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Sensing Bodily And
Spatiotemporal Becomings!
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RENATO OSOY!
renatosoy@gmail.com!Thesis Requirement !
MA Artistic Research!
University Of Amsterdam!
Student # 10418296!
June 2014!
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Keywords!
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• Time • Body • Space • Frame • Composition • Conversation • Territory • Fields • Interior • Experience • Mind • Self • Being • Movement • Process • Relations • Formation • Articulation • Fragmentation • Flows • Connection • Detonation!
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Abstract!
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This thesis focuses on the notions and the relations produced in and around the BODY/ SPACE/TIME constellation in the realm of artistic and theoretical productions. Fields where knowledges and imaginative singularities are produced, detonated and expanded; values which seem to be inherent in such activities. In this sense, this thesis engages the following questions: How do I think and propose places of imagination and knowledge from the interior of the self, beyond myself, the self as anyone’s self? In which way is art and theory intervening in/on my conception and contextualisation of bodily and
spatiotemporal notions in spheres which I relate to? Am I inside or outside the frame? How do I recognise, extract, interact map or enrich myself socio-culturally by becoming aware of these notions? What is the value of becoming aware, engaging and conversing in/ with such activities?
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Table of Contents!
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Keywords pg.2!
Abstract pg.3!
Table of Contents pg.4!
Introduction pg.5!
Chapter 1 pg.7 “The Constellational Being”!
Chapter 2 pg.22 “Self-Framing As Experiment”!
Chapter 3 pg.38 “Untimely Conversations”!
Epilogue pg.54!
Bibliography pg.57!
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Introduction!
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“Artists do not wish to instruct the spectator. Today, they deny using the stage to dictate a lesson or convey a message. They simply wish to produce a form of consciousness, an intensity of feeling, an energy for action.”
“The Emancipated Spectator” by Jacques Rancière.
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It appears that in order to make sense of it all, meaning the chaos that surrounds us, we need to somehow produce (an) order, in Deleuzian terms: a territory. To engage in such activity, we need to set a frame, a context; frames in our mind which separate one thing from the other, the chaos from the order and vice-versa. The interior as the point of departure for the production of meanings. If we think of the interior, our interior, as a place, as a place-space where we make sense, and produce coherence of the world and its representations. In a way, this text attempts to propose a thinking mode, as a sort of survey-construction method, on how to develop one’s own method for exploring and reflecting on things and environments. My concern surveys primarily on bodily and spatiotemporal perceptions, which perform and act through different concepts and contexts, producing knowledges and imaginative singularities.
The frame captures the body, the body as frame, the mind operating from the body as framework, the duration of things. These key concepts afore mentioned are throughly articulated in chapter I; “The Constellational Being”. Let us think of a container for example, a recipient which given certain circumstances can contain and hold a given thing; concrete or abstract, a liquid or a thought. For example, following Latour’s thoughts on Sloterdijk theories, let us mention the notion of networks and spheres. Networks contained inside spheres, spheres that link within and across networks, spheres which posses self contained networks. A sphere as a place-space of varieties. Spheres of relations and interconnectedness which encounter each other through interventions and actions. The idea is to think of a sphere as a world of worlds, where operations and their respective intentions flow through intricate systems of networks and relations. These notions are discuss throughout the text, but they are revised with more detail in chapter II; “Self-Framing As Experiment”. The notion of the frame becomes then a possible system of articulation.
It is then through conversation where I seek to explore specific topics while unfolding the approach itself. The operative method of conversation allows for a multiplicity of views to develop, perhaps one could reiterate at last how dialectical conversations allow us to see
one truth, or rather one point of view through many appearances. In chapter III; “Untimely Conversations”, a conversation becomes not only a liberating act, but also a
process where we converse, and convert artistic representations and capsules of
information into something that can perhaps become meaningful. Hence, a conversation can become a conceptual place where we produce vocabularies, and systems of
communications constituted by words, gestures, symbols and/or forms. The total articulation of such matters produces then a composition; an ensemble of thoughts and things which produces sense and coherence among the constituents of a given thing or concept in relation to environment or contexts.
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Lastly then, my concerns link to the intersection point where a dimension of knowledges forms in between the encounter of two streams, two lines, one being the horizontal (space) and the other, the vertical (time). A time in space, a place in space, a place-space in time. An awareness which is perceived and expressed by body-mind experiences; movement, spatiality and availability of self in a given duration become the articulation points of these notions.
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The Constellational Being!
Chapter 1!
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“The Imagination accepts the multiple and constantly renews it in order to detect therein new intimate and secret relations, new correspondences and analogies that are themselves inexhaustible.”
G. Didi-Huberman, “Atlas”
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I.
It could be you, but it is me. It is in the here and now that I stand before a mirror. Like I said, it could be you, but it is me. I am looking at my body and the space that surrounds me, I am looking. There is me and there is what is around me. I am looking, I continue looking. Time passes and I
continue looking, but at some point in time, after observing my body and its environment, I find myself or at least I get the impression that I find the idea of my-self. I come to find myself by looking into the eyes of that other
one that appears reflected in the mirror, that
other one that stands before me, that other one that looks at the I, from the point of view of the I. But I think I am body, I am mind, I am inside and outside, it is my desire that pushes my intellect through the stems, my voice is now many voices tuning themselves into one. I am a cluster of informations, I am
the result of countless relations. As I carefully observe this portrait in the now, I recognise that the picture is both about me being there and me being here, a condition that produces an expansive thought formation in relation to the body and a particular spatiotemporal context. McEvilley cleverly expands a perceptual 1
conceptualisation as he states that, “Life is horizontal, just one thing after another, a conveyor belt shuffling us toward the horizon. But history, the view from the departing spacecraft, is different. As the scale changes, layers of time are
Self-portrait with Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Donna al cimitero (1962 – 1974)”, at Pompidou Centre, Paris, 2013.
superimpose and through them we project perspectives with which to recover and correct the past. No wonder art gets bollixed up in this process; its history, perceived through time, is confounded by the picture in front of your eyes, a witness ready to change testimony at the slightest perceptual provocation.” 2
So, there is me or the idea of me there in the picture, actually I would dare to say that that is only an image of my body that relates to the idea of me as a self. Then there is Pistoletto, but not really Pistoletto himself, but ‘a Pistoletto’, as in a work by Pistoletto, which in any case I somehow relate to. Lastly there is the place-space where this event takes place, in this case a place where artistic activity takes place, for general purposes I am going to call such place, ‘an art space’. I happened to be at such a place when the making of this image occurred. I could not say with total certainty if the Pistoletto made me want to make picture of it with myself in it, or if I saw the Pistoletto and then I decided to make a picture of myself with it. In a way the experience of art seeks that individuals become conscious of a given something that is designed and presented by the artist and its mediators. Clearly art spaces are designed with the spectator in mind, the visitor is supposed to have some sort of experience in it or after the visit to it. In this sense the spaces where artistic activity take place seem to be somewhat the types of places which facilitate events, encounters and experiences of an ontological nature. I am aware that this matter is not entirely an issue in all artistic concerns and activities, but more often than not it seems to be. In this sense, thinking of the art space only becomes an initial point of departure for my reflection, because it is beyond the notion of the art space where my actual concern rises. Essentially then, I want to take issue on how compositions of relations form as concept and context interweave in the experiencing of such a realisation, an occurrence which can produce a sense of holistic integration.
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II.
Can I really fragment myself I ask, can I really become detached and make myself just a subject that is being looked through an object-hood, could this really occur I ask myself, could I just become a part, a division of myself even for an instant, is there separation perhaps. I want to briefly consider the possibility of a self as a concept that
An Introduction by Thomas McEvilley, “Inside The White Cube; The Ideology Of The Gallery Space”, Brian O’Doherty.
is partially detached from a whole, an objective self. Let me point at first then, not to the idea of attempting to create an opposition, because for this topic it would be useless. Rather, I want to produce a frame for thought as an exercise of imagination. I want to visualise a frame within a frame, just to clarify matters as they become manifested conceptually. I think that achieving such a state of rationalisation, that is, that of being or that of becoming an objective being, the objective I, would entail two almost impossible events. On the one hand, a total disconnection of mind, and on the other, it would suggest that there is some sort of location where object-hoods in the mind are produced as thinking events unrelated to other thoughts and meanings. Since the purpose of this text is not to separate matters but to actually make manifest how inevitably linked and related we are to a totality when we look at its parts. As McEvilley points out: “It has been the special genius of our century to investigate things in relation to their context, to come to see the context as formative on the thing, and, finally, to see the context as a thing itself.” 3
We are not only functioning or being affected by a concept or conception alone, but we are also affected constantly by given contextual situations. Let me borrow then on Helmholtz’s thought, just to bear in mind how inevitably attached we are to the relations that occur from the inside of the mind to the occurrences from the outside of the world: “The ideas of the external world are images of the regular sequence of natural events, and if they are formed correctly according to the laws of our thinking, and we are able by our actions to translate them back into reality again, the ideas that we have are also the only true ones for our mental capacity. All others would be false.” Although stimulating for thought, it seems somewhat far fetched to 4
contemplate an objective mode of operation in the mind as something graspable. Unless, we wanted to perhaps position ourselves and partly our understanding of the world as being only polarised, without all its in-betweens, a world which operates only through binaries, machines, robots, computers, automatons.
Rather, I wish to consider the possibility to connect into a more enriching and fruitful mode of thinking. A mode where one expands the mind to explore its potential creativity, a self recognisable mode of being that goes beyond the ‘I’ mode. I mean that position which proposes not an I which splits the me against you, but a position
Ibid.
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“The Theory of the Perceptions of Vision”,Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics, by H. von Helmholtz. Third
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which seeks, “To reach, the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.” I must see myself then 5
as something that goes beyond a fragmented being, I am not a pairs of arms, two legs, a brain, two eyes, a nose, a bag of intestines, etc. Rather, I would like to think that I am a complex and constantly changing dynamic system, that is conformed by a set of organic and non-organic components which are constantly affected by ever-changing environments.
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Me, myself, that thing I call ‘I’, is nothing else but a place of accumulations, an evolving metamorphic assemblage of multiplicities that manifests itself, a composition of things that is constantly becoming, an articulated montage which I ultimately call: ‘myself’. “Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent pseudo multiplicities for what they are. There is no unity to serve as a pivot in the object, or to divide in the subject. There is not even the unity to abort in the object or ‘return’ in the subject. A multiplicity has neither subject nor object, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that cannot increase in number without the multiplicity changing in nature (the laws of combination therefore increase in number as the multiplicity grows).” I cannot but think, that as long as there is 6
human presence, human energy moving, notions of existence and inter-action in the world, the growth of consciousness is a continuum, a constant coming and becoming together between afairs. Consequently, the being and its mind grows, it becomes unmeasurable as it intensifies and multiplies. It seems that the creative mind seeks in an almost uncontrollable manner, to cluster itself in its expansion, while it feeds and taps into the unconscious, producing relations and multiplications. One can almost imagine the multiple creative mind, as if it was germinating, increasing, thriving into an insatiable Blob, which “…As it consumes more and more, it grows larger and larger.” 7
“Introduction: Rhizome”, A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
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Translated by Brian Massumi. Continuum Press, London-New York, 2004. Ibid.
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”The Blob”, 1958, Sci-Fi film, Directed Irvin Yeaworth, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051418/?ref_=nv_sr_2 excerpt from
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III.
Could we then say, that this idea of the self, as that of being an assemblage of multiplicities, is no other than the suggestion to look at the unconscious aspect of mind as a place of chaoses. A place where possibly the birth of uncontrollable creativity arises, and that as Deleuze and Guattari propose “An assemblage is precisely this increase in the dimensions of a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections.” The notion of assemblage plays a pivotal role 8
in our understanding on how to relate to matters that come together as they get framed. Referring to assemblage Bennett adds, “It entails continual invention: because each mode suffers the actions on it by other modes, actions that disrupt the relation of movement and rest characterising each mode, every mode if it is to persist must seek new encounters to creatively compensate for the alterations or affections it suffers. What it means to be a ‘mode’ then, is to form alliances and enter assemblages: it is to mod(e)ify and be modified by others. The process of modification is not under control of any one mode.” 9
It appears to me that in the case of assemblages, opposed to those of composition, an assemblage has no apparent governance by a single mode, it seems to be more a sort of density, a viscosity of assemblages and accumulations, a modi swamp of ideas, a magnetic field of forces, an intermingling rhizome of thoughts and relations, a vortex of powers and intentions that constantly affects itself and its surroundings. Bennett adds, “Assemblages are ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts. Assemblages are living, throbbing confederations that are able to function despite the persistent presence of energies that confound them from within. […] Assemblages are not governed by any central head: no one materiality or type of material has sufficient competence to determine consistently the trajectory or impact of the group”. Perhaps then, to bring a bit more light into this matter, we can reread 10
a snippet of the following conversation called: “Body-Assemblage: Félix Guattari and Tanaka Min in Conversation”. This exchange of ideas might bring us a bit further in 11
Ibid. Deleuze-Guattari.
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The Agency of Assemblages, “Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things”, Jane Bennett, John Hope Franklin Center
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Books, 2010. Ibid.
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Body-Assemblage: Félix Guattari and Tanaka Min in Conversation Translated by Toshiya Ueno and Toulouse-Antonin
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our understanding of the concept of assemblage, but it will also give us insight into how it partakes with the set of concepts we are discussing.
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Guattari: By the way, I would like to present the layered structure as follows: a theatrical space that is also a world consisting of intensities of the body. As the latter sometimes collides with the former, how do we control these layers and what sanctions float within them?
Min: It may take a long time to explain this point because it, what is determining these layers is not me but an agency outside myself... . G: That is exactly right. I am calling it an assemblage, which is collective. The collective assemblage does not imply the involvement of many people as it is an inhuman process. This inhuman process is a cosmic entity or a biological-hormonal history of abstract machines, and at the same time, can also be a history of rhythm imposed by a pure type of repetition that cannot be controlled by the logic of humanism.
Translator: In fact, Min’s work consists exactly in detaching from this manipulative idea of assemblage.
G: Beyond an individual assemblage…
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IIII.
But I must say at this moment that, as this idea of conceiving a sort of chaotic/
creative/multiplied/run-free/do whatever mind, is proposed, I also find that
something confusing begins to emerge. Perhaps what might come evident now, is a situation which reveals us, with something that looks like a senseless mind, a place that accumulates plain incoherence. It seems then, that somehow, this state of constant expansion and multiplication of the mind, can also become a sort of
everything and anything counts. Could we say then, that the risk might be that the
mind just becomes a wasteland of possibilities, which in turn could become nothing but a bunch of chaoses grouped among other chaoses. I feel like nonsense is beeping
now, and I ask myself, what good is it then to have an expansive creative mind if it sends one in every possible and unexpected direction. For this concern, maybe, we should seek further and explore what possibilities amidst the chaos, Deleuze and Guattari offer us, as we attempt to make sense and build coherence through the expansive mind.
At this point I feel that I must address the fact that I believe that the contribuition to thought by many of the worlds greatest thinkers, in this case Deleuze and Guattari, do not only present us with a thought or a set of thoughts on life, or say, the recipe for a particular philosophy. Rather, they present us with an expansive and immense realm of possibilities, which is articulated throughout their magnanimous oeuvre. For this matter, I want to reiterate that personally, I think that when one enters Deleuzian and Guattarian grounds, one actually enters another territory of thought, an expanse which I consider to be fertile ground for the intellectualisation of creative minds. I mention the above, not to inflate the argument, but rather, because I feel that the only way to make sense and really incorporate any of the matters discussed here as part of one’s thinking mode, is by intentionally opening up to something else.
But what is this something else then, if not anything, everything then could become possible, is it all a possibility then? Well, indeed, it is all possible. It is absolutely about it all being possible, but nonetheless, it is about possibilities being possible. So, as we move on, and head directly into a territory where linear modes of thinking might only leave us if anything, at odds with conclusions. Let us keep in mind that we are processing relations and thoughts that might lead us into a way which can possibly shed light in making sense of what being constellational is, or what the constellational being might be about.
V.
In any case, as we proceed to advance in these other territories of thought, we must not discard all previous notions, rather we must explore and consider the intellectual value which this other ways of thinking might add to our previous modes of operating knowledge. Let us suggest then for example, to make an attempt and go beyond the usual activity of deduction-reduction as a producer of thought. Could we perhaps attempt to go further in understanding matters beyond the production of dichotomies. Let us make it possible then to seek for alternative ways of categorising knowledge that surpass those of an arborescent nature. In this concern Deleuze and
Guattari tell us that, “All of tree logic is a logic of tracing and reproduction. […] a rhizome is not amenable to any structural generative model. It is a stranger to any idea of genetic axis or deep structure.”
It seems then, that we must attempt to activate and re-shape our ways of producing thought, in ways that include a more interactive and organic manner of consciously linking unexpected flows of relations between the outside (world) with the inside (mind). For example, in the afore mentioned, when they suggest that multiplicities
are rhizomatic, they also seem to offer us a way to play and operate through this
notion. Perhaps we could even say that they facilitate us with a possibility to locate matters of concern in the middle of chaoses. Further on they suggest that, “There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree or root. There are only lines. […] Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities.” Perhaps a distorted conception of matters, it 12
might appear that multiplicities or the thinking (of/in) multiplicities, could easily be perceived as being anything or everything. The thinking in/of multiplicities as a rational activity of adding for adding sakes.
To go beyond the conception of multiplicity as mere brain gymnastics or as an automatic production of informational chaoses. Massumi accurately pinpoints to a clarifying notion when he refers to: “The ‘schizophrenia’ Deleuze and Guattari embrace is not a pathological condition. For them, the clinical schizophrenic’s debilitating detachment from the world is a quelled attempt to engage it in unimagined ways. Schizophrenia as a positive process is inventive connection, expansion rather than withdrawal. Its twoness is a relay to a multiplicity. From one to another (and another…). From one noun or book or author to another (and another…). Not aimlessly. Experimentally.” It is a characteristic of the multiplicity 13
concept referred by Deleuze and Guattari, that it is not another and another on top of another, resulting in another. It is rather the case that it goes from one to another. Let me point then, to Bennett’s take on Deleuze’s take on Spinoza as she states that, “The power of a body to affect other bodies includes ‘a corresponding and inseperable’ capacity to be affected; ‘there two equally actual powers, that of acting
Ibid. Deleuze-Guattari.
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Pleasures of Philosophy (ch.1), “A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia; Deviations from Deleuze and
and that of suffering action, which vary inversely one to the other, but whose sum is both constant and constantly affective’. Spinoza’s conative, encounter-prone body arises in the context of an ontological vision according to which all things are ‘modes’ of a common ‘substance’.” I want to make sense of this matter at last by suggesting 14
that somehow, if we seek to escape some sort of relativism, perhaps we must find a sense of separation and unity at the same time, and incorporate it to our thinking. I think then, that each element must hold its own characteristic, each element should be defined by its own principal of unity. Perhaps it is the existence of such a principle of unity, or of each thing having its own mode which avoids the possibility of matters entering some sort of relativism. Rather we can consider the idea of a mode relating to another mode, a unity relating to another unity; a relational circumstance rather than a relativistic one. Hence, multiplicity as a threshold concept which facilitates the conceptualization of relational activities.
VI.
As Deleuze said, “we always start from the middle of things; thought has no beginning, just an outside to which it is connected.” Rhizomatic thought presents 15
itself to be quite unconventional, and of an unpredictable nature. It sets itself before us, first as a totally new mode of operating, and secondly as a partially unpoliticized notion that calls for imaginative reflection. I would like to suggest then, that besides engaging in some sort of creative mental activity which prompts a breaking out of our thinking comfort. It seems that we must also understand that these conceptual triggers, in the case of the rhizome concept for example, that they are modes of thinking which demand a sort of creative effort to be grasped, if we are to benefit from their polymorphic notions as a way to link to the production of unexpected forms of knowledge.
But for our case of concern here let us elaborate and construct an analogy around the rhizome as we try to grasp some of its catalysing possibilities as a working concept. “The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a tracing. The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome. What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is
Ibid. The Agency of Assemblages.
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Preface by Robert Hurley, “Spinoza: Practical Philosophy By Gilles Deleuze”, Translated by Robert Hurley. City Lights
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entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. […] The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification.” Let us look into what was stated at last, that 16
the map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification, we can certainly feel at odds if we insist in
conceiving the idea of a map, as only that of a diagrammatic representation which only illustrates static points of reference. Rather, “A map has multiple entryways, as opposed to the tracing, which always comes back ‘to the same’. The map has to do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an alleged ‘competence.” 17
Perhaps this last stated notion, can bring us a bit more clarity into grasping the idea of an ever-changing map. As we conceive and incorporate the idea of performing; to perform clearly indicates movement, to move, to execute, to carry on. In this case, the concept of performance (or to perform) not only adds a layer of meaning, but it also suggests the rhizomatic mode as an operational mode of being.
When referring to the rhizomatic as an operating mode to prompt and approach unexpected informational encounters, encounters which can produce alternative forms of knowledge; the work of artist Tomás Saraceno comes to mind. “An artist trained as an architect, Saraceno deploys theoretical frameworks and insights from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics and materials science. His residency at
MIT focuses on advancing new work for the ongoing Cloud Cities series. On Space Time Foam, a project created for HangarBicocca in Milan, Italy, is a multi-layered habitat of membranes suspended 24 meters above the ground that is inspired by
Ibid. Deleuze-Guattari.
cosmology and life sciences.” Clearly Saraceno’s work is not about one thing, but 18
about multiple things, one just needs to listen to Saraceno himself talk about his piece “HangarBicocca” to come to such conclusions. For example, some of 19
Saraceno’s main topics on this particular piece range broadly, he goes from Borges to the universe, from envelope to network theories, from air installations to quantum physics, from human relations to the butterfly effect, etc. His work feeds from an immense sea of disparate matters which link to each other across predictable and unpredictable relations between networks and spheres. This networks and spheres are some in cases physically concrete and deliberately planned, and in others they are ephemeral and come to existence totally unexpected. In this particular case the ontological nature on the theorisation of networks and spheres proposed by Latour and Sloterdijk open possibilities for thinking further about the rhizomatic as an operational mode, but first let us situate a context. On spheres and networks Latour adds, “The two concepts of networks and spheres are clearly in contradistinction to one another: while networks are good at describing long-distance and unexpected connections starting from local points, spheres are useful for describing local, fragile, and complex “atmospheric conditions”—another of Sloterdijk’s terms. Networks are good at stressing edges and movements; spheres at highlighting envelopes and wombs.” An array of possible possibilities opens up, one connection, many 20
connections, a link becomes many links, the center could be anywhere, the rhizome expands through the network; it forms as it becomes. Paraphrasing Deleuze and Guattari again, ‘The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a
map with the wasp, in a rhizome.’ In this sense I think that by looking further into
Latour’s reflections on Saraceno’s work, the idea of the rhizomatic might become more plausible as we think further on ‘What distinguishes the map from the tracing
is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real.’ It
is precisely in the operation between the experimentation coming in contact with the real that the rhizome concept lends its operational possibilities.
In Saraceno’s work things move as things change, and things change as they move, people and things produce unexpected forms and relations as they perform according
“MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology”, Tomás Saraceno is the inaugural Visiting Artist at MIT’s Center for Art,
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Science & Technology (CAST). Arts at MIT/Artists. http://arts.mit.edu/artists/tomas-saraceno/#prettyPhoto A good number of video and text interviews on Sarceno’s “HangarBicocca” are available online.
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“Some Experiments in Art and Politics” by Bruno Latour. e-flux journal No.23, 03/2011.
to their own innate sense of operation. Latour comments on Saraceno’s work, “Tomas Saraceno provided a great, and no doubt unintended, metaphor for social theory.” Later he adds, “Saraceno performed precisely the task of philosophy according to Sloterdijk, namely of explicating the material and artificial conditions for existence. The task is not to overthrow but to make explicit. As Deleuze and Guattari have
shown, a concept is always closely related to a percept.” The center could be anywhere, in Saraceno’s work things operate following a rhizomatic logic, rather we could say that things are perceived as works by adopting a rhizomatic being-ness in their operational mode, as the realtion between work and spectator take place. According to Latour, “The other remarkable feature of the work is that although there are many local orderings—including spheres within spheres—there is no attempt at nesting all relations within one hierarchical order. There are many local hierarchies, but they are linked into what appears visually as a heterarchy.” (An illustration of both heterarchy andrhizome shown accordingly). Rhizomatic is not about predictability, it is not about reproducing an unconscious which is closed upon itself, in any case the rhizome is what permits for an unconscious to become manifested as it constructs itself. Lastly, Latour remarks, “Another remarkable feature of Saraceno’s work is that such a visual experience is not situated in any fixed ontological domain, nor at any given scale: you can take it, as I do, as a model for social theory, but you could just as well see it as a biological interpretation of the threads that hold the walls and components of a cell, or, more literally, as the weaving of some monstrously big spider, or the utopian projection of galactic cities in 3D virtual space. ” 21
VII.
As mentioned earlier, this extra effort demanded by us reader or participants, appears to be nothing else than a suggestion to the use of our imagination. Let us
imagine a concept which proposes the use of imagination as a tool which could allow its user an access to a beyond dimension. A dimension that in any case surpasses our habitual forms of logic and rationalisation. By habitual forms of logic and rationalisation I address Helmholtz line of thought, where he addresses that, “Accordingly, the law of sufficient reason is really nothing more than the urge of our intellect to bring all our perceptions under its own control. It is not a law of nature. Our intellect is the faculty of forming general conceptions. It has nothing to do with our sense-perceptions and experiences, unless it is able to form general conceptions or laws.” For all one knows, imagination is not the most reliable of mental 22
operations, but nevertheless, we must not discard its very unique power for producing knowledges. Didi-Huberman rightly adds, “Imagination: a dangerous word if anything (as is, already the word image). But it is necessary to join Goethe, Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin in saying that the imagination, however disconcerting it is, has nothing to do with a personal or gratuitous fantasy. On the contrary, it gives us a knowledge that cuts across, through its intrinsic power of montage that consists in discovering — in the very place where it refuses the links created by obviated resemblances — links that direct observation cannot discern.” 23
Imagination then becomes a powerful mind value to operate on, a value which we can also consider as a tool that amplifies knowledges, “Knowledge through imagination, no less than knowledge of the imagination.” So, again, if we are to really grasp and 24
implement the power of rhizomatic thinking, we must become rhizomatic in exchange. “It is a tool, not for the logical exhaustion of possibilities given, but for the inehexaustible opening up to possibilities that are not yet given. Its principle its motor, is none other than the imagination.” Meaning that we should operate it or 25
operate in it, as a mode. We could adopt this condition as a state of perpetual flow of
the mind, a way of being which in turn becomes a constant mode of being. “Once a rhizome has been obstructed, arborified, it is all over, no desire stirs; for it is always by rhizome that desire moves and produces. […] To be rhizomorphous is to produce
Ibid. H. von Helmholtz.
22
Disparates. To read what was never written, Ch. 1” Atlas: How to Carry the World on One's Back? By Georges
Didi-23
Huberman. TF Editores, Madrid 2010. Ibid.
24
Ibid.
stems and filaments that seem to be roots, or better yet connect with them by penetrating the trunk, but put them to strange new uses.” 26
VIII.
So, it is me, but it could be you. Once again, here I stand before the mirror, looking at my body and the space that surrounds me, I am looking, there is me and there is what is around me. Here and there, I am looking. At some point in time, after observing my body and its environment, I find myself, I find myself again. This time I feel connected, I feel like a rhizome, I grow in many directions. It is me, but it could be you. Momentarily I visualise myself as a growing rhizome. “A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. I no longer see myself as the other I see myself as a connecting interaction of multiplicities, I no longer think of knowledge, I think of knowledges.
I am body, I am mind, I am inside and outside, it is my desire that pushes my intellect through the stems of thought and existence. My voice is now many voices tuning themselves into one. I am a cluster of informations, I am the result of countless relations, I am intentionally unpredictable, I no longer seek to dissect and objectify, rather I connect, iterate and subjectify matters. I am constantly reassembling, multiplying, moving and performing, I am constantly becoming. “What is important is not whether the flows are ‘one or multiple’—we are past that point: there is a collective assemblage of enunciation, a machinic assemblage of desire, one inside the other and both plugged into an immense outside that is a multiplicity in any case.” 27
These thoughts, these multiplications, these forms of being are what conform the possibility of imagining a conceptual body formed by clusters, a possible condition of being constellational.
The self as a complex dynamic system of operations which runs guided by its own principle of unity. I am talking about a way of being, an attitude of being, but more precisely again, a mode. A mode which could be seen as an assemblage of energies that moves and operates in the world, with the world. I am talking about an apparently undefined place, a territory that inhabits another territory. I am talking about that immaterial being which lives in the material body of the flesh. The mind. It
Ibid. Deleuze-Guattari.
is the mind, the mind as a conscious evolving territory which shapes itself as it becomes. “The pluralist composition of the mind, as a composite idea that posseses as many parts as faculties”. The mind that morphs through multiplicities into the self. “Ideas are not the only modes of thinking; the conatus and its various determinations or affects are also in the mind as modes of thinking.” We are the mind, the mind is 28
us, a mind that is constantly bridging itself into relations. “We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.” I 29
mean to say that I am, that we are a congregation of relations, a super connected entity formed by one and many constellations.
!
“Spinoza: Practical Philosophy By Gilles Deleuze”, Index Of The Main Concepts Of The Ethics,Chapter 4. Translated
28
by Robert Hurley. City Lights Books, 1988.
Ibid. Deleuze-Guattari.
Self-Framing As Experiment!
Chapter 2!
!
!
!
“When we intentionally reproduce empirical evidence found by earlier researchers, contemporaries, or ourselves, when we re-create natural or artificial phenomena, we speak of this as an experiment.” “The Experiment As Mediator
Between Object And Subject” J.W. Goethe
!
I.
Goethe, an artist, a poet, a thinker, a scientist, but most clearly a man of sublime sensitivity, tells us in somewhat of a paradoxical fashion, that our emotions, but more clearly our imagination is one of the most unreliable values that we can introduce into the process of experimentation. That is of course when we are considering experimentation as a means to develop reliable knowledge and acquire concise theory. “For here at this pass, this transition from empirical evidence to judgement, cognition to application, all the inner enemies of man lie in wait: imagination, which sweeps him away on its wings before he knows his feet have left the ground;
impatience; haste, self-satisfaction; rigidity; formalistic thought; prejudice; ease; frivolity; fickleness—this whole throng and its retinue.” The paragraph continues, 30
and ends with the following warning sentence, all the while still referring to the inner
enemies of man which lie in wait to betray our acquisition of knowledge through the
scientific experiment, “Here they lie in ambush and surprise not only for the active observer but also to the contemplative one who appears safe from all passion.”
Nevertheless and possibly against all odds manifested, I must add that I wish to start this argument by suggesting that the first step of inquiry on my proposition:
‘self-framing as experiment’, must in any case be and begin by engaging in active imagination throughout the statement.
Let us imagine then, that a straight line is drawn on a piece of paper with a pencil, going from one extreme to the other. It creates a division, a separation. A line, yes, a
“Part 1.- Methodology and General Scientific Topics” From the essay: “The Experiment As Mediator Between Object And Subject”
30
line, a simple line. Then, somehow, the line becomes a border between one side and the other, it delineates spaces, it forms two territories. Think of a line again, a simple line. But this time a line that forms itself in space, a place of our fancy, a place we imagine. This line, it curves, it angles, at times it might intersect with itself, or perhaps it can close or open a shape, a frame. A line, yes, a simple line opens up the possibility of definition. The line as a frame, the frame as a forming concept, framing as defining, framing as stating what is to be inside and what is to be outside.
Framing starts with the formation of a cell, the division of the sexes, there is an inside an outside, a male a female, as pointed out by Elizabeth Grosz, we separate, we form, we have boundaries to contain and differentiate. “The frame is what establishes
territory out of the chaos that is the earth. The frame is thus the first construction, the corners of the plane of composition. With no frame or boundary there can be no territory.” Following on this Deleuzian notion of territorialization as framing 31
exposed by Grosz, let me point then as Deleuze mentions, to the plane, a plane of
composition, where we can arrange and frame the chaos of information and thoughts
that surround us, in one specific place. “The plane of composition, which cuts across and thus plunges into, filters and coheres chaos through the coming into being of sensations, is thus both an immersion in chaos but also a mode of disruption and ordering of chaos through the extraction of that which life can glean for itself and its own intensifications from this whirling complexity—sensations, affects, percepts, intensities—blocs of bodily becoming that always co-evolve with blocs of the
becoming of matter or events”. For our case of concern, being that of constituting 32
frames as devices in the process of experimentation, we will recur consistently to the notion of a plane of composition, as the place to contextualize and delineate frames. In this case, the body as a place to form compositions, the body as a laboratory, the body as a place to produce knowledges. I mean a body, that could be anybodies body. Perhaps then we could bring a bit more clarity in conceiving the idea of the body as the point of departure by borrowing on Spinozian bodily notions, “The body in question is the human body; and its corresponding idea is the human mind or soul. The mind, then, like any other idea, is simply one particular mode of God's attribute, Thought. Whatever happens in the body is reflected or expressed in the mind. In this
“Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth”, Elizabeth Grosz, ch.1. Columbia University Press, 2010.
31
Ibid.
way, the mind perceives, more or less obscurely, what is taking place in its body. And through its body's interactions with other bodies, the mind is aware of what is
happening in the physical world around it.” Hence, for the purpose of this argument 33
will adopt the idea that the body can become the point of departure for making compositions, and that the body then becomes a possible place to experiment in and with. Accordingly then, I want to refer to the notion of self, as that of the self who uses its own body, not only as a framing place to compose, but also as an instrument and as material to experiment with. The idea of embodied cognition calls for the need to situate a place for experimentations to come about, in this case I wish to position the body as the laboratory.
II.
A laboratory possesses many instruments, and a researcher aids himself by selecting the necessary devices in order to perform the desired enquire. Consistency and efficiency are crucial aspects to keep in line, in this case Goethe reminds us, “The main value of an experiment lies in the fact that, simple or compound, it can be reproduced at any time given the requisite preparations, apparatus, and skill. After assembling the necessary materials we may perform the experiment as often as we wish. We will rightly marvel at the human ingenuity when we consider even briefly the variety of arrangements and instruments invented for this purpose. In fact, we can note that such instruments are still being invented daily.” As I explore further 34
the concept of a laboratory, I have chosen more precisely to think of the use of the photographic camera as the apparatus which aids my experimental investigation. the camera it is, because besides its many uses it is certainly known as an accurate and commonly used device for registration purposes. The photographic camera most certainly allows one to efficiently record consistent repetitions when one is tracing processes and documenting results.
Certainly not anybody can make a picture, but most certainly I would dare to say that almost everyone knows how to take a picture. With todays technological
advancements it is a simple matter of point(ing) and shoot(ing), you frame(it) and you click(it). This apparent ease of use, makes the medium of photography extremely popular and accesible in a variety of circumstances and uses. But as suggested
“Baruch Spinoza”, Nadler, Steven. First published Jun 29, 2001; substantive revision Jul 15, 2013. The Stanford Encyclopedia of
33
before, it might require skill and intention to actually make a photograph. When I refer to the making of imagery in photography, I mean images that function as containers of information, images that encapsulate an specific and deliberate
message within them, images that want to speak to us. Making an image involves an outline, a plan to follow, most certainly in the end it involves acquiring an specific outcome with them. Throughout this process, the maker has to first begin by entering into a trial and error mode of experimentation, in order to achieve a successful system. By system I mean, that which would allow him to be consistent and efficient in order to have the instrument at his service, the experimenter needs to first develop the skill to master the tool if he is to have the tool to the service of his
experimentations. I want to propose then, the use of photography as a means to experiment and theorise on the self, while using Goethe’s notion of the experiment as
mediator between object and subject as conceptual catapult. First, for this matter I
want to focus on the use of photography into a more specific genre, that of portraiture it is, but more precisely that of self-portraiture.
III.
Before jumping directly into self-portraiture as a means to experiment, I need to first briefly define my method of analysis, and second I need to find out how the activity of
portraying, meaning the making of portraits, relates my consideration to the photographic. In this case I am implementing the use of a method-machine, to
propose and expose the possible mechanisms at work, when we consider the use of the photographic image as experimental tool. I have chosen then for this case, to apply the Barthesian machine, ‘studium/punctum’, as a means to survey the
photographic portrait. Barthes particular contribution as a theorist in the visual field
regards us with a concern into the production of dichotomies and values between the subjectivity and the objectivity of a photographic image. “This view was given
exemplary formulation in Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida where he counterposed the force of pensiveness of the punctum to the informative aspect represented by the
studium.” Rancière tells us, as he makes a point of value on pensiveness (more on 35
this further on) concerning the photographic image using Barthes method.
“The Pensive Image” Chapter 5, The Emancipated Spectator, Jacques Rancière. Translated by Gregory Elliot, Verso Editions, London
35
Curiously enough and for the benefit of my argument most of the photographs discussed by Barthes in Camera Lucida, happen to be portraits. The same occurs in Rancière’s afore mentioned essay “The Pensive Image”, where he constantly aludes to the photographic portrait. Another case that draws on the use of the Barthesian
method-machine with essential concerns towards the photographic portrait, is read
in Félix Guattari's essay “Keiichi Tahara’s faciality machine”, Guattari adds, “We are now in a situation in which the ensemble of faciality traits has been destabilised by the deterritorializing treatment of lighting and framing.” I am drawn to the
possibilities that the studium/punctum machine can facilitate when exploring the photographic portrait. “Henceforth, the structural key to the image no longer adheres to the ‘photographic referent’ such as Roland Barthes defines it (I call ‘photographic referent’ not the optionally real thing to which an image or a sign refers but the necessarily real thing which has been placed before the lens, without which there would be no photograph). It finds itself transferred to the imagining intentionality of the spectator”. Perhaps what draws my interest to explore this particular method, is that I find that it is in the portrayed human face, that the whole presence of the self intensifies and becomes manifest. It could be perhaps because the visibility of
punctum accentuates with more drama in photographs where the human face is
present, but for that I have no precise ground of discussion. Although later on the text Guattari briefly opens up this matter by pointing to Barthes theory once again: “It is thus on the basis of a fracture of sense that this existential transfer of enunciation is set off, the portrait’s capturing gaze. Roland Barthes has apprehended this
phenomenon through the opposition he makes between the ‘studium’, in which the signification of the photo is coded, and the ‘punctum’ ‘sting, speck, cut, little hole— and also a cast of dice… that accident which pricks me’.” 36
!
I wont go in to much detail to specify on how this system might have been constituted, rather, I will attempt its application as a system to study and feel photographs. Let me then simplify the way in which I understand it, and into how I will apply Barthes’s method to my own experimentation process. First, we could assume that the studium refers to the image as a self-contained whole which permits readability through its own semiotic code. The studium is surveying and decoding the image by the means of its indexicality. In this sense, photography had the claim, and
Keiichi Tahara’s faciality machine”, Schizoanalytic Cartographies by Félix Guattari, translated by Andrew Goffey. Bloomsbury Press,
for some people it still does, that it tells some sort of truth, or at least that it tells the truth of what is indexically contained within the image when we look at it objectively, that we could say is the studium. The studium enables the reader with a sense of approachability, it allows the image to be assimilated in somewhat of a coherent way. The punctum on the other hand inspires an intensely private meaning, it escapes language, the image becomes a temporal hallucination. The punctum in this case is a cut, a puncture. As mentioned before, there is no universality in the reading of the message, rather there could be particular or collective conventions on certain codes contained in the image which viewers would agree upon. In the end, an image might carry its own thing which only affects the individual for a very particular reason. Singularity and the vibrating subjective exceptionality of the photograph could be referred to as the punctum. To think further on, I want to consider Ranciere’s notion of pensiveness as it opens up the possibility of considering the studium/punctum approach not necessarily as two separate matters. Say, as an a or b approach, but rather as a and b simultaneous operating possibility. “It might be characterised as an effect of the circulation, between the subject, the photographer and us, of the
intentional and the unintentional, the known and the unknown, the expressed and unexpressed, the present and the past. Contrary to what Barthes tells us, this pensiveness stems from the impossibility of making two images coincide… that one produced by the punctum and on the other hand, that one produced by the studium.” It seems that what remains slightly uncertain and open for interpretations, is if it is the actual activity of surveying the image, meaning engaging in the studium, which allows us to find the punctum, or if it is that we actually find the punctum because we immediately feel something at a glance when we look at an image. Is it the punctum then an intrigue perhaps, or an inexplicable feeling which is produced in us the spectators, which urges something in us to explore the image further and engage on a
studium. to come to grips I want to cite Ranciere’s pensiveness again, “Pensiveness in
fact arrives to thwart the logic of the action. On the one hand, it extends the action that had come to a halt. But on the other hand, it puts every conclusion in suspense. What is interrupted is the relationship between narration and expression. The logic of visuality no longer arrives to supplement action. It arrives to suspend it or rather to duplicate it.” 37
!
Ibid. “The Pensive Image”.
!
IIII.
Let us look at this apparently simple portrait then. First I will try to describe the picture somewhat objectively, at a glance. “The photograph is a black & white image.
In the frame we see that there is a man taking a picture of a woman against a backdrop that depicts a scenery. The setting is situated in front of some buildings in ruins, there is snow in the background, they are outdoors, possibly in a city.” This
brief and concise description indicates what is depicted in this particular photograph, it describes without much elaboration its indexical attributes.
!
!
!
“Untitled”, random photograph found on the internet.
!
!
As I ease into my description, I will adopt a first person voice to look further into the image, I will try to describe it as subjectively as possible according to what I am seeing and feeling, in order to express why it produces such an impact on me in an attempt to find the punctum. I will attempt then, to read this photograph careless of
any discursive approach that might already exist, and indifferent to the value that my interpretation can represent to an audience. In this case, I will engage in a deep
studium in order to reach the image’s punctum. “The theory of the punctum intends
to affirm the resistant singularity of the image.” This is an attempt to manifest the 38
punctum in this particular photographic portrait, hence, the amplification of
singularization in its interpretation is not only permitted, but encouraged as a form of producing knowledge. According to Simondon, “Individuation must be grasped as the becoming of the being, and not as a model of the being which would exhaust its
signification.” Let me elaborate then on the particularity of this image. 39
!
“This picture was taken probably in the aftermath of WWII, it looks like some eastern European city, Warsaw maybe, those buildings remind me of Warsaw, I somehow want to believe it in this way, it is there for sure, there is something in the smile on that woman’s face that reminds me of the Polish, people I have met before and after I was in Poland.
!
Strangely enough, I noted that she appears to smile at the person taken the picture of herself, but actually at close look, it looks like she is smiling at the person looking at her being photographed, or more clearly, at the person that is making the photograph of the photograph. In this case, it appears that the two photographs are shot simultaneously just at the moment of the ‘click’, we can suspect that this moment is taking place because the photographer is pressing on the lens, holding the camera, directing his gaze at her slightly lifting his left foot, arching his arm, somehow this movement suggests to me that he is in the action of doing something, which is obviously ‘taking the picture’. It certainly gives me the impression that she is smiling at the other camera, or say, the camera-spectator, that automatically gives me the impression that she is smiling at me in this case, the viewer, rather than at the photographer before her. It is her smile which puzzles me and which makes it to be something unique for me on this picture. To me that is the ‘punctum’ of the image, it tenderises the roughness of the situation, those recently bombarded buildings appear to be much more of an interesting setup, than the actual improvised background with the spring scene painted on the cloth, and again, I feel her smile overpowers the presence of the surroundings.
!
At first, I felt at odds looking at this image, it is her smile that keeps me at odds. Although this picture encapsulates many aspects, like a certain documentary quality to it, we still lack more access to information about it, in the case we need it to use it as a provider of
Ibid. “The Pensive Image”, Jacques Rancière.
38
“The Genesis Of The Individual” By Gilbert Simondon. Translated from the french by Mark Cohen and Sanford Kwinter. In:
39
facts, like it would tell us about a war, about destruction, about certain people, a picture that depicts the human condition at a certain time in a certain place.
!
But in this case I look at it plainly as a picture of a picture, of someone making a picture. This circularity I mention, keeps a never-ending flow in occurrence and constantly
validates itself, because she is looking at the viewer, at the person with the second camera, and she is smiling at him/her, and this causes the level of complicity to intensify, making me feel a bit uneasy towards the picture. In a sense, this portrait evokes me to consider the ambiguity posed by Rancière’s thoughts on the pensiveness of the image. “In pensiveness, the act of thinking seems to be encroached upon by a certain passivity. Things become complicated when we say of an image that it is pensive. An image is not supposed to think. It contains unthought thought, a thought that cannot be attributed to the intention of the person who produces it and which has an effect on the person who views it without her linking it to a determinate object. Pensiveness thus refers to a condition that is
indeterminately between the active and the passive.” 40
!
Curiously, to me, this specific image also points dramatically to the paradoxical fake-ness of the photographic medium and its ambiguous entrapment with evidential truth. For example, this particular images depicts the deliberate construction of a scenario, of false scenarios in the midst of war. One comes to think that after all the tragedy, images of happiness and possible landscapes get quickly constructed and promoted to heal and forget the wounds of war. The destroyed city in ruins, poverty and desolation are covered up by the falsity of a constructed depiction of an unachievable future, hope is what we are
longing, we still don’t know if the war is over at the moment this picture was taken, but the picture being made inside the picture struggles to cover, or maybe, somehow, it tries to decontextualize this fact, but by doing so it only makes it more evident, it magnifies the event, it only brings the horror of the situation to a further intensity.
!
But after all, all of this as a form of meaning, becomes dubious, it fades into nothingness in a fraction of a second. Because this singularization, is just a particular interpretation, it is just one-other, another reading of this one portrait by me, the individual. As I read the image, and as I relate all matters that concern me inside and outside the frame, I think and believe that the punctum is located in that woman’s smile. I am sure the punctum is there, right there; it is there where it punctures me.”
!
V.
The self as personal laboratory, poses the idea that the self with its own particular interior, becomes a potential producer of knowledges as it manifests its interiority
outwardly through a projected appearance. As mentioned before in the process of self-framing as experiment, the body becomes the frame, but also the frame captures the body. As framing or rather self-framing is discussed further, I will like to point again towards photography and its possible role with experimentation. Photography is a medium that allows one to experience all sides of its integration: one can make a picture, see a picture and be in the picture without much effort or skill. Besides its impeccable accuracy for reproducing reality, photography can certainly function as a versatile tool as a means to experiment. Primarily I think, it is do to its innate framing qualities. Besides the point, we must also consider that currently, photography is quite a practical and accesible medium to handle. These rather facile ease of use makes photography now, an extremely popular device for portrait making, hence, a favourite tool for self-portrait making, ranging from selfies to artistic images. The interest on self-portraiture which I seek to discuss in this text, concerns more
precisely with a self-portraiture that proposes its use as a means to create platforms for knowledge production, using the self as experiment. While I read Goethe’s title “The Experiment As Mediator Between Object And Subject” once more, I iterate thoughts, I am thinking now of this text’s own title “Self-framing as Experiment” and I try to position both self and experiment in one frame of thought. I realise then how thinking possibilities open up, and an unmeasurable amount of information is revealed through imagination. Without a doubt for me, Goethe’s concept has
somehow transposed me to the idea of considering the self further, the self as a place to experiment; the self as knowledge producer.
As the proposition of the self as personal laboratory continues to unfold I must first bring attention to the place-space where these events occur. The body, but not only in its corporeality, the mind but not as separation from body, I mean to say the mind and the body as a self. Possibly, we can start to understand that on the one hand there is a self which delineates an specific frame outside of itself in order to produce
experiments. On the other, there is a self which becomes itself the frame, using its body as a place to perform research on its own self to produce knowledges. In this sense Deleuze brings us to the edge of such a thought, as he highlights some
essentials in Spinozian philosophy pointing out that, “Spinoza offers philosophers a new model: the body. He proposes to establish the body as a model: ‘We do not know what the body can do…’ This declaration of ignorance is a provocation.” Thus, the 41
Chapter 2, “Spinoza: Practical Philosophy By Gilles Deleuze”, Translated by Robert Hurley. City Lights Books, 1988.
body becomes a source, a point of departure, a point of reference. What the body says, what the body can do, what the body can touch, what the body can feel. The body occupying space, the presence of the body. But there is a recognition of a body and of the body, a here and a there, hence an inside and an outside. These defined sides are precisely what might allow us to build a position on the use the body as point of departure in experimentation.
The mind appears to be located in the inside of our body while simultaneously it is also connected to an outside of our bodies. We perceive our mind through our intellect, but we also feel the mind in our bodies through our senses and emotions, a situation which causes ambiguity as we try to intellect it with certainty, as we attempt to assure that the mind is alone our brain, our body. Rather, the mind appears to be something a bit more abstract, perhaps we can call it a force, a force from within, a certain type interior energy that needs to rise and liberate itself through us and in us. It seems that this force, this outpour, this desire for the mind to act, for it to be itself is a need, a need to become, to manifest. To manifest freely, out there in the outside. On this thought, Deleuze provides us with a powerful insight as he reflects on his Spinozian enquire, adding: “What defines freedom is an ‘interior’ and a ‘self’ determined by necessity. One is never free through one’s will and through that on which it patterns itself, but through one’s essence and through that which follows from it. Man, the most powerful of finite modes, is free when he comes into possession of his power of acting.” It seems then, that it is through this 42
power, the power of acting that the interior of the self outpours and articulates,
manifesting itself through a body while simultaneously becoming an expression in the world. Although it is certainly true that we cannot see a mind, we can certainly say that we can see a body. Hence, we could probably say, a mind that uses a body as an object to frame itself, to represent itself.
!
VI.
As a case study I have chosen the photographic work of Brazilian artist Renato Abreu. More Precisely I will focus on his self-portrait series “Revelations” presented at
FOAM in Amsterdam in October 2011. To make sense of the self-framing as 43
Chapter 4, Index Of The Main Concepts Of The Ethics, “Spinoza: Practical Philosophy By Gilles Deleuze”, Translated by Robert
42
Hurley. City Lights Books, 1988.
“Revelations” is a series of 8 typological photographs always presented as a set. Sizes and installations vary according to the artist’s
