Warwick University in the nineties, who got together around their shared interest in DeLanda, Deleuze, cyber-theory, rave culture, etc., and who now are teaching in various UK-universities (indeed, four of them are here at Goldsmiths, and two in this department – Kodwo Eshun and Mark Fisher – who are my PhD-supervisors). The main contribution of the Ccru, for me, is precisely their materialist approach to cultural studies – vis-à-vis, DeLanda, Deleuze, and their mentor Nick Land – which, like DeLanda’s work, not only offers some serious challenges to the tiresome prevalence of postmodern scepticism, but was also of key importance for current so-called “speculative realist thought”. So here the Ccru’s concerns intersect with DeLanda’s in the most explicit way, since it’s one of my basic arguments that his reading of Deleuze as a realist philosopher was a kind of forerunner of speculative realism, and that with the increased influence of these philosophical programs, we will gain a better understanding of the many benefits of this reading.

It should, however, be pointed out that far from everyone agrees with DeLanda’s reading of Deleuze and Guattari as realists. Deleuzian thinker Ian Buchanan, for instance, proposes that one should read D/G as engineers of what he calls a “phenomenology of schizophrenia” – a claim which obviously discredits any form of philosophical realism, and Buchanan unsurprisingly dismisses DeLanda’s work for failing to take into account D/G’s internal reversal of psychoanalysis and the philosophy of desire. So for Buchanan, Capitalism and Schizophrenia is not so much the starting point for a renewed realist/materialist philosophy, but rather a radicalized account of the workings of the unconscious. One is of course free to agree or disagree with this claim, but whatever stance one may take here, one at least has to admit that this position unavoidably fails to escape out of what Quentin Meillassoux has named “the correlation of being and world”. So if one is of the opinion (as I obviously am) that this philosophical idealism is nothing but the first thing that must be abandoned if critical thinking is to be potent enough to move forward – indeed, the enabling condition for critical philosophy as such – then Buchanan’s position inevitably ends up doing little to push this through. So it’s consequently in this context that I would like to talk about DeLanda’s realism.

First of all, one must notice that the move from idealism, or correlationism, to realism doesn’t necessarily have to involve such an extensive theoretical move as Meillassoux does in After Finitude. Because, as Graham Harman has pointed out: Meillassoux is in fact a peculiar realist, in that he actually considers the basic correlationist argument – that if you try and think something beyond thought you are immediately bringing it into thought – as a very powerful argument which simply can’t be dismissed as invalid, whereas the other three “original” speculative realists (and DeLanda as well) think that it is a bad argument to begin with. But we do need to credit Meillassoux position in that it brings to attention the dogmatism that philosophical realism so often has been associated with in continental philosophy. Because until very recently, if you were a realist you were basically someone who didn’t understand Kant’s Copernican revolution, and thus fell victim to a kind of naive, or uncritical, acceptance of the world as such. This is a valid point, but this is also where the “speculative” part of speculative realism comes in, as an indication of the fact that this is not simply some form of revival of dogmatic, or naive, realism, but a realism according to which the world is far from simple and common sense, and thus undermines one of the main arguments against philosophical realism.

But if this is the case, then how should we explain the workings of a complex and mind-independent reality? In other words, the first question which any speculative realist thinker has to pose is: what is it that gives reality structure once we have removed the human/world-correlate, and dogmatism, from the centre stage? It’s here that DeLanda introduces his neo-materialism, which, as the name implies, is different from Marxist materialism, in that it ditches the dialectic simply as a transcendental illusion, and also argues that matter not only exists independently of our minds, but also has the capacity to express itself independently of our minds. So this is how he manages to circumvent the deadlock between idealism and naive realism, that is, by understanding matter as morphogenetically charged, or synthetically potent, with autonomous self-differentiating capacities. He thus criticises essentialism and idealism for subordinating matter to a transcendental set of entities, whether in the form of eternal ideas or social conventions. This is indeed inadequate, as he points out, since it unavoidably depotentiates the functional potencies that belong to matter as such, and the latter must therefore be understood solely on the basis of immanent production. This is consequently where he turns to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, since what he finds in their co-written texts, and in Deleuze’s solo-work, is precisely the philosophical resources for this renewed form of materialism. Here it should be noted that DeLanda, unlike most readers of D/G’s work, does not simply isolate his writings on the level of so-called “DeleuzoGuattarian jargon”, but on the contrary makes a serious effort to unpack their somewhat obscure arguments vis-á-vis the many breakthroughs of modern science. This is a crucial move, I would argue, since it seems to me that the major problem with the many contemporary readings of D/G is that they tend to merely repeat the jargon, without coming to terms with what these concepts actually refer to. So “deterritorialization”, “rhizome”, and “multiplicity” become nothing more than fashionable postmodern slogans, after “deconstruction” and “simulacrum”, which is unfortunate since it gives a very poor understanding of what D/G’s work really has to offer, and thus merely groups them up within the consensus of postmodern theory.

But if one subscribes to realism, this is a particularly crude mistake, since it reduces the richness of D/G’s work to semantics, and thus fails to move beyond the level of language, metaphor, and signification. DeLanda’s turn to science is therefore a crucial one, and indeed something which already is present in D/G’s work, as he illustrates by the numerous quotes that refer to figures such as Gauss, Riehmann, Darwin, and Thom. So therefore, it’s the rigorous explicitation of the scientific resources embedded in D/G’s work which is the philosophical contribution that we first and foremost need to credit DeLanda with, since a productive realism/materialism indeed has to, as he points out, come to terms with science if it is to have any saying about the nature of reality as such. And the many examples discussed in his work – from the topological invariants operating across the virtual, to the crucial roles of intensive differences (of temperature, pressure, etc.) in processes of morphogenetic individuation – are indeed nothing but the foundation for this form of realism.

This immediately poses another question, however, which concerns the relationship between science and philosophy. Because continental philosophy has, as is well known, long been oblivious to the progression of modern science; indeed, one of the central foundations of contemporary continental philosophy – obviously in the spirit of correlationism – was a reaction against the so-called “threat” of the natural sciences. This is of course Husserl’s phenomenology, which in many ways was constructed as sort of a response towards the claims that philosophy would soon become superfluous because of the advances of the natural sciences (particularly experimental psychology), so Husserl therefore created phenomenology, as a philosophical account of the immediate access of human experience beyond the domains of science, but in the process he became an idealist precisely because of his fear for the natural sciences. This anecdote of course just reinforces the argument that contemporary realist thinking has to come to terms with science – but in what way? And DeLanda’s work has unsurprisingly been criticised for its endorsement of modern science, such as when James Williams (another thinker famous for his writings on D/G) argues that DeLanda is making philosophy too dependent on the truth and falsity of scientific statements. But the problem with this critique (besides from the fact that Williams never explicitly mentions if he is arguing from an idealist standpoint) is, as DeLanda has pointed out himself, that it assumes that scientific theories just replace each other arbitrarily when they are falsified, which of course is wrong. Einstein’s theory of relativity did, for instance, not replace Newtonian physics, but simply showed that the latter is only partly true. Or, to use another example, just because we do believe in the mind-independent existence of an entity such as oxygen (based on the numerous empirical evidences from modern science) this does not mean that we know all that there is to know about oxygen. In other words, even if it is true that scientific theories can never give us a complete account of the real that doesn’t mean that they are completely wrong, or inadequate to draw ontological consequences from, as the speculative realist philosopher Ray Brassier has pointed out in response to similar criticisms: “The fact that our best current science will probably turn out be only partly true does not license the conclusion that it is all wrong and that it has no authority whatsoever”. Rather, what it does mean is that we always need to be cautious about the metaphysics we ascribe to science, as both DeLanda and Brassier also have pointed out, so that we don’t end up following science blindly, or believing that current science gives us the ultimate structure of reality (i.e. that all that is real must be comprehensible within the explanations of current scientific paradigms), but that does not invalidate the compatibility between scientific explanation and philosophical speculation as such. It just means that we need to distinguish between different forms of scientific explanations and their histories within their various fields.

I will conclude this talk with isolating what it is in DeLanda’s writings that have been most important in terms of my own project, which is the concept of “machinism”, which of course already is present in D/G, but which he takes up and elaborates on in his own writings. First of all, the idea of machinism should not be misunderstood as having to do exclusively with technological machines, because even if it certainly encompasses technology as well, it refers to something which goes beyond the mere technological and becomes synonymous with the self-differentiating potency of matter itself. So for DeLanda, as for Deleuze and Guattari, there is a fully real machinism which governs the production of the real as such: indeed, our entire four-dimensional space-time. To take a simple example to illustrate this: “When we say (as Marxists used to say) that “class struggle is the motor of history” we are using the word “motor” in a purely metaphorical sense. However, when we say that “a hurricane is a steam motor” we are not simply making a linguistic analogy: rather we are saying that hurricanes embody the same diagram used by engineers to build steam motors, that is, that it contains a reservoir of heat, that it operates via thermal differences and that it circulates energy and materials through a (so-called) Carnot cycle. Deleuze and Guattari use the term “abstract machine” to refer to this diagram shared by very different physical assemblages. Thus, there would be an “abstract motor” with different physical instantiations in technological objects and natural atmospheric processes”. In other words, whereas we tend to think of a hurricane and a stem-engine as two completely different entities, they in fact share the same abstract motor, or abstract machine, and may thus be grouped together with respect to their objective isomorphism (i.e., the fact there is a mechanism-independent process which drives both of these entities). Of course, this is just one example of an abstract machine, and the topological points, periodic attractors, and meshwork/hierarchy-diagrams that DeLanda discusses – and which governs the structure of the many entities which populate the planet, from salt crystals and granites, to biological organisms and radio-transmitters – are all examples of other abstract machines which operate according to given intensities of matter and energy and produce the material world as such. So according to this position, the biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and so on, are all governed by the morphogenetic potency of what Deleuze and Guattari call the “mechanosphere”, or “machinic phylum”, which is their name for the combined production of all the abstract machines that populate the domain of the virtual. This virtuality, is, as DeLanda points out, not the virtual reality of computer simulations, but a “real virtuality” which, like the extended notion of machinism, clearly goes beyond art and media, but nevertheless will have consequences not just in philosophy, but in those areas as well. And it’s subsequently in this context that my own work should be situated.

Notes from the Harman-Seminars

2012-01-21T07:44:00.000-08:00

Here are some thoughts on the seminars that Graham Harman gave at Goldsmiths' Department for Research Architecture yesterday (I missed the seminars of day two, unfortunately, since I have to work on my presentations on DeLanda for next week). This was the first time I've seen him speak (with the exception of one or a few clips online), and overall I really liked it; he actually reminds me quite a lot of DeLanda, in that his lucidity is present even in his oral presentations, with a large amount of humour and positive energy as well (doing a PhD you unevitably will have to suffer through a certain amount of completely non-passionate talks about subjects you have absolutely no interest in at all, so this was definitely a nice change). The room was basically packed as well, and they even had to stop people from booking seats, since it turned out to be a huge interest in the event. Here's a brief summary of the entire thing:

Session 1, Part 1: Introduction to Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO)

- OOO has its roots in an unorthodox reading of Heidegger (and Husserl, to a certain extent)
- Husserl wanted to protect philosophy from the natural sciences (particularly experimental psychology)
- People claimed that philosophy would die out, and be substituted by the natural sciences
- Husserl argued that science cannot give account for our immediate access to the experienced world, and he thus created phenomenology
- He was, however, so afraid of the natural sciences that he ended up being an idealist
- Even though OOO rejects Husserl's idealism, it takes his notion of our experience of objects as a crucial philosophical insight (against empiricism (Hume, Locke), for instance, for which the object is nothing but a bundle of qualities)
- Qualities are changing, but objects are not
- Heidegger argued (against Husserl) that most things are "invisible" to us, in that they hide behind the phenomenal sphere of experience ("presence-at-hand") - they withdraw from us
- Tool-analysis (being of things): it is only when things stop functioning that they become visible to us
- The tool-analysis is the heart of Heidegger's work
- There is something deeper in objects than practice
- The distortion of things is not an exclusively human feature - things distort each other as well (they withdraw from each other, not just from humans)
- We need a more radical reading of Heidegger
- 20th century philosophy peaked in the 1920's (Whitehead, Husserl, Heidegger, Bergson)
- Bruno Latour, although highly popular in the academia, is generally not considered a philosopher
- Prince of Networks (Harman's book on Latour) is the first attempt to treat Latour as a philosopher
- DeLanda thinks that Latour is too "humanizing" (he is currently writing something about this)
- Whitehead argued (correctly) that most philosophers since Kant have lived in Kant's shadow (Meillassoux's "correlationism")
- Whitehead: All relations need to be thought in the same way (not just the human/world-relation)
- Whitehead makes one mistake: he argues (as does Latour) that things are their relations
- This is inaccurate, since things withdraw from each other, so no object is completely exhausted by its relations with other objects (otherwise change would be impossible)
- OOO = Whitehead with Heideggerian/Husserlian elements
- Occasionalism argues that no two things can have direct causal efficiency on each other without the intervention of God
- Hume and Kant merely reversed occasionalism by replacing God with the human mind
- Causation has to be solved locally, without involving God or the mind

Session 1, Part 2: "Discovering Objects is More Important than Eliminating Them" (paper)

I didn't take any notes here, since he was going very fast and I tend to loose track of talks when I write simultaneously, but it was basically a useful introduction to the many ways in which philosophers have tended to eliminate objects throughout the history of Western thought. Topics he discussed included: Latour, reductionism/irreductionism, the pre-Socratics, undermining/overmining, Ray Brassier/eliminativism

Session 2: Is the Speculative Political Future of Egypt Also A Philosophical Project?

The afternoon-session was much more informal, and, in my mind, also much less interesting than the previous one. The main reason was because there was a slight disjunction between Harman and the graduate-students, since the latter constantly tried to push the discussion towards politics, whereas Harman (unsurprisingly) was a bit uncomfortable to talk about that (he even admitted that the department had set the topic, and that he merely intended to share some of his experiences from living in Egypt during the revolution, which was interesting but not from a philosophical perspective). I say unsurprisingly, because it is well-known that Harman is first and foremost a metaphysician and really hasn't adressed political, cultural, economic, and social concerns in his writings (so far at least). This doesn't necessarily have to be a problem (DeLanda is after all also very much a metaphysical philosopher), although I personally don't share Harman's worries that politics might be too correlational (since its privileging humans) and that one might too easily fall into political cliches (which seemed like more of an excuse for why he hasn't adressed politics in his writings). On the contrary, it seems to me that if OOO (and other speculative realist programs) will continue to have influence in the academia, this will to a large extent depend on to what degree they actually work in concrete social, political and cultural contexts (this is indeed why I tend to be less interested in endless philosophical debates about metaphysical stances - prevalent to a quite large extent in the blogosphere - since I believe that actually working with them in non-philosophical disciplines is the way to actually test their relevance and validity). Thus, I felt a little bit uncomfortable with Harman's skepticism towards pragmatism and politics, although I should also point out that it was not like he completely ruled it out (and I also do agree with him that ontology doesn't have to be synonymous with politics, although I do think that all ontology will have, or should have, political consequences).

Outline for PhD-talk on DeLanda

2012-01-14T08:47:00.000-08:00

Just an outline for a PhD-seminar on DeLanda, and my own work, that I will be leading next week (I will try and post some of it here).

The Neo-Materialism of Manuel DeLanda

This seminar will attempt to introduce the basic ideas of the philosopher Manuel DeLanda, and elaborate on them from within the context of my own project. The first part of the seminar will contextualize DeLanda's work; from his earliest publications in the nineties, and readings of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, to his recent influence on so-called 'speculative realist-thought'. It will be argued that DeLanda was a forerunner of speculative realism, and that revisiting his work from this context may be useful not only for philosophers, but for artists and scientists as well. This will be demonstrated through a close reading of his paper "Deleuze and the Genesis of Form" (1997), focusing in particular on his ideas of immanent morphogenesis, abstract machines, and a non-human world of raw matter-energy.

The second part of the seminar will introduce my own application of some of DeLanda's ideas, in the context of my attempt to formulate an inhuman philosophy of media (or 'machinic materialism'), vis-a-vis concepts such as abstract machines, the machinic phylum, and real virtuality. Some of the central issues that will be brought up are the relationship between epistemology and ontology, the postmodern critique of representation, and the functional operations implicated by a speculative philosophy of technology. Here I will also discuss some of the media-related work of Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, and the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Ccru).

Required reading:

DeLanda, Manuel, "Deleuze and the Genesis of Form" (1997), http://www.artnode.se/artorbit/issue1/f_deleuze/f_deleuze_delanda.html

Further reading:

Bryant, Levi, Graham Harman, and Nick Srnicek, "Towards a Speculative Philosophy", in Bryant, Levi, Graham Harman, and Nick Srnicek, eds., The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (2011), re.press, Prahran, http://www.re-press.org/book-files/OA_Version_Speculative_Turn_9780980668346.pdf, p. 1-19.

Reynolds, Simon, "Renegade Academia: The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (Director's Cut)" (1999), http://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/2009/11/renegade-academia-cybernetic-culture.html

Harman at Goldsmiths

2012-01-11T09:13:00.000-08:00

Will definitely try to attend this one. It's limited availability though, so anyone interested should contact the Department for Research Architecture.

Friday-Saturday, 20th-21st of January 2012

Networks and Assemblages: A Day-Long Seminar with Graham Harman
Goldsmiths, RHB 312 / 10:30am-5pm

Philosopher Graham Harman is Professor at the American University in Cairo and the author of numerous books and texts (several of which will be references in this day-long session). During the seminar, Harman will trace out the contours of an object-oriented philosophy and imagine how our world might look like “once the human subject in all its blatant and camouflaged forms exhausts the few remaining permutations and finally loses its status as Emperor of Philosophy.”

10:30am-1:00pm: Discovering Object

+ Susan Schuppli – Introduction to Graham Harman’s work and its operative modalities for thinking/doing practice-led research. Of specific importance are Harman’s two books: Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (2002) and Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things (Court, 2005).

+ Seminar Presentation: Discovering Objects is More Important Than Eliminating Them
Lecture by Graham Harman

In the morning session we will also try and situate the project of Speculative Realism, which was, in part, im- pelled by an important workshop held here at Goldsmiths April 27 2007 with presentations by Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman, and Quentin Meillassoux (see Related Readings).

Rather than announcing the advent of a new theoretical ‘doctrine’ or ‘school’, the Speculative Realism event conjoined four ambitious philosophical projects – all of which boldly problematise the subjectivistic and anthropocentric foundations of much of Continental Philosophy while differing significantly in their respective strategies for superseding them. It is precisely this uniqueness of each participant that allowed a fruitful discussion to emerge. Alongside the articulation of various challenges to certain idealistic premises, a determination of the obstacles that any contemporary realism must surmount was equally in effect. Accordingly, some of the key issues under scrutiny included the status of science and epistemology in contemporary philosophy, the ontological constitution of thought, and the nature of subject-independent objects. ‘Speculative Realism’, then, forces contemporary philosophy to make a decision, but it is not so much one concerning idealism or realism. Rather, at stake here is the possibility of a future for audacious and original philosophical thought as a discourse on reality itself.

+ Response by Susan Schuppli

Related Readings: 1) Graham Harman, The Road to Objects, unpublished work http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1263 2) Graham Harman, Networks and Assemblages: The Rebirth of Things in Latour and DeLanda, paper presented at Goldsmiths in 2007 http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1262 3) Speculative Realism http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1265

Additional Reference Materials: 1) Bryant, Levi, Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, eds. The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne: re.press, 2011. http://www.re-press.org/book-files/OA_Version_Speculative_Turn_9780980668346.pdf “One common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Zizek, all of whom elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts.” 2) Object-Oriented Philosophy (blog): http://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com

2:00pm – 5:00pm: Is the Speculative Political Future of Egypt also a Philosophical Project?

This session continues the discussion of the morning and will deal with some of the political implications of the philosophy of Speculative Realism as it might pertain to the changing realities of Egypt today. How does its more globalised project intervene to engage directly with experiences in contemporary Egypt happening in the streets, online, and captured by mobile technologies? Can philosophy play a role to play beyond engaging with the hermeneutics of the written word whether expressed as criticism or commentary, in such rapidly changing and activist contexts? Moreover does the philosophy of Speculative Realism have a future in a project in which politics alongside its religious alliances, seems to be the determinant factor in producing the new reality of Egypt — a kind of totalizing or universalist discourse that Speculative Realism would itsekf naturally be resistant to.

+ Graham Harman – Preliminary Reflections + Response by Godofredo Pereira

Earth-Objects and the Politics of Ecology
Barbican Art Gallery Events Space (Barbican Art Gallery, Level 3) / 2pm–6pm

With the intensified speed of capitalist production acting as a force multiplier in reformatting the biosphere, nature responds as a terrifying, dark agent – blackening earth and sky. Its effects on human and non-human populations are at the same time legal-scientific, military-humanitarian and ethico-political. Geo-philosophic speculation and forensics investigation into the deep history of the earth is perhaps the only way to bring to the foreground the complexity of this new natural-political assemblage where the separations between humans and environment, culture and nature, the anthropological and the geological are no longer stable.

As part of its salon event for the OMA/Progress exhibition at the Barbican, the Centre for Research Architecture (CRA) invites the philosopher Graham Harman to respond to the open archive of CRA members and engage in an open roundtable discussion with the public. Presentations by Nabil Ahmed, Paulo Tavares, Eyal Weizman, Susan Schuppli and CRA members. Response by Noortje Marres.

Curatorial Workshop with Anselm Franke
(location to be announced) / 11am-3pm

This session will be dedicated to a general discussions in the presence of Anselm Franke around the exhibition at the HKW/Berlin (House of world Cultures) that he will curate in Feb or March 2014. This close internal session will also act as a platform for a more general discussion about our respective research- practices, the relations they form and their possible materialisation or actualisation in both an exhibition context as well as as part of our theses. How can we conduct architectural or artistic forms of research and use the gallery as a site of knowledge production and dissemination so unlike the university, the seminar room or the studio. Anselm asks that each member brings with her/him a form of presentation of her/his research so far. Each will do a short 15-20 minutes presentation of the material and we will open a peer-to- peer discussion around this and other exhibition and about practice-lead research. It is essential that Anselm sees the work at this stage as we start arrange and budget for the exhibition.

Intensive Thinking's Top 20 Records of the Year

2011-12-21T01:16:00.000-08:00

Inspired by The Wire's Top 50 Records of the Year I thought I'd put together a small list of my own. Now, I always freak out a bit by doing stuff like this, since it reminds me of how much I've actually missed during the year, so I always end up feeling like any list is severely inadequate. However, since I tend to listen to 90% minimalism/drone/dub techno/electro-acoustics nowadays (a few years ago it was mostly metal, post-rock and electronica), I do feel that this list at least is adequate within those strands. There are a few more well-known albums too, but the list is mostly oriented towards the more experimental spheres of contemporary electronic music. With that said, there have definitely been a few strong releases of that kind this year: particularly two incredible albums each by Eleh and Andy Stott, a "forgotten" recording by Radigue (which is one of her best composition to date), and lots of worthwhile piano-based electro-acoustics, with Deaf Center and Swod releasing fine records, and new albums from Sakamoto in his collaborations with Fennesz and Alva Noto. Noto himself also released the second installment in his "Uni-series", while Raster Noton celebrated 15 years, which I think is worth mentioning (and next year Touch celebrates its 30th anniversary, which should lead to some interesting events around the world).

I haven't included any sound-clips in the list, but in most cases its pretty easy to find on the Web (sometimes via the included links to the label), although I would encourage one or a few purchases since many of the albums are available in incredible (and highly limited) editions.

Eleh - Floating Frequencies/Intuitive Synthesis, Vol.I-III (Important)
Andy Stott - Passed Me By (Modern Love)
Deaf Center - Owl Splinters (Type)
Eliane Radigue - Transamorem/Transmortem (Important)
Eleh - Radiant Intervals (Important)
Andy Stott - We Stay Together (Modern Love)
Alva Noto - Univrs (Raster Noton)
Radiohead - The King of Limbs (XL/Ticker Tape)
Sunn O))) meets Nurse with Wound - The Iron Soul of Nothing (Ideologic Organ)
Swood - Drei (City Centre Offices)
Burial - Street Halo EP (Hyperdub)
Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto - Summvs (Raster Noton)
Oneothrix Point Never - Replica (Software)
Gorillaz - The Singles Collection 2001-2011 (Parlophone)
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972 (Kranky)
William Fowler Collins - The Resurrections Unseen (Type)
Jon Mueller - Alphabet of Movements (Type)
Hecker - Speculative Solution (Editions Mego)
Fennesz & Sakamoto - Flumina (Touch)
Joachim Nordwall - Ignition (Ash International)

Honorary Mention: David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time (Play It Again Sam)

DeLanda's Next Project

2011-12-17T12:45:00.000-08:00

From Graham Harman: "A massive philosophy of chemistry. Sounds great."

I agree, although I'm still wondering when he's going to write his "serious attack on Marx", that he's been talking about since the early nineties. Also, it would be interesting if he expanded on his brief discussions of Hume and neural nets into a full-blown philosophy of subjectivity (and not just because this is what I will be working on over the near 2-3 years). But it's nice to already have an idea of what he's up to next, since I had been wondering where he would go after the recent book on simulation and emergence. Plus, I don't think I've ever heard him speak/read anything on this topic, so it should be exciting.

Sonic Electricity

2011-11-30T08:51:00.001-08:00

[A technological] plane is not made up simply of formed substances (aluminium, plastic, electric wire, etc.) or organizing forms (program, prototypes, etc.), but of a composite of unformed matters exhibiting only degrees of intensity (resistance, conductivity, heating, stretching, speed or delay, induction, transduction ...) and diagrammatic functions exhibiting only differential equations or, more generally, "tensors".

- Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Neuro-Philosophy / Philosophy of Mind

2011-11-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

One thing that’s missing from the PhD-proposal, or not really missing since I do mention it, but which definitely must be articulated further, is the importance of neuro-science, and the philosophy of mind that it implies. Because this project is actually not just about cinema, but also an attempt to formulate a philosophy of subjectivity (including, of course, consciousness) along neo-materialist lines. This might initially appear to be ridiculously over-ambitious, since no one, to this day, actually knows what a consciousness is, so it is still one of the holy grails of philosophy. Yet there have undoubtedly been numerous exciting progresses within neuro-science over the last years, and as a realist thinker it would be quite arrogant to not take some of this into account in a project that, at least partly, deals with the philosophy of mind. Thus, I am in agreement with Ray Brassier, when he argues that it is in fact possible to explain human experience in terms of science (rather than the other way around, which has been the dogma of continental philosophy for a long time), and that there is no such thing as a “subjective core” of human experience, which somehow resists scientific explanation. I think that Brassier’s work here is extremely important, even though I don’t side with his revisionary naturalistic approach (vis-á-vis Thomas Metzinger and Paul Churchland in particular), but rather want to pursue the path hinted to, but so far not fully articulated, by DeLanda, which attempts to construct a philosophy of mind based on recent developments in connectionism, neural networks and pattern/recognition (against symbolism). However, Brassier’s commitments (but with critical reservations) to science are crucial here, since I think that he is absolutely right in that we should draw ontological consequences from science (including neuro-science), and that science must be part of a productive realist philosophy, even if we still need to accept that scientific theories are never complete and can never give us a complete account of the complexity of the real – but this doesn’t mean that they are downright wrong. There is, after all, “a world of difference between something’s being partly true and its being all wrong”, as Brassier points out, which makes me think of James Williams’ critique of DeLanda for making philosophy too dependent on the truth or falsity of scientific theories. But, as DeLanda has pointed out in response to that article, scientific theories don’t just replace each other willy-nilly, but, on the contrary, supplement each other by adding more and more explanatory structures to already existing theories. For instance, Einstein’s theories of relativity did not falsify Newtonian physics, but just showed that Newtonian physics are only partly true; or just because we do believe in the mind-independent reality of an entity such as oxygen it doesn’t mean that we know all that there is to know about oxygen. Thus, to quote Brassier again: “The fact that our best current science will probably turn out be only partly true does not license the conclusion that it is all wrong and that it has no authority whatsoever”. We do, however, always need to be cautious about the metaphysics we ascribe to science, as both DeLanda and Brassier also have pointed out, so we should not just follow science blindly, or believe that current science gives us the ultimate structure of reality (i.e. that all that is real must be comprehensible within the explanations of current scientific paradigms), but that does not invalidate the compatibility between scientific explanation and philosophical speculation as such (see for instance the last chapter of DeLanda’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy for a rich discussion of these issues).

With that said, I feel that I do need to support the philosophical arguments on subjectivity, that I make in the dissertation, with actual data from relevant fields in current neuro-science. This will undoubtedly make the project more complicated, but at the same time a lot more acceptable from the perspective of the realism that I advocate (it was, after all, DeLanda’s rigorous attention to scientific explanation that attracted me to his project in the first place, and which I think separates him from most Deleuzians, who just tend to repeat basic DeleuzoGuattarian concepts without actually going to the bottom of their ontological status, etc.). Thus, the project will probably be a kind of mixture between neuro-philosophy/philosophy of mind and cinema/new media, with a bit of cultural theory and political economy thrown in towards the end.

To be continued, undoubtedly…

DeLanda's film "Raw Nerves: A Lacanian Thriller" (+ short interview)

2011-11-19T08:31:00.000-08:00

Brief follow-up to my previous post on DeLanda's experimental shorts - here is his most famous film: Raw Nerves - A Lacanian Thriller (1980), with Lydia Lunch among others (another funny collaboration). Also added a short interview on materialism and experience, which is quite nice, although basic.

Manuel DeLanda- Raw Nerves: A Lacanian Thriller

Manuel DeLanda Interview

Massive Attack, Live at Melt (2010)

2011-11-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

Another exciting Youtube-experience: a whole concert with Massive Attack from 2010's Melt Festival (and in good quality too, since it seems to be an official recording). It's a pretty short gig though, but the sheer quality of the music and A/V makes it more than worth it anyway. Nice to hear a few more new tracks as well, since they apparently ditched a lot of songs before releasing Heligoland, but which might end up on the follow-up, if I remember correctly. I saw them for the first time in 2009, when they played in Stockholm, and it was an amazing gig overall, which reminded me of how good they actually are (I have been listening to them a lot over the years, but less often untill the concert in 2009). I know that some people miss their pre-Mezzanine sound, which sounds a lot more like classical triphop/hiphop, but I actually think that I prefer their more recent darker and electronic sound, since it feels a lot more contemporary and powerful. I have actually been thinking through their live set in relation to some of my theoretical work as well, and there seems to be many interesting points to make, although I haven't written anything yet. I might do it at a later point though, but in the meantime, here is the clip:

Set list:

United Snakes
Babel
Girl I Love You
Invade Me
Teardrop
Safe from Harm
Intertia Creeps
Unfinished Sympathy
Atlas Air

DeLanda's experimental short "IsmIsm" (1979)

2011-10-31T15:48:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that one of DeLanda's early experimental short films, IsmIsm from 1979, now is up on Youtube, which is quite amazing considering that they have been unavailable for two decades, after he pulled them from circulation when the original negatives where lost. However, earlier this year The Anthology of Film Archives restored and reissued them, so I guess that's why this one is now online. This is quite funny, actually, since I've never seen any of his films (in case anyone does not know, he was in fact a filmmaker before he became a philosopher, and made a number of 8mm and 16mm films in his early twenties) and also because I've just started a PhD-project which will discuss experimental films with the help of his theory. It is therefore quite funny that he apparently studied with P. Adams Sitney (one of America's leading theoreticians on experimental film), whose work I probably will reference alongside his own writings when discussing experimental cinema and neo-materialism. Anyway, here is the film (although, it seems that roughly 2 mins are missing considering it ends quite abruptly and should run for 8 mins in total) along with some notes on DeLanda's filmography by The Anthology of Film Archives, which were published in conjuntion with a screening earlier this year (with DeLanda himself present, apparently):

*UPDATE* UNFORTUNATELY IT SEEMS THAT THE FILM IS GONE NOW, BUT I POSTED A LINK TO HIS FILM "RAW NERVES" JUST ABOVE, SO FEEL FREE TO HAVE A LOOK AT THAT ONE INSTEAD.

Audacious. Outlandish. Subversive. Intense. Insane. These are just a few of the inadequate adjectives that fail to describe Manuel DeLanda’s fantastically disarming and deeply funny films. Known today as an author, teacher, and philosopher, DeLanda’s iconic celluloid works remain among the most innovative, abrasive, and hypnotic films produced in the 70s and early 80s. Raised in Mexico and transplanted to NYC, DeLanda, rather amazingly, created most of these films while still an undergraduate at the School of Visual Arts. Radically conceived and frantically edited, DeLanda’s energetic, semiotic cinema earned him instant acclaim in the international experimental film world. Unique among the films of their era (or of any other for that matter), DeLanda’s movies have a highbrow philosophical tinge, lowbrow wit, and punk rock style. Out of circulation for nearly two decades and newly restored by Anthology from the best existing sources, these utterly distinctive films will undoubtedly rearrange your synapses.

“An anarchist who studies analytical philosophy, DeLanda makes aggressive, wild movies that simultaneously leap all over the place and stand absolutely still. His punchy Dada-like stances have a certain built-in versatility insofar as they manage to defy The System while both embodying and benefiting from it. … DeLanda brings a certain Latin camp wit to his European theoretical models, from Wittgenstein to Deleuze and Guattari. A touch of the happy charlatan is similarly brought to his glitter punk credentials that hark back to such diverse Spanish-speaking surrealists as Arrabal, Buñuel, Dali, and Jodorowsky – although, unlike most of his predecessors, DeLanda prefers LSD and computers to the sacraments and anti-Christs of Catholicism in establishing the terms of his shock (and semi-mock) rebellion.”

–Jonathan Rosenbaum

Anthology Film Archives’ preservation of the films of Manuel DeLanda was generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Manuel DeLanda will be here in person for the screening on Saturday, March 5!

JUDGEMENT DAY (1983, 8 minutes, Super8mm-to-16mm)
Cockroaches meet their maker in the first installment of DeLanda’s incomplete “Jerry Falwell trilogy.”

THE ITCH SCRATCH ITCH CYCLE (1976, 8 minutes, 16mm)
A bickering couple unleash holy hell on each other in this deconstruction of the shot/countershot technique.

INCONTINENCE: A DIARRHETIC FLOW OF MISMATCHES (1978, 18 minutes, 16mm)
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF goes gaga in this optically-printed masterpiece featuring a very surprise appearance by Professor Mamboozoo (painter Joe Coleman).

ISMISM (1979, 8 minutes, Super8mm-to-16mm)
“Documents my graffiti activities in New York (before switching to more obscene drawings on subway walls). The film was originally made as a class project for P. Adams Sitney. It has the form of a manifesto against the orthopedic power of language.” –Manuel DeLanda

RAW NERVES: A LACANIAN THRILLER (1980, 30 minutes, 16mm)
A noir mostly set in a bathroom stall and stairwell. A private dick trapped in a tight spot. A narrator searching for a way out of the story. Toilet humor and pulp fiction captured in colors like you’ve never seen, RAW NERVES is DeLanda’s most accomplished film.

Total running time: ca. 75 minutes.

Details on Negarestani's "The Mortiloquist"

2011-10-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

This is going to be quite a read, the follow-up to 2008's Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, and the second installment in Negarestani's "Blackening-Trilogy". Will be published by Urbanomic in May next year. Here are the details from Urbanomic's website:

A sequel to Cyclonopedia and the second installment in the Blackening trilogy, The Mortiloquist is a barbaric interpretation of the life and problems of Western philosophy.

Feasting on the theatrical resources of Greek tragedy, Jacobean revenge drama, grand guignol theater, the theater of cruelty, aktionism (especially Herman Nitsch's Fall of Jerusalem and Orgien Mysterien theater) and employing the dialogue-commentary of scholasticism, The Mortiloquist is a cross-breed of play and philosophy. In this textual mongrel, the life of Western philosophy is gutted out by outlanders and barbarically staged.

Taking place in an alternative history of the Greek Empire during a hypothetical siege of Athens, The Mortiloquist begins with a heated debate among three philosophers. Aristotle, Speusippus and Andronosos have refused to flee from the Academy. Oblivious to the commotion in the streets, they are arguing the impact of Speusippus' 'alien causality' on generation and corruption of ideas. As those who represent the philosophical militancy and political ethics of the Greek Empire, the philosophers are put into an ordeal of unspeakable cruelty at the hands of the barbarian invaders. They are forced into freshly gutted out carcasses of three oxen; the animals are then sewn up to trap the philosophers in a way that only their heads protrude.

Composed in the form of an inverse chiaroscuro, the stage consists of a tenebrous foreground and a luminous background. Three animal corpses lie in the foreground, from each carcass a chattering human head has protruded. Each act begins with monotonous De Sadesque depictions of barbarous savageries taking place in the stage background. Set against this chaotic but silent background, conversations between the three philosophers who are trapped in dead animals are audible and appear in the form of scholastic colloquies and theatrical dialogues.

In The Mortiloquist, each scene begins with a generation of a new entity from the putrefying animal carcasses. In line with Henry of Langenstein's unsettling remarks regarding the possibility of a dog being generated from the corpse of an ox or a horse, the oxen carcasses in which the philosophers have been trapped change to canine and fox corpses among other unheard-of creative forms. Ideas and philosophical debates are renewed and shifted according to the germinal power of putrefaction and the possibility of the infinite deformity of forms in decay. The history of philosophy is, barbarically and problematically, revealed to be a differential form of arborescent emptiness which is in the process of blackening its vitalistic twists - a tree of rot whose supernal branches stretch toward the One and whose roots reinvent their own tortuous earth.

A unique blend of horror, Beckettian drama, and classical philosophy as seen from the 'barbarian' outside, The Mortiloquist takes Negarestani's 'theory-fiction' to astonishing new depths.

Contents

Act I (Cruelty, or determination against an indeterminable background)
Scene i: The Fall of Athens
Scene ii: Outlanders in the Academia
Scene iii: A philosophical torture

Act II (Life, or when death jabbers about itself)
Scene i: Corpora viva
Scene ii: Corpora cadavera
Scene iii: Cadavera dicta

Act III (The Revenge of Socrates: transcendental dirt and thinking dung)
Scene i: A ventriloquist humanism
Scene ii: An animist necrologics
Scene iii: A mimetic Inanimism

Act IV (To have done with the judgment of dog)
Scene i: On the generation of a fox from a canine corpse
Scene ii: On the corruption of ideal and generation of ideas
Scene iii: On the generative No-One and brooding No-Thing

Act V (The Return of Mezentius)
Scene i: Dubito ergo
Scene ii: Cogito ergo
Scene iii: Vivo ergo

Forthcoming May 2012

PhD-Thesis Proposal: "Neo-Materialism and the Philosophy of Cinema"

2011-10-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest version of my PhD-thesis proposal, with the working title Neo-Materialism and the Philosophy of Cinema. All-in-all I have probably redrafted it 3-4 times, but this was the version I applied with and I still think it works, even though I haven't changed it since spring this year. In fact, I don't have many changes to add at this point - except that I probably will emphasize the connection with speculative realism even more, and also focus less on experimental cinema, and readings of certain films, than I initially planned, since I'm more interested in underlying philosophical issues - but otherwise I would say that it gives a good overview of the project at the moment. Then who knows what will happen in 3-4 years, but considering I've already worked on this thing on and off for the last 5 years, I feel that I have a solid base to build on.

Basic Outline

The aim of this project is to create a conceptual encounter between the film-philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and the image-thinking of the filmmakers belonging to the history of so-called experimental (or avant-garde) cinema, through Manuel DeLanda’s neo-materialist reading of Deleuze’s (and Guattari’s) philosophy. My approach will be similar to Deleuze’s in his two books on cinema, in that I am interested in the connections of thinking which may be established through an encounter between philosophy and aesthetics. In other words, this project is not so much a work of film-theory as a sort of audio-visual concept-engineering, in that I (unlike many of the books on Deleuze’s film-philosophy) have little interest in trying to make sense of Deleuze’s cinema-concepts for an audience of film scholars (or “work with Deleuze in film-theory”), but rather to extract the specific modes of thinking, and their resonances, in his film-philosophy and the work of a number of directors of experimental film. This will be done with the help of DeLanda’s neo-materialist approach and in particular the theory of subjectivity (based on Deleuze’s own reading of David Hume) that he discusses in his book A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, as well as in a number of lectures available on the Internet. The discussion in the book is very brief, and not really its main topic to begin with, yet it seems to me that this model of subjectivity is crucial for a contemporary philosophy of aesthetics (particularly in the context of emergent realist and materialist strands within the continental camp), because of how it is positioned against neo-Kantian (i.e. linguistic and correlationist) theories of experience. This specific neo-materialist conception of subjectivity will therefore constitute the overall framework of the project – much like Henri Bergson’s model of subjectivity from Matter and Memory does in the cinema-books – and be discussed in relation to a number of experimental films. The aim here is to tease out a certain consistency through the construction and mobilization of a number of concepts positioned at the intersection between philosophy and cinema.

Draft of Contents

The first part, Cinema and Subjectivity, will introduce DeLanda’s and Deleuze’s specific reading of Hume’s theory of experience and position it within current realist and materialist strands of continental philosophy, on the one hand, and against linguistic and correlationist models of subjectivity (as in phenomenology, social constructivism, structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, etc.), on the other. Following DeLanda, the neo-materialist model of subjectivity will be defined as a crystallization in a field of raw sensation, given structure by the habitual association of ideas, or, to put it differently, as an assemblage of distinct and separate sense impressions – stored in the brain as lower-intensity replicas in the form of memory – structured by degrees of territorialization and deterritorialization. This part will also contain a discussion of the ontological status of an image. It will be argued that the three most common definitions of cinematic images – frame/representation, window/transparency, and mirror/reflection – fail to take into account the singularity of images as distinct bundles of audiovisual sense impressions, and a fourth definition will therefore be introduced: cinematic images as diagrams of singular perceptual relations (my own reconstruction of Deleuze’s formulation of cinematic images as “blocs of movements/duration”). Finally, there will also be a section in which I motivate this philosophical/image-encounter more in-detail, which in particular has to do with the idea of experimental cinema as a materialist cinema, that intentionally flattens storyline, human participation, habitual cognition, and so on, in favour of a focus on deterritorialized modes of being and the primary physics of matter (frequency, wavelength, etc.).

Part two, Cinema and Impressions, will trace various forms of seeing and hearing throughout the history of experimental cinema. Starting with early forms of so-called “cinema of attractions”, in which narrative and storyline were subordinated to the (novel) act of seeing through the camera, and then moving through the films of some of the early modernists (such as Dziga Vertov ), the post-war experimentalists (Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow, etc.), as well as contemporary visual and sound artists (Richard Chartier, TeZ, etc.) and other new media productions, a history of audiovisual perception will be mapped out, in which human (or what Deleuze calls “solid”) modes of perception are undermined in favour of non-human, or “gaseous”, perceptual relations (such as in the idea of the camera as a non-human eye). This will then be positioned against empiricist and idealist forms of philosophy, as well as film theory which tend to read images as text or strictly in terms of representation.

In the third part, Cinema and Ideas, the approach will be similar as in part two, but now focusing on memory and cognition. The starting points here are Deleuze’s claims that “the brain is the screen” and that a “molecular biology of the brain” has a lot more to offer cinema than linguistics and psychoanalysis. It will be argued that cinema has the capacity to cause a form of neural interference, or liquification of thought processes, which then will be traced throughout various approaches to memory and cognition in experimental cinema; from early surrealist pieces (Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, for instance), to the new American avant-garde (particularly Maya Deren) and more recent filmmakers (such as Derek Jarman and David Lynch). The aim here is to construct a molecular cinema of complex visual and audiovisual conjunctions and disjunctions, also using some of DeLanda’s work on connectionism, neural networks, and pattern recognition.

Finally, the fourth part, Cinema and Attention, will shift focus to contemporary debates on cinema in relation to current post-cinematic, late capitalist, or simply postmodern, positions. The starting point here is Jonathan Beller’s idea of attention as the late capitalist mode of production par excellence, in the form of an immaterial labour which generates subjectivity and extracts surplus value from affect. This will then be used in order to reflect on the relevance of experimental filmmaking and neo-materialist thinking in the context of our current cultural landscape of consumerism, digitization and capitalist subsumption. More specifically, Beller’s approach, in terms of a totalization of capitalist exploitation, will be criticised by introducing DeLanda’s reading of Fernand Braudel’s distinction between markets and anti-markets (and economies of agglomerations and economies of scale), in which the notion of “capital in general” is substituted by a multileveled system of centralized and decentralized economic institutions. In a similar way, Beller’s conception of attention as purely routinized labour, and films as deterritorialized anti-markets, will be complemented by attention as inventive labour, and films as “enterprising businesses” (in the Braudelian sense).

Theoretical Context

Philosophically, I feel close to what Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman refer to as the “speculative turn”, that is, emerging realist and materialist positions in continental thinking, which position themselves explicitly against idealist, or correlationist, modes of thinking that have been dominating continental philosophy up to now. When it comes to questions of aesthetics and cultural production, I have drawn a lot of inspiration from the Ccru (Cybernetic Culture Research Unit), in that I really appreciate their fusion of diagrammatic thinking, concept-engineering, and renegade academia with cultural studies, sonic theory, affect theory, political economy, and so on. I have to admit that I have some problems with a lot of the secondary work on Deleuze (particularly the cinema-books) in that it seems to be more of a repetition of his basic concepts, rather than an attempt to expand on, and rethink them. So in this sense, I feel that the collective approach of the Ccru (as well as that of DeLanda) is exemplary in terms of “post-Deleuzian diagrammatic thinking”.

As for myself, I think of this project as something of a culmination of my long-time interest in experimental film and alternative modes of thinking through cinema, but also as a stepping-stone towards a broader approach to aesthetic, technology and culture. Because this is really where I see my work going in the future, that is, towards a vaster engagement with new media theory, political economy, and cultural studies. This urge comes from a frustration with the limitations of postmodern theory, and the interest in speculating on how one may “reinvent” cultural studies – like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, for instance, have worked towards reinventing Marxism – along with the belief that the emerging speculative philosophy and new political economy (i.e. multitude, accelerationism, markets/anti-markets, etc.) indeed are the ideal foundations for such a reinvention.

On Correlationism

2011-10-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

Despite the extraordinary sophistication of Meillassoux's argument against correlationism, I'm still not entirely convinced about his tremendous respect for 'the correlationist circle'. In fact, I'm afraid that it almost could lead to somewhat of an opposite - i.e. anti-realist - effect. Here I'm thinking of the basic correlationist argument - "you can’t speak about what lies outside thought, because by speaking of it you are already inside the circle of thought" - which Meillassoux finds to be extremely powerful, whereas I personally think that it is a bogus argument to begin with. Thus, I tend to side with Harman when he points out that Meillassoux is far from a traditional realist (if, in fact, he is a realist at all), precisely because he, unlike the other three 'original' speculative realists, says that you can't simply dismiss correlationism by saying that it is a bad argument, and that you therefore have to radicalize it from within. This leads Meillassoux to a peculiar, but fascinating, philosophy which positions itself dangerously close to strong correlationism and absolute idealism, without ever subsuming to either one. Here I feel a bit torn apart once again, since I do on the one hand find Meillassoux's basic concepts (absolute contingency, principle of non-contradiction, super-chaos, etc.) to be among the most extraordinary in contemporary philosophy, yet I remain unconvinced that one needs to make such an extensive theoretical move in order to break through the circle. This brings me back to the countereffect just mentioned, since I was surprised by how many of my fellow PhD-students, in a seminar on Meillassoux, tended to side with the correlationist argument (even though, to be fair, we didn't really bring in many other alternatives, which perhaps minimized the room for discussion), so much of the class was in fact spent on basic anti-realist discussions regarding problems like "can we really speak of an ancestral realm, since by speaking of it we are already bringing it into thought", which for me is kind of an uninteresting discussion to begin with. Though I guess I also have to take into account the fact that this was an introductory seminar, so a little bit of brainstorming doesn't have to be that bad, yet I hope that future discussions won't get stuck around similar problems - i.e. "can we really speak about a mind-independent reality?" - since I think that questions like "what is it that gives reality structure if it isn't the mind?" (as DeLanda often puts it), are far more interesting and relevant.

With that said, I do agree with Shaviro (in this post) that every (speculative) realist somehow has to come to terms with Kant, since his Copernican Revolution/Ptolemaic Counter-Revolution after all is the basic principle of any idealism/correlationism. This can, of course, be done in a number of ways, many mentioned by Shaviro in his post, and to them I would also add Land's materialization of Kantian synthesis and DeLanda's Humean inversion of neo-Kantianism, which are the two positions I'm most interested in at the moment.

Another Video Lecture with DeLanda

2011-10-15T14:54:00.001-07:00

His open lecture at EGS from earlier this year, entitled Metaphysics as Ontology: Aristotle and Deleuze's Realism. All-in-all a solid lecture, which gives a good overview of his reading of Deleuze, yet it would be nice to hear him speak of something new, since this is quite old stuff by now. Of course, I have followed his work so closely for quite some time, so I'm naturally very familiar with most of what he's saying, yet it would be very interesting to see him go into other areas/examples. For example, the claim that realism is an underrated form of philosophy is, of course, still true, yet things have changed during the last years, with the emergence of speculative realism and so on, so it would be interesting to hear his thoughts on this, rather than more criticisms of the well-known anti-realism in continental thinking. So, to summarize: solid but familiar.

I have also added the titles to his lecture series at USC earlier this year, as well as a new section with some of his essays that are available online. The latter is still a work-in-process, though, so I intend to add some more at later stages.

Speculative Realism-Videos

2011-10-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

Jane Bennett, Levi Bryant, and Graham Harman from the City University of New York:

Andy Stott's "Passed Me By" and "We Stay Together"

2011-10-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

Andy Stott's two recent mini-albums Passed My By and We Stay Together are truly amazing stuff, and very different from the more traditional techno-style of his earlier work (such as 2006's Merciless). If albums like Merciless were solid techno, these later releases come closer to the minimal/experimental terrains inhabited by acts like Basic Channel and GAS. Indeed, Stott says himself, in a recent interview in The Wire, that he changed many of his basic working-methods when composing Passed Me By, and the result is truly amazing. Besides from the gorgeous textures, what strikes me most is how slow the music often is. Unlike the usual 130 or so bpm of techno, Stott's tunes often move around the 100 bpm mark, which gives them a strange and unique pacing (basically, it sounds like they have been pitched down a lot). The result is, in a way, the opposite, yet at the same time similar, to the intensification of bpm advocated by 90's jungle, because in both cases there is an interest in the alien, or simply weird, rhythms that can be produced with electronics, and which bypasses any simple urge to just "shake it" (and, consequently, also the human). Because even though Stott himself apparently wants to put more emphasis on the human element in his compositions (as opposed to techno's traditional obsession with the machine), I think that there is a certain non-human emptiness, or dare I even say "nihilism", in the tunes (which I also think is a general feature of the stripped-down aesthetics of minimal techno, again a bit like the sonic despotism of jungle, which has been theorized in detail by writers like Simon Reynolds), and which for me provides a sobering contrast to the vitalist impetus that runs throughout a lot of writing on dance-music - and the music itself of course. This is a line of thinking that I've been increasingly interested in recently, and which I most certainly will return to in the future, but in the meantime I recommend careful listenings of Stott's two albums.

Andy Stott - Passed Me By

Andy Stott - We Stay Together

Starting my PhD

2011-09-21T01:56:00.000-07:00

Next week, I will finally start the PhD-program in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths. Even though it's been decided for many months it took some additional time to get all the things in order, but now it's finally done and I'm really looking forward to it, since the MA convinced me that Goldsmiths, and London, really are the right places for me to be at the moment. There is just so much going on at the university, and the fact that speculative realism has so many followers in London has already affected my own work in positive ways. Even better, I will be supervised by Kodwo and Mark, who I already studied with during the MA, and who I really feel are the ideal supervisors for me because of their interest in aesthetics, technology, and speculative realism - and also because of their history with the Ccru. All of this means that I will finally have the time to focus more or less full-time not just on theory, but the kind of theory that really interests me, and that is something I have been hoping to have a chance to do for quite some time now. Obviously, a PhD is not just a walk in the park, and 3-4 years of intense intellectual work will probably be far from just a blessing, yet at the moment I'm looking forward to the challenge and how it will affect my thinking - some of which will be put up on this blog in the future.

Two Videos (Urbanomic, Land, Negarestani, and Cosmic Geotrauma)

2011-09-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Here are two videos related to Nick Land, Reza Negarestani, Urbanomic and Speculative Realism. The first is an interview with Urbanomic founder Robin Mackay - on Land, Collapse, speculative realism and related - and the second is an audiovisual dramatization of Land's theory of cosmic geotrauma (which draws upon Deleuze's and Guattari's "Geology of Morals" and also has been taken up by Negarestani) with music by the great drone-artist Eliane Radigue (I believe it's the beginning of the first piece of her Adnos-trilogy).

Levi Bryant's "The Democracy of Objects"

2011-09-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Levi Bryant, author of the brilliant Larval Subjects-blog, will soon publish his long-awaited book The Democracy of Objects. In fact, the book is already available online here, and the print-version will arrive soon. Another crucial title for everyone with an interest in speculative realism and object-oriented ontology.

Brief summary of the book:

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects, Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that he calls “onticology”. This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. Drawing on the work of the systems theorists and cyberneticians, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he is able to integrate the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects.

Levi R. Bryant is a former psychoanalyst and professor of philosophy at Collin College outside of Dallas, Texas. He is the author of Difference and Givenness: Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence (Northwestern University Press, 2008) and co-editor, along with Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (re.press, 2010). He has written numerous articles on Deleuze, Badiou, Lacan, and Žižek, and has written widely on social and political thought, cultural theory, and media theory at his blog Larval Subjects.

Finished MA Thesis + Near-Future Reading List

2011-08-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

I just made the last corrections on the manuscript that soon will be handed in as my MA-thesis at Goldsmiths. It ended up at just over 35 pages, 13,300 words (notes included) and took roughly 6-7 weeks to write. Overall, I am quite pleased with the result, which is nice considering I have wanted to write this piece for a while, but I still need to let the dust settle a bit, and receive comments from my tutors, before I can tell for sure how it turned out. In the meantime it feels good to be done with it, even though I'm already looking forward to write the next piece of this project (outline should be up here sooner or later), but for the moment I need to take some time to catch up on all the books I haven't had time to read while writing and travelling almost constantly over the last few months (I only just started with DeLanda's latest book, for instance). So here is my near-future reading list:

Félix Guattari - Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm
Graham Harman - The Quadruple Object
Graham Harman - Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making
Iain Hamilton Grant - On an Artificial Earth: Philosophies of Nature After Schelling
Jane Bennett - Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things
Joanna Demers - Listening Through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music
Paul J. Ennis - Continental Realism
Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
Reza Negarestani - Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials
Steven Shaviro - Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics
Timothy Morton - The Ecological Thought
Timothy Morton - Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics

A Sonic Simulacrum?

2011-08-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

This is the first draft of a section from the MA-dissertation that I'm currently writing. Since this no longer is the main topic of the project, I thought I could post it here. It might feel a bit out-of-context, for obvious reasons, yet I still think that it sums up some of the key points in my outline of a sonic simulacrum:

Theories of simulacra and simulation have almost exclusively focused on the visual aspect of simulation, even though there clearly is a sonic one as well. This is of course not an unusual characteristic of media-, film-, cultural studies, and so on, in which sound always has been an under theorized, yet crucial, component in all forms of electronic media. As the French sound artist and theoretician of sound Michel Chion has pointed out: “films, television, and other audiovisual media do not just address the eye. They place their spectators – their audio-spectators – in a specific mode of reception, which […] I shall call audio-vision”. 21 years after Chion wrote these words, it is clear that audio-vision is a mode of reception that encompasses not only specific media forms, but the entire audiovisual continuum (to borrow Steven Shaviro’s formulation) that we live in the midst of. This is not really recognized by Baudrillard either, who also focus exclusively on the visual, and the simulacrum is consequently referred to as “the evil demon of images”, “the violence of the image”, and so on, yet images in all their variations form intricate and intimate relationships with sounds, so rather than somehow magically withdrawing from the simulacrum, there must be a sonic dimension of simulation – or sonic simulacrum – that operates alongside the visual. This is the topic of one of the chapters in Chion’s Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, in which he criticizes the idea that there is a “natural harmony” between sounds and images, and that mediated sounds (in films, television, etc.) are completely truthful to their “real” counterparts. For Chion, mediated sounds are “neither the neutral transmission of a sound event, nor an entire fabrication by technical means”, but rather “a specific reality”, which is a “product of a preexisting reality plus the conditions of reproduction”. This specific reality, then, testifies to the “hyperreal effect [of mediated sounds], which has little to do with the experience of direct audition”. Furthermore, this hyperreality of the sonic is, for Chion, not only specific to various media forms, but a symptom of “our total everyday immersion in mediated acoustical reality”, in which mediated and non-mediated sounds overlap to the extent that it becomes impossible to distinguish the “real” sound from its mechanical reproduction, and where we refer to sonic codes established by television and cinema, rather than lived experience, in order assess the truth value of a sound. As Chion puts it: this is an acoustical reality in which the mediated sound “no longer [is] perceived as a reproduction, as an image […], but as a more direct and immediate contact with the event. When an image has more presence than reality it tends to substitute for it, even as it denies its status of image”. Consequently, Chion argues that we must be careful to distinguish between rendered and reproduced sounds when considering the realist function of the mediated sonic. Because whereas the reproduction merely “reproduce what would be heard in the same situation in reality”, the rendering rather aims to convey specific feelings associated with the situation (think of sounds in commercials, for instance, which usually constitute a sort of ideal sonic space, rather than an actual sound situation). In other words, the rendering produces a specific sonic (or audiovisual) reality, which substitutes for the actual reality of the locations or situations in consideration, and thus gives us a sonic hyperreal.

Dissertation Outline: "Rethinking Simulacra and Simulation"

2011-07-24T11:13:00.001-07:00

I am currently working on my dissertation for the Goldsmiths degree, and the final outline is now finished. I really like how it turned out, and think that it looks very promising for the actual piece, which was planned to be a bit different a few months ago. My initial plan was to focus more on sound (as in the concept of a "sonic simulacrum"), but it soon became quite evident that I really need this wider ontological contextualization since this is such a central argument for the whole project, and it really needs to be articulated more in-depth. I have also added a final section that draws upon my work with accelerationism, and will perhaps add one or two specific aesthetic examples as well, to conclude the piece. Anyway, here is the outline:

In this dissertation, I aim to sketch out a neo-materialist ontology of simulation and philosophy of media, through a reconsideration of the concept of the simulacrum, as it has been used since Baudrillard. The piece is explicitly positioned against postmodern conceptions of representation and technological scepticism, and argues that these have no longer much to offer philosophy and cultural theory, yet the aim is not to completely ditch them, but rather to perform a sort of internal reversal of core postmodern thinking and concepts (images, simulation, virtual reality, etc.). It will be argued that the simulacrum is positioned at a crucial point in this context, since it in many ways has become the concept most synonymous with postmodernism, and also somewhat of a cliché, which today is mentioned almost automatically in conversations and introductory books on cultural studies, but still has the capacity to offer fresh thinking to philosophy and cultural theory.

The first part of the dissertation will deal with the rise of the simulacrum in the 80’s and 90’s, in relation to the work of Baudrillard. What is particularly interesting here is how widely used the concept was – even outside philosophy and academia – and it will be argued that the emergence of virtual reality, network cultures, reality television, the Internet, and so on, was the main reason for this. In other words, the concept in many ways captured the changing media landscape and the effects this had on individuals, along with notions such as “reality” and “authenticity”. It will, however, also be argued that the simulacrum has lost much of its critical value today, and instead become something of a cliché of postmodern doxa. As Steven Shaviro has noted: it is interesting how Baudrillard’s apocalyptic notions of “the end of the Real” has gone from being a prophecy of urgency and extremity in the 80’s and 90’s, to nothing more than the banality of capitalist business as usual. Clearly something different is needed here, and this, I will argue, may actually be found in the simulacrum itself – although in a different version, which in particular goes back to the writings of Gilles Deleuze in the 60’s and 70’s.

I will argue that Deleuze makes two crucial points on the simulacrum: that it characterized less by degraded resemblance than by the lack of resemblance altogether (or that it is less a copy than a fundamentally different entity), and that it is primary process of matter, rather than secondary process of representation. These two arguments will then be unfolded and positioned at the heart of a materialist ontology of simulation, which positions itself both against Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum as a heterogeneous system of signs, but also Plato’s triad of model-copy-simulation, and Aristotle’s genera-species-organism. It will be argued that these ontological positions fail to take into account simulation as primary process of matter, and I will instead introduce Manuel DeLanda’s particular reading of Deleuze’s ontology, in which we may find a different triad of virtuality-simulation-simulacra (or, in DeLanda’s terms: the virtual, the intensive, and the actual). I will then argue that simulation is a process of individuation, immanent to matter, which differentiates virtual forms into actual simulacra, and that simulation therefore is less a human-operated process that detaches us from reality, as much as it is a non-human process which produces the real on the basis of an abstract real.

I will then move on to use this materialist ontology of simulation in order to sketch out a philosophy of media very different from the many postmodern versions, such as Baudrillard’s. Here, I will take as my starting point Deleuze’s and Guattari’s distinction between machinic mapping and representational tracing, along with Baudrillard’s first analogy of simulation – the Borges tale where the mapmakers create a map which is of the exact same scale as the territory mapped – and argue that mapping has less to do with the representation, than with the production, of a territory. Here I am once again reversing Baudrillard from within, by arguing that mapping is a form of simulation, but non-human and asignifying in that it is matter which generates its own mapping, or maps out itself, prior to any overcoding structure. I will then define art as a form of mapping, rather than tracing, and argue that artists create machinic maps (or what Steven Shaviro calls “affective maps”), which aren’t so much simulations of a pre-existing territory, but simulations which produce a territory – a singular territory, which then has the capacity to affect and to be affected by other territories (aesthetic, geographical, architectural, existential, etc.).

Finally, to complete my internal reversal of Baudrillard, I will introduce the concept of accelerationism, but, once again following Shaviro, in a different form than its political instantiation (as in the idea that one should accelerate, rather than resist, capitalism). I will argue that the processes of mediation, or global media landscape, theorized by Baudrillard, is characterized by multiple flows of deterritorialization (in the form of simulacra, and the mobilization of images, sounds, virtuality, etc.), which then are immediately reterritorialized as sign systems and put into use in various forms of social domination (consumerism, gossiping, celebrity fetishism, sexual exploitation, etc.). This is clearly simulacra in the Baudrillardian sense (and which still is completely valid, so the aim is once again not to completely ditch Baudrillard), yet, against his overt pessimism and reactive nostalgia, I will be arguing that the proper form of resistance is not trying to withdraw from the simulacrum, but rather to push it further; to accelerate the process in order to shatter the grid of representation once and for all, as Brian Massumi puts it in somewhat of an accelerationist moment in his essay on Deleuze, Guattari, and the simulacrum. Indeed, as I have argued earlier, the problem of how do we free ourselves from the simulacrum is a pseudo-problem, since simulation is in fact what produces the real (rather than the hyper-real). Therefore, the shift from withdrawal to acceleration might indeed turn out to be a crucial move.

I will consequently introduce what I call a technological accelerationism, which argues that postmodern concepts such as images, simulation, virtuality, and machines, must not be resisted but pushed even further, since the problem with postmodernism was not the deterritorialization of old, stable, social relations, but precisely that it was not deterritorialized enough. I will therefore also introduce the distinction between relative and absolute simulation (which is quite similar to what Nick Srnicek calls “relative and absolute accelerationism”); relative simulation is simulation in Baudrillard’s sense, which is characterized by its relation to a pre-existing model (root, or overcoding), whereas absolute simulation is simulation in Deleuze’s sense, which has no pre-existing unity as such (rhizome, or multiplicity). In other words, relative simulation is fundamentally human-centered and representational, whereas absolute simulation is de-humanized and speculative, and which recognizes not just the virtual reality and technological machines of global media technologies, but also the real virtuality and abstract machines, that are immanent to matter. Clearly, then, a materialist philosophy of media must accelerate technology beyond representation, and notions of the human, towards the non-human simulations and mappings of pure matter. Indeed, it will be argued, in conclusion, that the self-organizing and non-linear mapping of raw matter-energy is absolute simulation par excellence, and which any philosophy, not only of media, must take into account.

Accelerationism

2011-06-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Currently going through the volume of Nick Land’s essays, and the concept which has caught most of my attention so far is what has become known as accelerationism. This is an idea which in fact precedes Land, in the work of various French philosophers in the 70’s and 80’s (Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy (1974), Baudrillard’s Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976), Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman (1985) and Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus (1972)), and later has been taken up by various people associated with the speculative realism movement (Reza Negarestani, Steven Shaviro, Ray Brassier, Mark Fisher, etc.). Yet Land’s work is in many ways what binds these “older” forms of accelerationism with its more recent instantiations (since he was influenced by Deleuze and Guattari, in particular, and then himself influenced people such as Negarestani and Mark Fisher), which becomes clear when one listens to the talks (see below) that took place at the conference on accelerationism at Goldsmiths last September (just a week before I arrived there to start my degree, ironically, but I did get a chance to listens to all talks and discussions online thanks to the great lecture archive at Backdoor Broadcasting). The conference took place in conjunction with the release of the collected works of Land, as well as Benjamin Noys’s The Persistence of the Negative (2010), and all talks are somewhat related to Land’s accelerationism and its relationship to capitalism and political economy. I particularly recommend Mark’s introduction, Brassier’s conceptual critique of Land’s dualism, Noys’s critique of the accelerationist program, and Nick Srnicek’s distinction between accelerationism as human and political and as non-human and speculative.

So what is accelerationism? In a nutshell, the concept refers to the idea that capitalist processes should not be resisted but accelerated, and argues that capitalism is both the most destructive and productive moment in history at the same time. In this sense, it draws a lot from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s conception of capitalism as unleashing massive processes of decoding and deterritorialization (productive), but simultaneously blocking these same forces with immediate compensatory recoding and reterritorialization (destructive). In this sense, the proper form of resistance is not withdrawal from the world market, but rather accelerating capitalistic decoding and deterritorialization in order to turn them against themselves. As this quotation from Anti-Oedipus suggests:

But which is the revolutionary path? Is there one? – To withdraw from the world market, as Samir Amin advises Third World Countries to do, in a curious revival of the fascist “economic solution”? Or might it be to go in the opposite direction? To go further still, that is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization? For perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough, from the viewpoint of a theory and practice of a highly schizophrenic character. Not to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to “accelerate the process,” as Nietzsche put it: in this matter, the truth is that we haven’t seen anything yet.

Now there are obviously a lot of things to say here, such as if this indeed is a productive form of “resistance”, merely an acceptance of the total subsumption of capital, or even another capitalist gimmick masked as critique. I won’t go through all of these positions here, since they are covered very well in the symposium, but my personal reservations towards political/economic accelerationism are particularly related to the now established conception of capitalism as an all-encompassing system (which I have criticised earlier by introducing a DeLandian/ Braudelian multileveled network of markets and anti-markets), and it seems to me that many of the accelerationists I have read subscribe to this position. In other words, if one follows the idea of “capitalism in general”, as one all-encompassing and monolithic entity to which there is no outside (spatial or temporal), then the only option for resistance seems to be to accelerate capitalism from within. This is for example Steven Shaviro’s position when he discusses a so-called “aesthetic accelerationism” in the coda part of his recent Post-Cinematic Affect (2010). Indeed, the aim of the book is to perform a sort of affective mapping, with the help of recent audiovisual productions, in order to construct a sort of aesthetic accelerationism that is “as radical as reality itself”. Now, while I think that the actual analyses are useful I do have some problems with this conception of capitalism, and the strict aesthetics it leads to, but I still feel that accelerationism is a very important concept that needs to be pushed further, from within a slightly different context than the totalized capitalist system. This is indeed were I find Shaviro’s aesthetic rewiring useful, and also agree with his cautions (following Noys) against political accelerationism, and the belief that if one simply accelerates one automatically liberates, as well as the dangers of a sort of paradoxical conservative return to the older Marxist idea that capital itself automatically creates the conditions for socialism, etc., which clearly is a way too naïve position today. However, what if we push the concept of accelerationism into other domains, like Shaviro has done? Perhaps we can talk about different forms of accelerationism, with different aims and outcomes? Here I will be deliberately vague at the moment, since this is what I’m currently working on, yet I hope it will be a lot more precise within the next few months, once I incorporate it within a more specific framework. In the meantime, I will do a short presentation on Land and accelerationism at the Deleuze camp next week (apparently I was up for two talks, and not just one), which I will come back to here when the conference is over in a little less than two weeks. In the meantime, I recommend the conference on accelerationism from Goldsmiths last year.

Accelerationism, Goldsmiths 14 Sept. 2010.

In the early 1970s, post-68 French thinkers such as Deleuze and Guattari and Lyotard made the heretical suggestion that capital should not be resisted but accelerated. Deplored, repudiated then forgotten, this remarkable moment was returned to only in the UK during the 1990s, in the theory-fiction of Nick Land, Iain Hamilton Grant, Sadie Plant and the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit. Drawing upon Fernand Braudel, Manuel DeLanda, and cyber-theory, 90s accelerationism drew a distinction between markets (as bottom-up self-organising networks) and capital (an oligarchic and predatory system of control). Was accelerationism merely a new cybernetic mask for neoliberalism? Or does the call to “accelerate the process” mark out a political position that has never been properly developed, and which still has a potential to reinvigorate the left?

This one-day symposium will think through the implications of accelerationism in the light of the forthcoming publication of Nick Land’s Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 and Benjamin Noys’s The Persistence of the Negative.

Speakers:

• Ray Brassier – co-editor with Robin Mackay of Nick Land’s Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 (2010)

• Mark Fisher – author of k-punk blog and a founder member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit

• Alex Andrews – a researcher at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham.

• Benjamin Noys – author of The Persistence of the Negative (2010), blogs at No Useless Leniency

• Nick Srnicek – author of Speculative Heresy blog, PhD candidate at LSE, and is working with Alex Williams on a book critiquing folk politics

• Alex Williams – working on a book on accelerationism, blogs at Splintering Bone Ashes

Listen to all talks, and a music mix by Mark Fisher, here.

June Talks

2011-05-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

I will be giving two presentations in June, one at the Goldsmiths Postgraduate Symposium (6th-7th of June) and one at this year’s Deleuze-conference in Copenhagen (20th-29th of June). The Goldsmiths talk will basically be an early version, or outline, of my dissertation, whereas the other one will be a slightly reworked version of the Kirkegaard-piece that I wrote in January. Both talks will be pretty short (only about 20 minutes or so), but should hopefully work as a decent introduction to my work on neo-materialism, morphogenesis, aesthetics, and technology, and help me to further articulate my thoughts on simulation and sonic materialism. Here are brief outlines of the talks:

Rethinking Simulacra and Simulation
In this presentation, I will attempt to rethink the postmodern conception of simulacra and simulation, as formulated by Jean Baudrillard, through the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Brian Massumi and Manuel DeLanda. It will be argued that Baudrillard’s idea of simulacra as a heterogeneous system of signs (or copy of a copy of an original) is too anthropocentric in that it fails to take into account simulation as the process of production of the actual (or simulacra), which is immanent to matter. This different understanding of the concepts will then be theorized by using Deleuze’s, Guattari’s and Massumi’s writings on simulacra and simulation, as well as DeLanda’s reconstruction of Deleuze’s ontology. It will be argued that simulation doesn’t replace or mask a real, but in fact produces the real on the basis of an abstract real.

Processes of Auditory Subjectivity: Jacob Kirkegaard’s Labyrinthitis
This presentation attempts to formulate a specific form of auditory subjectivity through a reading of the Danish sound-artist Jacob Kirkegaard’s 2008-piece Labyrinthitis. Much like the philosopher Gilles Deleuze formulated a specific cinematic form of subjectivity in his brief essay “Having an Idea in Cinema” – by distinguishing not only between sound and image, but also between voice and speech – this presentation attempts to map out an auditory form of subjectivity by distinguishing between listening and hearing, as well as passive hearing and active hearing, and contextualizing it within the sonic theoretician Steve Goodman’s idea of a politics of frequency and what I call an ethics of sonic materialism.

Writing and Style of Presentation

2011-05-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

One thing that tends to surface in discussions every now and then, particularly in these days of many essays and presentations, are questions related to writing and style of presentation, and a basic conflict here is that between clear and abstract writing. The latter has of course long been a sort of a priori within the continental camp, whereas the former tends to be associated more or less exclusively with analytical, or Anglo-American, philosophy. When I first came to continental thought I was immediately quite bothered by the style of presentation that many authors (Baudrillard, Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, etc.) make use of, and which to me felt like something of an unnecessary obstacle to get through. I could immediately feel that I was drawn to the ideas themselves, yet the prose felt overtly esoteric, sometimes to the point of frustration. This doesn’t mean that I couldn’t understand, or find any significance, in the written words of these thinkers, but rather that it felt like an extra burden on top of the actual ideas. Therefore, reading DeLanda for the first time was an extremely liberating experience, since I found it highly intriguing that someone could deal with continental thinking (and even Deleuze’s and Guattari’s thick prose) in such a clear and concise way, by dropping all kinds of metaphor and jargon in favor of clarity and lucidity. This is of course not an accidental move of DeLanda, who indeed criticizes Deleuze and Guattari for their dense and overtly complex way of presenting their ideas. For DeLanda, the “funny words” and “constant change of terminology” that Deleuze and Guattari make use of is problematic in the sense that it may result in (and indeed sometimes has) a profound misunderstanding of their work (such as the reading of them as postmodern philosophers), in which all that is adopted is the jargon, whereas the actual ideas remain in obscurity. What is interesting to note here is that Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher not often mentioned alongside DeLanda, also criticizes his “mentor” Jacques Lacan in a similar way. Indeed, it is precisely their stylistic approaches, in terms of unpacking Deleuzian and Lacanian writing respectively, which is what unites these two otherwise very different thinkers. Thus, Žižek criticizes Lacan in a similar way as DeLanda criticizes Deleuze, and also points out that he personally believes in clear statements and that the whole point of his work is to show that there in fact is something “behind all this obscurity”, that is, that one can make Lacan accessible to everyone. There is just something that I personally find very refreshing with this approach, since continental philosophy indeed has been steeped in a specific writing style for a long time, which is far from clear and concise. As Graham Harman points out, in relation to Žižek:

Another thing to be said on behalf of Zizek (and there’s no way for this to avoid looking like a veiled dig at some other figures, but it has to be said nonetheless)… Zizek gets to the point. He makes clear and forceful statements, and takes responsibility for possibly being wrong about them. It wasn’t always the case that this was the style of continental philosophy. During my formative period, it was always made to seem like a sort of tacky gaffe if you actually came right out and said something definite. Everything had to be hedged, problematized, left at a quasi-ironic distance, placed in parentheses. This may be part of the reason why I have such an extreme liking for anyone in continental philosophy who happens to be abnormally clear: DeLanda and Meillassoux both come to mind.

These lines really capture a lot of the issues I also have had with continental writing, and maybe lucidity indeed has become the unusual in a tradition where obscurity and density often have been the only alternatives (indeed, DeLanda describes his style of writing as a “minor” style, in the DeleuzoGuattarian sense, in that he considers himself to introduce a certain form of clarity to the English language). Then there is of course the other way of looking at it, where the just mentioned lucidity and clarity instead becomes reductionism or just plain dryness, and this is something that keeps haunting me in the sense that I sometimes tend to oscillate back and forth between these two positions quite a lot. Because even though I couldn’t (or wouldn’t, at least not at the present moment) write something in the form of prose like, say, in the beginning of Anti-Oedipus, or some of the more obscure parts of A Thousand Plateaus, I can still see the quality of these texts – not only in terms of the actual ideas, of course, but also the writing itself. Or, to take another example, the writings of Brian Massumi, which I need to study in more detail, but which often strike me as oscillating back and forth between way too much jargon (for me, at least) and an extremely advanced and technical prose, which, despite its highly complicated level, somehow still manages to remain remarkably concrete (for instance in his superb text on affective modulation and quasi-causalities of fear).

At the heart of this conflict, for me, is the question of accessibility, since by presenting things in an extremely dense and esoteric way, one obviously risks losing a lot of potential readers. The point here is, of course, not that one should write in a particular way with the single intention of getting as many readers as possible (if that is one’s aim, philosophy is probably not the right area to deal with in the first place), or that people will automatically be drawn to a text just because it’s lucid in its style, but rather that dense prose might make the work inaccessible to people in other areas, who otherwise would have benefited a lot from reading it. In my case, for instance, I have often noted a slight gap, or disjunction, in communication between artists and philosophers, precisely because the latter communicate with such a technical form of language that the former simply can’t follow it. This is of course not to say that philosophers are inherently smarter than artists, or that artists themselves don’t develop their own vocabulary. Indeed, it is rather a standard that a particular discipline develops its own terminology (think of science or computer programming, for instance, or even various sports or cooking), so why should philosophy be an exception? Well, for one thing I don’t think that terminology is the main issue here, since concepts always must be formulated and also most often can be explained, but rather the jargon that sometimes surrounds it. In other words, I don’t think the problem is the conceptual apparatus per se, but rather the obscurity that often surrounds it in continental prose. I guess my point here is that I believe that interdisciplinary thinking is extremely important, whether one is a philosopher or not, and that I therefore sometimes can get the feeling that a too esoteric style might be counter-productive in the sense that it tends to (intentionally or unintentionally) result in the enclosure of a particular discipline (which I indeed think is extremely counter-productive). On the other hand, writing is of course always interconnected with thinking, and the unpacking of complex ideas must not be thought of as the same as a simplification of those ideas (just the way of presenting them). As Harman notes in another passage, which almost contradicts the former (although I think that he refers to “two kinds of clarity”, one which is lucid and one which is simply dry):

Analytic philosophers as a group still have very little idea of what good prose means, because they always assume that it can only mean clear prose. But clarity is only one small part of good prose, just as cleanliness is only one small part of a good restaurant. The best writer in the English language is Shakespeare, but I don’t think we’d call him the clearest writer. Among the best writers of American English are Emerson and Melville, neither of them among the clearest writers of American English. Depth and suggestive power are more important elements of good prose than clarity is, and this is why Wittgenstein, who is by no means the clearest writer in analytic philosophy, is one of their very few pretty good ones. Analytic philosophy has a prose problem, and they don’t yet realize it. You can’t write good prose if you think obfuscation is the major enemy of thought. It’s not. Shallowness, glibness, and lack of imagination are the major enemies of thought, and they are what good prose must combat.

There are of course no definite answers here, so DeLanda will, for instance, continue to be praised both for his admirable lucidity and criticized for his overtly dry schematicism. Basically, it all boils down to personal style, that is, to find the form of writing which suites oneself the best. Here it also strikes me how little we actually discuss writing on the MA (as a friend also pointed out), which is strange in a way, since writing (and not just constructing concepts, etc.) is such an important part of what we’re doing. As late as yesterday I even said to a friend that since I had the outlines of my dissertation more or less finished I considered the hardest part already being done, since the writing process is simply getting the ideas on paper. But while this might be the case for an experienced writer, who already has developed his particular style, I think I will benefit from thinking more about the actual process of writing itself than I have done so far. Hence, it was quite interesting to briefly revisit The Speculative Turn (which I’ve just read), and to focus exclusively on the style of prose, quotation, terminology, and so on, that each of the authors make use of. I tend to always pay some attention to these aspects, although not at the level of just focusing on it, which I think is quite an interesting exercise. Also, in conclusion, there is actually a certain shift going on in continental thinking right now, which I think is obvious when looking through The Speculative Turn, and that is not only the move from idealism to realism, but also the move from esoteric to exoteric prose – that is, from abstract to concise writing – since many of the thinkers associated with continental materialism and realism actually prefer quite an accessible style of presentation, as the first quote from Harman indicates. Indeed, Harman also proposes (like DeLanda and others) that the division between continental and analytic philosophy maybe should be substituted by the division between realism and idealism, or that there might even be several more distinct fields in philosophy in the future, all concerned with their specific problems and styles of presentation. While this might of course never happen, it is an intriguing thought – both at the level of content and of form.

New Massumi Book and Video Lecture (with Erin Manning)

2011-05-20T12:30:00.001-07:00

Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts
Brian Massumi

Events are always passing; to experience an event is to experience the passing. But how do we perceive an experience that encompasses the just-was and the is-about-to-be as much as what is actually present? In Semblance and Event, Brian Massumi, drawing on the work of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and others, develops the concept of "semblance" as a way to approach this question. It is, he argues, a question of abstraction, not as the opposite of the concrete but as a dimension of it: "lived abstraction." A semblance is a lived abstraction. Massumi uses the category of the semblance toinvestigate practices of art that are relational and event-oriented - variously known as interactive art, ephemeral art, performance art, art intervention - which he refers to collectively as the "occurrent arts." Massumi argues that traditional art practices, including perspective painting, conventionally considered to be object-oriented freeze frames, also organize events of perception, and must be considered occurrent arts in their own way. Each art practice invents its own kinds of relational events of lived abstraction, to produce a signature species of semblance. The artwork's relational engagement, Massumi continues, gives it a political valence just as necessary and immediate as the aesthetic dimension. Massumi investigates occurrent art practices in order to examine, on the broadest level, how the aesthetic and the political are always intertwined in any creative activity.

November, 2011. 224 pages. MIT Press.

Coming Alive in a World of Texture: For Neurodiversity
Brian Massumi & Erin Manning at the Thinking - Resisting - Reading the Political conference in Giessen, Germany, November 12th 2010.

Brian Massumi and Erin Manning speaking about Autism, multiplicity, mind-blindness, and textures. In this lecture Brian Massumi and Erin Manning explore the Neurodiversity Movement reading from collected writings by Autists. They talk about multiplicities of existences, emergent relations in the environment, re-conceptualizing what it means to be "human" and what it means to be "autistic". Specifically they focus on neuro typical experience of experiential fielding, inter-modal modes of existence, intricacies of perception, environmental awareness, entrainment, and actively relational thinking.

Brian Massumi, Ph. D., is a political theorist, writer and philosopher, and is currently a professor in the Department of Communication Sciences at the University of Montréal in Quebec Canada, where he directs both the Ph. D program and the Workshop in Radical Empiricism (Atelier en empirisme radical). He is well-known for his translations of several major texts in French post-structuralist theory, including Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, and Jacques Attali's Noise. Brian Massumi received both his Masters and Doctoral degrees in French Literature from Yale University and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University. In addition to his theoretical work and teaching, Massumi works with Erin Manning in her research-creation laboratory Sense Lab located at Concordia University in Toronto.

Massumi has authored several books: Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2002), A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (1992), and First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot, with Kenneth Dean (1993). He is also the editor of The Matrixial Borderspace: Essays by Bracha Ettinger (1997), A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari (2002), Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: The Eurydice Series (2002), and The Politics of Everyday Fear (1993). Massumi was the founding editor of the University of Minnesota Press book series Theory Out of Bounds (1991-2006; co-edited by Michael Hardt and Sandra Buckley) and has written numerous articles which have been published in collections.

Erin Manning, Ph.D., is a philosopher, visual artist and dancer, and is currently a University Research Chair at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, Montreal. She is also a founder and director of The Sense Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory on research, creation and an international network focusing on intersections between philosophy and art through the sensing body in motion. Erin Manning received her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Hawaii (2001) and has been teaching philosophy, political theory, visual studies, cultural studies, and film theory. She is a member of the editorial board for the online journal Inflexions and the author of works on movement and ephemerality, for which she frequently collaborates with Brian Massumi.

In her writing, Erin Manning addresses various topics related to thought and politics in a field between dance and new technology, the convergence of cinema, animation and new media. Her focus is on the senses, philosophy and politics, as well as on the political and micropolitics of sensation and performance art. Erin Manning's art practice combines painting, fabric design and sculpture, and her dance background includes classical ballet and contemporary dance. She dances Argentine tango professionally. Erin Manning is the author of Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy (2009), Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty (2007) and Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home and Identity in Canada (2003).

Let Me In (/Let the Right One In)

2011-05-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

[Brief warning: Anyone who hasn’t seen these films, or who’s not familiar with the basic plot, should not read this post, since the films really work so much better if one watches them without any prior knowledge of what they’re about. In fact, I wouldn’t even recommend reading the plot summary on the box cover, since that unfortunately reveals way too much of the storyline.]

Let Me In (2010) is one of those films that I’ve wanted to be made for a long time; particularly since it contributes with something fresh to the much underrated horror genre, while also taking on the topic of contemporary youth alienation in a singular and exciting way. Not that there aren’t already a number of worthwhile films in these camps, particularly the latter, yet Let Me In – through its insistence on crossing generic categories of genre – manages to give something to both, and in particular the extremely one-sided horror genre. I have to admit that I hadn’t seen the Swedish original Låt den rätte komma in (2008), by Tomas Alfredson, until very recently, which obviously is a shame (in fact, I even watched it after the American remake, since I accidentally ordered the remake in the belief that it was the original), yet I have to say that I actually prefer the American version for a number of reasons. Cases of remakes are of course often difficult, in the sense that they often are considered to be a sort of “artistic retreat”, in that one simply makes another film once again. And in this case, when the original film also is based on a novel, it becomes even harder to judge the American film on its own. But, of course, it isn't on its own, which is the nature of remakes and cases of “based on”, so the issue is rather: what does the American film give that is absent from the original and the novel (or what does it remove)? I haven’t read the novel yet, so I have nothing to say there, but will go through why I prefer the American version rather than the Swedish. But first some initial remarks on the story (no summary, though, since I assume that anyone who’s reading this already knows the story).

What I most appreciate with Let Me In is how it uses the vampire-theme in a contemporary context of youth alienation. Even though there have been a number of excellent films on the latter topic during the last years (such as Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) and Last Days (2005), Shortland’s Somersault (2004), Arnold’s Fish Tank (2009), Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003), Ramsay’s Morvern Callar (2002), and so on) there has also been a tendency in many similar films to lapse into a kind of “indie-1.01 theme", which no longer feels fresh and exciting, but rather like some kind of default pseudo-artistic style, signifying notions such as “alternative” or “underground” (a general feeling I have towards a lot of so-called “indie”). Let Me In, on the other hand, by insisting on the vampire theme, rather goes in a very different direction, which brings it closer to some of the best horror films of the classic 70’s era in Hollywood. Most notably The Exorcist (1973), of course, and I would even go so far as to say that Let Me In is something like a contemporary The Exorcist (and I might also add that The Exorcist is one of my favourite horror films). What made The Exorcist such a strong film was obviously how it combined the “horror” of small-town life in USA with the horror of the possessed Regan. There simply was something completely fresh (even for us who watched it later) with that combination of dark, everyday drama, and the almost Evil Dead-like horror of Linda Blair’s character. Clearly, something similar is going on in Let Me In, which also uses the fact that there already is something very horrific in alienation, and, rather than making it into some kind of kitschy pseudo-personae (like in various forms of indie), pushes it even further by incorporating the vampire-theme. So this combination is clearly of mutual benefit, since the horror-theme has the capacity to extract something that already is implicit in the thematic of youth alienation, and take it even further, while the latter also manages to unfold something that the horror-film already is pregnant with, yet too seldom makes use of. This is precisely the incorporation of horror in everyday-life, along with emotionally and psychologically rich characters. Even though I don’t have anything particular against typical genre-films, such as Vampires (1998) or Friday the 13th (1980), the main problem with films like these is that they basically exist in another universe altogether, which certainly makes for a fun ride, yet at the same time keeps the psychological and emotional depth to a minimum. It is true, of course, that horror films usually are about the horrors of the flesh, yet they don’t necessarily have to be exclusively about that, which is where Let Me In stands out as very different from the all-too one-sided output of horror films. Indeed, it is precisely the combination of the drama-scenes between Owen and Abby (with actual people, emotions, and so on), and the bloody vampire-scenes with Abby (pure gore and tormented flesh), which makes the film feel fresh, and a lot more emotionally and psychologically engaging than the average horror-film (whether it be a vampire-film, slasher-film, or something else).

So why do I prefer the American version? This might initially seem to be an odd question, since they both look extremely similar at a first glance (and Reeves has indeed been criticized for this), yet if one looks a bit closer it becomes obvious that both the narrative and overall affective tone are very different in the American version. It is certainly easy to dismiss a lot of this as simply a typical form of American crowd-pleasing, since there are more special-effects, more dramatic music, more gore, and certainly cuter kids. Yet, even though I do agree with this to a certain extent (such as with the first scene, or prologue, which feels completely unnecessary, and basically just a simple way of assuring the audience that it will indeed be death and bloody horror soon), I still can’t help having the feeling that if one simply dismisses this as superficial nonsense, one misses the point that this isn’t merely cheap tricks in order to please the audience, but an overall stylistic choice, which fits the affective character of the film (there is, for instance, something extremely disturbing about the contrast between the human-like version of Abby and her vampire-incarnation, that the American version pushes further with the help of make-up, non-human bodily gestures and voice). This is indeed an important point, since the main difference between the two versions (and indeed also the main reason for why I prefer the American version over the Swedish) is that the latter is more of a socio-realist drama, with a dose of horror, whereas the former keeps insisting on the aspects of horror and alienation, and taking them even further. Thus, it is correct to say, as many have, that the American version is more of a genre-film (even though not entirely a genre-film, as I've been arguing here), yet I believe that it is incorrect to say that this is simply a market-strategy, since this clearly is Reeves overall intention with his version (and which subsequently also answers the question on what the American version actually contributes with).

In this sense, I don’t think that the extra effects, music, gore, and so on, should be dismissed on a purely superficial basis, since they are intimately connected with the horror and alienation at the nexus of the story. In comparison, I feel that the Swedish film is lacking in intensity and abstraction, even though this is obviously just as much an artistic choice by Alfredson (which some certainly prefer over the American version). At the same time, the American version is neither some kind of explicit orgy of gore, since it is still very respectful towards both the book and original film. On the contrary, I really like how it progresses slowly, with a lot of patience, in combination with sudden ruptures of extreme violence and gore, rather than just going in constant full-speed (indeed another problem with a lot of contemporary horror-films). Also, the film is skilfully constructed in terms of the mise-en-scene, particularly through the use of light and darkness, but also the out-of-field, which already was present in the original, but which is taken even further here. Notice, for instance, how important events often occur out-of-field (such as Abby’s many transformations and violent outbursts), or how the face of Owen’s mother never is shown onscreen, which is a brilliant way of underlining the emotional distance between them, without having the characters explicitly talking about it. Clearly, then, there is often a feeling of spatial insecurity in the American version, which I also felt was lacking in the Swedish one, and which almost makes me think of Deleuze’s concept of the any-space-whatever (i.e. a space which has been emptied out of its habitual functions in order for new forces to emerge, and which Deleuze indeed often associates with contemporary abandoned and alienated spaces of an urban character). There is also the aspect with Abby and Richard Jenkins’s character (Håkan in the original), which I felt is addressed much better in the American version, and which gives the overall story, not to mention the ending, a considerably darker tone (even though it might just be me missing something here, but I didn’t feel that the Swedish version addressed the fact that the man isn’t her father like the American did). Finally, a few words about the acting: even though I don’t think that Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson did a poor job in the original, I do once again prefer their American counterparts. There is just something with Kodi McPhee and Chloe Moretz which is more natural, in the sense that I don’t get the feeling that they perform their lines as much as they are them. Also, Richard Jenkins must be mentioned here, who, after such a long career, still is such an underrated actor. It is true, of course, that he recently received an Academy Award-nomination for best leading role (in The Visitor (2007)), yet he still remains one of the great underrated actors in Hollywood, and his performance here is indeed excellent (considering how little screen time, not to mention dialogue, his character has).

In conclusion, a few words obviously have to be said about the Twilight-series, which unfortunately will be difficult, since I still haven’t seen any of them. Yet, if I’m allowed to be a bit prejudice here, I do get the feeling that they have more of the kitschy and pseudo-intellectual tone of indie that I reject, rather than the singular character of Let Me In. I’m not going to go any further than that, though, until I’ve actually seen them, yet I seriously doubt that they will have much to offer over Let Me In, which I do think is one of the great horror-films of recent times (to once again fall back into generic terms). It doesn’t just set new standards for vampire-films, as one critic proposed, but for all contemporary films about horror and alienation in its many forms.

Mark Fisher and Kodwo Eshun on Nick Land

2011-05-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

I finally received my copy of Land's Fanged Noumena, which looks awesome of course, and also had a recent article from Dazed and Confused sent to me, in which Mark and Kodwo discuss the relevance of Land's work (he was their mentor at the University of Warwick, and the co-founder of the Ccru, along with Sadie Plant). Hopefully, this publication will lead to a return to Land, who has been almost completely forgotten since his departure from the academia in the late 90's. Also, Land has recently started a new blog, which can be found here.

New Books

2011-04-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Since I'm currently in the midst of writing two quite long essays for my degree at Goldsmiths, I have very little time for reading at the moment (also, I find it difficult to read while I'm in the middle of the writing process), which is a shame, since several extremely interesting books have been published over the last months. I just received my copy of Shaviro's Post-Cinematic Affect, which I've already read most of, but will dive into again quite soon, in relation to my writings. Also, I finally bought a physical copy of The Speculative Turn, which I also have read parts of already, but must look further into whenever I have the time. Considering the amazing list of people who have contributed to the volume, I'm sure it's worth to have a closer look at. Finally, I also couldn't resist buying DeLanda's latest book Philosophy and Simulation, Land's Fanged Noumena, and Francois Dosse's 600+ page biography of Deleuze and Guattari, entitled Intersecting Lives. I usually don't find biographers of philosophers to be particularly entertaining (because, to quote Deleuze himself, "academics' lives are seldom interesting"), but this book looks very nice, partly because of what was going on in France at that time, as well as the almost mythical status of D & G's working relationship, but also because Dosse really seems to have paid an extreme attention to detail, so it looks like each chapter is packed with engaging material, rather than just a guided tour through their books, etc. Hopefully I'll get the chance to read these books soon, although the upcoming master thesis might make it difficult.

In terms of future books: Harman has a volume on Meillassoux that will be released soon, as well as upcoming books on Lovecraft, and (TBA) supposedly on McLuhan as well. I find the latter extremely interesting, since I've always felt that McLuhan is quite undertheorized today, and I have actually meant to go back to his work very soon (since it's been a while since I read Understanding Media and The Gutenberg Galaxy), so this will be a perfect opportunity to do so. Also, Paul J. Ennis has his upcoming book Continental Realism on Zer0, and I also heard that Daniel W. Smith's Essays on Deleuze will be released by Edinburgh (but not untill 2012). So a lot of interesting stuff.

Details on Florian Hecker's "Speculative Solution" - A CD/160 page book on the philosophy of Quentin Meillassoux

2011-04-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

eMEGO 118 / Hecker
Speculative Solution
CD + Book

1. Speculative Solution 1 (32:00)
2. Speculative Solution 2 (2:57)
3. Speculative Solution 2 (2:55)
4. Octave Chronics (19:10)

Written and produced by Florian Hecker, March 2009 – November 2010
Book edited by Robin Mackay
Typesetting by Tina Frank, Elvira Stein
Software Design by Alberto de Campo, Tommi Keränen
Mastered by Rashad Becker

This sensation that you are in a world where there can be no physics, but only a chronics, of things - Quentin Meillassoux in conversation with Florian Hecker and Robin Mackay, Paris, 22.07.2010

Editions Mego and Urbanomic are pleased to announce the release of ‘Speculative Solution’, a CD and book with contributions by Florian Hecker, Elie Ayache, Robin Mackay and Quentin Meillassoux. Originally commissioned by Urbanomic and developed over the last year, this collaborative project brings together Hecker’s sonic practice and psychoacoustic experimentation with philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of ‘hyperchaos’ – the absolute contingency of the laws of nature.

In an apparent departure from Hecker’s previous release ‘Acid in the Style of David Tudor’ (eMEGO 094, 2009), the four titles featured in ‘Speculative Solution’ contain a series of micro-chronics and sequences of auditory contingencies, ranging from extreme stasis to the most dynamic intensities, crisp dramatisations of what Meillassoux calls in his text ‘extro-science worlds'.

As Mackay states in his contribution to the book, Hecker’s composition “participates in a circuit in which it, the accompanying texts, and diverse other objects, enter into a perpetual catalysis that must annihilate all priority, representation, reference, and even entity.’. Both ‘scripture and prescription’, ‘Speculative Solution’ invites its users to integrate its sonic and textual components, as they enter into an accelerative cycle, becoming “truly ‘literalist’ marks which have no reason to be as they are, and which could have been – and still could be, at every moment – otherwise”. With ‘Speculative Solution’ Hecker proposes that the concepts of absolute contingency and hyperchaos offer a rigorous new alternative to the employment of chance and randomness in avant-garde composition.

It is recommended to listen to ‘Speculative Solution’ on loudspeakers at high volume. Headphone use is not advised. Frequent recitation of the included texts is also indicated.

‘Speculative Solution’, is Hecker’s 13th release with (Editions) Mego. It comes in an embossed, deluxe box with a bilingual (English / French) 160 page book and 5 metal balls (ø 3,969mm). Available only in this format.

Release date: 23.05.11

Conversation between Florian Hecker, Quentin Meillassoux and Robin Mackay.

http://urbanomic.com/
http://florianhecker.blogspot.com

Essay Outline: "The Ontology of Sonic Immanence"

2011-03-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

Just a brief outline for an essay that I will be writing shortly:

In this essay, I will attempt to construct a sonic materialism, or ontology of sonic immanence, through a parallel reading of the neo-materialist philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Manuel DeLanda, and the writings of a number of prominent sound artists and theoreticians of sound, starting from around the beginning of the 20th century. I will argue that music took, along with the arrival of electronic technology, a similar route as the three philosophers mentioned above, towards a certain materiality of sound (or “the sonic”). More specifically, just like DeLanda has argued that the major philosophical contribution of Deleuze and Guattari is not only a critique of phenomenological and idealist ontologies, but also a reversal of traditional realist ontologies (such as in Plato or Aristotle), in which morphogenesis is considered to be transcendent to matter (as in various forms of essences or divine entities). Instead, DeLanda finds, in the work of Deleuze and Guattari, an ontology in which morphogenesis is immanent to the material world (as in processes of self-organization, nonlinear dynamics, and so on).

Following this, I will argue that a similar reversal took place in music around the beginning of the 20th century, from Schoenberg’s atonalism to Boulez’s serialism, but I will instead focus on the emergence of electronic technology and the implications it had for how artists thought about, and approached, sound, as well as the birth of so-called “sound art” (i.e. the interest in the materiality of sound and the sonic). My approach will be similar to Deleuze’s in the cinema-books, in that I will use a historical approach (even though this will not be a history of sound art) in order to work through the specific thinkers and concepts that will help me to formulate an ontology of sonic immanence. I will use the noise-philosophy of Italian futurist Luigi Russolo as my starting point, and then go through a number of relevant concepts by sound artists and theoreticians of sound, such as Pierre Schaefer, Michel Chion, Edgard Varesé, Brian Eno, Francisco Lopez, Steve Goodman and Aden Evens, as well as Deleuze and Guattari’s own writings on music (from A Thousand Plateaus), and DeLanda’s reading of matter, technology and abstract machines.

The idea of a sonic materialism certainly goes beyond just sound art (since similar approaches to sound can be found in a number of other musical styles, such as electronica, dub, and various forms of dance music), yet I have chosen to focus on sound art because I think that there is a particular resonance between this specific sonic lineage, and the materialist philosophy that I follow. In particular, there are two specific points of resonance that I will discuss in-detail in the essay: the approach to technology and to the material world. Also, this will help me target two of my main theoretical “antagonists”, which are postmodernism and idealism. More specifically, I will argue that the postmodern approach (echoing Baudrillard and Benjamin), obsessed with the idea that electronic media technologies obscure our relationship with reality, is too regressive in terms of a longing for a more authentic real that preceded electronic media. Instead, I will argue that a sonic materialism gives a vaster framework for various approaches to electronic media, in which these entities (aural, but also visual) also has the capacity to enrich our relationship with reality and the material world. In other words, whereas the Baudrillardian and Benjaminian approach inevitably leads to the idea of a sharp discontinuity between nature and technology, I will instead argue, using Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of “abstract machines”, that there is in fact a continuity between the two.

In a similar way, the neo-materialist approach also serves as a good platform for a critique of various forms of idealist and other anthropocentric approaches to sound (and thinking), that tend to read sound as text, or define music as exclusively human. Criticizing these approaches, I will attempt to sketch out an ontology of sonic materialism in which sound (and even music) precede human beings as a form of non-human expressivity. I will argue that sound is immanent to matter as a continuum of sonic vibration, and subsequently trace a similar approach in the history of sound art (in which artists started to use the material world as a sound machine), as well as in the philosophy of Deleuze, Guattari and DeLanda, and argue for the relevance of a sonic materialism in terms of a vaster understanding of contemporary sonic phenomena, that goes beyond postmodernist and idealist obsessions with text, metaphor, consciousness and experience.

Another book on Speculative Realism

2011-03-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

Continental Realism by Paul J. Ennis.

Paul J. Ennis has given us the first general overview of the theses of After Finitude, and of their reception in the Anglo-American philosophical field. The theses in question - speculative and correlationist - are here exposed with clarity and fidelity. An indispensable introduction to speculative realism.
Professor Quentin Meillassoux, Le Departement de philosophie, Aecole normale superieure

91 pages, May 26th, Zer0 Books

Another Paper: On Jacob Kirkegaard's "Labyrinthitis"

2011-03-09T04:06:00.000-08:00

Another paper that I wrote over Christmas, but this one was for Kodwo Eshun's Auditions-course. Overall I like it, since I feel that I managed to bring up quite a lot of important issues (reverse transduction, active hearing, politics of frequency, sonic materialism, etc.), yet at the same time it's also quite thin and feels more like an outline than an in-depth discussion (this was also Kodwo's main problem with it). I think the reason is very similar to why I left the final section out of the previous paper, that is, because I have already planned my spring-essays (which will be more than twice as long) and therefore didn't bother to do more than brief outlines in these papers. In this case, I introduce what I call an "ethics of sonic materialism" as late as in the final section, but don't develop it much further since this is precisely what I intend to do in my future essay. The problem, of course, was that Kodwo wasn't aware of this and thus thought that my thinking had stopped there, but thankfully I have now pointed out that this is not the case (it's rather the other way around, really, but I guess that's what happens when you're already two steps ahead and forget to indicate this somehow).

With that said, I'm still satisfied with the basics of this paper, even though it, once again, should be read as an outline rather than my final words on these issues (and the similar ending is a bit cheap too, for sure, but I wanted to tie them both together at this point, to remind myself of where I'm going in the near future).

[Apologies for the lines that have jumped to the left in the reference-section, but I blame Scribd for this.]

New Paper: On the Diagrammatic Voice

2011-03-08T07:31:00.000-08:00

This is a paper I wrote over Christmas, for Mark Fisher's Vocalities-course at Goldsmiths, and which I've just gotten back. I did not have too much expectations of it, since I really didn't put as much effort into it as I could have, and since I've never really had any particular interest in engaging with psychoanalysis (my main "antagonists" are rather idealism and postmodernism). Nevertheless, I did receive a lot of interesting feedback on it, and Mark managed to point out certain positive aspects of it that I had disregarded a bit too quickly (probably because of my lack of interest in the topics), and which puts the essay in a new light (in particular the importance of using neo-materialism as a criticism of psychoanalysis, and the implications it will have for questions of voice).

The only thing that I feel is missing in the essay (as Mark also pointed out) is a final part where I apply the theoretical resources to cultural material, since there are no concrete examples of the "post-psychoanalytic, asignified, diagrammatic voice", and the essay instead just ends quite abruptly. Ironically, I not only have concrete examples to use here, but these were even what got me into these domains in the first place, and the only reason I didn't use them is because I want to expand on these ideas in my longer spring-essay, which I will be writing soon. So this one basically sketches out an overall framework, whereas the more in-depth discussion will follow later. Nevertheless, after the overall positive feedback I got, I feel that it's still worth putting it up here.

[Brief side note: My favourite example of the diagrammatic voice is, not surprisingly, the work of Karin Dreijer-Andersson as Fever Ray (and in the Knife), which is what my future essay mostly will deal with. So this is really what's missing from this essay, as also can be seen in my brief outline of this project on the Vocalities-blog.]

Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings (of Nick Land) 1987-2007

2011-03-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

I had a chat with Mark Fisher today, and he mentioned that the written work of early 90's cyberpunk-guru and Ccru-member Nick Land finally will be released (after several delays) this month. This is great news indeed, since Land's work, like that of fellow Ccru-member and cyberpunk-theorist Sadie Plant, has been unavailable for a long time, which is kind of ironic in a way (as Mark put it: it's quite ridiculous that the work of the major Internet-theoreticians is unavailable on the Internet!), but luckily this will change with the publication of this volume (and I really hope that this will encourage more reprintings of the same kind, since there's still way too much of the Ccru's early work that is currently unavailable; even Kodwo Eshun's book has been out-of-print for a long time, so I did not have a chance to read it until a friend told me that it's on Mediafire). Below is a brief outline of the volume, as well as some blurbs from Mark, and the speculative realists Iain Hamilton Grant and Ray Brassier (who also co-edited the volume along with Robin Mackay).

"Fanged Noumena brings together the writings of Nick Land for the first time. During the 1990s Land's unique philosophical work, variously described as 'rabid nihilism', 'mad black deleuzianism' and 'cybergothic', developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of 'continental philosophy' - a route which was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British 'speculative realist' philosophers who studied with him, and through the many cultural producers - artists, musicians, filmmakers, bloggers - who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision.

Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume then collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s - long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print) - in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids.

Fanged Noumena allows a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and will introduce his unique voice to a new generation of readers."

Contents

Editors' Introduction
Kant, Capital and the Prohibition of Incest
Narcissism and Dispersion in Heidegger's 1953 Trakl Interpretation
Delighted to Death
Art as Insurrection
Spirit and Teeth
After the Law
Making it with Death
Shamanic Nietzsche
Circuitries
Machinic Desire
Cybergothic
Cyberrevolution
Hypervirus
No Future
Cyberspace Anarchitecture as Jungle-War
Meat (or How to Kill Oedipus in Cyberspace)
Meltdown
A ZiiGothic X-Coda (Cooking Lobsters with Jake and Dinos)
KatasoniX
Barker Speaks
Mechanomics
Cryptolith
Non-Standard Numeracies: Nomad Cultures
Occultures
Origins of the Cthulhu Club
Introduction to Qwernomics
Tic-Talk
Qabbala 101
Critique of Transcendental Miserablism

These extraordinary texts, superheated compounds of severe abstraction and scabrous wit, testify to a uniquely penetrating intelligence, fusing transcendental philosophy, number theory, geophysics, biology, cryptography and occultism into startlingly cohesive but increasingly delirious theory-fictions.
Ray Brassier

This is theory as cyberpunk fiction: Deleuze-Guattari's concept of capitalism as the virtual unnameable Thing that haunts all previous formations pulp-welded to the timebending of the Terminator films. Land's machinic theory-poetry parallelled the digital intensities of 90s jungle, techno and doomcore, anticipating 'impending human extinction becoming accessible as a dance-floor'.
Mark Fisher (K-Punk)

In the last half of the twentieth century, academics talked endlessly about the outside, but no-one went there. Land, by exemplary contrast, made experiments in the unknown unavoidable for a philosophy caught in the abstractive howl of post-political cybernetics. Fanged Noumena demonstrates how Land ruined a generation of intellectuals for merely academic philosophy, by opening a speculative singularity where the future used to be.
Iain Hamilton Grant

The publication date is March 14, and the edition is limited to 1000 copies. More info on the publisher's website.

The 4th International Deleuze Conference: "Creation, Crisis, Critique", Copenhagen 27-29 June 2011

2011-03-03T06:26:00.000-08:00

"The fourth annual International Deleuze Studies Conference intends to explore current conditions for creative critiques. In the searchlight are potentialities for responding to a seemingly permanent, yet persistently mutating crisis.

The conference intends to assemble ways of conceiving the current plurality of crises – financial, ecological, political, existential, aesthetic – letting their bindings show, analyzing their displacements and their disguises, exacerbating them, perhaps indeed taking us deeper into them. A micropolitics of global society is in need of articulation; this makes us desire philosophy as ever before.

The texts of Gilles Deleuze, once restricted to specialists, the French public, and tenants of radical politics, are now being put to work everywhere, and seem far from having lost their momentum. His readers - whether they be academic scholars, activists, architects, artists, designers, managers, workers or just marginalized - face a world that beckons comprehensive recompositions through inventive action.

The current situation calls for a renewed critique, but also for something more. It calls for a creativity in questioning the world, in the position and solution of its problems. The very scope of the difficulties calls for transdisciplinary awareness and attention to disparaties. The multiple lines connecting heterogeneous systems articulate as many virtual passages between (to name but the most apparent) the ecological, educational, financial and political crises which play together with the crises particular to the arts, to architecture, and to design.

This is why Copenhagen Business School, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture and School of Visual Arts have joined forces in searching for a recomposition of the reception and application of Deleuze’s work.

Preceding the conference, students can participate in a Summer School: Deleuze Camp 5 "Creative Critique". The camp will take place from 20 - 24 June 2011 in Copenhagen."

More info can be found at the conference website.

I just received a confirmation e-mail which says that I have secured a spot on the Deleuze Camp, so I will obviously stay around for the conference as well. I might even do a short presentation of parts of my work on either the conference or the camp (more details soon, in that case). I'm not sure what to expect of the whole thing, really, since it seems to me that it is primarily run by people who's approach to Deleuze is very different from mine. Nevertheless, I think that this is the ideal time for me to attend this event, since I'm currently an MA student who will be writing several essays on Deleuzian philosophy around that time, while also trying to transfer to a PhD (with a thesis proposal organized around the cinema-books). So basically, I hope that it will be a useful source of inspiration at the conclusion of my Goldsmiths degree, and an opportunity to familiarize myself a bit more with the work of Deleuze's many followers.

Contextualizing My Work

2011-01-30T15:06:00.000-08:00

Since I’m currently in the process of both starting the essay writing-part of my MA, as well as simultaneously applying to do a PhD, I’ve recently felt an urgent necessity to contextualize my work within today’s philosophical and cultural debates. The main reason for that is, of course, that this is crucial in order for me to be able to explain where I’m coming from theoretically, as well as where I aim to go in the future, and the whole process has so far been great overall, and a nice way of examining my own work critically.

One of the problems I’ve had earlier is that I had barely examined DeLanda from an outside perspective, and instead just followed his reading of Deleuze as a materialist-realist philosopher. This is of course a problem, since I also need to establish my own position in relation to DeLanda, in order to avoid being just some kind of “DeLanda-copycat”. Luckily, the recent publication of The Speculative Turn turned out to be very timely, since the introduction to the anthology brings up several key aspects that I needed in order to situate myself in a theoretical context. There are in particular three key points that can be found in the introduction that seems to be crucial for me:

1. First of all, the introduction starts with establishing what the authors refer to as “the speculative turn”, which of course is a deliberate play with words of the famous so-called “linguistic turn” that dominated 20th century philosophy, and which all the authors that contribute to the anthology in some way oppose. The linguistic turn refers to the philosophical stance which argues that experience is shaped by arbitrary signifiers (and which goes back to Kant, via Saussure), and should be situated along the long line of 20th century thinkers (in particular) who’s philosophy tends to focus exclusively on text, discourse, ideas, consciousness, etc., as that which constitutes reality: in short, it positions humanity at the centre stage of philosophical thinking (as in phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, etc.). Now, this is an ontological stance that recently has faced an increasing amount of criticism in the continental camp of philosophy, and the publication of this volume is indeed one of the major attacks so far on the idea that there is no reality independent of human experience (what the philosopher Quentin Meillassoux calls “correlationalism”), and instead argues (in many different ways, through all of the authors) for a return to reality itself – independent of a human subject (this is of course not to deny that there is such a thing as human experience, but rather to argue that to organize one’s entire philosophy exclusively around this is indeed to fall victim to a crude form of anthropocentrism).

The introduction then proceeds by mapping out the origins of the speculative turn, through the work of Deleuze and Guattari (who, as DeLanda has pointed out several times, distinguished themselves in the history of 20th century philosophy by trying to move away from idealism to a world-in-itself), the 2002-publications of Graham Harman’s Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects and DeLanda’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (two books in which a continental philosopher, for the first time, proclaimed himself to be a realist), the 2007-debate at Goldsmiths where the so-called “Speculative Realist” group of philosophers (Harman, Meillassoux, Iain Hamilton Grant and Ray Brassier) was born, to recent developments in continental materialism and realism. This has indeed provided me with the framework that I was looking for, since it contextualizes both Deleuze/Guattari and DeLanda in relation to today’s philosophical debates, and puts it in context with the dominant trends of 20th century philosophy.

2. Furthermore, the authors also mention the appearance of the Ccru (the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit) in the early nineties. Ccru was a mysterious research group, comprised of a number of research students at Warwick University (Sadie Plant, Nick Land, Mark Fisher, Steve Goodman (Kode 9), Matt Fuller, Kodwo Eshun, etc.), that operated at the margins of academia and, like me, were influenced by Deleuze and Guattari’s materialism, DeLanda’s markets/anti-markets, along with the British rave music-scene (jungle, dancehall, techstep, dubstep, etc.), as well as mysticism and science-fiction (the music critic Simon Reynolds has an excellent article on the Ccru that was published last year in Paul D. Miller’s (DJ Spooky) anthology Sound Unbound, and which also can be found (in a longer version) in one of Reynolds’ old blogs). The crucial element with the Ccru for me personally is that they were among the first to speculate on how this newfound philosophical interest in realism/materialism may provide a framework in order to rethink questions related to art, media and culture, while also opposing institutionalized spheres of academic discourse in favour of what Reynolds, in his article, calls “renegade academia” (i.e. bridging the gap between theory and practice, as well as emphasizing a more experimental approach to writing and thinking). Both these aspects are indeed something that I can indentify with very strongly – since I’m equally interested in how this newfound philosophical interest in realism and materialism may be used in order to rethink orthodox positions on art, technology and culture, while also trying to bridge the gap between theoretical debate and artistic and cultural practice, as well as favouring what Eshun (following Deleuze and Guattari) calls “concept-engineering”, rather than “theory”(kind of a problematic term that I don’t use coherently in this text, but more on this below) – and thus gives further contextualization to my own work, which indeed should be positioned along the lines of DeLanda’s specific reading of Deleuze and Guattari, as well as the Ccru’s approach to art, media and culture (in this sense, it has, of course, been extremely rewarding to do my MA with Kodwo Eshun and Mark Fisher).

3. I also very much appreciate how the authors emphasize the importance of the emerging online community in continental thought, since this has been another extremely important resource for me (particularly since I, up till recently, hadn’t had any formal education in these matters, and thus, like DeLanda, was more or less self-taught). The blogosphere is obviously the first phenomenon that comes to mind, as the authors point out, as well as a number of important publishing houses (re.press, Zer0 Books, etc.) that really are trying to rethink what publication in the humanities could be today, and to that I would also add the increasing number of online journals (such as Film-Philosophy and A/V), papers and even whole books that can be accessed on the Web, as well as the vast number of video lectures that are becoming available online (EGS has of course played a central role in this); all of which has made theory (from unpublished authors up to the “superstars”) remarkably accessible during the last years. Indeed, I am positive that I wouldn’t be where I am today without these resources, so this is certainly an important new trend that will be very interesting to follow in the future.

(4.) Finally, I also need to add a fourth point, which isn’t mentioned in the anthology, but which is kind of related to the work of the Ccru, and has become something that I’ve been increasingly concerned with while writing drafts of my PhD-application, since it is a phenomenon that I think is very much established in the particular field that concerns me in the application (i.e., Deleuze and cinema, even though I would argue that it is present in a wider context as well). This concerns the problem of how to approach Deleuze’s work on the cinema (but, once again, also on painting, music, literature, etc., and I would actually say his entire philosophy), since one of the main issues I’ve had with much of the secondary work on Deleuze (particularly on film) is that I’ve felt that it’s more of a repetition of Deleuze’s concepts, rather than an attempt to rethink, and expand on, his basic ideas (this is of course one of the reasons for why I admire DeLanda’s work, because, even though he obviously is very much in-debt to Deleuze, he does transform it to something that goes beyond Deleuze himself); as one correspondent recently wrote to me: “I have to say, I'm a little tired of Deleuze and cinema couplings, mainly because they often lead to rhetorical incantations of Deleuze’s (or D & G’s) terms to little effect”. This is something I fully agree with, and which indeed captures the issues I’ve had with basically every book I’ve read on Deleuze’s philosophy of cinema, since it seems to me that something vital has been lost along the way. [Brief side note: My intention here is of course not to bash these authors theoretically, since I obviously still respect their work, nor to act like some kind of arrogant MA-student who thinks he knows better than everyone else, but rather to point out some occurring problems I have had with many of these books.]

The main issue is, I think, that these authors are approaching Deleuze from within the context of film theory, rather than philosophy (indeed, the authors do explicitly state that they attempt to work with Deleuze’s concepts in film theory, etc.). This is in my opinion kind of a strange, and I would even go so far as to say slightly contradictory, way of approaching Deleuze, particularly since he himself made it very clear in the cinema-books that he is not writing a theory of the cinema, but rather attempts to formulate a sort of philosophy which works alongside the cinema, in order to produce philosophical ideas (concepts) that belongs to the cinema, but which must be formed philosophically. Also, in his excellent short essay “Having an Idea in Cinema”, he explicitly rejects the idea that a philosophy of the cinema is the same as film theory, and that critics of the cinema need philosophy in order to reflect on it. Rather, he points out that philosophy has its own content (the creation of concepts), and by using philosophy as merely “reflecting on”, all its power is taken away from it. In this sense, I think that the widespread approach of using Deleuze’s philosophy in film theory has very little effect on his thought (indeed, I might even go as far as to say that it actually is counter-productive), and, as far as film theory goes, I am in total agreement with the quotation above in the sense that coupling Deleuze with film theory seems to lead to nothing more than just a repetition of his basic terminology, by simply applying each concept to specific films (i.e. “film x is an example of a crystal-image, while film y is an action-image”, etc.).

I realize that this might sound a bit harsh, yet I firmly believe that this approach gives a very poor idea of what Deleuze’s thinking is, and that something different is needed; something that goes beyond “theory” and moves closer to philosophy. Once again, DeLanda’s work is exemplary in this context, as well as the collective work of the Ccru, and Eshun’s idea of concept-engineering, not to mention the group’s criticism of institutionalized academic systems, indeed express a similar disbelief in this highly “theoretical” and “academic” way of approaching Deleuze’s thought [Side note: Many of the books published by people of the Ccru, from Eshun’s 1997-book More Brilliant Than the Sun, to Steve Goodman’s recently published Sonic Warfare, do indeed point in a different direction, which I think gives a lot more justice to Deleuze’s own work, particularly in terms of doing concept-engineering (i.e. the creation of new concepts), rather than theory (i.e. applying already existing concepts to specific films, etc.).] This, finally, leads to the question of my own approach, which explicitly attempts to bypass the method of applying Deleuze in x kind of theory, in favour of DeLanda’s reconstruction on the one hand, and Ccru’s concept-engineering on the other. I will, however, not discuss this in detail right now, since I’m still in the process of formulating it more coherently, as well as reflecting further on the critique I’m bringing up here, yet the culmination of my MA, and the implications of the PhD, will surely mean that I will come back to this in more detail in the near future.

Optofonica-Post Published on LINE

2011-01-18T05:55:00.000-08:00

My earlier blogpost on the amazing Optofonica-release by LINE has been put up on their homepage, here (scroll down). Thanks to Richard Chartier for this, and the positive feedback on the text itself.

Gavin Butt on Kettling, Student Protests and Police Violence

2011-01-17T05:02:00.000-08:00

Gavin Butt (of Goldsmiths) just published an excellent article on the recent police violence against, and criminalization of, students, which can be found here. I was there as well, and can only agree with the absurdity of kettling people against their will. Me and a friend left the main part of Parliament Square quite early, but then returned later on, just to observe what was going on from farther away... or that's what we thought, since we suddenly realized that the police had formed another line (with police horses) behind us, while we were observing events at the center of the protest. Obviously, there was absolutely no chance of exiting that way, so we finally had to jump over a fence and run through a backyard in order to escape the kettle. Bizarre, to say the least, since all we wanted to do was exit the area around Parliament Square.

A key passage of Butt's text, related to my own work in media and information, is when he writes that: "the media could be viewed as one component part of a wider strategy of containment, a technology of information management if you will, which is co-extensive with the kettling operation itself. Seen in this quasi-Foucauldian way, the media extends the containment virtually through the wider dissemination of police misinformation, “kettling” its viewers and listeners by keeping them in the dark about what is actually going on." This is particularly interesting in relation to what Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson (see the post on Facs of Life), when they visited Goldsmiths in december, discussed in terms of reversing this situation against "the apparatuses of capture". More specifically, Maglioni used the concept of multiple framings, in order to reflect on how the protesters were framed both by the police and media, and then exploited through the provocation and broadcasting of "student violence" (as Butt points out). Now, Maglioni speculated on how this system of multiple framings could be reversed into a scene of creativity (rather than exploitation) by those of "the common", through the mobilizations of bodies, materials, voices, and other components. This is certainly an interesting thought, for many reasons, although haunted by the extreme dissymetry between the police and students (the former armed to their teeth, and synchronized to the smallest detail, and the latter arriving in more or less fancy clothes and often with little idea of what's about to happen), yet it seems to me a key issue to reflect on, in terms of the recomposition of the methodological synchronization of state apparatuses, police forces and media institutions, into what we may call a performative act of the common.

More specifically, since, as Steven Shaviro has pointed out in his work, there is a trend in contemporary forms of exploitation to "swallow and internalize [...] every conceivable outside", a proper solution to this is not to lament over the loss of these outsides, but rather to look for other "points of undecidability" or "lines of flights" within the logic of exploitation itself. This seems to me a crucial insight in relation to the multiple framings, or actual and virtual kettlings, during the events at Parliament Square (which formed a center stage of exploitation), because I think it's a mistake to just reject these scenarios as dead-ends or imprisonments, since they also have an immanent potential of recomposition through collective affirmation (which obviously isn't the same as acceptance). So the problem is then how these events of recomposition would be performed, which I certainly can't answer at this point, yet I believe it is a central issue to reflect further on.

[Brief addition: Here is a great article that reflects further on the issues that I'm bringing up above. Particularly the parts on "swarms", or packs, of protest groups seem crucial to me, since, as the author points out, [a] form of protest is needed that places dispersal over concentration, mobility over stasis and perhaps even disruption over symbolism. Thanks to Gavin Butt for the link.]

The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism

2010-12-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

re.press have just released their new, massive volume The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, which gives the to-date broadest account of the philosophical movement known as "speculative realism" (born in 2007 at Goldsmiths actually). The volume is edited by Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, and includes an impressive list of contributors: from the four original speculative realists (Harman, Brassier, Hamilton Grant and Meillassoux), to other influtential realists (such as Stengers, DeLanda and Shaviro), and later contributors to the realist movements (Bryant and Srnicek), as well as interviews with both Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek. So far I have only browsed through DeLanda's contribution (an essay on causality and emergence, which is something like a teaser to his forthcoming book on emergence and simulation), but will take a closer look at the rest of the book as soon as I have the chance.. The whole 427-page volume is available as a free pdf at re.press (soon also in hardcopy at Amazon, etc.) and is a must-read for anyone who, like me, believes that one of the main obstacles which must be removed from contemporary philosophical debates is that of idealism, and that less anthropocentric forms of realism/materialism is what will push philosophy forward into the 21th century.

New Paper: On DeLanda's Political Economy

2010-12-15T03:39:00.001-08:00

This is a paper I wrote at Goldsmiths this term, and which sums up something I’ve been reading about quite a lot this past year. I’m really happy with how the paper turned out, since I think it summarizes most of the very broad issues that I wanted to address, in the relatively limited space that I had. Also, it marks the starting point for a new direction in my work, since I really haven’t written that much on political economy until recently, but which I’ve had an increased interest in this last year (particularly in relation to what critical art, and thinking, is today). Basically, it’s an ontological and historical critique of core Marxist concepts, such as “capital” and “the capitalist system”, from a DeLandian and Braudelian point of view. The basic argument is of course not that capitalism is a good thing, but rather that there is a certain form of totalization going on in much of contemporary critical thinking, which homogenizes the idea of critical art and thought as such. Obviously, there’s a lot more to say here, but the paper works really well as a starting point, I think.

This is also my first paper in which I don’t refer to Deleuze as such (except briefly through Shaviro, but he’s not really a main character in the discussion), which makes me wonder if I’m not actually more of a DeLandian than a Deleuzian. This is of course because DeLanda himself clearly breaks with Deleuze (and Guattari) here, who "remained Marxists until the end", but also because I’ve had some brief encounters with a few other influential Deleuzians recently, and realized how little they actually sympathise with DeLanda’s reading of him. Somehow I’ve always equalled DeLanda with Deleuze, which certainly is true in one sense, but also fails to give account for the specific nature of DeLanda’s reading, which obviously is one amongst many. Earlier, I actually had a different quote on the first page, in which DeLanda criticizes Deleuze and Guattari’s Marxism, but soon realized that it was completely out of place, since the paper barely discusses Deleuze at all, which is what made me think of this in the first place. Anyway, here is the paper:

Student Protests, Deleuze’s seminars at Vincennes, a statement by Alexander García Düttman and the work of Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson

2010-12-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

Over the last three days, I’ve had the privilege of encountering the Deleuzian-inspired work of filmmakers Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson, in conjunction with what might have been the climax of the student protests in England (in opposition to the proposal to cut 80% of the funding of many university programs, particularly within “less important” areas, such as arts, humanities and the social sciences, and consequently tripling the tuition fees). The vote went through yesterday, while thousands of students were out on the streets protesting, occupying buildings, and so on, which turned out to resonate strongly with the work of Maglioni and Thomson, who’s 2009 film Facs of Life is inspired by encounters with some of Deleuze’s students, the fate of Vincennes University (where he taught and which was pulled down in 1980) and with what they call “phantom revolutions” (cinematic and political), “that continues to haunt our desires”.

I will not discuss everything that happened during the three days in detail, since that’s way too unorganized at the moment, but going through all these series of events – including a screening of the film and 30 minutes of (subtitled!) footage from Deleuze’s seminars on A Thousand Plateaus at Tate Britain, marching the streets of London with Mark Fisher (one of my course tutors) and friends from my course, listening to several hours of discussions on the protests, Deleuze and Facs of Life with Maglioni, Thomson, and Kodwo Eshun (my other course tutor), and later end up in a (for us, short) spontaneous occupation of the Goldsmiths library with the three just mentioned and some more friends from my course – was both intense and inspiring in a number of ways. Particularly since a lot of this is very new to me (the political aspect in particular), so being in this constant fusion of art, politics and philosophy these three days – both in the classrooms and on the street – certainly paved the way for new lines of thinking. Events like this where one of the main reasons for why I applied to Goldsmiths in the first place, so I’m very pleased for these three days in particular (and to hear the synopsis to Guattari’s unmade and unknown sci-fi film is a bonus which is pretty hard to match).

Make sure to have a look at Facs of Life if it’s being screened near you. Also, I hope the filmmakers will have a chance to be able to subtitle more of Deleuze’s lectures (over 18 hours of material in total!), since it’s such an amazing thing to be able to get a glimpse of his seminars, and really interesting to study in relation to his books (which is something that has been of great value to me when studying DeLanda, since watching all his video lectures on Youtube has helped me tremendously with going through his written material). In the meantime, here is a trailer to Facs of Life:

I also want to share this statement by Alexander García Düttman (professor of philosophy at Goldsmiths) since I think it captures a lot of what probably is going to happen with higher education in Britain in the near future:

The Life and Death of the University, by Alexander García Düttman

- In the last few weeks, much emphasis has been placed on the impact that the unprecedented increase in tuition fees will have on the life of the university and, beyond the university’s boundaries, on the life of future students themselves. But oddly it seems that the real import of the cuts to Higher Education proposed by the current government will remain hidden, or is dissimulated, as long as we do not take on board the reason why student fees are to be raised so significantly. This is because the Arts, the Humanities and the Social Sciences will no longer receive teaching grants from the government. It is the privatisation of an essential part of the university that leads to the proposal that tuition fees should be raised. So by dividing or splitting it up, the government and all who support its policies in matters of Higher Education, are destroying the life of the university, are putting the university to death. When students say that the university is going to die, when, symbolically, they carry the university to its grave, they are only showing what the government is doing to the university, they are denouncing the violence that is threatening the university’s life. The students are calling things by their names instead of pussyfooting around the death of the university, and they are doing so because they want the university to remain alive.

- Everybody knows that fees alone cannot sustain the Arts, the Humanities and the Social Sciences in the university, and that in a situation of total competition for money, whether it comes from fees or from private funding, the university cannot survive. Where it survives, its life will be transformed radically: it will survive only as a simulacrum of life, a death worse than death, a life of zombies, with students no longer being students but clients and consumers, and with academics no longer being academics but replaceable entities in a service industry designed to satisfy the desires of clients and consumers who pay a high price for such satisfaction. Today, the value of an academic is already measured against his ability to provide money by being successful at getting enormous grants. The model of the academic is the networker and the lobbyist, not the researcher and the teacher.

- What is happening now should not come as a surprise. It is not a sudden and unexpected development. Rather, it is the end of a process which has been in place for a long time. What is happening now is only the final takeover of administration. Everybody knows that for more than twenty years now, administration has been taking over the university, in the UK perhaps more so than elsewhere in Europe. For when the Arts, the Humanities and the Social Sciences can exist on the basis of fees only, we have a situation of total accountability. The more the administration takes over the university, the more it subordinates the life of the university to the principle of accountability. Universities must be profitable and sustainable. With the withdrawal of teaching grants, this principle sways over the life of the university and substitutes a university that is actually dead for a university that is truly alive. Given how long the process has lasted, given how much academics have become used to it as if it were the most normal thing in the world that the principle of accountability reigns supreme in the university, one should not be too surprised at the fact that many academics prefer not to speak out in the face of cuts that will amount to an undermining of the university: be it out of fear for their jobs, or out of conformism, opportunism, and personal interest, or even out of a conviction that there can be no other university. The life of the university depends ultimately on an idea, on an idea that was conceived in the Humanities, precisely. It depends on the acknowledgment that the university is that rare and strange place where things can be taught, where research can be conducted, that cannot be accounted for, not immediately and perhaps not even in the long run. What politicians and their accomplices in the university seem to forget is that unless there is such a space, the life of the society, social life itself is destroyed. If it is to resist death, life depends on a surplus, on the superfluous and the excessive, on what cannot be measured, calculated, integrated, put to work.

- As always, the deadly risk that we run when faced with a deadly prospect such as the final takeover of the university by administration, by the principle of accountability and sustainability, is to forget that it is in a time when everything seems to be at stake that everything must be staked. The life of the university must be vouchsafed by students and academics reclaiming the university, reversing a political process that will result in the death of the university: the process which submits the university to the administration, to total accountability. Why is this a time when everything is at stake? Because the arguments, including the ones I have sketched out here, are all well known, and still are not heard anymore.

- The university is the place of students and academics and it is they who must run it.

Alexander García Düttmann, 8th December 2010

[Düttman-text from the Goldsmiths Occupation Blog and pictures from Infinite Thought.]

New Blog Project: "Vocalities"

2010-11-19T08:59:00.000-08:00

I am taking part in a new blog project, as part of the course I'm doing at Goldsmiths (with Mark Fisher, aka k-punk), which might be a bit interesting since the reading material draws from Lacan's work, and psychoanalysis in general (i.e., Dolar, Silverman, Kittler, etc.), rather than Deleuze, Guattari and DeLanda. Therefore, I have no idea of what I will contribute with at this point, but I have posted a brief summary of the psychologist Julian Jaynes' theory of bicameralism, auditory halllucinations and despotic voices, in relation to Dolar's reading of Lacan, as a starting point.

Details on DeLanda's upcoming book "Philosophy and Simulation - The Emergence of Synthetic Reason"

2010-11-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

In this groundbreaking new book, Manuel Delanda analyzes all the different genres of simulation (from cellular automata and genetic algorithms to neural nets and multi-agent systems) as a means to conceptualize the possibility spaces associated with causal (and other) capacities. Simulations allow us to stage actual interactions among a population of agents and to observe the emergent wholes that result from those interactions. Simulations have become as important as mathematical models in theoretical science. As computer power and memory have become cheaper they have migrated to the desktop, where they now play the role that small-scale experiments used to play. A philosophical examination of the epistemology of simulations is needed to cement this new role, underlining the consequences that simulations may have for materialist philosophy itself. This remarkably clear philosophical discussion of a rapidly growing field, from a thinker at the forefront of research at the interface of science and the humanities, is a must-read for anyone interested in the philosophy of technology and the philosophy of science at all levels

Manuel DeLanda is a distinguished writer, artist and philosopher. He began his career in experimental film, later becoming a computer artist and programmer. He is now Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is the author of the bestselling books War in the Age of Intelligent Machines and A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, as well as A New Philosophy of Society and Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy.

Introduction: Emergence in History
1. The Storm in the Computer
2. Cellular Automata and Patterns of Flow
3. Artificial Chemistries and the Prebiotic Soup
4. Genetic Algorithms and the Prebiotic Soup
5. Genetic Algorithms and Ancient Organisms
6. Neural Nets and Insect Intelligence
7. Neural Nets and Mammalian Memory
8. Multiagents and Primate Strategies
9. Multiagents and Stone Age Economics
10. Multiagents and Primitive Language
11. Multiagents and Archaic States
Appendix: Links to Assemblage Theory

240 pages
15 Jan 2011
Continuum Books

My talk at the Visual Cultures Guest Lecture and Screening Series at Goldsmiths

2010-11-05T05:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I presented some of my work as part of the Guest Lecture and Screening Series at the Visual Cultures Department at Goldsmiths. Here is a brief outline of the talk:

Deleuze, Subjectivity and New Media
This Presentation will introduce Gilles Deleuze's Humean philosophy of subjectivity through the Mexican philosopher Manuel DeLanda's neo-materialist reading of Deleuze. Key issues that will be brought up are perception, memory, language and attention, which also will be applied to questions related to art and new media.

Recommended Reading
DeLanda, Manuel, "Deleuze and the Genesis of Form", Art Node, 1998.

This brief paper serves as a good introduction to DeLanda's approach to Deleuze; both in terms of his neo-materialist ontology and choice of terminology, which also will be discussed briefly during the presentation.

Overall I felt that the presentation went well, even though there obviously are a lot of points which needs to be expanded, but apart from the concluding passage (on political economy), which really is a bit too vague, I felt that I managed to talk about the key issues that I wanted to bring up. So all-in-all it was a decent summary of what I have been exploring the last years, and that I want to pursue further in the future. The discussion afterwards centred mostly around two issues: my critique of "Deleuzian jargon" and the all too brief passages on political economy, which I think was mostly implicated throughout the presentation, but surfaced a bit at the end.

Regarding the first issue, some tended to side with my critique, while others argued that by "clarifying" Deleuze you loose too much of the mobility of his thought. This obviously goes down to personal preference, and I can clearly see the benefits of both sides, even though Deleuze's own style never really worked for me personally.

The second issue - i.e. the argument that deterritoralization doesn't work anymore, since capital has already deterritorialized and decoded everything - was something that I suspected would come up, since I know that the part on (DeLanda's) political economy really needs to be expanded quite a lot, particularly because of its controversial nature (i.e. anti-Marx, although still leftist), but this is something that I will try and tackle in future texts. For now I can only say that I can understand the argument, although I think that my own position will be clearer once I have a chance to contextualize it better than here.

Below is the final draft of the whole manuscript (which on one hand consists of rewritings of earlier posts on this blog, and on the other of new material).

The Philosophy of Manuel DeLanda

2010-09-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

Since I have been spending the last 2-3 years doing intensive personal research into the neo-materialist philosophy of Manuel DeLanda(‘s reading of Gilles Deleuze), I feel that it is now time to summarize some of the most important points. Since DeLanda’s work covers a lot of different areas – from science, mathematics and linguistics, to sociology, economics and warfare – I won’t discuss each one of them here (I am for example completely ignoring his important contributions to warfare and the philosophy of scientific epistemology), nor be able to discuss them all in detail (since I for example lack sufficient knowledge of the formal aspects of such areas as group theory and differential geometry). My aim with this text is rather a general overview of DeLanda’s ontology, as a way to “set the stage” for my own work (I won’t, however, make this connection here, since my focus is on summarizing DeLanda, but expect future posts to follow it up). The ideas I discuss can be found in his books (i.e. A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History (1997), Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002), A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (2006) and the newly released collection of essays, Deleuze: History and Science (2010)), a number of essays available on the web (see the annotated bibliography in the ‘Links’ section to the right) and the video lectures that the European Graduate School kindly has put up in their Youtube-Channel (once again, check the “Links” section to the right). Also, a brief footnote, I realize that I sometimes speak of “Deleuze” only, and not DeLanda, but this is almost impossible to avoid, since DeLanda’s philosophy is so much in debt to Deleuze’s that their positions usually are completely “in tune” with each other. Thus, I will often talk about Deleuze only, since he was the one who first formulated these ideas, and so he deserves to be credited with them, but it should not be forgotten that my framework and narrative always is fully DeLandian, so he is always part of the text, if not explicitly then at least implicitly, since many of the examples I use in fact come from him (even though the ideas are Deleuze’s).

Before I start with the philosophical discussion I want to say a few things about DeLanda’s background and style of presentation. Unlike the typical academic, DeLanda has no formal university credentials in philosophy (even though he teaches philosophy today), since he started his career as a filmmaker and then became a computer programmer (developing 3D-software), which led him to write his first book War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991 – not discussed here for reasons mentioned earlier). This has allowed him to work in a very “non-academic” way, by doing highly cross-disciplinary work, writing for a number of different audiences (sociologists, scientists, architects, etc.), rather than the standard “Deleuzian scholar” (thus introducing Deleuze’s ideas to other academic fields, and even to non-academics), and finally write in a simple but lucid style, which rejects the “dryness” of many more traditional academic texts. This last point is important, not only because of its (implicit) criticism of academic writing, but also since DeLanda in this respect clearly breaks with Deleuze, who wrote dense and difficult texts, filled with metaphors and jargon. Thus, even though Deleuze is, by far, the most important philosopher for DeLanda (in fact, he follows him in nearly every way, with a few important exceptions, which I will come back to later), he rejects Deleuze’s esoteric “Continental” style of presentation in favour of an exoteric, analytical style, totally free of jargon. This is something I appreciate, since I also have difficulties with Deleuze’s style of presentation. He not only uses obscure terms for his philosophical ideas (such as “body without organs”, “singularity”, “time-image”, “plane of consistency”, “line of flight”, etc.), but also deliberately changes terminology not only between books, but sometimes within one and the same book, while at the same time assuming that the reader is familiar with these terms and shifts. The problem is of course that few people are, and this makes reading Deleuze a real headache, while also opening up for a lot of misunderstandings and misinterpretations, which threatens to obscure the originality of his ideas. This is indeed a problem, and what makes it even worse is that many of the introductory books and secondary work on Deleuze make use of the same jargon and therefore (a bit ironically) fail to give a sufficient idea of what he actually contributed with. I am obviously a bit excessive here, and it is certainly not my intent to dismiss all of the secondary work on Deleuze (nor claim the these authors didn’t understand his ideas), yet I still can’t deny that almost every single one of these books have left me disappointed – precisely because they either are too obscure (this doesn’t mean that I don’t understand them, but rather that they seem to be more of a repetition of Deleuzian jargon than expanding on his basic ideas), or too academic for my taste. This is a first reason for why I admire the work of DeLanda, precisely because he not only writes in a way which everyone can understand (even people without academic credentials in philosophy), but also manages to both reintroduce and rethink Deleuzian philosophy in ways which goes beyond philosophical departments, to a number of other academic- and non-academic fields. He has described himself as a “street philosopher”, and his style of presentation as a “minor” style, which introduces a certain amount of clarity into the English language. This is something I have been highly inspired by, since I also want to write not so much to other philosophers as to artists, curators, producers, and people in general who are involved in contemporary artistic and cultural production, since I think that they indeed are some of those who would benefit the most from a Deleuzian philosophy (this does, however, not mean that I am uninterested in reaching an academic audience, on the contrary, since materialism still is an unorthodox philosophical position this is indeed highly relevant). In this sense, a “street philosophical” perspective, and a clear and concise style of presentation is highly relevant, since we need Deleuze’s thought right now, as DeLanda has pointed out (in response to Deleuze’s own comment that if it took people 400 years to finally understand Spinoza he has no problems if it takes 400 years to understand him), rather than loosing ourselves in misunderstandings and academic jargon.

Thus, DeLanda has set out to reintroduce Deleuzian philosophy into all those areas Deleuze himself covered (except aesthetics, which is a bit surprising because of his background as a filmmaker, so this is where I hope to make some contributions), while also expanding on his basic arguments (so in this sense, DeLanda’s texts actually both serve as the best possible introduction to Deleuze available today, and the best rethinking of Deleuzian philosophy as well). His most important contributions here are to be found in his reconstruction of Deleuze’s ontology (presented in Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, which for me is his best book and an excellent starting point for anyone interested in Deleuze and materialism). Ontology is the branch of philosophy which deals with which entities a philosopher considers real, and examples of an ontological position are those philosophers who believe that reality is shaped by linguistic categories, so their ontology mostly consists of mental entities, or those philosophers (like Deleuze and DeLanda) who believe that reality exists independently of our minds. For these latter philosophers, matter has an autonomous existence, independent of any human subject, so these philosophers may be labelled “materialist-” or “realist philosophers” (it goes without saying that a materialist also has to be a realist, but someone who believes in the existence of heaven and hell is a realist but clearly not a materialist, yet this is obviously an extreme example). But this also opens up a lot of problems, since something has to guarantee the (mind-independent) existence of all the entities around us, and this can obviously not be mental categories, since this would take us back to idealism once again. Thus, this problem must be solved differently, which Deleuze did in a very original way.

The classical answer to the problem of a mind-independent existence of entities is the concept of an essence – such as in the form of Platonic or Aristotelian essences. According to essentialism, a mountain, for example, is said to possess certain aspects of “mountainhood”, which guarantees its mind-independent existence. For Plato, for example, each actual entity was a lower representation of the ideal model of that entity, which existed in a transcendental space of essences, and to which each actual entity was just an imperfect replica. This “transcendental essentialism” might seem a bit dated today (even though religion and creationism is very similar, except that in this case form begins as an idea in God’s mind), but the Aristotelian concept of “taxonomic essentialism” is still widely accepted, to the degree that it has become part of our everyday language (such as with “generic” and “specific”). For Aristotle, it was a matter of finding a set of definable characteristics for each actual entity, which were said to be timeless and eternal, and these characteristics were said to define the essence of that entity. He did for example categorize biological entities into three levels, organisms, species and genera, where the organisms of the first level were specific, but the other two were general and therefore formed “general categories” which were unchanging and eternal. Thus, essentialism (and creationism) shares with idealism a view of matter as an inert receptacle for forms coming from the outside. In other words, the morphogenesis (i.e. the birth of form) of material entities comes from transcendental agents (either essences, a divine entity or mental categories), and this is where Deleuze’s originality lies, since he was the first philosophers to synthesize an alternative to this, in which matter is pregnant with morphogenesis. In other words, for Deleuze, the birth of form does not come from some kind of transcendental entity, but from within matter itself. Therefore, his philosophy is a philosophy of immanence (i.e. the opposite of transcendence), in which matter itself has the capacity to give birth to form (without any intervention of a transcendent agent).

The formal aspects of this idea are highly complex (probably the most complex of both Deleuze’s and DeLanda’s philosophies), and requires an understanding of both mathematics as well as several scientific branches, which I won’t go into here, but the main idea is that what gives birth to actual entities are not classifications, essences or a divine entity – but immanent, material processes. These processes are imperceptible to us, but still very real and precede stable entities (beings), and together constitute what Deleuze refers to as the virtual (also “plane of immanence”, “body without organs”, “plane of consistency”, etc.). The virtual should not be confused with virtual reality (as in computer simulations and 3D-animation), since it is a concept Deleuze borrows from his predecessor Henri Bergson and expands in a very original way. For Deleuze, the virtual is rather a real domain of material processes (becomings), from which stable entities (both organic and inorganic) are born through a process which he calls divergent actualization. Let me illustrate this with an example from DeLanda:

“The simplest type of immanent resource for morphogenesis seems to be endogenously-generated stable states. Historically, the first such states to be discovered by scientists studying the behaviour of matter (gases) were energy minima (or correspondingly, entropy maxima). The spherical form of a soap bubble, for instance, emerges out of the interactions among its constituent molecules as these are constrained energetically to "seek" the point at which surface tension is minimized. In this case, there is no question of an essence of "soap-bubbleness" somehow imposing itself from the outside, [or] an ideal geometric form (a sphere) shaping an inert collection of molecules. Rather, an endogenous topological form (a point in the space of energetic possibilities for this molecular assemblage) governs the collective behaviour of the individual soap molecules, and results in the emergence of a spherical shape. Moreover, the same topological form, the same minimal point, can guide the processes that generate many other geometrical forms. For example, if instead of molecules of soap we have the atomic components of an ordinary salt crystal, the form that emerges from minimizing energy (bonding energy in this case) is a cube. In other words, one and the same topological form can guide the morphogenesis of a variety of geometrical forms.”

This last point is of crucial importance, since this means that different actual entities can be actualized from the same virtual potentiality. In other words, there is no resemblance between the virtual, topological form and the actual entities which are unfolded from it, which is what guarantees the break from essentialism. The same point applies to more complex entities, such as fully formed organisms, which, rather than being realized by transcendental agents, are “unfolded” from virtual forms to actual entities, through immanent, material processes. Deleuze, for example, writes on embryology and points out that it shows that the division of the egg is preceded by more significant morphogenetic processes, such as “the augmentation of free surfaces, stretching of cellular layers, invagination by folding, regional displacement of groups. A whole kinematics of the egg appears which implies a dynamic”. Thus, what gives birth to organisms is not an essence, but rather a virtual body plan (Deleuze’s concept of the “body without organs”), which may be stretched and twisted in different directions and in this way actualize fully formed organisms. This is precisely the idea of topology, which is the most abstract form of geometry known today, in which Euclidean properties (i.e. length, area, volume, etc.) no longer are relevant, since, in topology, something may suddenly be stretched and folded in various ways – without loosing its fundamental properties (as in the famous example of the coffee cup and the doughnut, which are the same entity in topology).

This is Deleuze’s original way to break with both essentialism and idealism, by creating a philosophy in which not only actual material entities are considered real, but where they also are preceded by more significant virtual processes, which, even though they remain imperceptible to us, are considered just as real as fully formed entities. In other words, for Deleuze, matter not only exists independently of our minds, but also has the capacity to express itself independently of our minds (and of essences or a God). This is indeed a highly original philosophical idea, which not only has the guts to grant full existence to the material world, but also refuses to be organized exclusively around that which is human (what Nietzsche called “the human-all-to-human”, Foucault “the episteme of man” and DeLanda “the anthropocentrism of Western philosophy”). Therefore, Deleuze argues that the material world has just as much to teach us about expressivity as the best artists, musicians, poets and writers, and he and Guattari develop an extensive philosophy of non-human expressivity, which starts with the virtual processes of the plane of immanence, and proceeds through the three-dimensional expressivity of geological strata, to the one-dimensional expressivity of the genetic code and even the learnt expressivity of certain animals. This latter example is particularly interesting, since it illustrates that certain birds actually can be said to be artists just like human beings (an idea which Deleuze and Guattari also take from the composer Olivier Messiaen, who famously stated that “birds are artists”), since certain lines of their expressivity no longer are tied to their DNA, but have detached themselves and become what DeLanda (following Richard Dawkins) calls “memes”, which refers to expressive practices which must be learned as a skill. This may be illustrated with the example of birdsong: some birds (such as the blackbird and the nightingale) sing highly complex melodies, which never repeat themselves, but rather is in a process of constant becoming – and were learnt when the bird listened to other birds. In other words, if a nightingale is isolated it won’t be able to perform this expressivity precisely because it is not coded in its genes, but a skill which must be learned by the bird. Thus, birds are artists in their own way, and yet another example of the non-human expressivity that exists all around us. It is therefore crucial, particularly for artists, not to remain caught up exclusively in that which is human; not that such things as politics and economics is unimportant, but by closing ourselves too much into ourselves, we loose our “otherness”, which is the richness of the material world and its immanent, morphogenetic processes. So if one wants to be a good artist, it is crucial to become-nature, become-animal and become-imperceptible. This does of course not mean that we literally should try to become an animal, or even imitate it, but rather that we should see it as both an artistic, a philosophical and even an ethical exercise to understand and identity with animal life and material processes, precisely as a way to break free from the Western obsession with that which is exclusively human; because if we accept Deleuze’s ideas, it follows as a logical consequence that we also must have the guts to leave the human-all-to-human.

This may be further illustrated with yet another important aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy, which is the question of subjectivity. I have already made clear that Deleuze did not subscribe to an idealist ontology, so he could naturally not accept the dominant, so-called “Neo-Kantian” theory of subjectivity, since it is based on the idealist idea that language organizes our perception of the world in the form of arbitrary signifiers, which ultimately means that every culture lives in its own world (what is known as the “Whorf-Sapir hypothesis”, after the linguists Benjamin-Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir), since they don’t speak the same language (Whorf for example studied certain African tribes who don’t have a word for past tenses, and thus concluded that the past didn’t exist in their worldview). This main idea exploded in many branches during the 20th century (in what is known as “the linguistic turn”) – from Saussure in linguistics (the signifier), to Kuhn in the philosophy of science (the paradigm), Jaynes in neuropsychology (the bilateral mind), Bourdieu in sociology (the habitus), McLuhan in media theory (“the medium is the message”), to all the philosophers who began to use the concept of signifiers – but could not be further from Deleuze, since it reduces the expressivity of the material world and the plane of immanence to linguistic classifications. Deleuze, however, found another direction in the philosopher David Hume, who had developed a theory of subjectivity which unfortunately (as both DeLanda and Deleuze have pointed out) had been buried under the outdated slogan “sense data is the foundation of all knowledge”, which is what everyone associated the name Hume with. But Deleuze made his position very clear already in his first book (on Hume), in which he argued for a theory of subjectivity which today has become the “nemesis” to the Neo-Kantian theory, and which DeLanda also has used extensively in his work.

According to this theory, the subject is said to be a chrystallization, or a territorialization, of distinct and separable sense impressions (visual, aural, tactile, etc.), in a field of raw sensation (colours, sounds, textures, smells and tastes, but also inner sensations, such as fear, joy, pride, hate, and so on). In other words, these impressions are neither representations of general categories, nor structured by language, but singular in-themselves (“singular” should not be confused with “singular as opposed to plural”, since its meaning in this context rather is “singular as opposed to ordinary”; in other words, “singular”, in this case, means “unique” or “special”). Furthermore, the memories we store of these impressions are what Hume referred to as “ideas”. Ideas are usually considered to be linguistic, but for Hume they have absolutely nothing to do with linguistics, since they are lower-intensity replicas of actual impressions. For example, if I remember the smell of an apple, what is stored in my brain is not “the concept of apple” (as a linguistic classification), but rather the ability to reproduce the actual sensation, although at a much lower intensity. Thus, ideas are not only non-linguistic, but also not representations of impressions; they are rather virtual recreations of actual impressions (a similar theory of memory may of course be found in Bergson, who also influenced Deleuze to a large extent). This does of course not mean that we cannot remember linguistically coded facts (such as “my friends birthday is on November 25th), since we obviously can, but rather that there is an even more significant aspect of memory which has nothing to do with linguistics, representations or signifiers.

But what is it that holds this territorialization together, and prevents it from being merely a loose collection of impressions and ideas? According to Hume it is habit, or the habitual association of ideas. Let me illustrate this with an example often used by DeLanda: do Eskimos see 29 kinds of snow because they have 29 words for snow (Kant), or do Eskimos have 29 words for snow because every day they live, hunt, build, etc., in 29, real, mind-independent kinds of snow (Hume)? In other words, what comes first: the words or everything else (i.e. every non-linguistic activity Eskimos engage in, in their daily lives)? For Hume, it would obviously be the latter, and the words would be the result of the daily lives of Eskimos, because when something becomes important in one’s life (i.e. when one’s habitual, day-to-day experience is organized around certain entities and routines in particular), synonyms begin to accumulate, and a system of classification is born. In this sense, it is the habit of repeating non-linguistic activities (rather than mental categories), which is the most fundamental aspect of the structure of subjectivity, but this also means that we must ask ourselves: what happens if this habit is disrupted? In fact, if the subject indeed is nothing more than a territorialization of a multiplicity of sense impressions, it becomes both a philosophical and artistic exercise to deterritorialize the subject. There are of course many ways of achieving this, such as sensory isolation chambers, deliriums, or the more obvious example of psychedelic drugs, but the implications are the same in all cases, i.e. the genesis of the subject and its relationship with the virtual. This also leads us back to the question of non-human expressivity, since Hume’s conception of the subject is very much in tune with Deleuze’s idea of non-human expressivity, precisely because he did not emphasize language as much as non-linguistic practices and the importance of intensities (i.e. raw sensations). Thus, it becomes crucial for artists to constantly challenge the territorializations of the subject that habit has created, by disrupting the habitual association of ideas (which, for Hume, consists of three aspects: resemblance, causality, and contiguity in space and time) and extend our limited sense impressions through works of art. Because, on the contrary to Hume’s dated epistemology (what now is known as “positivism”), there are a multiplicity of imperceptible material processes all around us (Deleuze’s virtual), which are fully real even though we can’t perceive them with our bare senses, and it thus becomes the responsibility of the artist to unfold these immanent expressivities – to “render imperceptible forces perceptible”, as Deleuze and Guattari put it. This could be the vibrations of geological strata, the movements of atoms, or the blooming of flowers; expressive, material processes which we obviously can’t deny even though we cannot perceive them directly – but which we can render perceptible with the help of technology. Thus, technology (on the contrary to what many so called “post-modern” philosophers argue) becomes crucial as a way to deterritorialize the subject by opening it up to the (actual and virtual aspects of) the material world, and thus another way to reduce the anthropocentrism which currently is sweeping over many academic institutions (this is indeed one of the most important problems for an artist today).

Let me now switch focus a bit, and go back to another important aspect of the neo-materialist ontology, which is the ontology of the actual. We have already seen how Deleuze constructed an original ontology of the virtual, but what about actual entities, such as towns, social organizations, eco-systems, species, computer networks, and so on? This is what I briefly will discuss now, but here I must first mention that this is the only time where DeLanda clearly breaks with Deleuze, and since I believe that this break is justified I will follow DeLanda in this presentation. According to DeLanda, one of the main ontological errors of many social and political explanations today (including Deleuze’s own, which is their disagreement) is to believe in the existence of so-called “reified generalities”. To “reify” something means to postulate that something exists when it in fact does not exist, and DeLanda often uses examples such as “the market in general”, “the state in general” and “evil in general”, to point out common uses of reified generalities. What is “evil in general”, for example? Can we really talk about “evil in general”, and is this really a valid entity in a social explanation? For DeLanda, the answer is obviously “no”, and he uses the following example to illustrate this: when asked the question “why is Iraq developing a nuclear bomb?” a valid answer for those who believe in evil in general would be “because they’re evil”. But what does that really explain? Not much, for DeLanda, since he argues that a concept such as “evil in general” is too vague to mean anything at all, and is therefore an empty, or even non-existent, concept. This does of course not mean that everything is fine in Iraq, but rather that we need to stop targeting these reified generalities, and instead rediscover the richness of the concrete. Let me illustrate this idea with another example, which is the example of political economy, since DeLanda (despite being a leftist) clearly breaks with Marxist political economy for similar reasons. He argues that we should no longer talk about “capital in general” or “the capitalist system”, or assume that we live in a fully “capitalist society” (like many post-modern philosophers argue), but rather construct a new political economy, which avoids these dead-ends. He finds this alternative route in the French economic historian Fernand Braudel (arguably his most important source of inspiration following Deleuze and Guattari and, possibly, Foucault), who has written an extensive (over 2000 pages), three-volume history of the economic institutions of the West, which is diametrically opposite to Marx in many ways (but still leftist). First of all, Braudel’s history of economics avoids organizing history in a line of “neat periodizations” (such as feudalism, capitalism, late-capitalism, etc.), but instead writes a history which is seen in a much more multiplicity kind of way (for example, what we usually talk about as feudalism was, in fact, the most intense period of urbanization in Europe, according to Braudel). Secondly, Braudel argues that there was never such a thing as a “capitalist system”. Once again, this does not mean that there was never economic power, but rather that there was never a “systematic whole”. On the contrary, and this is Braudels third important point, as far back as the 13th century two forms of economic institutions have coexisted alongside each other – and continues to do so today. One of them – what Braudel calls “antimarkets” and DeLanda “economies of scale” – are large economic institutions in the Marxist sense (such as big corporations) forming monopolies and oligopolies, which also are price-setters (i.e. they have the ability to manipulate markets prices through for example supply and demand, which paradoxically separates them from markets as such, which is the meaning of the term “antimarket”), but there are also another type of economic institutions, which Braudel refers to as “markets” and DeLanda as “economies of agglomeration”. These economic institutions follow very different dynamics than antimarkets, since they are price-takers (i.e. they do not manipulate prices through supply and demand, but prices are set according to them) and also rely on the competition (but also exchange of skills) between each other (for example a multiplicity of small firms in a local region). That is, while economies of scale expand vertically, by integrating associated firms in its top-down, hierarchical system, economies of agglomeration rather expand horizontally and bottom-up, through the mushrooming of new firms, with the lack of a centre of decision-making. Thus, while the left have continually demonized “the market”, Braudel instead argues that there was never a market in that sense, and that these forms of economic exploitations rather should be thought of as antimarkets, while he also argues that markets can be creative, as in economies of agglomeration, which, even though they exchange money and goods, are important sources of creativity and innovation. In Braudel’s own words:

“[W]e should not be too quick to assume that Capitalism embraces the whole of western society, that it accounts for every stitch in the social fabric. […] On the contrary […], there is a dialectic still very much alive between capitalism on the one hand, and its antithesis, the ‘non-capitalism’ of the lower level [of the economy] on the other. […] The lowest level, not being paralysed by the size of its plant or organization, is the one readiest to adapt; it is the seedbed of inspiration, improvisation and even innovation, although its most brilliant discoveries sooner or later fall into the hands of the holders of capital. It was not the capitalists who brought about the first cotton revolution; all the new ideas came from enterprising small businesses.”

Following this, DeLanda argues that concepts such as “capital” or “the capitalist system” have lost much of their critical momentum and instead ended up as leftist slogans, which no longer are very effective, besides from when one needs to gather a lot of people for a protest action, but theoreticians need to avoid these dangers and instead rediscover things in their full heterogeneity. Thus, he substitutes “the capitalist system” with a multiplicity of economic institutions – some which exercise economic power, but also some which introduce economic creativity. This example, besides from being an important contribution to leftist political economy, also gives us an idea of DeLanda’s ontology of the actual, which is composed not of reified generalities such as “society”, “power” and “the state”, but rather with a multiplicity of individual entities which have been born through concrete, historical processes. This includes human individuals, but also larger-scale entities, such as social justice movements, organizations, villages and cities – all of which can be said to be individual entities operating on different spatio-temporal scales. Because just like Deleuze argues that a species is not an essence, but rather a singular individual (i.e. it is born at a certain time, through a concrete historical process, and also dies at a certain time, at the time of its extinction) operating on a larger spatio-temporal scale than the members of that species, DeLanda argues that a social organization is a singular individual (with a concrete history) made up of its members, while a town is a singular individual made up of the social organizations (and so on) of that town. This is therefore neither an ontology of totalities, nor of individual subjects operating in isolation, but rather of emergent properties. That is, properties of an entity which cannot be reduced to the entities on the lower level (such as solidarity in a community), but which may affect them if the larger-scale entity reacts back on them (as when the individuals of a community behave differently because of their feelings of solidarity). Furthermore, this ontology does not only include human subjects and organizations at various levels, but also non-human entities, such as buildings, forests, bacteria, and so on. Thus, rather than “society in general”, and neat periodizations such as “feudalism, capitalism and late capitalism”, DeLanda’s ontology consists of a multiplicity of singular entities and their parallel histories, such as the histories of cities, genes, biomass, memes, and so on.

I’m going to stop here, even though I’ve mentioned far from all of DeLanda’s contributions, and also could go a lot more into some, but I believe this text still serves as a decent summary of his basic ideas, and also as a good stepping-stone for my future work, which naturally will see me extending several of these ideas into my own areas of interest (what I’ve already started to do in my other posts in this blog), when I’m continuing my work in the future.

Stan Brakhage - In Memoriam

2010-08-29T02:36:00.000-07:00

Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) was an American experimental filmmaker, who, to me, probably is the most important so called ”avant-garde filmmaker” of all time (along with Maya Deren). Usually working completely by himself, he made over 400 films during his fifty year long career–some just a few seconds of duration and some several hours long–from the early dramatic shorts to increasingly abstract films and finally his so called “flicker films”, which consist of nothing more than layers of pulsating colours (like a Pollock painting moving in time, to make a simple analogy). He was also a prominent film theoretician and held regular classes where he discussed his own and others films (these classes also offered him the financial support he needed, since he never could make a living from his films, because of their unconventional style), and also wrote a quite large body of texts where he presented his visions of cinema, most famously in the now classical film-manifesto Metaphors on Vision (1963), where he presented his idea of the camera as the “untutored eye” (see below). I first became aware of Brakhage when Criterion released their dvd-collection By Brakhage: An Anthology some years ago (and later wrote my BA-thesis on his film theory), and since I’ve recently spent over seven hours going through the newly released By Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume 2 (yet another amazing volume, which gives us an additional 30 films, following the 26 included in the first volume), I feel that it is time to follow-up my earlier discussions of Brakhage (and maybe set the stage for future ones too).

What interests me in Brakhage’s theoretical writings is, not surprisingly, his famous concept of the untutored eye, particularly because I think that it resonates strongly with my Deleuzian/DeLandian neo-materialist approach. Deleuze did of course mention Brakhage when he wrote his two books on cinema in the 80’s (particularly in the first book, in the chapters on the perception-image and the affection-image), but he did (a bit surprisingly) not develop this discussion at length, so there is plenty of room to expand it from a neo-Deleuzian/DeLandian context, which is what I want to sketch out here, focusing on the concept of the untutored eye. The famous quote regarding the untutored eye has been referenced several times, but it is certainly worth mentioning it again:

Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of “Green”? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? How aware of variations in heat waves can the eye be? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable graduations of color. Imagine a world before the “beginning was the word”.

These lines, written by Brakhage himself, actually sum up the essence of his work and the cinematic style he developed and continually enriched until his death in 2003. He was certainly not the first filmmaker to work so intensely with colours, or the act of perception, yet his influences in these domains (for example on the artists behind the Optofonica-dvd, which I have written about earlier in this blog) have been more widespread than any other filmmaker working in a similar style. Brakhage’s main interest is precisely the act of perception itself, because whereas perception usually is considered secondary in narrative films (i.e. subordinated to the story) for Brakhage, there is nothing but (visual) perception itself. In other words, it is the act of seeing–or “the art of vision”, as he himself puts it–which is what his films is all about. There is rarely any narrative whatsoever, and the films are usually loaded with abstract images, visual manipulations and fast cuts (he is actually considered an important predecessor to the now-so-famous “MTV-fast cutting”). Furthermore, he rarely used sound in his films (not even music), because he was of the opinion that sound obscured the immanent rhythm of the images, which is a bad thing for a director so intensely devoted to the art of vision.

In Metaphors on Vision, Brakhage criticised our Western visual tradition for being obsessive with Renaissance perspective (what Deleuze calls “solid perception”) fixed in three-dimensional space. To Brakhage, this is a severely reduced and static conception of space, which certainly isn’t some kind of a priori of human vision, but rather a routinized mode of vision resulting from nothing but habit. But vision, far from being fixed in solid, three-dimensional space, is much more flexible since, for Brakhage, seeing is skill, and cinema is precisely the medium he needs in order to deterritorialize Western vision and its obsession with Renaissance perspective. Thus, the world is not static and fixed, but rather in constant movement and variation and the camera, for Brakhage, subsequently becomes a crucial tool for enriching vision and the act of seeing, and in his films he pushes this idea to the limit by shooting in the negative, scratching (and even spitting) on the lens, experimenting with various cameras and sometimes even painting directly on the film strip, thus making films without a camera (one of his most famous films in this style is Mothlight (1963), for which he glued a multiplicity of moth wings on the film strips and then edited it together). This is a continuing theme of his–from his first films from the 50’s to his last from 2000, shortly before his death–and something he continued to explore in over 50 years and 400 films.

Deleuze follows this idea when he mentions Brakhage in Cinema 1, in the discussion of the perception-image and the affection-image. Deleuze contrasts Brakhage’s gaseous perception with the solid perception of narrative cinema, and also argues that Brakhage is a filmmaker for which the camera becomes a non-human eye, capable of exploring “a Cézannian world absent of man”, which is nothing but pure matter in its entirety. His discussion stops here, yet there is obviously a lot to add to it, particularly when it comes to the relationship between Brakhage and the neo-materialist conception of the subject. As I wrote in the post on Optofonica, the subject, for Deleuze and DeLanda, is nothing more than a territorialization in a field of raw sensation, that is, a hardening of unique and separable sense perceptions routinized by habit. These perceptions are neither representations of general categories, but rather distinct and singular, nor subordinated to arbitrary signifiers (as in linguistic relativism), since they precede language ontologically. Furthermore, following the philosopher Henri Bergson, these perceptions are severely limited in the sense that we cannot perceive the material world in its entirety, since, for evolutionary purposes, our ears, eyes, and so on, have been modified in such a way. Yet, this does not mean that our habitual acts of perception (this does obviously include not only visual perception, but also aural, tactile, and so on) cannot be deterritorialized, or made more unstable, by certain means–from psychedelic drugs to the cinema of Brakhage. On the contrary, it rather becomes not only a possibility but both an artistic and a philosophical exercise to deterritorialize ourselves, through pure intensities, in order to enrich our understanding of the subject as such and in order to criticise anthropocentric notions of signification and positivism (which reduce experience exclusively to that which is human) by insisting on the primary ontological nature of intensities and the limitations of human perception.

This is indeed where neo-materialism and the films of Brakhage resonate most strongly, since the concept of the untutored eye also insists on the distinct and singular nature of perceptions, and the severely reduced nature of these perceptions in our culture (this singularity of perceptions does of course also include cinematic images, so in this sense I disagree with those critics who have argued that Brakhage’s films are documentaries, i.e. representations, of his own acts of seeing, since, for me, his films are rather about extending and enriching perception further, through the singularity of cinematic perception which is immanent in the images themselves). So instead of making perceptions dependent on language (such as the idea that in order to experience the colour red we need to have the concept of red stored in our brain), or reducing it to only that which is perceivable by our senses in their normal, solid state (i.e. immediately observable entities, such as trees and rivers, are considered real, while for example microscopic entities, such as atoms and molecules, are not), Brakhage plunges right into the raw intensities of pure perception and the non-human expressions immanent in the material world. Thus, rather than seeing just the colour green in a field of grass, he sees all kinds of nuances which we have become accustomed to disregard in habitual vision, and rather than being enclosed in that which is only perceivable by our direct senses he uses the camera in order to explore a multiplicity of phenomena in various speeds, dimensions and rhythms. For example, we cannot see flowers blooming with our bare vision, since the “becoming flower” is too slow for us to perceive it, yet with a camera we are able to shoot one frame at regular intervals and then play it back in order to experience this “becoming flower”. In other words, just because we cannot perceive certain events or entities by ourselves doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. This is the great contribution of Brakhage, who, like Deleuze and DeLanda, did not remain imprisoned in what Foucault called “the episteme of man”, but rather dedicated his art to rethink Western notions of anthropocentrism by questioning the nature of perception and our relationship with the material world.

There is a trend in contemporary aesthetic theory–from Benjamin’s mechanical reproduction and Boorstin’s pseudo-events to Baudrillard’s simulacrum–that electronic technology and new media fundamentally obscure our relationship with reality. New media is said to drain the “uniqueness” out of the real event and imprisoning us in the unreal flow of reproduced images; while this certainly is true in some senses (think of reality-tv and commercials for example), new media may also be creative by enriching our relationship with the material world. In other words, we need to be careful not to be too caught up in the so called “post-modern” critique of new media as just a negative phenomenon, but rather also see possibilities for creativity and innovation. This is indeed what Brakhage’s work offers us and in this sense it is still highly relevant for both artists and philosophers. Thus, rather than being just an example of an outdated form of modernism, which cannot be anything but a nostalgic yearning for the past in our current era of global capitalism, there is rather–as I have hoped to sketch out in this text–a strong resonance between the cinema of Brakhage and the new materialism of Deleuze and DeLanda. In this sense, Brakhage’s art still has a lot to teach us about ourselves and our place in the material world.

Fever Ray: Becoming Intense, Becoming Animal, Becoming Imperceptible...

2010-07-27T02:03:00.000-07:00

Fever Ray is the name of the Swedish artist Karin Dreijer-Andersson’s (of The Knife) latest aesthetic persona, and an impressively mutated form of electronic pop-music. The self-titled album follows from where The Knife’s Silent Shout left off, that is, into a dark terrain of cold synthesizers and distorted voices, and allows Dreijer to further develop her subjective transformation, or becoming, through images and sounds.

For Deleuze, one of the most artistic acts is to become animal, molecular, nature, etc. (he calls it by many names, as usual), not in a metaphorical way (such as imitating an animal, like wearing the costumes of a horse or a cow), bur rather to invent an animal personality. In other words, it is important for artists to leave the purely human and directly engage with (other) organic and even inorganic expressions, since “the human-all-to-human” is too territorialized and too limited in its viewpoint in relation to the richness of the material world. Thus, it becomes crucial, particularly for artists, to deterritorialize themselves as subjects in order to discover all those lines of flight leading back to non-human expressions, such as the movements of clouds, the singing of birds, the dramatic expressions of mountains, etc. In other words, artists must allow themselves to be affected by the multiplicity of the organic and inorganic expressions of the material world. Not only that which is perceivable in the actual world, but also all those virtual movements which are surrounding us (such as the slow movements of tectonic plates) and remain imperceptible for us, yet still are perfectly real. It is in this sense that becoming animal, becoming nature, becoming molecular is a crucial artistic exercise (and not something metaphorical) in the creation of the work of art (this does of course not mean that every artwork must engage with nature directly, but rather as a remainder that nature has as much to teach us about expressivity as the best writers or musicians, for example).

All of this is successfully manifested in the work of Dreijer-Andersson, which is particularly interesting in this case, since she appeared as an artist from within the so-called “pop-music tradition”. Pop-music is of course in many ways the absolute opposite of becoming nature, since it is a style (or “fake-style”) usually associated with superficiality, manipulated commodities and economic exploitation at the cost of true artistic creativity. Hence, is it even possible to become animal, etc. in pop-music, and how does one achieve this? I will give a brief account of why I believe Fever Ray is a great example of this, but in order to shed more light on this a brief comparison with the current “number one pop-diva”, Lady Gaga, is necessary [this discussion is strongly indebted to Steven Shaviro's analysis of Grace Jones and Madonna, which can be found here].

Many critics today celebrate Gaga as reinventing pop-music by successfully doing what her contemporaries failed to do: displaying her own artistic integrity (i.e. actually writing her own songs and being the guiding voice behind her aesthetic persona and subsequently her own style), while keeping a cool and critical distance to the chaotic and superficial world she nevertheless lives right in the middle of. In fact, her work is precisely often praised for its critical position. It is, however, this latter point which is a problem for me, since it seems to me that Gaga, precisely because she refuses to bring up anything else than fame, clothes and sexuality in very standardized pieces of work, fails to hold a truly critical position. An obvious objection to this is of course that that’s the point, since her strategy is the now-so-famous “criticising pop-music from within”, but for me (since the actual material – the songs, videos, etc. – aren’t very impressive) this becomes less of a critique than a part of what it’s supposedly said to criticise. To take a brief but concrete example: is Lady Gaga’s constant costume changes (in both her videos and public appearances) really a critique of the superficiality of the so-called “post-modern subject” (as some critics propose) or just an empty gesture which (no matter if it really is intended as criticism or not) is just another symptom of contemporary consumerism? To put it differently, following Shaviro, is Gaga making a clever comment about the surface effect of this “post-modern subjectivity” (i.e. that it’s just a matter of appearances which one may switch between like a new hairstyle or a dress) or is she just another example of a long line of pop-divas in which the nature of subjectivity is being even further reduced to nothing more than hairstyles and dresses. For me, it is more of the latter, since either there really is nothing there or the criticism is far too lame, lacking the actual shock which is needed in order to make one think differently, from a truly critical perspective. In other words, Lady Gaga, for me, fails to leave the status quo.

Fever Ray, on the other hand, is something entirely different, since Dreijer-Andersson’s transformation is much more radical than Gaga’s. Both artists are working from within the same tradition and have been praised for similar reasons, but for me Fever Ray goes a lot further than Gaga with both her music and her artistic persona. Whereas Gaga is using clothes and make-up merely for the surface effect, for Dreijer-Andersson they are rather tools in a process of becoming-animal, becoming nature. That is, she is using her visual appearance in a much more radical way in which there is no longer a question of just casually switching clothes, but of transforming oneself in a much more intense and embodied way, because in Fever Ray (as in The Knife), Dreijer-Andersson dissolves herself into a non-human figure which goes beyond pure surface and becomes alien. The best way of illustrating this is of course with her use of the voice. Whereas Gaga, once again, remains within the discourses of “womanhood” and “female sexuality”, both through her visual appearance but also through her distinctively female voice, Dreijer-Andersson shatters, molecularizes and fundamentally transforms “womanhood” and “femininity” as such (thus, she once again goes further than Gaga, who at best can be seen as celebrating the liberation of female sexuality while still being aware of the exploitation of the female body, which is an issue that already has been explored by earlier pop-divas such as Madonna, as Shaviro points out, and is less radical than becoming-animal). We have already seen how Dreijer-Andersson achieves this effect through her visual appearance, but an even more radical transformation takes place through her machinic deterritorialization of the voice (which already was her trademark as the lead singer of The Knife). By using a multiplicity of electronic machines in order to transform her voice (such as pitching it down), Dreijer-Andersson manages to escape the multiple associations which belongs to the female voice (such as the representation of the maternal mother in psychoanalysis, to name just one example) and instead creates a truly singular voice by leaving the purely human. This is rather a voice of a becoming alien, becoming werewolf – a voice of a pure otherness.

What must be emphasized here is that Dreijer-Andersson, despite the apparent avant-garde strategies running throughout her work, never leaves the pop-music heritage from which she emerged. The instrumental structures of the songs are usually fairly straightforward and she generally follows the classical “verse-refrain-pattern” in the songs, which also are of standard "pop-music length". In other words, Dreijer-Andersson never leaves pop-music for some kind of total “avant-garde approach”, but rather becomes animal in pop-music. It is a mutated and alien form of pop-music, but still pop-music. This is in fact what mostly accounts for her originality, that is, the becoming-alien of pop-music, which for me is a much more radical position than Gaga’s.

[Brief side note: Another equally provocative, yet somewhat different, becoming alien in pop-music is Aphex Twin’s approach in videos such as Windowlicker. Here we can also find a severely twisted and mutated form of pop-music, but whereas Dreijer-Andersson is becoming alien in pop-music, in Windowlicker it is rather pop-music which is becoming alien in Aphex Twin. In other words, it is not so much a question of an artist transforming himself in the context of pop-music, but rather pop-music (in this case the standard rap-video of MTV) which is transformed in itself. The multiple, distorted faces of Richard D. James appear everywhere, like a cancer infection, and deterritorialize the “coolness” of the hip-hop-video into some kind of “Baconesque horror" (and the song itself indeed sounds like a twisted and mutated pop-song). It is not Aphex Twin who is becoming animal in pop-music, but rather pop-music becoming animal, becoming alien, becoming Aphex Twin.]

LINE's "Optofonica"

2010-06-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

Optofonica, the fourth DVD release by the American music label LINE, is a fascinating journey of audiovisual expressivity. The label is mostly known for its extensive catalogue of CD’s documenting digital minimalism, but lately they have also started to release DVD’s, where Optofonica stands out as the finest achievement so far. Curated by the Italian multimedia artist TeZ, and featuring 42 different artists from 13 countries, this 150 minute long DVD showcases some of the best contemporary artists working in the intersection between sound and visual art. Included in the DVD is a booklet with a brief essay on the nature of sensory perception (written by Cretien van Campen, author of The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Sciene) and in the product description one can find artistic statements such as “transcending the limits of habitual perception” and “the act of perception itself”. This is obviously not a new phenomenon, neither in cinema nor music, yet there is still much to be written here-and particularly in the context of the new materialism.

Two of the main artistic achievements of Optofonica are the insistence on the distinct and singular nature of sensory perception, and the fact that raw sensations precede language ontologically. These ideas echoes Deleuze, who did not follow the mainstream theory of subjectivity (that of the linguisticality of experience) when he set out to produce a theory of the subject, but instead went to Hume, for whom the subject is a mere crystallization of singular sensory perceptions (aural, visual, tactile, olfactory, and so on) organized by the association of ideas in the form of habit. Ideas, for Hume, are furthermore not linguistic, but rather lower intensity replicas of actual perceptions. In other words, ideas are not representations of perceptions but rather just as distinct, separate and non-linguistic (although at a lower intensity). Here we must also add the fact that sensory perception ultimately is limited in its nature. This was the insight of Henri Bergson (another important precedent of Deleuze in the theory of the subject), who famously concluded that human perception is both centred and limited. In other words, we are ultimately locked in our own point of view and only have the ability to perceive certain entities of material flows. This is indeed true, but this does not mean that we should deny that which we cannot perceive (as in positivism, where directly observable entites, such as rivers and trees, are considered real, while unobservable entities – atoms, molecules, and so on – are said to have no real existence), nor follow idealist conceptions of experience in which perception is organized by a set of signifiers. These two highly anthropocentric views must indeed be challenged, and since the current academia is dominated by idealists, semioticians and postmodernists, a neo-materalist philosopher may instead benefit from turning to other sources of inspiration, such as the diverse field of contemporary, audiovisual art. A brief comparison with Deleuze’s own approach to cinema will illustrate this philosophical approach better.

When Gilles Deleuze wrote his two books on cinema in the 1980’s (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image) he did not set out to produce a theory of the cinema in the classical sense, but rather see how one may use cinema in order to rethink philosophical ideas. Because, for Deleuze, the great directors in cinema (just like artists in general) are thinkers in their own right, like philosophers and even scientists, but whereas the latter two express themselves through philosophical ideas and scientific functions, artists of course use their chosen medium as their means of expression. Therefore, even though artists, philosophers and scientists all are using different means of expression, they are all united in their explorations of the nature and structure of reality. It is in this sense that they all must benefit from each other, produce points of resonance, which is what Deleuze sets out to do in the cinema books. He is attracted to the cinema because he can find, in the work of the great directors, a similar struggle as his own in philosophy (the struggle of the nature of movement and time) and therefore uses cinema in order to enrich his own philosophical vocabulary. The cinema books are unquestionably a work of philosophy, yet a philosophy which works alongside the cinema in order to produce philosophical ideas in resonance with it.

I want to make use of a similar strategy here, that is, see how a work such as Optofonica may help us put more light on some fundamental philosophical issues, and my main focus is the nature of perception in relation to the cinematographic image. This may be summarized in the following way: if sensory perceptions indeed are distinct and singular, then the perceptions of cinematographic images must be just as distinct and singular as other perceptions. In other words, as Deleuze concluded in the cinema books, cinematographic images are not representations of perceptions, but rather singular perceptions in-themselves. While it obviously is true that (most) cinematographic images are images of something filmed, the images themselves (and their correspondent perceptions) must be separated from that which is represented; as Deleuze formulated it: “the image is the system of relationship between its components”. This “system of relationship” is equal to the singular perceptual relations that cinematographic images produce; relations which often are masked in the name of narrative cinema (which sets out to produce a centred and organized perceptual pattern which follows the habits of day-to-day perception), yet still remain at the heart of cinematographic singularity. Cinema, in this sense, becomes a powerful tool for producing unique perceptual relations, since the possibilities of camera and montage allow artists to move beyond the “limits of habitual perception” and, just like microscopes and telescopes in science and astronomy, extend perception through technology. In other words, “The camera is a non-human eye”, as Deleuze put it. This is, as I just mentioned, still not very recognised in cinema, since narrative cinema always has depended fully on habitual, day-to-day perception (and in those cases when this perceptual stability collapses, such as when a character is drunk or in a delirium, this is always presented in the context of the narrative – as a negative opposite – and consequently fails to move far beyond the rationality of the storyline), yet in experimental cinema we may trace a long tradition which goes the other way: from the earliest graphical filmmakers (Richter, Eggeling, etc.) to giants such as Brakhage and Le Grice – and also to the artists who are contributing works to the Optofonica release.

To summarize: when we have recognised that the subject is a crystallization of limited, singular perceptions which precede signifiers, and that cinema presents us with distinct and singular perceptual relations which are capable of moving beyond our own limited perceptual sphere, it becomes not only an artistic but also a philosophical exercise to reflect on how cinema may be used as a creative tool in order to de-crystallize the subject. This claim is obviously diametrically opposite to those made by idealists and positivists, yet for a neo-materialist – that is, one who believes that the world expresses itself on an immanent morphogenetic level, without the interference of human subjects (or transcendental essences) – it becomes crucial, as a way to reduce the anthropocentrism which currently sweeps over both academic and artistic institutions.

Deleuze writes something really similar in the cinema books. He distinguishes between three forms of perceptual relations in the cinema: solid, liquid and gaseous. For Deleuze, solid perception is that form of perception which is dominating traditional narrative cinema, while he identifies liquid perception with early forms of French cinema (Renoir, Vigo, etc.), in which the stability of habitual perceptual patterns is questioned. Yet it is first with avant-garde cinema where a third form of perception appears: a gaseous perception, in which the camera completely breaks with normal conditions of subjective experience, and instead opens up to a non-human flow of pure matter. Here, the focus is not on the centred and limited point-of-view of human subjects, but rather on the decentred and de-crystallized nature of those raw sensations of colour, sound and other qualities which are immanent in matter itself. There is no longer a closed anchoring in a human subject, but only the open flow of matter. Similar thoughts may of course be found in writings by avant-garde filmmakers such as Vertov and Brakhage – who wrote of the unlimited nature of a non-human eye (“kino-eye” and “the untutored eye”) and its ability to penetrate into material objects “through an adventure of perception” – and in the “common artistic philosophy” of the Optofonica DVD. The latter follows this cinematographic tradition by presenting an impressive amount of “adventures of perception” – such as the molecular patterns of Frank Bretschneider’s “rhythm exp.” or the sensory overload of Ulf Langheinrich “it would have been fantastic” – in which the main character is not a human subject, but rather “the act of perception itself”. It is obviously not hard to find a lot of resonances with earlier works in the same tradition, yet two aspects of most of the short films presented on the Optofonica DVD do set it apart from many earlier exercises in the same domain: the importance of sound and of digital technology. I will not discuss these aspects in detail here, yet a few words must be said. The relationship between the aural and visual is of course nothing new within this cinematic tradition, since even the earliest graphic filmmakers often deliberately played with the relationship between images and music, yet, it seems to me that the relationship between the aural and visual dimensions is a lot more intimate, or blurry, in the Optofonica-films than in many of the classical graphic films. Because the two dimensions, rather than working alongside each other as in the classics, here seem to merge into more undetermined perceptual patterns in which it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what is sound and what is image (or which comes first). There are a lot of references to synesthesia throughout the whole work, which is a condition in which perceptual borders are blurred and intersected (or more precisely: the condition in which the stimulation of one perceptual pathway leads to automatic, involuntarily experiences in a second – such as the ability to hear sound in images, see images in sounds, etc.). This, I believe, is here used as another creative method to disrupt and fragment habitual perception – to the point where images and sound, rather than working alongside each other, merge into one blurred perceptual mass. This is obviously achieved with the help of the precise mappings of digital technology, which furthermore allow the artists to produce an even more molecular dimension than earlier artist working in the same tradition. Digital technology is indeed powerful for expressing the microscopic, or the infinitesimal, which is brilliantly exercised in these works – on both the level of the aural and visual – in order to produce fascinating patterns of “pure perception”.

There is a current trend in many academic institutions today, in which we are said to live in a time of total economic exploitation. Abstract forces such as “the mass media” or “late capitalism” seem to exercise complete control and have – through their tireless hunger for consumerism and profit – erased creativity, subjectivity and even reality itself. Thoughts like this have become clichés in the so-called “post-modern” debate, such as in the philosophy of Baudrillard, yet, these so called “critical theories” fail to live up to their name precisely because they are unable to see that what must be criticised first and foremost are not the “consumerism of postmodernism” or the “economic exploitation of late capitalism”, but rather these concepts themselves, since they tend to reduce the diversity of cultural production to a homogeneous field of pure exploitation. Reality is much more complex than these “worn-out slogans” tell us, so the first step for a truly “critical theory” is to rediscover the heterogeneity of things as they really are. This is particularly true when it comes to totalized systems such as “the mass media”, as in Baudrillard, since by reducing the diversity of media- and artistic production, we subsequently ascribe too much (negative) unity to those fields and end up in a dead-end. It is in this sense that works like those presented on the Optofonica DVD, and subsequent analyses of them, are important as a way to reintroduce more heterogeneity and creativity into contemporary cultural production. This is obviously not a way to deny that there is (a lot of) economic exploitation and economic power today, because it obviously is, but rather to avoid ending up with concepts such as “the mass media”, in which media is seen merely as something which obscures our relationship with reality. While it certainly is true that this is a very real and ugly side of media, there is also another side; because media may also help us to enrich our relationship with reality and with ourselves, which is what the films on the Optofonica DVD are great examples of, and they must therefore be recognised as important artistic and philosophical resources, since it is only by reintroducing more diversity in cultural production, and in philosophy, that we will be able to break this negative trend and rethink the future.

BBC's "Planet Earth"

2010-05-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

[This post is not entirely free from some of the "Deleuzian jargon" which I usually try to avoid in my writing, and which I need to remove from this analysis in the future, yet I still feel it's worth posting it here.]

Planet Earth is a fantastic mini-series and the most impressive portrait of our planet that I’ve seen to date. It’s kind of a nature documentary, but that’s at the same time a misleading description, since it fails to give account for the series true strengths. It’s not hard to find many obvious connections between a series like Planet Earth and a neo-materialist philosophy, but it would be both superficial and a profound mistake to make connections only in terms of what the series "wants to say" ("the earth is expressive", "there is a need to turn to both organic- (animal) and non-organic life", etc.) since that would be to reduce the series to "catchy slogans" in the form of linguistic meaning. But, as any Deleuzian knows, this is a profound mistake since it overlooks the expressions of the medium itself (in this case television) and how it organizes movement and time in the form of mobiles sections [images]. This would be an even larger mistake when considering a series like Planet Earth, since it, unlike standard nature documentaries, relies as much (if not even more) on expression as on documentation. In other words, the series builds a lot of its momentum by not using images as mere representations of actual events (what is standard in documentaries), but through the expressivity of image composition itself. It’s cinematic in its performance, epic in scale and loaded with images as pure expression. In other words, Planet Earth has style.

This in many ways means that the series is just as close to various forms of classic avant-garde films (here I’m primarily thinking of films by such directors as Ralph Steiner and Joris Ivens) as it is to standard television documentaries. The relationship between experiments with the moving image and non-fictional "documentaries" as pure looking is indeed something which can be traced far back in the history of the moving image, in fact to its very birth, in the form of what Tom Gunning has referred to as the cinema of attractions. According to Gunning, early cinema (up to 1906 or so) did not primarily rely on fictional storytelling, but on fictional and non-fictional events. Since the cinematograph was a new phenomenon at that time, what attracted the audience was not a narrative storyline (which they already were familiar with from theatre and literature), but the images of the camera itself. Recall for example the Lumière Brothers famous "documentations" of a train arriving at a train station and workers leaving the factory (or Méliès fictional shorts). These brief shorts lack narrative coherence, yet attracted audience because they were examples of cinema as a whole new way of seeing. This was of course recognized by avant-garde artists early on, such as Fernand Léger, who excitedly declared that the true power of cinema wasn’t to be found in its resemblance to theatre or literature, but in how it’s "a matter of making images seen". However, as soon as narratives were invented, in the form of the classical Hollywood style, the cinema of attractions became largely forgotten, but continued to be explored and reinvented in the form of various avant-garde and underground cinemas, in which the unique expressivity of the image was of highest importance: from Vertov and the French surrealists in the 20’s, to the underground American cinema of the 50’s and 60’s, up to contemporary/digital underground films – and to Planet Earth.

Like avant-garde films and the Cinema of Attractions, Planet Earth primarily relies on ways of seeing. It’s packed with beautifully composed shots which sometimes almost take the form of abstract paintings: large scale images of mountains, rivers, clouds and oceans are mixed with extreme close-ups of dozens of animals, insects, etc. Even though there of course are several passages which are closer to the average nature documentary, the vast amount of shots as pure expressivity cannot be neglected. The framing and editing repeatedly insists on nature and the moving image as possessing their own expressivity, and the major strength of the series lies in how it manages to bring these two lines of expressions together through the mediation of technology. Like avant-garde films, this is a series which makes use of the moving image as pure expressivity, and, like the Cinema of Attractions, the use of modern technology as new ways of seeing. And this is indeed an achievement of technology, since the extensive use of new HD-cameras not only gives the series a crystal-clear visual style like few others of its kind, but also allowed the large crew to be able to film in areas which previously were inaccessible to human cameras. Furthermore, the extensive use of fast-motion (to show seasonal changes, flowers blooming, etc.) also adds to the series insistence on new ways of seeing through technology and composition – and to how we may rethink our relationship to nature through technology. What also must be mentioned in terms of expressivity in favour of documentation (not to mention anthropocentrism) is the fact that no human (with a few brief exceptions) is seen on-screen, which further reduces the feeling of televised documentary. In other words, since there is no on-screen human subject who guides us through the wild (as in standard nature documentaries), we are left with only the movements of pure images and nature as our "guide". Rather than being taken on a "televised safari", we are faced with the mobility of matter/image in itself. It’s true, of course, that David Attenborough’s voice-over, along with the cinematic music, gives each episode a narrative and dramatic coherence, yet it’s no doubt that these devices only act as supports to the primary movements of images and nature.

How are these movements organized then? Mostly through an acentred, gaseous perception in a world absent of man, which is its link with avant-garde cinema, while the sound is what gives the series its narrative coherence as documentary (as I mentioned above). Attenborough's voice-over and the dramatic, Hollywood-like music is indeed what separates Planet Earth from classical avant-garde cinema and is crucial for its character as popular documentary, because when it comes to the images themselves the series is far more experimental. One may, however, also find traces of other types of images in it, such as the "organic" cinema of Griffith (as I will come back to later), but mostly it’s an expression of the whole regime of the movement-image. In fact, Planet Earth gives us the movement-image par excellance.

According to Deleuze, the movement-image has three components: the set, the shot and montage. The set is the frame, and the relatively closed relations it gives us through the act of framing, while the shot is the movement between two cuts ("the take") and montage the whole as open totality, organized through editing (there are several conceptions of montage, where the "organic" is one of them). The set is local and closed in to itself, yet no set is ever totally closed, since they each contain an opening which relates them to other sets and the "whole of the Universe", as Deleuze puts it. This flexible relation is mediated through movement (the shot), which simultaneously closes the sets into themselves, but also opens them up to the totality of the open whole. In cinema, this is the movement from relatively closed frames to montage as open whole and indirect representation of time (in the movement-image, time remains subordinate to movement). Furthermore, Deleuze (following Bergson) identifies the image with matter. The movement-image is equal to matter-in-motion, which consequently means that the material universe is a heterogeneous meshwork of matter/image in constant motion (or "the machine assemblage of movement-images", as he puts it). Thus, matter has always had a profound relationship with the movement-image, or rather, with the ontology of the movement-image as open whole, and this is precisely what Planet Earth gives us (and why I think that the series is the movement-image in its purest form).

First of all, what characterises the series is constant movement. Each episode gives us a multiplicity of organic and inorganic movements from micro- to macro scale: the marching of ants, the journey of penguins, the streaming of rivers, the flowing of clouds, etc. In other words, there is a constant movement from the micro-scale of relatively closed sets (such as the habitats of individual animals and insects, but also the very close-ups of organic and inorganic entities, even though the latter are parts of sets rather than sets), to the macro-scale of the open-whole (with images of the earth from outer space at the very limit), here expressed both through the mobility of the camera and direct cuts from small-scale sets to the large-scale whole (the vast amount of cuts between extreme close-ups to massive long-shots is indeed a key aspect of the series, as we will see). Furthermore, the absence of a human subject through which all of this is perceived is crucial, since this move the series even further away from the "centred perception" of subjectivity to the "acentred state of things". Because, according to Deleuze (once again following Bergson), human subjects are "special images", to which all other images vary; thus, to be human is to receive and transmit only those images which are of ones interest (rather than instantly acting and reacting on them, as is the case with the non-human), which consequently requires both fixed perspective, as well as reduced experience of the open whole (as Bergson concluded in Matter and Memory: "perception is not addition, but subtraction", so there will always be an issue of centring and limitation for the subject, since it’s bound to perceive less than what there is).

Yet Planet Earth, precisely because it does not rely on fixed perspective in the form of a human subject (as I discussed above), instead gives us the acentred open whole as universal variation. Since there is no subject/fixed perspective, we are continuously confronted exclusively with the constant movement of image/matter, which for me is the greatest achievement of the series. But this is also, once again, an achievement of technology, and more specifically of the camera(s). Because, as Deleuze points out (along with avant-garde filmmakers such as Brakhage and Vertov), the camera is an eye, but a non-human eye not limited by the conditions of human perception. The camera rather possesses machinic perception, which (through editing and optical tricks) frees it from fixed perspective and instead unites it with the acentred flow of image/matter. Thus, the camera becomes an important machine when criticising anthropocentrism through art and new media, precisely because it’s freed from the (limited) conditions of human perception. In Planet Earth, this is further expressed through the use of duels. Because whereas humans acted as the motor of duels in classical American cinema, the absence of humans in Planet Earth doesn’t reduce the amount of duels, but rather emphasizes the constant presence of a multiplicity of non-human duels (in other words, nature itself here acts as the motor of duels) through the creative use of the camera. Each episode presents to us constant duels (of predator/prey, winter/summer, etc.), as in Griffith’s extensive use of duels in his organic conception of montage, but where Griffith mainly used history and humanity as the basis for duels (as in Intolerance) the basis here is the local and global and the non-human – from the smallest ants and insects to the largest seasonal changes – and the result is indeed a powerful visualization of matter/image/nature in constant movement. To put it differently (following Deleuze’s definition of organic montage): there are binary relationships (predator/prey, winter/summer, etc.) presented in the form of parallel alternate montage and exchange of relative dimensions (local/global), which takes the form of concurrent/convergent actions (the duel). This organic approach must, however, not be considered as a way to say that the earth is some kind of living, organic entity (as in the Gaia Hypothesis), but rather that it’s an open whole [body without organs], traversed by a multiplicity of organic and inorganic duels/movements/expressions, from a local to global scale. In other words, even though organic montage presupposes a certain unity, there is always an opening to the whole and to duration as such.

All of this makes Planet Earth an astonishing aesthetic experience, but wherein lies its main relevance today? One of the most defining characteristics of post-modern thought is that it’s extremely anthropocentric. Either everything is reduced to text – language, semiotics, classifications, etc., as arbitrary signifiers of experience – or to capital, which swallows and digests art, technology, feelings, thoughts, nature, etc. Even though it would be unrealistic to deny the existence and importance of language (although not as that which organizes experience), or the negative influence of economic exploitation, it seems to me that both idealism and late capitalist thought (just as the concept of "post-modernism" itself) tend to be too totalizing and assume a certain unity in which all material processes are being reduced to (or disguised by) either signifiers or the logic of capital. Even for a philosopher such as Baudrillard, who wrote extensively on the media, electronic mediation (particularly through television) is nothing but simulation – representation which obscures the represented and "murders" the real in favour of the simulacral forces of consumerism. Thus, it seems to me that we need another way of theorizing a work such as Planet Earth – which is what I’ve tried to offer in this text – since neither theories of simulation/signification, nor of capital gives a satisfactory image of what this series (not to mention, real heterogeneity) really is. They fail, precisely because of their anthropocentrism, to give a true account of what a work like Planet Earth has to offer us – which is that of non-human expressivity. Deleuze repeatedly suggested that it’s a danger to close oneself exclusively into the world of humanity – to be obsessed with only that which is human. This is not to say that humans don’t have much to express, but by falling victim to the "human-all-to-human" we loose our otherness, which is biology, ethology, chemistry, and so on. This is indeed what separates his thought not only from idealists and late-capitalist thinkers, but also from earlier forms of materialism (historical materialism, dialectical materialism, etc.), since he not only insists that matter exists independently of our minds, but that it’s also is able to express itself (through immanent morphogenesis) without any need of human intervention. In other words: matter is in a constant movement of expression and to fail to affirm this is indeed a loss – particularly for artists, who are those that need to understand the nature of expressivity more than anyone else.

Thus, technology, in the form of new media should, in this sense, not be used in ways which obscure our relationship with immanent material processes, but, on the contrary, in ways which affirm our relationship with matter by recognizing that human experience is limited, and that there is a whole world of organic and inorganic movements around us which we need to confront in creative ways (rather than hiding behind notions of "signification" or "capital"). In this sense, technology is crucial when it comes to rethinking our relationship with matter through art and new media. But it’s not enough to just "represent" material processes through technology, because this still assumes a fixed perspective and subsequently reduces the expressivity of both nature and technology. Rather, technology should be used in ways which extend and decentre human experience, and we therefore cannot work through representation (since it will always remain fixed and centred in human subjects), but must instead turn to the intensities produced by technology/media(/nature) in themselves. In this case it’s all about the internal logic of images-in-themselves, and the expressive encounters between nature and image, without the anchoring of a fixed subject. This is indeed the greatest achievement of Planet Earth, which not only makes it a memorable aesthetic encounter (far more powerful than any “documentation” would have been), but also a highly relevant piece of work when discussing the relevance and importance of technology, nature and contemporary art.