Embodied Fantasies: From Awe to Artifice 9783034311021, 9783035105407, 3034311028, 3035105405

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Table of Contents......Page 7
Introduction 7......Page 9
Acknowledgements 15......Page 17
1. Imagining Imagination......Page 19
C.S. MEIJNS - What’s Imagining Got to Do with Images? 19......Page 21
SUZANNE ANKER - Bio-ethers and Luminous Ores: Welcome to Wonderland 33......Page 35
RAÚL GÓMEZ VALVERDE BY SABINE FLACH - Sometimes I Begin with a Title 49......Page 51
2. Sensible Differences......Page 63
MIKA ELO - (Dis) Synchronies of Vision and Touch 63......Page 65
ESA KIRKKOPELTO - What Does Imagination Look Like? Notes on the Schematism of the Modalities 73......Page 75
SABINE FLACH - Negotiation and Metamorphosis: Carsten Höller’s SOMA and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 83......Page 85
DAWNA SCHULD - Plato’s Shade: Embodying the Cave in Phenomenal Art 99......Page 101
3. Thwarted Expectations......Page 115
GERHARD SCHARBERT - Fantasias – Experimental Induced Psychosis and Modern Aesthetics in 19th Century France 115......Page 117
ARTHUR I. MILLER - Creative Processes within Fantasies: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung 125......Page 127
GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER - Fantasies of the Catastrophe: Embodiment and Kinaesthetic Awareness in the Performance-Installation of Naoko Tanaka’s “Die Scheinwerferin” 139......Page 141
FRANK GILLETTE - Patterns Which Connect: Embodied Fantasies 151......Page 153
4. Places and Spaces......Page 159
BORIS GOESL - Star Arts or Celestial Embodiments: Culturally Conventionalized Constellations and Ambiguous Artistic Asterisms in the Modern Projection Planetarium 159......Page 161
MITCHELL JOACHIM - The Necessity of All Scales: Planetary Design in the Age of Globality 177......Page 179
MATHIAS KESSLER BY SABINE FLACH - Staging Nature 187......Page 189
ALEX ARTEAGA - Fantasy in a Non-Given World? 195......Page 197
MARGARETA HESSE BY SABINE FLACH - Seeing Red 203......Page 205
5. Pose and Expose......Page 217
ALEXANDER SCHWAN - Body-Calligraphies: Dance as an Embodied Fantasy of Writing 217......Page 219
SHELLEY RICE - The Grass is Always Greener: Self-Portraiture in the Age of Facebook 229......Page 231
LAURA TALER - Spiegelei 241......Page 243
THYRZA NICHOLS GOODEVE - Twilight of the Artworld: From Representation to Ontology in the Work of Matthew Barney 249......Page 251
ELLEN ESROCK - The Phantasmagoria of Everyday Life: The Visceral-Somatic Viewer of Hiroshi Sugimoto and Adolph Menze 257......Page 259
Contributors 267......Page 269

Citation preview

Suzanne Anker is a visual artist and theorist working at the nexus of art and the biological sciences. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally in museums and galleries including the Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian Institute, The Phillips Collection, P.S.1 Museum, the JP Getty Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in Japan. Her seminal text The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (co-authored with the late Dorothy Nelkin) was published in 2004 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. She is the Chair of the Fine Arts Department of School of Visual Arts in New York since 2005. Sabine Flach is Professor for Contemporary Art and Art Theory (visiting) at School of Visual Arts in New York. Her current research focuses on Epistemology and Methodology of Contemporary Art; Praxis and Theory of Contemporary Art; Aisthesis and Media of Embodiment; Epistemology and Aesthetics of Visual Thinking; Emotions and Culture of the Senses; Knowledge of the Arts; Art and Art Theories of the 19th and 20th Centuries; Concepts of Nature.

ISBN 978-3-0343-1102-1

Approaches to modes of fantasies are explored beyond traditional conceptions to include complex thinking processes, subjectivity and inter-subjective experiences. What function do fantasies and their images possess in relation to art as a form of knowledge production?

www.peterlang.com

This volume focuses on notions of embodiment as they relate to sexuality, aesthetics, epistemology, perception, and fantasy itself.

Embodied Fantasies: From Awe to Artifice

Art / Knowledge / Theory

Embodied Fantasies, a concept central to art history, theory and practice is concurrently a topic debated in the fields of the neuro- and cognitive sciences, philosophy and phenomenology.

Embodied Fantasies: From Awe to Artifice Suzanne Anker Sabine Flach (eds)

Peter Lang

This volume focuses on notions of embodiment as they relate to sexuality, aesthetics, epistemology, perception, and fantasy itself. Approaches to modes of fantasies are explored beyond traditional conceptions to include complex thinking processes, subjectivity and inter-subjective experiences. What function do fantasies and their images possess in relation to art as a form of knowledge production? Suzanne Anker is a visual artist and theorist working at the nexus of art and the biological sciences. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally in museums and galleries including the Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian Institute, The Phillips Collection, P.S.1 Museum, the JP Getty Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in Japan. Her seminal text The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (co-authored with the late Dorothy Nelkin) was published in 2004 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. She is the Chair of the Fine Arts Department of School of Visual Arts in New York since 2005. Sabine Flach is Professor for Contemporary Art and Art Theory (visiting) at School of Visual Arts in New York. Her current research focuses on Epistemology and Methodology of Contemporary Art; Praxis and Theory of Contemporary Art; Aisthesis and Media of Embodiment; Epistemology and Aesthetics of Visual Thinking; Emotions and Culture of the Senses; Knowledge of the Arts; Art and Art Theories of the 19th and 20th Centuries; Concepts of Nature.

Art / Knowledge / Theory

Embodied Fantasies: From Awe to Artifice

Embodied Fantasies, a concept central to art history, theory and practice is concurrently a topic debated in the fields of the neuro- and cognitive sciences, philosophy and phenomenology.

Embodied Fantasies: From Awe to Artifice Suzanne Anker Sabine Flach (eds)

Peter Lang

(PERGLHG)DQWDVLHV)URP$ZHWR$UWLÀFH

Art / Knowledge / Theory Volume 1

Edited by Suzanne Anker and Sabine Flach

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien

Embodied Fantasies: )URP$ZHWR$UWLÀFH Suzanne Anker Sabine Flach (eds)

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien

Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Embodied fantasies : from awe to artifice / Suzanne Anker, Sabine Flach (eds). – 1 [edition]. pages cm. – (Art/knowledge/theory ; volume 1) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-3-03-431102-1 1. Art–Philosophy. 2. Fantasy. 3. Image (Philosophy) 4. Imagination. 5. Phenomenology. 6. Thought and thinking. I. Anker, Suzanne, 1946- editor of compilation. II. Flach, Sabine, editor of compilation. BH39.E5455 2013 154.3–dc23 2012049186

The editors and publishers gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. Cover Design: Didier Studer, Peter Lang AG ISBN 978-3-0343-1102-1 pb. ISSN 2235-2759 pb.

ISBN 978-3-0351-0540-7 eBook ISSN 2235-2767 eBook

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2013 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Hungary

Table of Contents

Introduction

7

Acknowledgements

15 1. Imagining Imagination

C.S. MEIJNS What’s Imagining Got to Do with Images?

19

SUZANNE ANKER Bio-ethers and Luminous Ores: Welcome to Wonderland

33

RAÚL GÓMEZ VALVERDE BY SABINE FLACH Sometimes I Begin with a Title

49

2. Sensible Differences MIKA ELO (Dis) Synchronies of Vision and Touch

63

ESA KIRKKOPELTO What Does Imagination Look Like? Notes on the Schematism of the Modalities

73

SABINE FLACH Negotiation and Metamorphosis: Carsten Höller’s SOMA and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster

83

DAWNA SCHULD Plato’s Shade: Embodying the Cave in Phenomenal Art

99

3. Thwarted Expectations GERHARD SCHARBERT Fantasias – Experimental Induced Psychosis and Modern Aesthetics in 19th Century France

115

ARTHUR I. MILLER Creative Processes within Fantasies: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung

125

6

Table of Contents

GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER Fantasies of the Catastrophe: Embodiment and Kinaesthetic Awareness in the Performance-Installation of Naoko Tanaka’s “Die Scheinwerferin”

139

FRANK GILLETTE Patterns Which Connect: Embodied Fantasies

151

4. Places and Spaces BORIS GOESL Star Arts or Celestial Embodiments: Culturally Conventionalized Constellations and Ambiguous Artistic Asterisms in the Modern Projection Planetarium

159

MITCHELL JOACHIM The Necessity of All Scales: Planetary Design in the Age of Globality

177

MATHIAS KESSLER BY SABINE FLACH Staging Nature

187

ALEX ARTEAGA Fantasy in a Non-Given World?

195

MARGARETA HESSE BY SABINE FLACH Seeing Red

203

5. Pose and Expose ALEXANDER SCHWAN Body-Calligraphies: Dance as an Embodied Fantasy of Writing

217

SHELLEY RICE The Grass is Always Greener: Self-Portraiture in the Age of Facebook

229

LAURA TALER Spiegelei

241

THYRZA NICHOLS GOODEVE Twilight of the Artworld: From Representation to Ontology in the Work of Matthew Barney

249

ELLEN ESROCK The Phantasmagoria of Everyday Life: The Visceral-Somatic Viewer of Hiroshi Sugimoto and Adolph Menze

257

Contributors

267

Introduction Embodied fantasies, a concept central to art theory and practice, have again emerged as a salient topic in diverse fields outside of art’s domain; especially philosophy, psychology, medicine and neuro and cognitive sciences. The relationships between embodiment, fantasy, the senses and emotions have become prominent in various discursive settings. It is striking, that all these fields of knowledge production are currently readdressing fantasies beyond traditional conceptions of the ungraspable, but additionally, as a complex set of thinking processes. Apart from such classical philosophies as phenomenology, understood as intentional subjective relationships perceived between objects and environments; fantasies under the auspices of embodiment theories, have become germane for understanding multifarious processes of ‘inner worlds’. In doing so, theoretical reflections to clarify the status of such fantasies exercise a dominant role in understanding the intricacies of visual thinking and it’s conjunction with perception, emotions and the senses. I For Aristotle, phantasia is analogous to sensual perception and akin to sensual perception has its own, intrinsic judgment which can also be prone to deception1. Such double-sidedness of fantasies, with their inner dichotomy oscillating between qualitative experience and cerebral judgment, can still dominate current discourse. If the hypothesis that thoughts are essentially motor processes, what would it mean for fantasy if such a proposition proves true? Would the embodiment of fantasy be comprehended as a kind of off-line sensor-motoring-process or other applicable versions of subliminal activity? For example: gesturing while speaking? Would its intrinsic nature be discerned as predominantly emotional? If so, how can this process be conceived? What is the physical body’s role in thinking, in imagination, and in fantasy itself? Moreover, if thoughts are not motor processes, how do fantasies manage to become embodied? In this volume we have endeavored to elucidate how fantasies are manifestly embodied. Fantasy, imagination, and the German Einbildungskraft are significantly interwoven with various theories of subjectivity, the visual and performing arts and image theory. Yet still unresolved within this network is the highly debated question concerning qualia. Does qualia exist and if so, how do subjective experiences translate on an intersubjective level? For art and art-theory, imagination

 1

Aristotle: De Anima, pp. 427–428.

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and Einbildungskraft are related to visuality, pictorialization, and the gaze. Moreover, these constructs intermingle again as soon as questions addressing descriptions of fantasies arise. How can inner images be thought of to legitimatize substantiations of fundamentally immaterial objects? Assuming mental projections can be framed as icons does not at all establish that consciousness is a container into which material images are inserted. Even if there is no doubt that perceptions are immaterial, this still does not imply that perceptions as ideas do not possess structural features known from images. Perceptions are the result of a subject’s actions.2 In this active creation, perceptions can only be directed towards objects that have been presented in pictorial form. Thus, it is not about content but about the comparison between “Darstellung” (image-presentation) and “Wahrnehmung” (perception) or “Vorstellung” (imagination) referring to the structural mode of “Anschauung” (perceiving).3 Perceptions in their immanent composition exhibit stylistic frameworks. This allusion to the structural resemblances between images and perceptions points toward a condition that is constitutive of the mental capacity to shape images. Merleau-Ponty defines ‘stylize’ as the mutuality between types of perception and the perceiving subject. This act offers more than just the explanation of a uniquely intentional reference. Such forms of perception are not only perceptions of something, but are autonomous vis-à-vis the subjects’ intentionality. This means that the way in which one perceives something is independent of the phenomenon of what one perceives. This type of perception is invariably dynamic. For example, one not only sees changing objects, but also their ever shifting stylized appearances.4 Such seeing cannot be thought of without a personal subject. “Seeing always implies structures [...] and giving weight to objects.”5 Thus, in this doubly coded stylized manner of perception, the subject shows itself, as “the current and individual self of a person,”6 such that we may not negate the distinction between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ spheres. II During the 18th century, fantasy, imagination and the Einbildungskraft became separate entities. Imagination and Einbildungskraft were considered as mere mental faculties, which did not project back in time, like a recollection. Instead

 2 3 4 5 6

Wiesing: Vom Cogito zum Video, pp. 140ff. Wiesing: Vom Cogito zum Video, p. 141, and Flach: Twilight Zones. Wiesing: Vom Cogito zum Video, pp. 141–142. Ibid. p. 143. Ibid. p. 142.

Introduction

9

 they pointed to a subject’s future projections,7 while fantasies remained the productive capacity of perception. Imagined objects (phantasiertes Objekt) play a significant role in the constitution of self-awareness and questions of how conscious fantasies interact with “daydreaming” still remain. Moreover, there is a unique distinction between fantasy and mimesis, in which the fantasy not only reproduces what is seen but produces what was never seen before, not reflecting but creating a reality. Discussions concerning these issues have a very wide range of focus. For example, if we consider dance as an embodied fantasy, the structural issue becomes, whether to conceive of the dancer’s performative body as an agent of fantasy or as its expression. Other examples include dream experience and hallucinatory episodes. If in REMSleep gravity-related limbs are paralyzed, dreams erupting during this phase can only be “off-line” embodied experiences. How does intrinsic sensing and emotional expression arise through simulations that are not “real” but exist as automatic brain functions? Further subjects of interest include the concept of “creative flow.” Heinrich von Kleist’s “On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking” (Über die Allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden) postulates that seemingly irrelevant issues of subliminal embodiment, such as gesturing and body language coexist. For example, to clarify the status of visual thinking, fantasies, and imagination, we examine a notebook from the estate of Ludwig Wittgenstein. An insistent question appears in the notebook written between March 24 and April 12, 1950, among comments on color and color terms. This query becomes a decisive parameter which leads to thought passages on the relation linking ‘internal’ and ‘external’: The question, short but effectual, is: “Am I aware that I see?” Thus the postulate: “Am I aware that I see” implicates an immanent cast of self-perception. The question then appears as: What is a “seeing” that perpetually oscillates between an ‘external’ and ‘internal’ way of seeing? What corresponding phenomenon of external givens and internal appearances does it describe? Assertions of mental pictures, that is, our capability to imagine, we argue, are encircled by Wittgenstein’s challenging thought; which is understood as a tentative “picture game”, configuring this inner pictorial ability to recognize “sense” in visual configurations8. The reference for us is to open a dimension in which seeing itself gains an additional optical value, in which the knowledge of certainty in art is not necessarily compelled to reproduce what is visible, but instead unveils what has not yet been seen.

 7 8

Schulte-Sasse: Einbildung/Imagination/Phantasie, p. 89 Macho: Ist mir bekannt, daß ich sehe, pp. 211–229.

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In this sense, an artistic undertaking not only ascribes to something but can be autotelic, referring to itself. Such pictures cannot be simply regarded as fragments of reality. Pictures always contain an interior reflection connected to specific manners of perception. If the picture’s significance results from relieving tensions between the mode of representation and that which is represented, only then can the context of the actual conditions which create visibility, hence meaning, be considered. It is not primarily the eye that governs this pictorial sense; rather, a perception is essentially generated atmospherically. Its sense is a body that, in this case, always comprises a motion, a motive, and thus iconic kinetics.9 Embodied fantasies are the productive activities of the senses of sight which appear in cognitive and mental faculties. Embodied fantasies are the modal plurality of the senses which make possible the emergence of images of perception. They shape a subject’s constitutive activities which result in a conjunction of the interaction between mental and material images. III We now turn our attention to the ways in which the visual and performing arts employ the double coded operation of fantasy. Citing a reflection from Paul Valéry on the specific abilities of pictures, he writes that pictures show more than the objects they represent: “Une image est plus qu’une image et parfois plus que la chose meme dont elle est image.”10 What Valéry’s remark discloses is the special demand made of art which should not simply confirm what is already known but inparts an additional value of projected possibilities. On the foundation of these observations the following crucial question for embodied fantasies can be asserted: How can inner images be thought of while one excludes that such images lead to illegitimate substantiations of fundamentally immaterial objects? Even if there is no doubt that ideas addressing perceptions are immaterial, this still does not imply that perceptions as ideas do not possess structural features known from images.11 Following this premise, images unleash variegated approaches to the imaginary, as a broader range for what constitutes images (Bildraum), and thus they inquire: How can we see what is not there? IV We have sub-divided the presentations into five distinct yet overlapping categories in which our authors engage this subject. In Chapter I: Imagining Imagina-

 9 10 11

Flach, Sabine: On Lament, pp. 181–207. Valéry quoted in Dagognet: Philosophie de l’image (without pagination). Wiesing: Vom Cogito zum Video, pp. 134–147.

Introduction

11

 tion, Chrissy S. Meijns’ discussion What’s Imagining Got to Do with Images concentrates on the picture theory of imagination including a discussion of images as objects and images as instruments. She explores the imagination as a form of consciousness. Suzanne Anker’s Bio-Ethers and Luminous Ores: Welcome to Wonderland refers to a world which is entangled with novel methods of cellular production, bio-printing and astrocultural techniques of food production. Exploring the ways in which science and technology are transforming living forms in revolutionary ways. Ironically, these forms resemble ‘creatures’ embedded in classical myths and fairytales. Sabine Flach’s text on Raúl Gómez Valverdes Sometimes I Begin with a Title demonstrates how the artist creates a void, thus becoming a matrix for building realms of fantasies. Composed of photography, video and installation, phenomenological experience emerges as an attribute of fictive space. In Chapter II: Sensible Differences we have placed Mika Elo’s text (Dis) Synchronies of Vision and Touch. Beginning with Aristotle’s sense of touch, Mika Elo reexamines the role of tactility in human experience in light of revolutionary digital technology. Esa Kirkoppeltos’ What Does Imagination Look Like? Notes on the Schematism of the Modalities demonstrates how the parallel reading of Immanuel Kant’s Third and First Critiques can change our ideas of imagination (Einbildungskraft) and of its intermediary role between human understanding (Verstand) and what is provided it in perception (nature, world, sensory data, etc). He picks up an idea initially introduced by Hegel, later adopted by the phenomenologists: Ergo, the Kantian imagination is not a semiautonomous agent at the service of the higher faculties of mind, but a reflective representation we can access of the transcendental activity of one’s experience, of its world-oriented existence. Sabine Flach’s essay Negotiations and Metamorphosis explains how the sense for images (Sinn für Bilder) the sense of images (Bildsinn) and an imagined sense (bildhafte Sinn) interact with specific spatial conditions, not unlike Foucault’s heterotopias. She refers to Husserl and Merleau-Ponty as a backdrop in which visual thinking merges with its philosophical implications. Dawna Schuld’s Plato’s Shade: Embodying the Cave in Phenomenal Art, interrogates the concept of shadows to understand the role of senses in cognition. Therefore she focuses on the 1960s, were a number of artists, following John Cage’s lead, began to experiment with artificial caves (including anechoic chambers) as a means of toying with perception. Schuld argues that there exists an imaginative corollary between one visitor experience and the next; that an embodied form of “like experiences” constitutes an intersubjective space for comprehension that is neither wholly physiological nor wholly cognitive, but combined. In Chapter III: Thwarted Expections, each of the presenters employs unexpected twists of fate. Gerhard Scharbert’s text Fantasias – Experimental In-

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duced Psychosis and Modern Aesthetics in 19th Century France underpins the role of hashish experiments in 19th century France. The unconscious (as it pertains to drug-induced visions) sets the stage for the study of psychopathology, still in its infant stage in France at that time. Arthur Miller’s chapter Creative Processes within Fantasies: The Strange Friendship of Pauli and Jung researches the personal and professional relationship between Jung and Pauli. He chronicles the various ways invention, interpretation and psychological dysfunction decipherable. Gabriele Brandstetter’s reflections on Fantasies of the Catastrophe: Embodiment and Kinaesthetic Awareness in the Performanceinstallation of Naoko Tanaka’s “Die Scheinwerferin” asks how traumatic experiences are embodied. She explores the ways in which dance can be employed to rework the past, concentrating on Naoko Tanaka’s performance, which deals with aspects of loss and tragedy. In this performance, the protagonist takes on the persona of her grandmother, a Hiroshima victim and survivor. Frank Gillette’s Patterns Which Connect: Embodied Fantasies, is a novel report and portrayal of hallucination intertwined with and hypnogogia and “dream-soaked” sleep. Strangely, it combines the spirit of stream of consciousness and literary parlance. In Chapter IV: Places and Spaces, Boris Goesl writes about Star Arts or: Celestial Embodiments: Culturally Conventionalized Constellations and Ambiguous Artistic Asterisms in the Modern Projection Planetarium. He explains the ways in which constellations are mapped through the ages; depicting both the imaginary and the iconic. In Mitchell Joachim’s contribution The Necessity of All Scales: Planetary Design in the Age of Globality, the architect and urban planner gazes into the future as a means of understanding the present. Scale, in a globalized society, is the issue Joachim focuses on. How can we conceive of space that is at once efficient and psychically viable? Sabine Flach on Mathias Kessler’s Staging Nature points to how landscape as an ecological and social condition can be reckoned with. By exploring a US city ravaged by the mining industry, Kessler creates a portrait of political corruption in a devastated place; which opens up a realm for imaginings concerning untouched landscapes. And therefore fantasies about nature as the counterpart of culture. Alex Arteaga in Fantasy in a Non-Given World? introduces a multi-sense performance combining ambient sounds of the city with a text written as a multi-dimensional “time” experience. While Sabine Flach in her essay Seeing Red shows the significance of how specific spatial conditions create realms for fantasies in Margareta Hesse’s site-specific laser installation. In Chapter V: Pose and Expose, Alexander Schwan contributes with BodyCalligraphies: Dance as an Embodied Fantasy of Writing. In his text he cites dance as both a form of cutting and writing with gestures to displace space. Shelley Rice writes about The Grass is Always Greener: Self-Portraiture in the

Introduction

13

 Age of Facebook. She concentrates on a global view of gender, its cultural transformations and contemporary practitioners within current photographic genres. Laura Taler’s Spiegelei employs the tango, as a device that defines protocol. Who leads? Who follows? How does such a rhythm come to be and what are its projected implications? Thyrza Goodeve’s Twilight of the Artworld: From Representation to Ontology in the Work of Matthew Barney concentrates on the artist’s work from the perspective of a cultural historian. She discusses his sculptures as “primordial” experiences embedded in a deep sense of time. Ellen Esrock’s The Phantasmagoria of Everyday Life: The Visceral-Somatic Viewer of Hiroshi Sugimoto and Adolph Menzel’s Art explores the ephemereality of images and how they trigger memories. The visual and performing arts, architecture, art history, prose and science studies have informed this conference with a wide array of provoking thoughts. The impact of this event substantiate the humanities’ role with reference to how knowledge is encoded, transferred and archived. The rich set of vocabularies present here acknowledge the value of transdisiplinary dialogues in place in the 21st century. Further forays in explicating the ephemereal surround of fantasies, both vague and persistent, are continually underway. We can only imagine what the future will bring, as novel imaging devices and digital communication systems expand our global axis and mine our internal recesses.

References Aristotle: “De Anima” in Seidl, Horst (ed.): Aristoteles: Über die Seele. Hamburg (Meiner) 1995. Dagognet, François: Philosophie de l’image. Paris (Vrin) 1984. Flach, Sabine: “Twilight Zones” in: Sabine Flach and Jan Söffner (eds.): Habitus in Habitat II. Other Sides of Cognition, Bern (Peter Lang) 2010, pp. 31– 49. Flach, Sabine: “On Lament” in: Sabine Flach, Daniel Margulies and Jan Söffner (eds.): Habitus in Habitat I. Emotion and Motion, Bern (Peter Lang) 2010, pp. 181–207. Macho, Thomas: “Ist mir bekannt, daß ich sehe? Wittgensteins Frage nach dem inneren Sehen”, in Hans Belting and Dietmar Kamper: Der zweite Blick. Bildgeschichte und Bildreflexion. Munich (Fink) 2000, pp. 211–229. Schulte-Sasse, Jochen: “Einbildung/Imagination/Phantasie” in: Karlheinz Barck et al: Ästhetische Grundbegriffe. Stuttgart, Weimar (Metzler) 2001, Vol. 2, p. 89.

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Wiesing, Lambert: “Vom Cogito zum Video. Die bewußtseinstheoretische Bedeutung des Sehens nach René Descartes”, in: Olaf Breidbach, Karl clausberg (eds.): Video Ergo Sum. Repräsentationen nach innen und außen zwischen Kunst- und Neurowissenschaft. Hamburg (Verlag Hans-BredowInstitut) 1999, pp. 134–147.



Acknowledgements

The publication Embodied Fantasies: Between Awe and Artifice is the first volume of our book series Art / Knowledge / Theory. The theoretical basis, methodological approaches and interdisciplinary topicswere developed for the Peter Lang publishing group. We are delighted that our first project, the Embodied Fantasies International Conference was realized in October 2011 at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), Department of Fine Arts in New York City. It was the first major event constituting the prelude for this book series. More projects will follow. An endeavor like Embodied Fantasies is not possible without the confidence of institutional support. Our special acknowledgements go to the President of the School of Visual Arts, David Rhodes, the Executive Vice-President, Anthony Rhodes and to our administrative staff. We are indebted to all of our colleagues in the Fine Arts Department who generously supported the preparation and realization of the conference with enthusiasm, ardor and reliability, namely: Anne M. Clark, Erik Guzman, Kari Britta Lorenson, Tarah Rhoda, Mark Rosen, Henry Sanchez, Gary Sherman, Luis Navarro, Amy Stienbarger, Joe Tekippe and Daniel Wapner for their time and efforts. A very warm and affectionate appreciation goes out to all of our wonderful student workers and the earnestness and engagement with which they participated: Maria Babikova, Jill Cleary, Richard Dempsey, David Frenkel, Lily Gist, Kayleigh Groves, Shakhed Hadaya, M. Benjamin Herndon, Su Min Hong, Su Yeon Ihm, Daria Irincheeva, Winter Kim, Sandra Lang, Paul Lemarquis, Lucia Mooney-Martin, Laura Murray, Johannes Nowak, Hae Lin Park, Lorelei Ramirez, Alessia Resta, Jamie Rubin, Julie Sas, Melissa Skiadas, Alejandro Salas Strus, Miryana Todorova and TK Tram. We are enormously thankful for the vast help given by Anne M. Clark and her priceless skills in editing and proofreading the texts and references with carefulness, accuracy, and sensitivity to language as well as to the themes in every chapter. We are extremely grateful to M. Benjamin Herndon, who collected, organized and formatted the images and captions featured in the essays, and to Anthony J. Milio, who expertly video-graphed the presentations during the conference. Our very special praise and admiration go to Raul Gomez Valverde. He was not just a stunning participant at our conference – you will find his contri-

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bution in the first chapter – but also a marvelous colleague during the working process for this volume. It is our great pleasure and honor that he also designed the covers for each of the books in the series, Art / Knowledge / Theory. In addition, we wish to acknowledge those presentations and supportive documents not included in this text by: Horst Bredekamp, Alva Noë, Dan Hutto, Mark Dery, McKenzie Wark, and Romana Filzmoser. Special thanks also go to Caroline Schopfer from the Peter Lang publishing group in Switzerland. It is gratifying to work with someone so professional and insightful. A special courtesy indeed goes to all the contributors to the conference and this publication. Without their engagement and participation, such critical and vivid discussions and enthusiastic debates would not have been possible. We are indebted to those artists, scholars and institutions who have graciously granted permission to use the images that accompany the essays: Suzanne Anker; ART Resource; Dr. Anthony Atala, Science Photo Library; Matthew Barney; The British Museum, London; William Byers Brown; Claudia Brunhuber; Sean Coyle; Estate of Eric Orr; Jan Fabre; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; Suzanne Geiser; Flip Gils; Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York; Hugo Glendinning; Raul Gomez Valverde; GRG Gallery, New York; Galerie Fortes Vilaça, Sao Paolo; Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremburg; Lyle Ashton Harris; Harvard College Library; Margareta Hesse; Mitchell Joachim; Mathias Kessler; Shigeyuki Kihara Studio; Winfried Labus; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; The Pace Gallery; School of Visual Arts; Hiroshi Sugimoto; Laura Taler; Naoko Tanaka; Terreform ONE, Brooklyn; The Toy Vault Inc.; Troubleyn-Company; Janaina Tschape Studio; University Archives, The University of Iowa; Marco Wittkowski; Carl Zeiss AG, and the support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Dahlem Research School for the contribution by Alexander Schwan.

New York City, April 2013 Suzanne Anker & Sabine Flach



1. Imagining Imagination



What’s Imagining Got to Do with Images? C. S. MEIJNS

A central feature of sensory imagination, and perhaps even a mark of thought generally, is captured in the catchphrase of “presence in absence”. When I imagine a river, a river is what figures in my consciousness – a large quantity of greyish-blue, streaming water, with a bank of green vegetation on each side. I am aware of it, without being under the impression that there actually is a river in my vicinity. In fact, when I imagine the river Styx, I am not even under the impression that this mythical waterway actually exists. Regardless of such absence or nonexistence, in all these cases a river is what I am conscious of. One might think that this feature of imagination demands explanation. When I confront a picture, say, the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the one pound coin, the person this picture depicts is somehow made present by the picture. I can see the Queen just by looking at the coin. Pictures make something present, even when it is clear that the thing they depict is not actually around. The surface of the one pound coin gives a profile of her crowned head in a relief of lines and shapes, yet we would not want to say that the Queen of Great Britain is herself a witness of each inhabitant’s cash purchases. It is clear to us that pictures enable things to be presented to us in their absence. One might judge the parallel between these two observations to be salient. In fact, one might take this parallel to be salient to such an extent that one wishes to bring both observations together. Perhaps we can use our understanding of what goes on in the one case to illuminate what goes on in the other. Now, one way of doing this can be called a “picture theory of imagination”. Very roughly, the idea behind such an approach is that we can understand, explain, or make intelligible what goes on with imagination in terms of what goes on with pictures. Noteworthy about a picture theory of imagination is that, as the label conveys, it is a theory about imagination – it tries to help explain what imagination is. And it aims to do so by means of, or by pointing to, the supposedly better understood nature of pictures. Thus it is from an understanding of pictures that the picture theory aims to move toward an understanding of imagination; the approach has a directionality to it, and is not a mere comparison. The broad idea of a picture theory of imagination is itself nothing new. We might even think that we can find something like it in the work of Aristotle, when in his De Anima he states: “[...] in imagination [phantasia] we are like

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spectators looking at something dreadful or encouraging in a picture”.1 However, the frequent attempt to explain imagination by appealing to pictures has also faced a lot of criticism. What much of this criticism is concerned with is this: are there not many, often crucial, points at which the parallel between pictures and imagination breaks down? The strongest skeptic would simply dismiss the whole project on the grounds that the two phenomena are simply too dissimilar for this sort of explanation to get started. However, it should be emphasised that the picture theory only ever purports to offer an explanation by analogy. Distinctive of such an approach is that the analogy always holds for only some properties, and only to some extent. A complete mirroring of properties would not be a case of analogy, but rather of identity. So the approach in itself certainly does not require that the correspondence between the two phenomena at issue must be complete. To be sure, a fundamental difference between imagination and pictures is readily observed: that with imagination we are considering a psychological phenomenon – a capacity we, as conscious thinkers, have – while with pictures we consider spatially extended objects or, more precisely, artefacts. Therefore, no concerns should arise over an incomplete correspondence, and the question to be addressed must be this: in what way, and to what extent, can our understanding of pictures provide a successful model for our understanding of imagination? Although perhaps not exhaustive, there are three main options for fleshing out the idea of a picture theory of imagination. They differ in the range of properties they take over from the model of the picture, and in the way these get used in explanation. I begin by considering two accounts that model imagination on the full process of perceiving pictures. That is, they take imagination to be a species of picture perception: the mental equivalent of a perception of the mental equivalent of a picture. There is, however, also a third option that takes a different route, and models imagination on bare pictorial representation. In other words: pictures represent, and imagination is to be understood as a species of representation like depiction. I will argue that if a picture theory of imagination is to be defended, it will be most successful when it takes this latter option. This way, the core of the idea that we can understand at least key aspects of imagination through our understanding of pictures can be acceptable.

 1

Aristotle: De Anima, III.3 427b.

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1. Pictures The standing assumption behind any picture theory of imagination, is that we have a close familiarity with pictures. But to say that we have a good understanding of pictures and how they work can seem contentious, given the extreme disputes that characterise the debate on the nature of pictorial representation. Theories about what, exactly, determines how pictures represent range from resemblance theories, to theories of the maker’s intention, to pure conventionalism.2 However, these disputes should not conceal that concerning at least two basic points there is a near overall agreement. First, that we find out about what pictures represent by looking at them, and secondly that pictures represent in a way that has to do with their appearance features, or what can be seen in them. The latter is clearly what distinguishes pictorial representation from numerous other forms of representation.3 Political representation, for instance, leaves this aside. That David Cameron represents the British people is determined by his being elected and acting on their behalf, and not by how he looks, or what can be seen in him. Let me illustrate this with some concrete examples: 1. Over the entrance of my local umbrella store is a sign saying “Umbrellas since 1887”, with next to the lettering a schematic blue-and-black umbrella figure with a golden handle. 2. On the wall over my cousin’s couch hangs a large colour poster of Buckingham Palace – an institution this side of the family visited some summers ago – directly showing the building’s symmetrical façade. 3. In the Musée de Tapisserie de Bayeux, the Bayeux Tapestry demonstrates key events in the Norman conquest of Britain. Walking past the nearly seventy-meter-long tapestry, I see the events, while interjected captions (“hic dux wilgelm cum haroldo venit ad palatium suum”) guide me through the story. In all these cases there is a spatially extended material artifact, located at some distance from the viewer, in which things, an umbrella, a palace, or a king, can be seen in virtue of features of the artifact’s appearance, such as its shapes, shades and hues. Let this stand as a broad outline of what is well understood

 2 3

For example, see respectively: Beardsley: Aesthetics; Wollheim: Painting as an Art; Goodman: Languages of Art. Wollheim: “Representation.” See Ishiguro: “Representation” for a wider discussion.

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about pictorial representation. I will now turn to the different accounts of a picture theory of imagination, and their relative merits.

2. Imagination as picture perception The line of thought behind the first versions of a picture theory of imagination can be made more concrete. The main idea of this approach, recall, is to model imagination on the act of picture perception. Imagination, on this account, is a species of picture perception. However, in order to get from the case of pictures to that of imagination, the noted discrepancy between the two phenomena (concrete, spatially extended, material artifacts on the one hand, and our human psychology on the other) does demand correction at points where the analogy breaks down. For example, can a material artefact still be regarded as what it is that is perceived? A commonly adopted way to accommodate the presumed difference is simply to leave out the property of spatial extension that is found for pictorial artifacts. When modelling the case of imagination we ignore the spatial extension of the image. That leaves us with a straightforward idea, namely that imagination is the perception of a non-extended mental image. The image, a mental depiction of something, is the object of imagination. For example, when I imagine Buckingham Palace, I perceive an image of Buckingham Palace. What may seem attractive about this line of thought is that in postulating a perceived image, it does offer material to account for the phenomenon of presence in absence. Like the poster, a mental image of Buckingham Palace does not require this building’s actual presence. Moreover, the mental image can be said to represent the palace in virtue of exactly the same sort of properties that would be responsible for representation in a picture: a distribution of properties relating to appearance, such as shapes and colours. H.H. Price, in his discussion of imagery and thought, even notes that introducing the idea of imagery becomes almost unavoidable when it comes to accounting for thought about spatial relations, colours, or shapes.4 One philosopher often identified as endorsing this account is David Hume. In his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume specifies that in imagination we have ideas – which are understood to be images – that are repetitions or copies of prior sense impressions we had. Characteristic of ideas in imagination is that they appear to the mind in a faint and less forceful way, and can arise in a

 4

Price: Thinking and Experience, pp. 234–236.

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different order or combination than their original impressions: in imagination we are free to transpose, change, and create novel complex ideas.5 Hence, when I imagine Buckingham Palace, I perceive a faint copy of sense impressions of Buckingham Palace. Another author who at least initially looks to come close to this view of imagination is G. E. Moore, in his lecture “Imagination and Memory” (1911). Here he states: When we imagine anything, it very often happens that we have before our minds what is sometimes called an image. At the present moment, for instance, when I am talking of griffins, I have before my mind a visual image more or less like pictures or statues of griffins which I have seen, though a great deal fainter.6

With “image” Moore here refers to what he calls a sense-datum – something “which we directly perceive”, composed out of colour patches of various shapes.7 So according to Moore, in my imagining there is always something I am directly perceiving. A point that immediately needs addressing here is that we must be cautious in specifying what the object is that our imagining is directed at. What is it that we imagine, when we imagine? Can this really be the mental image itself? The implication that all people’s imagining is only ever directed at elements of their own psychology – that is, their mental images – does not seem right. If a child imagines their missed parent, or a fasting person imagines bread, then would we not say that precisely that parent and bread will be the objects of their imagining, rather than some aspect of their own mind? If we would want to take on this version of a picture theory of imagination, then, we need to specify something more in order to avoid the result that the image itself is the object we imagine.

2.1 Image as object What must be pointed to, of course, is the supposed fact that the mental image is not just an object of our cognition, but that it is also representational. Though Hume appears to regard it as an option that our mental images could be “mere data”, simply floating in the mind – especially in the case of daydreaming – when he does consider their representational character, he seems to think of ideas as representing on the basis of resemblance to (parts of) impressions of

 5 6 7

Hume: Treatise, Bk I, Pt I, §1–3; cf. Pears, Hume’s System, p. 35. Moore: “Imagination and Memory”, p. 234 (emphasis in original). Moore: “Imagination and Memory”, p. 237.

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things in the world.8 For example, a complete idea of the city of Paris would “perfectly represent all its streets and houses in their real and just proportions” (which, he admits, is hard to achieve). Hume allows that our ideas are not always of things that actually exist, or that we ourselves in fact have experienced – such as “winged horses, fiery dragons, and monstrous giants”.9 But in any case, he holds that when we imagine, what we perceive is a mental image, which happens to represent things on the basis of resemblance.

2.2 Image as instrument There is an alternative way of spelling things out. It seems that Moore’s idea in the end is that we actually have an awareness of the common-sense object of our imagining – say, a parent or bread that is not identical to the perception of an image. While initially Moore emphasizes that all we ever directly perceive are sense data, and not sheets of paper, houses, or trees, after discussing the case of looking at a picture of a griffin, he concludes differently: And what I want to suggest is that the only part that images do play in imagination, is the part which the picture plays in this case. Obviously merely to see a picture of a griffin is not the same thing as imagining a griffin. [...] In both cases, the sense-data which we are directly perceiving merely serve to suggest something else – something which we are not directly perceiving.10

So for Moore, while the image is all we directly perceive, one is conscious of the object of one’s imagination in “some way other than direct perception”, that is, it is “suggested” in the image.11 There is a challenge in pinning down exactly where and how these two positions come apart. And unfortunately for the current inquiry, for parts of Hume or Moore’s positions there simply is not sufficient evidence to pin them down firmly either way. Still, we can define the options abstractly such that it is clear that they come apart: Account (A): In imagination, we are directly perceiving a mental image. This mental image happens to resemble some object or event that is not itself identical with the image.

 8 9 10 11

Pears: Hume’s System, p. 31–36; Hume: Treatise, Bk I, Pt I, §1. Hume: Treatise, Bk I, Pt I, §3. Moore: “Imagination and Memory”, pp. 241–245, pp. 247–248. Moore: “Imagination and Memory”, p. 247.

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Account (B): In imagination, we are directly perceiving a mental image. This mental image causes us to have a separate awareness of some object or event that is not itself identical with the image. Accounts (A) and (B) are alike in that both model imagination on picture perception, or more precisely, that they take the core of imagination to consist in the perception of a mental picture. They differ in the full explication they give: whereas in the former the image is itself the object of our imagining, in the latter it is an aid or instrument to get at a further “suggested” object – for example, imagining a bread is the awareness of bread by means of the perception of a mental image of bread.

3. A worry about objects The strongest worry was that, on the given models, our imagination would be directed only at our own psychology. These worries can be mitigated by pointing to a way in which, due to its representational character, the image “reaches out” (so to say) to the object – that is, the bread or the parent itself rather than a mere mental image of it. Nevertheless this does not suffice to take away all concerns. To begin with account (A): this still seems to misidentify the object of awareness in imagination. Jean-Paul Sartre confronts this in his L’Imaginaire (1940), where he objects that on Hume’s account we get the mistaken consequence that it is not directly transparent to us what we imagine, because this depends on an extraneous relation of one’s mental image to what the image happens to represent.12 Even when taking its representational character into account, it is still only an image that we are genuinely perceiving. Given the obvious need to scrutinise a painting’s surface, such opacity would be expected for external pictures, yet for imagination it does not look right. This concern persists for account (B), but in a slightly different way. While this account is able to yield the correct result that the object of an imagining can be bread or a parent, difficulties arise in the procedure it specifies. It gets us a double object: we are conscious of both the image of bread, as well as of the bread itself. Again, where such duplication may seem acceptable for the objects of external pictorial works, for imagination it is does not seem right. Thus some main problems still stand here.

 12

Sartre: L’Imaginaire, §1.2.

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4. A worry about ontology In itself these issues are sufficient to reject account (A) and (B), and with them the idea that we should model imagination on picture perception. However, there is a further concern arising here, which relevantly leads towards a more fundamental point on what goes wrong in this approach. For though the issues raised for accounts (A) and (B) are distinct, they are similar: they concern the immediate object of our imagining, as both accounts hold that we immediately perceive a mental image. Now as stated at the outset, no picture theory of imagination expects the similarity between pictures and imagination to be perfect or complete. And it was also noted that one feature of pictures that could be expected not to carry over to imagination was that of material extension: whereas the Bayeux Tapestry informs me of the crowning and death of King Harold through its extended surface, it is not supposed that mental pictures have embroidery and stretch nearly seventy meters long. The question is: can this lack of transfer of features from the model to the modelled remain without consequences for the way we spell out imagination? One issue that many authors have picked up on is the talk of our access to imagery in terms of perception. Can we still speak of “perception”, when there is no stimulation of a sensory organ caused by an external object?13 Apparently both Hume and Moore think that we can, as they comfortably speak of perceiving sense data and ideas. Now, one might think that either or both of these authors read “perception” in a broad sense. Perhaps they do not restrict it to what we do with our sense organs, but refer to whatever is an element of thought or consciousness. Indeed, Hume does speak more generally of how ideas “strike upon the mind” and “make their way into our thought or consciousness.”14 However, such a loose understanding of perception does make us drift away further from the picture perception model. A perhaps even more crucial point lies with the remaining suggestion that there would be an object that we perceive in thought. The most interesting worries here are not so much those raised by Ryle and Dennett, that mental imagery would be paperless, canvasless and without an artistic medium like frescoes, drawings, or photographs.15 What matters most are criteria for objecthood. On an attractive way of thinking about it, objects are single or individual items with a certain unity of themselves, persisting over at least some stretch of time. With

 13 14 15

Ryle: The Concept of Mind, p. 234; Dennett: Content and Consciousness, p. 134. Hume: Treatise, Bk I, Pt I, §1. Ryle: The Concept of Mind, p. 224; Dennett: Content and Consciousness, p. 133.

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pictures such as the Bayeux Tapestry, it seems that it is precisely in virtue of their features of spatial extension that they meet these criteria for objecthood. Its spatial presence along the museum walls allows the tapestry to be individuated, and to be identified as distinct from its Victorian replica in Reading. Further, this also forms the basis for its continued persistence as a tapestry – or the lack of it, in case it would sadly burn to ashes. Once we have let go of features of spatial extension for the case of mental pictures, on what grounds can these criteria for objecthood get fulfilled? On what basis do we still speak of a mental image as an individual object? It seems that what we are rather left with is just the temporal character of any imagining – say, the fact that I imagine a tree for a period of twelve seconds. But all this gives us is not that an individual object is involved, but the starting and ending points of an episode of imagining. Theories that model imagination on picture perception rely on there being an object – namely the mental image – that we directly perceive when we imagine. However, it seems that conceiving of an image as an object that we perceive only gets off the ground by illegitimately importing criteria from the model of pictures to the modelled case of imagination. But if that is so, then that invalidates this attempted structure of explanation, and is in itself a decisive reason for rejecting any such theory – including accounts (A) and (B). We have good reason to believe that these accounts of the picture theory of imagination should be given up.

5. Imagining is representing If this is correct, then what are we left with? Does this mean that the picture theory of imagination generally must be rejected? In response to this I shall answer “No”. But that does require another way of conceiving of the structure of the account entirely. The structurally different approach is this: instead of modelling imagining on the act of picture perception (“what we do when we imagine is like what we do when we look at a picture”), pictorial representation itself is taken as a model (“what we do when we imagine is what a picture does when it functions as such”). Representing is something a picture does, and it is equally what we do when we imagine. On this account – let it stand as account (C) – imagination is understood as a basic form of consciousness, constituted by episodes of imagery. The object of our awareness is postulated to be whatever it is that we imagine. For example, when I imagine Buckingham Palace, it is Buckingham Palace that I am conscious of.

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Of course, unlike pictures, a person who imagines is no instance of a publicly observable representation, open for others to inspect – but again, this is a feature of the model that we may legitimately set aside when specifying the modelled. The sort of representing that goes on when people imagine must be understood to be psychological; an instance of representing to ourselves.16 The constitutive role of imagery referred to here might be taken to be similar to the way it figures in the (B) account: as an instrument by means of which we imagine. However, a structural difference is that account (C) does not assume imagery to be a mental object with stable persistence conditions; rather, it comprises episodes that we have. Moreover, one of the hallmarks commonly attributed to imagery, namely, that it has to be perceived in order to become aware of what it represents, is also left out here. Positively, in claiming that imagery is constitutive of imagination, it is maintained that imagining just is a form of being aware of something that comes with having imagery. At least in outline, some endorsement of this view can be found. For example, Malcolm Budd argues that, according Wittgenstein, “the concept of imagining is like the concept of depicting”, where this is specifically meant to deny that we need any resembling image to inform us of what we imagine.17 Zeno Vendler in his The Matter of Minds (1984) too notes that in imagination we do not represent something that must be perceived, and that imagining doing something requires no medium beyond one’s own consciousness.18 And it seems that something similar can be found in Sartre. One of the “certain” characteristics of imagination Sartre lists is that “the image is a consciousness” directed towards an object, not towards an image, and he moreover states that imaginative consciousness is always representative.19 It makes perfect sense, he notes, to say that when we imagine a chair, no chair is somehow in consciousness, and that we are not conscious of it by means of a mental image.

6. Explanation Attractive in this account is that it will not face the worries about yielding the wrong object of imagination, or about illegitimately importing criteria from the model case of pictures, that the earlier positions faced. However, a potential

 16 17 18 19

Travis: “The Silence of the Senses”, pp. 60–62. Budd: Wittgenstein, pp. 114–115. Vendler: The Matter of Minds, pp. 58–89. Sartre: L’Imaginaire, §§ 1.2–3, 1.6.

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objection to it is that it actually fails to give an explanation of what is going on here. Whatever their faults, accounts (A) and (B) at least made an attempt at leading the overall process of imagining back to more basic elements. But does (C) offer anything in that direction? In response to this, a first thing to point out is that even though this is a common conception of it, the idea that genuine explanation requires giving an analysis of something complex into more basic elements is mistaken. A phenomenon can only be reduced to more basic elements if it in reality genuinely is composed out of these things – which, if (C) is correct, is not the case for imagination. Furthermore, there are alternative, equally valid conceptions of explanation available, such as that of offering clarification, exposition, or a way of thinking that makes a phenomenon more perspicuous. By giving the reconceptualisation that it does, (C) seems well able to fulfil such a task. But perhaps the more specific worry is that even with such clarification, the phenomenon of “presence in absence” that deserved explanation is not adequately accounted for. For if, as (C) suggest, there is no perception of imagery that stands in place of what is absent, how could something be made present in our experience? That is to say, if there is no tree around, but I also do not perceive a substitute mental image of a tree, how could I have an experience in which a tree is present? Now, in account (C) it is not denied that imagination will involve imagery. On the contrary, it holds imagery to be constitutive of imagining. The point of disagreement was more precisely about whether the imagery functions as an intermediary. It can be seen why (B)’s “Yes” answer may initially seem plausible, by returning to the model of pictures. With pictorial representation, an intermediary role of making something present is fulfilled by the pictorial artifact itself. Though a picture of a tree is something external to and independent of us, by performing an act of seeing it we can nonetheless come to have an awareness of a tree, even when there is no tree around. By holding fast to the same structure for the case of imagination, it would be said that we can become aware of something in its absence only by performing an act of perceiving an object that substitutes for what is absent. In account (C), contrariwise, some aspects of the picture model are not taken over, precisely because of the following important discrepancy. With pictorial representation, what makes it the case that a tree comes to be present in its absence is this independent artifact, the picture. We come to have an awareness of a tree in virtue of looking at this picture; the act of looking bridges the natural gap between what is there in the picture, and what we are conscious of. For imagination, it was agreed that what fulfills the role of making present must be something in our consciousness or thought. However, it seems a safe assumption to maintain that we typically, if not always, have a direct awareness of what

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goes on in our thought. But if that is so, where then does any genuine need for postulating a role of apprehension arise? Why would we expect that in imagination, we gain an awareness of what we imagine only mediately? The thought motivating (C) is precisely that when we imagine, we are always already aware of what is represented, so that there is no need for a process of apprehending even to get started. Imagination leaves no such an additional task of becoming aware. With imagination, what is doing the representing and what (hypothetically) would be doing the apprehending are just the same – in both cases this is just a function of our consciousness. To put it crudely, for the sort of representation that goes on in imagination, medium and receiver are collapsed into one. If this is right, then it is not universally required to include the perceptual apprehension of a substitute mental image in order to account for presence in absence, and account (C) is not missing a crucial explanatory element.

7. A version of the picture theory? One might, finally, still think that account (C) has little to recommend itself as a version of a picture theory of imagination. As it throws out the whole idea of a stable image open for visual inspection, on what grounds would it still classify as such? Although for the correctness of the account it will not matter whether it comes out as a version of a picture theory or not, I do think there are good reasons for still counting it as one. A major reason is that its motivation is in essence the same as what was already expressed before: the idea that there is a fundamental parallel between imagination and pictures, such that we can illuminate what goes on in imagination on the basis of our understanding of pictures. And in addition to the fundamental claim that both pictures and imagination are representational – they both allow us to be aware of something absent – it is also maintained that their form of representing is relevantly similar, namely as picking up on properties of appearance. Thus there seems good reason to still uphold account (C) as a version of a picture theory of imagination.

Conclusion Pictures and people are quite different things. Nevertheless, I have argued that in certain respects, what they are capable of doing must be understood to be

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importantly similar. The idea that there is a significant parallel between imagination and pictures is the central drive behind what I have here discussed as the picture theory of imagination – the idea that, given that the representational character of pictures is well understood, we can gain a better understanding of imagining on its basis. In this paper I have presented a version of the picture theory that is not often endorsed. Commonly, when authors point to the relevance of pictures for understanding imagination, the parallel they draw on is that imagining is like picture perception. Here I have argued that such a view is highly problematic, and therefore is best set aside. Instead, I put forward that the best way of thinking of the parallel between pictures and imagination is found at the level of representation itself: representing is what a picture does, and it is what do we when we imagine. In both cases, representation facilitates an awareness of an object in its absence. Let that be part of the story of what imagination has got to do with images.

References Aristotle: De Anima (On the Soul). Trans. W. S. Hett. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 2000. Beardsley, Monroe: Aesthetics, Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. Indianapolis, IN (Hackett Publishing) 1981. Budd, Malcolm: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology. London (Routledge) 1991. Dennett, Daniel: Content and Consciousness. London (Taylor & Francis) 1969. Goodman, Nelson: Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis, IN (Hackett Publishing) 1976. Hume, David: A Treatise of Human Nature. Mineola, NY (Dover) 1739 [2003]. Ishiguro, Hidé: “On Representations,” European Journal of Philosophy, 2 (1994), pp. 109–124. Moore, George Edward: “Imagination and Memory”, in: John Wisdom (ed.): Some Main Problems in Philosophy, London (George Allen & Unwin) 1911 [1953], pp. 234–251. Pears, David: Hume’s System: An Examination of the First Book of His Treatise. Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1990. Price, H. H.: Thinking and Experience. London (Hutchinson) 1953. Ryle, Gilbert: The Concept of Mind. London (Routledge) 1949. Sartre, Jean-Paul: L’Imaginaire. Paris (Gallimard) 1940. Travis, Charles: “The Silence of the Senses”, Mind 113 (2004), pp. 57–94.

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Vendler, Zeno: The Matter of Minds. Oxford (Clarendon Press) 1984. Wollheim, Richard: Painting as an Art. London (Thames and Hudson) 1987. Wollheim, Richard: “Representation: The Philosophical Contribution to Psychology”, Critical Inquiry, 3 (1977), pp. 709–723.



Bio-ethers and Luminous Ores: Welcome to Wonderland SUZANNE ANKER

To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.1 Wallace Stevens In wonderland, a phantasmagoric fantasy world, contradictions coexist. It is a place where caterpillars give advice, alternative realities abound and elixirs of potent potables create out-of-scale experiences. Logic is rerouted to include unforeseen variables and curiosity alters expected outcomes. Time is not linear and space is transmutable. It is also where language and literary devices are transformed into actions and where the psyche and its physiology play hide and seek. From cabinets of curiosities to social networking, from consumer excess to sex trafficking rings, and from honor killings to face transplants, is reimagining our futures in part re-imaging it? As Photoshop and its related software programs re-pixelate the extant, and the slice and dice techniques of bio-engineering reconfigure life forms, the zones between fact and fiction are continuously being blurred. More than a post-modern conceit, these manipulations of matter, content, and context create a subversive atmosphere where every crazy has his day. Theatrically-staged maneuvers are not strangers to government spin nor military blitz, nor tabloid reconstructions, nor picture-making itself, but such malleable strategies also remind us of the fragile ether in which the imagination lives. Is the imagination a multiplex entity where fabrications of the mind become reality? How does the imagination play tricks on consciousness by providing phantom sensations, hallucinations and even panic attacks? Can limits be put on the imagination? How does it conjure? How is it measured? The imagination, like the trickster itself, through inventions of technology, can turn cells into tissues, create interfaces between brains and computers and even turn corpses into biological fathers. How far and at what costs do we deem to dream? Are we living in a fairy tale?

 1

Stevens: The Necessary Angel, p. 140.

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Fig. 1: David Ow, Tobacco seed combined with firefly genes. Ow, D.W., Wood K. V., DeLuca M., de Wet J.R., Helsinky D.R., and Howel S.H.: “Transient and stable expression of the firefly luciferase in plant cells and transgenic plants”, in: Science, 243 (1986) 4778, pp. 856–859.

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What Does It Mean to Be Green? In a 1986 laboratory experiment, geneticist David Ow combined tobacco and firefly genes to produce tobacco plants that glowed in the dark (fig 1). Although the wonder of bioluminescence had been noted as early as Pliny the Elder nearly 2000 years ago, it is currently being used as a diagnostic tool allowing research scientists to peer inside living cells. The transference of bioluminescence genes from the firefly to other species allows researchers to study how some mechanisms function in a living cell. In a combinatory entity, a mixed species, part plant and part animal, discrete barriers between living things are being transgressed.2 More recently however, in 2009, Japanese researchers have genetically “engineered monkeys whose hair roots, skin and blood glow green”.3 What is both astonishing and frightening is that these “green genes” have been passed along to their offspring through coitus. This is the initial time that germ cells, or gametes, more commonly known as sex cells have been altered in a primate. What is of concern in this experiment is that “green glowing monkeys have green-glowing babies”, produced not by laboratory intervention but by the old fashioned way of conjugal enrapture. By manipulating the germ cells, or sex cells in a living species, that individual becomes the sentient mechanism for the manufacture of desired traits. Projecting desired traits onto our offspring, or governments designing “appropriate citizens” in the kinds of fantasies that are imagined recall science fiction novels and films. From Gattica to AI, from Minority Report to Bladerunner, from The Fly to Dr.Frankenstein, the myth of taming monstrous nature rears its force. Model organisms continue to be produced in laboratories in an effort to understand human disease. Recently, mice were implanted with human livers at MIT by a team of scientists led by Sangeeta Bhatia, a biomedical engineer.3 Scaled down in size to fit the body of the rodent, the miniature liver metabolized drugs the same way as in humans.4 What ethical standards or guidelines are in place for human cells and tissues when there is a human subject involved? How does the big business of science and the patenting of life forms extend to humans? I cite two legal cases in this regard: John Moore and Hennrieta Lacks. In the landmark case Moore vs. Regents of the University of California in 1990, it was ruled that John Moore, who had acquired a form of hairy-cell leukemia, was not entitled to any profits

 2 3 4

Ow, et al.: “Transient and Stable Expression of the Firefly”, pp. 856–859. Fox: Green-glowing monkeys have green-glowing babies. Turner, “Mice with human livers deal with drugs the human way”.

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garnered through the commercialization of his cell line. Samples of blood, bone marrow, sperm and spleen were taken under his physician’s advice for further analysis of his disease. No mention of a proposed patent on these cells was ever discussed. On March 20, 1984, U.S. Patent 4,438,032 was issued naming David Golde and Shirley Quan as the inventers of this cell line and hence the holder of all rights associated with patent law. Although these cells were taken from John Moore’s body, it was decided that the newly formed cell line belonged to the scientists.5 Hennrietta Lacks, an African-American woman was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in 1951. Tissue samples of her cervix were sent to the lab for further inspection. While performing a cell culture, George Gey noticed that these cells were behaving very differently than normal cells in that they had the capacity to continue to reproduce in cell culture ad infinitum. In effect, Henrietta Lack’s cells were termed immortal. Extensively employed in research internationally, her cells aided in research for cancer, gene mapping and even for Salk’s polio vaccine. No financial compensation was ever made to her or her surviving family members.6 These cases raise the question of who owns whose body parts, tissues and cell samples? Taken to the extreme, would it be possible to patent a whole person? Should financial compensation be made for these bodily products? Legal markets abound in the sale of blood, sperm, and eggs, for example, and rogue commerce runs adrift worldwide in the procurement and distribution of human organs. What rights do we have over our own bodies? What ethical frameworks are in place to guide human rights?

Spare Parts and Replacement Tissues Bioprinting, a novel technology employed in regenerative medicine, will make it possible one day to create complex replacement parts for human bodies. By employing this technology it is currently possible to “print” and engineer replacement tissues. Dr. Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist, “used the bioprinter to

 5 6

Anker & Nelkin: The Molecular Gaze, p. 172. Skloot: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. From the The Colbert Report interview available at http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267542/march-16-2010/ rebecca-skloot.

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deposit chicken heart cells onto a dish in which the cardiac cells were able to beat synchronously, with the rest of the heart”.7 Dr. Anthony Atala8 printed bladders for young children as the first “laboratory human organs” used in human trials. (fig. 2) Although artificial lifeextension devices and tools made of flesh and blood appear in science fiction films such as Repo Men and Existence, it is the conjoining of fantasy with reality which continues on a most spectacular level. Using a 3-D printer and what has come to be known as “bio-ink” a replacement tissue can be uniquely protoyped. Using the patient’s own cells, this methodology eliminates the rejection problem inherent in organ transplants. Since “self” is replacing “self” we are looking towards technology’s capacity to produce the body’s own repair kit.

Fig. 2: Artificial bladder in a beaker, grown by a team led by Dr. Atala of Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, USA.

 7 8

Emily Spivack: Gabor Forgacs on the reality of 3D organ printing. Atala: Anthony Atala: Printing a human kidney.

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Augmenting the body’s ability to perform tasks, the Brain Computer Interface (BCI) is a direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device. This device works by measuring the electric signals given off by neurons. It can also map significant differences when concentration changes, say, from listening to music to playing a sport. However, can you imagine moving a computer cursor with your thoughts? A significant advance in communication, these devices are currently being used to aid in “locked-in syndrome”, a terrifying condition in which a person can only move his eyes. In an invasive procedure, electrodes are planted into the person’s gray matter or skull. These bionic interfaces also can be used with robotic limbs, cochlear implants as well as implants for vision. How far will bioengineering take us in the direction of the complete makeover?

Between Man and Beast As hybrid forms, chimeras are composite figures ignoring discrete Linnaean species boundaries. The chimera has appeared and reappeared in myriad guises over centuries in numerous and various cultures. As early as prehistoric times, the chimera appears inscribed on cave walls in Lascaux with the body of a man topped by a bird’s head. Cycling through history as a sphinx or as a satyr, man/beast combinations in mythological chimeras have taken the form of combinatory amalgams. Prime characterizations of chimeras populate H.G. Wells’ evolutionary parable The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896). At such a time when distinctions between animals and humans were being vigorously debated, especially with regard to vivisection, this enchanting novel is a discourse on the continuity/discontinuity between man and beast – a border zone encapsulating significant bioethical concerns. Dr. Moreau, the novel’s protagonist, is engaged in fabricating humanoid forms comprised of animal/human hybrids. Herein beasts are given human features: man/dog; cat/woman et al., thus scaling up or down evolution’s clock. More recently, in biology, the term chimera has taken on another definition: an animal or plant composed of cells from distinct species. These kinds of chimeras come into being in a variety of ways. Like mitochondria, some are naturally occurring, some are fabricated in the lab and others are the result of organ transplantation. And with certainty, popular culture enters the fray with what else, but a plushy chimera (fig. 3) Microbes as toys – are these designed for terrorist tots in training? Or even “right to life” for any living matter?

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Although Wells’ narrative is steeped in confabulation, the questions posed remain striking today. Research scientist Evan Balaban’s9 unique experiments with transplanted brain cells intensifies debates concerning species integration and complex behaviors. In experiments akin to Dr. Moreau’s, Dr. Balaban transplanted neural tissue from Japanese quail embryos into the brains of two-day old Plymouth Rock chickens resulting in the transference of behaviors unique to each species. In a startling result, these tissue engineered chickens emitted vocal sounds particular to quail mutterings. In addition, they engaged in up-and-down head bobbing, a gestural manner exclusively associated with quails.

Fig. 3: Chimera Plush. Courtesy of Toy Vault, Inc.

Darwinian Imperatives Charles Kingsley, a 19th century Anglican theologian and friend of Charles Darwin believed that “moral lessons of nature” could be taught through his delightful fairy tale The Water Babies.10 In this parable, which was read aloud to children in Victorian England, a young chimney sweep, Tom, appears filthy and uncouth, a clear indication of his lowly social status. In an effort to escape his master and others running after him, he falls into a stream where he descends into a deep sleep. Here he meets up with the fairies who transform him into a

 9 10

Balaban: “Brain switching”. Kingsley: The Water Babies.

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water baby. In this state he acquires a set of gills. As he learns through reason and judgment to accomplish the tasks before him, he changes once again. Each time he performs his cerebral tasks he moves up the phylogenetic order, from fish to amphibian to mammal. In an effort to reconcile Darwin’s theory of evolution with Christian theology, Kingsley sets up a dialogue between Tom and Mother Carey. Encountering one of the chief Fairies, Mother Carey, Tom queries: “I hear you are very busy.” “I am never more busy than I am now,” she said without stirring a finger. “I heard ma’am, that you were always making new beasts out of old.” “So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make things, my little dear. I sit here and make them make themselves.” Ironically, Mother Carey’s words resonate not only with Darwin’s tangled bank of endless forms, but also preface current scientific experiments, particularly with glowing green monkeys. As Maggie Fox of Reuters reported in 2009: “Japanese researchers have genetically engineered monkeys whose hair roots, skin and blood glow green under a special light, and who have passed on their traits to their offspring, the first time this has been achieved in a primate.” What is important in this experiment is that “green glowing monkeys have green-glowing babies.”11 So, as Mother Carey states: “I sit here and make them make themselves.”

The Unborn & The Undead: Liminal Categories Anker’s Water Babies (fig. 4) takes its title from Kingley’s parable. In this photographic set viewers are confronted with fetuses submerged in preservation liquids. Akin to creatures in an aquarium, these specimens are not of the imagination; they are real. In zones of ambiguity, these fetal bodies float anonymously as mementos marking historical time. In an ocular joust, the observer assumes a pose, as details of his gaze come into focus. Thoughts about definition enter and exit the viewer’s consciousness, until some determination of meaning, however tentative is arrived at. What questions are provoked by once living matter enclosed in a glass veil? To go behind a veil is to transgress a hidden boundary. At the same time the veil becomes a mirror for our concealed selves, as we peek behind the curtain of inscrutable worlds, a place we have been, but

 11

Beatty and Hale: Water Babies: an evolutionary parable.

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have no memory of. Although real, these preserved specimens partake of the fictive, engaging their formal presence as cultural and historical artifacts, displaying the knowledge of their time (techniques of staining, posing and displaying) Occupying a world of unimaginable repose, the fetus is a primal marvel. A mystery in itself, the fetus has come to represent life as a continuous cycle, moving from birth to death. The unfolding of a single cell has within its code an expiration date.

Fig. 4: Suzanne Anker, Water Babies, 2004. 12 inkjet prints on watercolor paper, 96 x 110 inches, 243.84 x 279.4 cm (24 x 36 inches, 60.96 x 91.44 cm each). Courtesy of the artist.

In this disjunctive, transgressive time a dismantling of values continues to summon the adaptation of alternative ones. What may be marvelous in visual art may be treacherous in science, and vice versa. While the chimera or microbial beings may be humorous or endearing or scary in art, what may they be in sci-

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ence? Advances in biomedicine surely rely on their manufacture as living models to combat disease. In The Future of Human Nature,12 Jürgen Habermas calls for a “species ethics”. The advance of the biological sciences and development of biotechnologies at the threshold of the new century do not just expand familiar possibilities of action, the enable a new type of intervention. What hitherto was ‘given’ as organic nature, and could at most be bred now shifts to the realm of artifacts and their production.

Astroculture: Imagined Habitats How can we transform the already-given so that the alternative potential of living matter can be explored? With the rise of biotechnologies and alterations in living systems can we imagine vast resources still available in outer space and deep sea habitats? How do plants respond to changes in gravity? What happens to seeds, for example when they are grown in space? NASA’s Space Project Development Program is exploring this possibility. Scientists are asking the following questions: “Can plants complete seed-to seed life cycles in microgravity?” “How does microgravity impact on gene expression levels?” “How do the seeds produced in microgravity conditions compare to those harvested on Earth?”13 These questions are part of the first growth facility installed in 2001 in the International Space Station and aptly named ADVANCED ASTROCULTURETM. Satoshi Furukawa, a Japanese astronaut, had been set the task of growing cucumbers in space in 2011. According to this NASA project, “root systems in microgravity, grow latterly or sideways, instead of up and down like they do under Earth’s gravitational forces. Using cucumber plants, investigators look to determine whether hydrotropic – plant root orientation due to water – response can control the direction of root growth in microgravity. ” Furukawa said in a preflight NASA interview, “On the ground only one peg is made at the time of germination, but under microgravity two pegs were made at the time of sprouting”. Also he discovered that the side roots grow towards water.14 If space travel is indeed to become a reality, then food sources must be available to travelers who

 12 13 14

Habermas: The Future of Human Nature. See space.com: “Japanese astronaut to grow cucumbers in space”. Ibid.

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undergo these journeys. On another level, such experimentation challenges our accepted agricultural practices which may be altered depending on circumstances. In Astroculture (Shelf Life),2009 (fig. 5) (fig. 6), three plant chambers were constructed from off-the-shelf components. Each consisted of three galvanized metal cubes into which was fitted an LED panel. Placed inside the cubes were peat seed pods implanted with vegetable seeds. All of this was maintained in a gallery setting at Exit Art’s New York exhibition space. Over a period of weeks the plants began to sprout forming vines and leaves and finally string beans. There was no insecticide employed, and they were watered on a regular basis. Surprisingly, although the plants appeared to be fuschia-colored, they in fact were still naturally green. Will these fuschia radiances begin masquerading as the new “green”? They glowing LED’s electrified the space and manifested the possibility of growing herbs in any light deprived apartment in NYC. The large scale photographs produced in conjunction with this living artwork, were saturated in fluid color. No Photoshop technology was used. Capturing liquid light in this ethereal space produced a set of glowing illusions, luminescent and ethereal. Other yet unimagined discoveries are sea creatures living near boiling vents of water close to Antartica. Employing robot technology, Prof. Alex Rogers of Oxford and his team discovered a number of new species including hairychested yeti crabs and pale octopuses. Forging a path towards astrobiology, Rogers said, the discovery of these hydrothermal vents “inform the extreme conditions under which life could exist.” They also aid in understanding the ecological conditions for survival of species in deep water without sunlight and in waters up to 400 degrees Celcius.

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Fig. 5: Suzanne Anker, Astroculture (Shelf Life), 2010. (Detail). Inkjet print, 24 x 36 inches (60.96 x 91.44 cm). Courtesy of the artist.

Fig. 6: Suzanne Anker, Astroculture (Shelf Life), 2010. (Detail). Inkjet print, 24 x 36 inches (60.96 x 91.44 cm). Courtesy of the artist.

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Thresholds of Opticality The lines between nature and culture are highly permeable, and it is through this osmotic membrane that the overlapping domains of knowledge systems, novel technological interventions and redefinitions of aesthetic practice are made possible. As symbol sets intervene and alter layers of consciousness, we feel the historical presence of world making. From reflection to reflection, from memory to trace, from museum to archive, the recalibration of culture is each generation’s task. Sometimes subtle, sometimes out of focus and sometimes hermetic, thresholds of opticality crystallize thought. But images are like halfway houses, suspending final judgments for further consideration. In conclusion, I offer the reader the following limerick which sums up the intersections between awe and artifice (fig. 7):

Fig. 7: Suzanne Anker, “Embodied Fantasies”, 2010. Inkjet print, 24 x 36 inches (60.96 x 91.44 cm). Courtesy of the artist.

Fairy, Fairy, Mary, Mary, how does your garden grow? From sulphur bells to cockle shells to test tubes lined up in a row. Mary, Mary, Fairy, Fairy how does your garden grow? From pure pipettes with no regrets, with green bunny rabbits aglow.

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Mary, Mary Fairy, Fairy, how does your torso grow? From a splice here, to add an ear, and ova in the flow. Mary, Mary, Fairy, Fairy how does your garden know? From super cells to mystery gels all bound up in roe. Mary, Mary, Fairy, Fairy how does your water flow? From silver sloths to tasty broth as ointments in the know. Mary, Mary, Fairy, Fairy, why are you so merry? With pharma-pigs and hundreds of gigs, upon a pile of cherries. Mary, Mary, Fairie, Fairie, why is your garden so green? With fruit of the loom and all its doom, and tasty puddings of spleen. Mary, Mary, Fairie, Fairie, where have all the forests gone ? One by one and ton by ton the creatures are a dying. Why are we not crying? Mary, Mary, Fairies, Fairies, I bid you sweet farewell. Until that time, there is no wine, I’ll stay the course, of course. With wondrous wimps and naked chimps, we’ll meet again to tell. Mary, Mary, Fairy, Fairy, why are your maggots so haggard? Return to earth another birth, all clean and neatly lathered. *** Parts of this text were reproduced from my catalogue essay written for the Frist Art Center for Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, in conjunction with the exhibition Fairy Tales, Monsters and the Genetic Imagination. I wish to thank Mark Scala and Vanderbilt Press for allowing me to include excepts in this text. (www.fristcenter.org)



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References Anker, Suzanne and Nelkin, Dorothy: The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age, Cold Spring (Harbor Laboratory Press) 2003. Atala, Anthony: Anthony Atala: Printing a human kidney. Talk at TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. www.ted.com/speakers/anthony_atala.html Balaban, Evan: “Brain switching: studying evolutionary behavioral changes in the context of individual brain development” in: The International Journal of Developmental Biology, 49 (2005), pp. 117–124. Beatty, John and Hale, Piers J.: “Water Babies: an evolutionary parable”, Endeavour Vol.32 No.4, 2008. Fox, Maggie: Green-glowing monkeys have green-glowing babies, in: Reuters, (May 27, 2009). http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/05/27/idUSN27194 737 Grosse-Wentrup M. and Schölkopf B: “High Gamma-Power Predicts Performance in Sensorimotor-Rhythm Brain-Computer Interfaces.” Journal of Neural Engineering, 9, 2012. http://iopscience.iop.org/1741-2552/9/4/046 001/ Habermas, Jürgen: The Future of Human Nature, Boston (Polity) 2003. Kingsley, Charles: The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1995 Ow, D.W., Wood K. V., DeLuca M., de Wet J.R., Helsinky D.R., and Howel S.H.: “Transient and stable expression of the firefly luciferase in plant cells and transgenic plants”, in: Science, 243 (1986) 4778, pp. 856–59. Skloot, Rebecca: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, New York (Broadway Publishers) 2011. Space.com staff: “Japanese astronaut to grow cucumbers in space”, in Space.com, June 7, 2011. http://www.space.com/11887-space-stationastronaut-grows-cucumbers.html Spivack, Emily: Gabor Forgacs on the reality of 3D organ printing, Interview at PopTech, February 24, 2011. http://poptech.org/blog/poptech_interview_ gabor_forgacs_on_the_reality_of_3d_organ_Printing Stevens, Wallace: “Imagination As Value”, in The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination, New York (Vintage) 1965. Turner, Marian: “Mice with human livers deal with drugs the human way” in Nature, International Weekly Journal of Science. July 11, 2011. http:// www.nature.com/news/2011/110711/full/news.2011.409.html

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List of illustrations Fig. 1: David Ow, Tobacco seed combined with firefly genes. Ow, D.W., Wood K. V., DeLuca M., de Wet J.R., Helsinky D.R., and Howel S.H.: “Transient and stable expression of the firefly luciferase in plant cells and transgenic plants”, in: Science, 243 (1986) 4778, pp. 856–59. Fig. 2: Artificial bladder in a beaker, grown by a team led by Dr. Atala of Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, USA. Fig. 3: Chimera Plush. Courtesy of Toy Vault, Inc. Fig. 4: Suzanne Anker, Water Babies, 2004. 12 inkjet prints on watercolor paper, 96 x 110 inches, 243.84 x 279.4 cm (24 x 36 inches, 60.96 x 91.44 cm each). Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 5: Suzanne Anker, Astroculture (Shelf Life), 2010. (Detail). Inkjet print, 24 x 36 inches, 60.96 x 91.44 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 6: Suzanne Anker, Astroculture (Shelf Life), 2010. (Detail). Inkjet print, 24 x 36 inches, 60.96 x 91.44 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 7: Suzanne Anker, Embodied Fantasies, 2010. Inkjet print, 24 x 36 inches, 60.96 x 91.44 cm. Courtesy of the artist.



Sometimes I Begin with a Title RAÚL GÓMEZ VALVERDE BY SABINE FLACH

Sometimes I begin with a title was the name of Raúl Gómez Valverde’s talk for the conference. He presented his artworks, Empty (2010–ongoing) and As an artist, I look for this kind of drama (2010–2030): “Empty takes the form of a website to present an archive of exhibition views from galleries participating in the Art Basel art fair. All images have been edited to remove any trace of artwork. The viewer is confronted with large records of empty architectural displays, which constitute a prototype of current presentation venues. These spaces make evident the problematics of art production and strategies of trade. While Empty refers to present trends in our globalized economy, As an artist, I look for this kind of drama appropriates exhibition spaces, but does so in the future tense. This video project takes into consideration the context of institutional exhibition formats, plus my own creative trajectory. Conceived as a series in progress, this work presents the sunlight of March 12, 2030 – the day I will turn 50 years old. The project focuses on that specific light-space interaction happening at diverse art museums around the world. The work is a set of assumptions about the future, while questioning common structures of expectations”.1 The artist is interested in art and art-making to create a realm of transparency, pointing to the fact that art has the power to “make visible realities generally overlooked”.2 Our interest is to clarify the meaning of “overlooking”: what kind of relationship exists between visibility, that implies a special physical existence of objects, and its counterpart, overlooking, which points to a possible ephemeral quality concerning objects during the process of perception? How could something be the subject of an art piece, or even the art piece itself, that is not there?



 1 2

Description by the artist Groys: “Politics of Installation”, p. 27.

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Fig. 1: Raúl Gómez Valverde, Empty, 2010–ongoing (detail), website, database, images, text. Courtesy of the artist.

Fig. 2: Raúl Gómez Valverde, Empty, 2010–ongoing (detail), website, database, images, text. Courtesy of the artist.

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Fig. 3: Raúl Gómez Valverde, Empty, 2010–ongoing (detail), website, database, images, text. Courtesy of the artist.

Of relevance is the “void” in visual thinking for which Raúl Gómez Valverde’s working method is a perfect example. Gómez Valverde’s As an artist I look for this kind of drama is characterized by one significant aspect: its extremely long duration, which goes often enough beyond a life-time. For the visitors, the experience of time turns Gómez Valverde’s work significantly into a spatial condition. This is a transformation process, which a subject under normal conditions is not aware of. The artworks described here point to the interweaving of time and space experiences. Infiniteness, however, is a spatial experience which provides –to describe it again in spatial terms– room for prospects, projections, prophecy and assumptions. These all have one characteristic in common: the subjunctive as the conjunctive combination of existing parameters which are there, but not necessarily visible. How could an artwork bring this process into visibility or into experience? Paradoxically enough, by staging the “void”, the “absence”, or the “withdrawal” as in Gómez Valverde’s art, the artist makes a claim for characterizing art as a de-materialized phenomenon. This clearly makes reference to technical media, which, according to this idea fosters the development of the arts towards a massive “ontological denial”.3 For us it is important to point to the fact that the

 3

Lehmann & Weibel: Ästhetik der Absenz, p. 7.

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void, withdrawal, absence, and lack gain autonomy in the aesthetic process, and are regarded as constituting elements essentially inherent in the work of art. Shifting the elements of void, withdrawal, absence and lack, and aesthetically locating them within the work of art, lastingly alters the characteristics of these phenomena: they can no longer be grasped solely by way of a mediatechnological or an extra-artistic analysis; rather it is the structural and constituting components of the artistic work itself that must first be specified. Withdrawal, in Gómez Valverde’s work, manifests itself primarily as the radical specification of negation.4

Fig. 4: Raúl Gómez Valverde, As an artist, I look for this kind of drama at Visual Arts Gallery, New York, 2010. This computer-generated simulation displays how the sunlight of March 12, 2030 would light the gallery space. Courtesy of the artist.

 4

Flach: Körper-Szenarien, p. 316.

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Gómez Valverde does not show objects as such but turns the work of art into a reflection on remainders, on negative space, so to speak. Concerning the question of representation, this form of presentation asserts a crucial artistic stance: the objects themselves do not achieve and constitute meaning, but rather marginalities and absences do. In this concrete case it gives a sense of a dividing line between the actual but yet not present object, and the surrounding space. It is this line that designates that which is being denied, and thereby creates the very contour which in its precision renders the withdrawal or the void, the absence visible. The work of art evolves away from a product into a process, which subsequently constitutes the work of art itself. Implicitly the work of art comes with a certain reductionism resulting in the dematerialization of artistic practice. Thereby, contingent aspects of the context are more and more clearly integrated. In consequence the artistic work becomes a phenomenological event, with attention focused on the conditions of perception. The phenomena of withdrawal and void are persistently figured as constituting elements of Gómez Valverde’s artistic practice. The artwork is marked by a concept of space relating to the processing of action sequences. Spatiality, however, is characterized not so much by architectonic constants but rather by process and dynamism; i.e. in forms of execution that may generate in-between spatialities or parentheses, the focus lies on visually presenting what is lacking. The strategies Gómez Valverde develops in his piece are founded on the idea of highlighting precisely that which is missing.5 Susan Sontag has cited this attitude as being comparable to silence, and continues to define both as power factors for the artist’s own position. For Sontag, the terms create opaqueness, and therefore an almost unassailable position of power. She states: “...the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence”.6



 5 6

Flach: “Withdrawal as an Artform”, pp. 48–62. Sontag: “The Aesthetics of Silence”, p. 191.

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Fig. 5: 3D model and shader test for As an artist, I look for this kind of drama at the Visual Arts Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the artist.



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Fig. 6: Time and location parameters set on Cinema 4D (above) and render production still made with Maxwell Render (below) for As an artist, I look for this kind of drama at C Arte C, Madrid, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

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As for the question of documentation, one must be mindful of the performative, transitory approach, in order to understand the dramaturgical conception of the works and the modes of their perception. The performative aspect of the work materializes as an interaction; therefore it can neither be fixed nor reproduced. Meaning constitutes itself once again, through withdrawal. Performativity then always means undercutting classical concepts of a work of art as well as traditional reception patterns; it is thereby a counter-concept to that of representation. Rather, performativity points to something that remains vacant, oscillating and, as it were, resistant in the process of meaning generation. Yet it is this performativity itself that draws attention to the vacancies and dissolutions. Reference is performed in its origination, withdrawal and absence, i.e. in negation; what is shown here is the fragility of a system of representation. Artworks as Gómez Valverde’s become once more a discursive practice, examining and interacting with the structures surrounding it. Phenomenological experience as aesthetic practice brings forth a certain reserve towards traditional means of art as much as towards an illusionist character of art. The work of art is a phenomenological event conceived as an experimental, experiential situation, in which the viewer is integrated into the time and space experience. This phenomenological conception implies therefore that the structural and symbolic positioning of the artist, of the observer, and of the work of art are being reviewed. The artist turns into the fabricator of real experience; a mise-en-scène is staged, and analytic methods refer back to personal experience. The relationship between presence and absence, between immediacy and reproduction is made problematic in those arts and situated in the field of tension between the work and the event. The observing subject is constituted in this process, and at the same time it is perpetually destabilized. The work of art always produces something: namely a hypothesis to see what will happen. For the sake of curiosity about what will happen, Raúl Gómez Valverde often starts with a title.



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Fig. 7: Raúl Gómez Valverde, As an artist, I look for this kind of drama at ventana244 Art Space, New York, 2011. Stills from computer generated animation. Courtesy of the artist and Ventana244 Art Space, New York.

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Fig. 8: Installation view of the exhibition As an artist, I look for this kind of drama (c arte c) 2012, at Raul Would like you to be critically happy, Centro de Arte Complutense, Madrid. Photo: Raul Gomez Valverde. Courtesy of the artist.



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References Flach, Sabine: Present Continuous Future(s). Raúl Gómez Valverde’s artworks between absence and attendance. In: XXXX Flach, Sabine: Körper-Szenarien. Zum Verhältnis von Körper und Bild in Videoinstallationen, München (Fink-Verlag) 2003. Flach, Sabine: “Withdrawal as an Artform. Between Withdrawal and Presentation – The Body in the Media Arts”, in: Ursula Frohne, Mona Schieren, Jean-François Guiton (eds.): Present Continuous Past(s). Media Art. Strategies of Presentation, Mediation and Dissemination. Vienna (Springer Verlag) 2005. Flach, Sabine and Tholen, Georg Christoph (eds.): Mimetische Differenzen: Vom Spielraum der Medien zwischen Abbildung and Nachbildung, Kassel (Kassel University Press) 2002. Groys, Boris, “Politics of Installation”, in: Julieta Aranda, Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood (eds.): e-flux journal reader 2009, Berlin/New York (Sternberg Press) 2009. Sontag, Susan: “The Aesthetics of Silence” (1967), in: A Susan Sontag Reader, London, (Penguin Books) 1983. Lehmann, Ulrike and Weibel, Peter (eds.): Ästhetik der Absenz: Bilder zwischen Anwesenheit and Abwesenheit. München /Berlin, (Klinkhardt & Biermann) 1994.

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Raúl Gómez Valverde, Empty, 2010–ongoing (detail), website, database, images, text. Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 2: Raúl Gómez Valverde, Empty, 2010–ongoing (detail), website, database, images, text. © 2010 Raúl Gómez Valverde. Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 3: Raúl Gómez Valverde, Empty, 2010–ongoing (detail), website, database, images, text. Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 4: Raúl Gómez Valverde, As an artist, I look for this kind of drama at Visual Arts Gallery, New York, 2010, Stills from computer generated animation. Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 5: 3D model and shader test for As an artist, I look for this kind of drama at the Visual Arts Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the artist.

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Fig. 6: Time and location parameters set on Cinema 4D (above) and render production still made with Maxwell Render (below) for As an artist, I look for this kind of drama at C Arte C, Madrid, 2012. Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 7: Raúl Gómez Valverde, As an artist, I look for this kind of drama at ventana244 Art Space, New York, 2011. Stills from computer generated animation. Courtesy of the artist. Fig. 8: Installation view of the exhibition As an artist, I look for this kind of drama (c arte c) 2012, at Raul Would like you to be critically happy, Centro de Arte Complutense, Madrid. Photo: Raul Gomez Valverde. Courtesy of the artist.

2. Sensible Differences

(Dis) Synchronies of Vision and Touch MIKA ELO

Our contemporary technological environment is largely built on finger-friendly touch points. From day to day, we finger various manual devices, and today their switches, buttons, levers and adjusters are more and more often digitalised. They are digital icons on some type of display. All we need to control them is a light tap or sweep of our finger. The finger can alone take care of a multiplicity of tasks, even in real time. The status of such an omnipotent finger is, however, ambivalent. As a clearly defined part of the hand, a digit serves as a model for distinct numerical unit. Children learn how to count by counting their fingers. Hereby, they also take into account their bodies, of which the finger is an organic part. Numerical units tend, however, to become autonomous. This is the case in digital code; it does not include any relation between part and whole. The binary combinations of 0’s and 1’s point away from the body. As regards these discrete units, it is customary to speak of the digitalisation of different media. It seems, however, that along with digital technology, even the finger has become “digitalised”. Being digitally omnipotent the finger points away from the embodied experience. It has become an increasingly autonomous unit in relation to the skills of hand and sentience of body and its functions can be modelled and transferred to new contexts. What kind of consequences might this “digitalisation of the finger” have in regard to imagination? How do imagination and sentience relate to each other? I will approach these questions in terms of touch. My main points of reference will be Aristotle’s treatise On the Soul and Husserl’s remarks on touch in Ideen II. With the help of these texts I will point at two extremes in the phenomenological thinking of touch: 1) touch as a heterogeneous set of different forms of sensitivity and 2) touch as the guarantor of sensory certainty. My aim is to give a tentative account of how these extremes might give a hint of the imaginative power inherent to touching. The nature of touching has been a moot point in Western thinking.1 Different conceptual articulations and arguments, however, almost invariably share the idea that touch is a way of locating and guaranteeing the contact between

 1

Derrida: On Touching and Paterson: The Senses of Touch.

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different elements of experience. Reality has been understood essentially as being in touch with something real. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the different parties to this contact have many names in our tradition: soul, mind, reason, concept vs. body, flesh, sensuality, image... Correspondingly, the contact itself has been studied from the points of view of religion, intuition, reflection, synapses – and imagination. In regard to digital technology, the status of touch as a guarantor of tangible reality would appear unstable, as a great deal of what we consider real is anything but tangible, even when we find it touching. The question arises, how to relate tangibility to the conceptual, affective and mental dimensions of touch or feeling.

I In De Anima, Aristotle studies the body as the scene of life. Touch plays here a central role. Life is characterised by sensing, but the only sense that is indispensable to all animals is the sense of touch: “some classes of animals have all the senses, some only certain of them, others only one, the most indispensable, touch.”2 Aristotle relates the vital role of touch above all to the ability to feel pleasure and pain and the ability to seek and find nutrition, but also to deepening of life. The characteristically human “practical reason” (fronesis), for example, derives from the fact that our sense of touch is more sensitive than other animals’.3 In short, sensation by touch is central to both sensing and thinking. This implies that touch exceeds the tactile world; it is heterogeneous and difficult to define. As Aristotle notes, the objects of touch are many, and it has no clearly definable organ. This, notably, is something that touch shares with thinking. In light of Aristotle’s treatise, touch is not only a matter of contacting surfaces; it also has depth: something can be so touching that a human being or an animal is thoroughly moved. It is an exposure to something excessive and unexpected which may leave a painful mark. In a closer analysis the common denominator of the various dimensions of touch turns out to be this pathic moment.4 The term ‘pathic’ derives from the Greek word pathos and refers to sensitivity, affection, suffering, and, more generally, exposure. On the risky

 2 3 4

Aristotle: De Anima, 414a. Ibid., 421a. For a more detailed argument see Elo: “Digital Finger”.

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stage of life touching also always means being touched, and therefore, exposure. This reciprocal structure of touch is not, however, symmetric but twisted out of joint by the pathic moment. The self is always preceded by something that touches or exposes the self. It is only the possibility of reaction or reverse that makes the self relate to itself as sentient. It is worth noticing that this is not merely a reflexive structure, as exposure always involves the transitive formation of the self. Touch as exposure explores the borderline between what is experienced as one’s own and another’s. It thus becomes a question of tact. Touch as exposure holds the key position in Aristotle’s discussion on the structure of sensitivity. According to him, all sensing takes place in the suspense between contrary opposites (such as light-dark, hot-cold, etc.).5 Both excessive and insufficient intensity make it impossible to sense differences. The capacity of sensing can even be destroyed when borders are crossed. In other words, sensory sensitivity is structurally finite and fragile. This pathic structure gives sense perception its measures and enables the sensing of differences. Besides taking place between contrary pairs, sensing itself is defined by an interspace that Aristotle describes with a word he borrows from Democritus, metaxy, “what is in between”.6 He states: “Sensation depends [...] on a process of movement or affection from without [paskhein]”.7 As far as sensor and sensed are separate, there is also something between them. And what is between them must be something other than void, because it must mediate the sense effect in one way or another. Different from Democritus, Aristotle does not believe in the possibility of remote effect.8 According to Wolfgang Hagen, Aristotle’s metaxy, “the in-between”, is not, however, an intermediary substance but the distance structurally required by sensing, the anonymous exteriority which does not appear as such but produces effects in the form of sensible differences.9 This interpretation is backed by Aristotle’s use of the writing tablet metaphor in the part concerning reason in De Anima.10 Aristotle suggests that thinking is a process where potential substance is given an actual form. The transfer from substance to form is qualitative rather than substantial. In other words, the effect or “being affected” (paskhein) should be considered through the development of form rather than a material causal relationship. Thinking, accordingly, appears as form-giving where the objects, whether perceived or imagined, stand out against their background just as letters do in a writing tablet. Aristotle outlines a similar structure for senses:

 5 6 7 8 9 10

Aristotle: De Anima, 424a. Ibid., 419. Ibid., 416b. Ibid., 419a. Hagen: “Metaxy,” pp. 23–29. Aristotle: De Anima, 429b.

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“This [perception] is that part which is potentially such as its object is actually”.11 Imagined and perceived differences appear as writing on a board, thanks to the space between the letters, the anonymous exteriority. Aristotle says that if an object lies immediately on the surface of a sense organ, it is not perceived at all.12 Perception requires distance, a space between. Aristotle recognises such an in-between even in touch, which, too “must be affected by what comes between [...] The same, in spite of all appearances, applies also to touch and taste”.13 In other words, not even touch, says Aristotle, is structurally immediate. The mediacy of touch, however, is something that escapes our notice in sense experience in terms of contact and the idea of immediacy associated with it. From the Aristotelian point of view, “being affected” (paskhein) should be considered through the development of form rather than a material causal relationship. Thinking, sensing and imagining appear as processes of form-giving where the objects stand out against their background. In light of Aristotle’s treatise, what is involved in touch is not an actual contact of two separate objects, or the annulment of distance, but an experienced distance and proximity. In this respect the treatise can be regarded as phenomenological.14 In short, the “inbetween”, metaxy, is not a mere space between, measurable distance or a void, but a suspension span or “background” as the possibility of a form. It is this suspension at the core of sentience that opens up the possibility for imagination. Eva Brann’s interpretation of Aristotle’s notion of imagination supports my reading here. According to her, Aristotle’s imagination (fantasia) is not a faculty of its own but a function that builds on sensation.15 It is “motion proceeding from sensation as it goes on actively”, as Aristotle says.16 For Aristotle imagination is “sensation prolonged past the presence of the object”, as Brann puts it.17 It is noteworthy that according to Aristotle, the potentiality of touch differs from that of the other senses. Sight is potentially all colours, as it itself is without colour. Correspondingly, hearing is potentially all sounds, as it itself is soundless. What is capable of touch by contrast, cannot be without sensible characteristics, because it lies in the midst of sensible qualities. As exposure, therefore, touch becomes its own background, the untouchable in the contact itself. The sense of touch can only sense what it itself is not, i.e., a difference. In relation to itself – or rather, in relation to the same – it is insentient. In short,

 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Ibid., 418a. Ibid., 419a. Ibid., 419a, see also 423b. Chrétien: The Call and Response, pp. 88–90. Brann: The World of Imagination, pp. 40–46 and Sallis: The Force of Imagination, pp. 44–45. Aristotle: De Anima, 428b. Brann: The World of Imagination, p. 42.

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sensation by touch requires an appropriate suspension span, for the feeling to be able to sense that it is sensing, which means that it only feels itself through the other, pathically. As this kind of pathic sense, touch marks the insentient background of all sentience.

II In order to study the suspension of sensory distance we must take into account the technical and technological conditions of each particular situation, since the experiences of distance and proximity are also always articulated in relation to them.18 This means that unfolding of the imaginative power inherent to sentience becomes a question of technics. Even if it might seem that the question of technics belongs where we have some kind of tools at hand, we need to focus on the figure of the hand first. In one way or another, the hand and the skills of the hand play a central role in just about all human activity and thinking. It is therefore hardly surprising that the hand has also been a central figure in reflections on touch. Many prominent philosophers assign the hand a key role in thinking about touch. In his book on Nancy that plumbs the theme of touch, Jacques Derrida mentions Maine de Biran, Kant, Husserl and Heidegger as examples of thinkers who assign the hand a key role in the thinking of touch.19 Aristotle, who might be called a “proto-phenomenologist”, is an interesting exception in this tradition. It is true that Aristotle calls the hand “a tool of tools” saying that it has a particular position in studies of the soul.20 He does not, however, think of touch in terms of the figure of the hand, as has become clear above. Like Aristotle, Edmund Husserl gives the sense of touch a particular position in relation to embodied experience. Differently from Aristotle, however, he holds on to the special nature and immediacy of the sense of touch. In Ideen II, Husserl studies the constitution of the live body and its role in psychic life. Here the hand and touch play a central role. For Husserl, corporeal body (Leibkörper) is both a sensing body and an object that can be sensed just like any other object. These two aspects are linked together by the sense of touch thanks to its two-sided structure. Husserl’s term for this is Doppelauffassung, “double apprehension”. As two-sided, touch is apprehended at the same time both as a

 18 19 20

Waldenfels: Bruchlinien der Erfahrung, pp. 361–362; Ortsverschiebungen, p. 87. Derrida: On Touching, p. 149. Aristotle: De Anima, 432a.

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sensation (Empfindung) of something sensible and as a sensing (Empfindnis) of the sensing body. Husserl argues for the special nature of the sense of touch on the basis of how it localises sensations and sensings. In touch, the localisation is immediate, whereas it is mediated in the other senses, such as sight and hearing. Even ears and eyes act as “fields of localisation” (Lokalisationsfeld), but only indirectly, via the sense of touch. Visual sensations are not localised in the eye any more than aural sensations are localised in the ear. Only pain, temperature, movement and other sensations of touch can be immediately localised as sensations in these sense organs. In their proper modalities, sensations and sensings differ spatially. It is only the sense of touch that can bring them together, because there both sensation and sensing are localised together on the spot.21 The question of localisation leads Husserl into making a distinction between spread or distribution (Ausbreitung, Hinbreitung) and extension (Ausdehnung): the spread of sensings in the body is according to him different in principle from how the extentional things are positioned in space.22 The tactile sensings do not belong to the sensuous schema at all.23 The spread of sensings is not perceived as a spatial and temporal whole formed by various partial perceptions. Consequently, the corporeal body cannot be outlined as a clearly delineated dimensional object on the basis of sensings alone. What is needed is synchrony of vision and touch. The spreading body and extending object have to be congruently superimposed in order to form a Leibkörper.24 The hand is for Husserl a hold from which to best outline this superimposition or “double exposure”. It is a highly sensitive and also sufficiently “palpable” hold, because, differently from many other body parts, it is visible to the bodily subject itself. It is by virtue of these characteristics that the hand becomes for Husserl a privileged localisation field, the metonymy of the body. The hand as the priviledged figure of touch and as its metonymic organ manipulates, informs and formats the thematisation of touch in Husserl’s phenomenology. According to Jacques Derrida, setting the hand as an example turns out to be a “properly phenomenological gesture” where the hold offered by the hand is linked to the conscious self and the subject’s abilities. The hand is linked to the service of optic intuitionism. It is through this linkage that touch becomes the guarantor of sensory certainty.25 The privilege of the hand through which Husserl argues for the privilege of touch is above all based on the visibility of the hand and the seamless interplay

 21 22 23 24 25

Husserl: Ideen zu Einer Reinen Phَnomenologie, pp. 147–148. Ibid., p. 149. Ibid., p. 150. Ibid., pp. 151, 158. Derrida: On Touching, pp. 159–182.

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of hand and eye. This is a connection that supports the idea of an immediate and full presence, which in turn makes up the background against which imagination appears as something that can be measured against perception. In his study on fantasy, Husserl addresses the distinction between perception and phantasy as that between Gegenwärtigung (presentation) and Vergegenwärtigung (re-presentation).26 In Husserl’s analysis, perception and fantasy are closely related to each other and their differences are difficult to discern. Their relation is reminiscent of that of original and image; in both cases the same object can come to appearance, and even with precisely the same determinations.27 Yet, the field of fantasy is “completely separate from the field of perception”.28 In order to distinguish them, one needs to focus on the different ways an object can be apprehended. Here, perception functions for Husserl as the main point of reference, since the ways in which fantasy presentation differs from “the objective nexus of present reality” can be discerned in contrast to preception. Especially illuminating are the situations where a perceptual apprehension comes into conflict with a second (imaginative) apprehension. The example Husserl gives here is revealing: “The bent stick in water is a fiction, an illusion: for in deceptive perception the visual apprehension is supplemented by certain tactile apprehensions”.29 The sensory illusion is “corrected” when the imaginative elements of perception are recognized as such. As the example indicates, synchrony between vision and touch plays here a central role. Husserl’s discourse on touch in Ideen II puts up the challenge of articulating how both the sensitivity of the hand and the interplay between hand and eye might be considered as historical variables. This seems to me highly relevant as regards the experiential horizon of digital culture. Are not the ways in which we need to adapt ourselves to the logic of various digital interfaces, after all, reminiscent of the “bent stick in water” situation described by Husserl? In Derrida’s reading, the apparently seamless interplay of hand and eye makes Husserl blind to what it is that enables the joining of sight and touch: the outside, a detour which is needed for a point of view to be attached to the sensation.30 This detour implies the possibility of supplements and mediations – technics.

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27 28 29 30

In Husserl’s vocabulary, “imagination” is a narrower term than fantasy. It expresses that what is fantasized is merely something imagined, merely a semblance, i.e., an internal or external image presenation (Husserl: Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory, pp. 1–4, 17). Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 49. Ibid., p. 48. Derrida: On Touching, pp. 161, 204.

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III Today, as different sensations and faculties are combined in new ways with the aid of computers some have even begun to talk about “a new language of haptic sensations” whose structure and tones interface designers polish by means of user studies exploiting virtual prototypes.31 It becomes evident in this context that touch is still understood as a promise of immediacy. This feeds the kind of realism that attempts to fade out the part played by technology: virtual objects are expected to “feel real”. The goal is a seamless interplay of vision and touch. This, in turn, presupposes that strong links between perceptual and imaginative qualities of virtual objects are established. The pathic orientation of study opens up a possibility for deconstructing this kind of “haptocentrism”, where we end up if we set up touch as the guarantor of sensory certainty. As soon as touch is articulated as a technological application field the angle is “haptocentric”, since the aim is to successfully represent the sense of touch. Typically, interface designers set as their goal not only the richness and realism of sense feedback but also the pleasure that the user can experience.32 This kind of formatting builds up a representation of touch as a sense that works in synchrony with vision and offers a support for optical intuitionism, i.e., mechanisms for linking visually informed perception to imagination. It enhances the role of touch as the guarantor of sensory certainty. This scheme of haptic appropriation, or ‘haptocentrism’, has made up the endoskeleton of western philosophy of touch since Plato.33 Interface design that builds on this scheme tends to focus on feedback that affirms recognition and underlines the idea of the human body as an autonomous functional unit. This could be called narcissistic feedback, because it forms in its functionality a circle that feeds the fantasies of mastery and self-power. Hereby, the pathic nature of touch and the ethical dimensions of feedback remain in a dead angle. From the pathic point of view, the ethical implications of “sensory enhancement” are not restricted to the level of practices and attitudes, i.e., on the level of the mediations of an ethical relationship. As Dave Boothroyd has noted, the mechanisms of the constitution of an ethical subject are what is at stake above all.34 As regards synchronies and dis-synchronies of vision and touch, these mechanisms are closely related to linking imagination to perception.

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Paterson: The Senses of Touch, p. 139. Ratti et al.: “Tangible User Interfaces,” p. 410. Derrida: On Touching, pp. 159–182. Boothroyd: “Touch, time and Technics.” p. 335.

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This ethical dimension must be considered in relation to sentience, which, as Aristotle helped make evident is related to the sensitivity of thought and imagination. It is therefore not all the same in what frames determined by what figures we make these distinctions and on what structures we reproduce them. No organ or contact surface can be taken for granted. What we can do is to direct our thinking to the friction between various contact points and faculties, to the gaps where the apparent immediacy of touch is suspended in favor of imagination. This would amount to studying imagination as a figure of touch.

References Aristotle: “De Anima” in: W.D. Ross (ed.): The Works of Aristotle, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1931, Volume III. English translation by J. A. Smith. Aristotle: “Metaphysica” in: W.D. Ross (ed.): The Works of Aristotle, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1954, Volume VIII. Boothroyd, Dave: “Touch, Time and Technics. Levinas and the Ethics of Haptic”, in: Theory, Culture & Society, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore (SAGE) 2009, Vol. 26(2–3). pp. 330–345. Brann, Eva T. H.: The World of Imagination. Sum and Substance, Maryland (Rowmann & Littlefield) 1991. Chrétien, Jean-Louis: The Call and the Response, New York (Fordham University Press) 2004. English translation by Anne A. Davenport. Derrida, Jacques: On Touching – Jean-Luc Nancy. California (Stanford University Press) 2005. English translation by Christine Irizarry. Elo, Mika: “Digital Finger: Beyond Phenomenological Figures of Touch”, in: Journal of Aestehtics and Culture vol 4. (2012) DOI: 10.3402/jac.v4i0.14982. Hagen, Wolfgang: “Metaxy. Eine historiosemantische Fußnote zum Medienbegriff“, in Stefan Münker & Alexander Roesler (eds.): Was ist ein Medium?, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp). 2008, pp. 13–29. Husserl, Edmund: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologische Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Ed. Marly Biemel. Haag (Martinus Nijhoff) 1952, (Abr. Hua 4.) Husserl, Edmund: “Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898– 1925)”, in: Rudolf Bernet (ed.): Edmund Husserl Collected Works, vol XI. Dodtrecht (Springer) 2005. (Abr. Hua 23.) Trans. John B. Brough.

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Paterson, Mark: The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies, New York and Oxford (Berg) 2007. Ratti, Carlo et al.: “Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs): A Novel Paradigm for GIS”, in: Transactions in GIS, 8 (2004) 4, pp, 407–421. Sallis, John: The Force of Imagination. The Sense of the Elemental, Bloomington and Indianapolis (Indiana University Press) 2000. Waldenfels, Bernhard: Bruchlinien der Erfahrung. Phänomenologie, Psychoanalyse, Phänomenotechnik, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 2002. Waldenfels, Bernhard: Ortsverschiebungen, Zeitverschiebungen. Modi leibhafter Erfahrung, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 2009.

What Does Imagination Look Like? Notes on the Schematism of the Modalities ESA KIRKKOPELTO

1. What is imagination? Can we answer this question without using our imagination? And if we cannot, what sense can the whole question make to us? The following notes constitute a draft for a study on the originally reflective nature of imagination. As I will argue, our problem related to imagination is not to imagine it but to imagine it otherwise than we usually do.1 At the background of these notes there is my long-term practical and philosophical work with the phenomenon and concept of ‘scene’ (or ‘stage’). By scene I understand the transcendental conditions of scenic performance, which are the same for both performer and spectator. By transcendental, I refer to the basic modes of encountering the world or being “there”. I state that we all share a certain kind of ‘scenic understanding’, according to which we recognize something as performed, as theatre, and are capable of reproducing phenomena of the world theatrically, in the mode of scenic performance. In order to do that we have to have an a priori understanding on how an acting and speaking, living human being appears and looks like. That is to say that our perception is originally engaged by this phenomenon, a ‘scenic thing’.2 Why is it so? And how can we be so sure about it? Here as elsewhere I base my argument on an evidence which, over again, reveals as transcendental: in our sensory field, the human phenomenon is the only spot where that field becomes connected with language; where the perceptible mimetic processes and conceptual symbolic ones coincide with each other without getting merged. If this connection is taken for granted, which most often is the case, then this particular phenomenon constitutes for us a ‘figure’, an

 1

2

The article is based on my presentation at the “Imagining Imagination” colloquium at the Royal College of Art, London, 10 June 2011, organized by Sabine Flach, School of Visual Arts and Michael Schwab, Royal College of Art. Kirkkopelto: “The Question of the Scene: On the Philosophical Foundations of Theatrical Anthropocentrism.”

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imaginary instance and object of identification, an overall anthropomorphic schema, which dominates our perception and understanding in various ways.3 Our way of perceiving the world is internally mediated by the way our fellow beings appear to us. This basic transcendental aspect of our cognition is not a matter of mere reasoning, but it can reveal itself also empirically in different kind of everyday contexts. According to the well-known psychological phenomenon, unexpected and strange objects tend to take first a human form before we recognize them as what they properly are. On the other hand, as the psychological tests concerning the so called “uncanny valley” have tended to prove, an excessive but not sufficient similarity of a non-human object (for instance a robot) to the human one provoke a disquieting experience. In other words our very sense of commonness is sustained by the recognition of likeness, which cannot be reduced to a mere sensory data. Our empirical perception is always already of transcendental and, hence, of scenic nature. Therefore, if we want to inquire imagination critically, especially in artistic and philosophical contexts, we should carefully study to which extent our theories of this topic are already engaged and sustained by the imaginaries related to the human figure. We should dare to ask whether we can have an “image” or “representation” whatsoever without the intervention of an invisible human instance who plays, displays or represents the world to us. After these general remarks, let’s consider more closely what philosophers have thought and written about imagination. I will focus on the Kantian theory of imagination, since it offers an influential starting point for all theorization of imagination up to our days. The points I refer to are included in Kant’s first Critique, The Critique of Pure Reason, in a chapter titled “Schematism”, where he analyses a power of cognition called “transcendental imagination”.

2. In Kant’s description of the dynamics and structure of our cognition, the “force of imagination” (Einbildungskraft) has roughly speaking two main functions, a ‘servile’ and a ‘free’ one.

 3

As it could be proved, the recognition of this figure and its authority has constituted a critical moment in all philosophical critique of theatrical representation since Plato. Ever since the Poetics of Aristotle, another important starting point for that tradition, the human figure has assumed the prevalent position also in theatre. In Aristotle, this was guaranteed by his definition of theatrical representation as mimesis tôn pragmatôn, “imitation of facts”, “acts” or “events”, executed by acting human beings or “actors”, prattontes. See the previous note.

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According to its servile function, imagination works at the service of the “understanding” (Verstand), our empirical reason, the mode of reasoning we use in both everyday and theoretical contexts. The theoretical reason determines conceptually what senses give to it. An objective empirical reality is born as a result of this determination. The “synthesis” between conceptual determination and sensory receptivity has its own forms and laws, an a priori structure and dynamics. The work of imagination is situated in this intermediary realm between sensibility and reason. It provides the concepts of understanding with their “significance” (Bedeutung). Structurally, this happens in two phases. The first phase consists of perception, where the sensory data is changed into perceptible representations following the associative laws of the reproductive imagination. In the second phase, the transcendental imagination connects those representations with corresponding concepts. The free use of imagination in turn belongs to the domain of the aesthetic reflection. Aesthetically, the sensible products of the imagination are not encountered as empirical objects but as phenomena that have always already entered our experience and constitute a part of it. They are “reflected” within that experience according to their “free play”, in an undetermined relation to the concepts and demands of reason. The reflection either pleases or displeases the reflecting subject, who on the basis of her experience can articulate a judgement of taste. The analysis of this kind of experience is one of the main topics of the Third Kantian Critique, The Critique of Judgement. Hence, as may can notice, imagining imagination in the Kantian context seems to be first and foremost a matter of aesthetic reflection and judgement. However, as I will argue, even the empirical and theoretical judgement analysed in the first Critique, has its implicit aesthetically reflective dynamics. In order to see how it works, let´s observe now more closely Kant’s idea of the transcendental imagination. Insofar the work of imagination takes place in relation to the most basic concepts of the understanding, the “categories”, its activity is purely transcendental. In order to separate it from more reproductive modes of imagination, Kant calls it “schematism”. The schematism consists of the production of the “schemas”. The schemas are ultimate and most abstract constructions which imagination is capable of. They consist of a priori determinations of time which, alongside with space, is the purest form of “intuition”, a sensible form according to which all sensory data enters our consciousness. Each category of understanding has its “schema”, a specific transcendentally intuitive model, which makes that concept perceptible. For instance, the scheme of the category of “quantity” is “number”; the schema of “quality” is “the continuous and uniform production of reality [...] in time” or a “quantum”; the schema of “substance” consists of a “permanence of the real in time”. As Martin Heidegger has

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later argued in his reading of the Kantian schematism, the same principle applies to all concepts of understanding, even the most empirical ones, whose relation to the sensory field is mediated by so called “image-schemas” providing a preliminary aspect related to each concept. Schema is a transcendental instance: one just need to imagine it in order to get assured of its functioning. Like the anthropomorphic figures described above, the schemas do not ‘exist’ outside our imagination. How are figures and schemas interrelated? In order to approach this question, let’s consider first how Kant himself conceives the work of transcendental imagination. According to his famous description, “the schematism of our understanding, in its application to appearances and their mere form, is an art [Kunst] concealed in the depths of the human soul [Seele], whose real modes of activity [or “manoeuvres”, Handgriffe] nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze.”4 What Kant does here is not only that he calls the schematism an “art”, a free activity at the core of all empirical determination. He also considers the imagination as a worker, as a (more or less platonic) craftsman, who works faithfully at the service of our understanding. Hence, the definition can be read and understood in an anthropomorphic way. Regarding that possibility, as it seems to me, there resides still today a confusion, a pitfall, which undermines the post-Kantian attempts to understand imagination. The problem is related to the following: If we consider imagination as a capacity, a faculty or a function, we have always already, whether we think it or not, understood it anthropomorphically or, at least, enclosed it in an anthropomorphic framing. This is a metaphysical operation par excellence, of which neither Kant nor his followers in the German idealist tradition are even. Every time we think/imagine like that – and it is indeed hard to think/imagine it otherwise – we suppose that this particular power is at the disposal and used by some higher instance – in Kant, especially this instance is “Reason” – which by intermediary of the imagination both governs the sensible sphere and keep itself detached from it and, so doing, maintains its supposed purity. As we make this distinction, we have also taken the human figure as granted, “deep in our soul” we have always already imagined it, since it constitutes the last instance capable of keeping the separated spheres together. It constitutes the schema of all schemas, the one who imagines them as her own image. This is how we literally sup-pose the figure, which ceaselessly withdraws itself behind all its representations, preceding them always and already. Is there any alternative for the anthropomorphic reason? To a certain extent the answer is no. Insofar the human phenomenon is the only medium through

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Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, p. 183.

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which we can assess the relation between the sensible and the conceptual, between body and word, our reflection does not have another playground. The only way out, therefore, is to try to think imagination in a new way, to imagine it in a non-anthropomorphic and -centric way, without having recourse to the presence and the authority of the human figure. The task is not only philosophical or theoretical but also artistic. It might be even most proper to artistic research.

3. As I pointed out, Kant’s relation to the imagination, especially in the first Critique, remains prudent and ambivalent – and he has also been criticized for that. In this respect one of the most prominent reading is that of Martin Heidegger who in his Kant and the problem of Metaphysics5 from 1929 tended to show how the question of the transcendental imagination constituted the hidden core of Kant’s transcendental thought. According to Heidegger, the schematism had to be understood as the common “root” of both perception and understanding, as the most basic expression of the transcendental and temporalizing activity of Dasein. Whatever we today think about Heidegger’s influential reading, the least we can say is that it opens new ways for imagining imagination. In the Heideggerian staging, imagination is not anymore a faculty of its own, a lesser or a higher one, but a representation of our experience itself as it reflects on its own world-oriented and world-constructing activity. That is also why its “art” is unavoidably “hidden”, at least partly. If our idea of imagination is the result of the auto-reflection of the experience, operation that can only take place within time and in its terms, it is understandable that we cannot ever seize the activity of our experience as fully present. This lack has to be understood a constitutive aspect of our “finitude”, that in the Kantian transcendental context is understood as our “receptivity” in relation to the Being. If, following Heidegger, we conclude that imagination is but the aspect of our “being-to-the-world” or “transcendence”, our inherent connectedness and receptivity in relation to what surpasses us and surprises us, our attention removes from the order of representations (as products of our imagination) towards the very structure and the dynamics of that imaginative connectedness

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Heidegger: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.

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itself. ”Imagining imagination” means the questioning – and wondering – of the originally reflective nature of our original connectedness. How can we describe this kind of “finite transcendence”, without sliding back to anthropomorphism? Both artistically and philosophically, we should be able to conceive the functioning of our experience without recourse to the production of representations, to any kind of figurativeness.

4. As I will argue, in order to escape the order of representation, one does not necessarily have to quit the Kantian transcendental setting. It may be even important to keep hold of it, especially if we want to maintain the possibility of the empirical determination, the objective reality. Otherwise our reflections risk themselves to turn merely “aesthetical” – at least in the eyes of our possible critiques! Whatever is our way of rearticulate the functioning of our imaginative activity, it should respect the possibility of the constitution of object on which our so called “natural attitude” – our everyday dealings with things and our way of speaking about them – is based on anyway. If we want to change our most stubborn habits and customs, we cannot just replace them with new habits, but we have to remove them on a new and wider perspective, where they are not simply abolished but conceived differently. Now the question concerns our possibility to conceive our way of imagining differently. In the context of the schematism, as it seems to me, the way out opens up by focusing on the modal and temporal features of our experience and by asking their interdependence. According to Kant, the modalities – “possible”, “effective” and “necessary” – belong to the categories of understanding. In other words, all empirical cognition is based on a certain a priori modal understanding. How are the three modalities interrelated? The most basic articulation for their mutual dynamics can be found in the paragraph 76 of the Third Critique. The definition goes as follows: “For the human understanding it is utterly necessary to distinguish between the possibility and the effectivity of things.”6 The matter could hardly be put in a more simple way. The three modalities are born together and they ‘work’ in a close cooperation. They are not mere analytical categories of logical reasoning, but modes of our a priori heterogeneous and finite experience. This experience has a certain modal understanding of its own functioning. It ‘knows’ that it consists of three concomitant modal

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Kant: Critique of Judgment, p. 534

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spheres which are necessary to discern. This necessity, the third modality, concerns the belonging together and keeping apart of the two other modalities, possible and effective, the possibility of distinguishing them. This possibility is not of empirical but transcendental order. It reveals experience itself as a power capable of worrying about its own possibility. A perceiving and knowing subject knows that if it cannot make the difference between effectivity and possibility, it does not perceive or know anything at all; it falls into illusions and looses contact with something essential, namely with our “common reality” based on the modal difference. This can happen in so many ways and it happens all the time. It is almost unavoidable, since every object of experience is born as a compound of aspects of which some are effective, some are possible. Even though our modal understanding gets articulated according to the predicative and propositional logic of the empirical reason, the way they contribute to our everyday or theoretical experience is different from the other categories. They do not participate in the constitution of objects (quantity, quality, the modalities), or in the determination of their mutual relations (substance, causality, community). Instead, they define how our experience, as a whole and subjectively, relates to those objects and to their supposed totality, the nature. The modalities reflect upon the existence of our experience. Even though in the chapter on the “Postulates of empirical thought”, Kant makes clear and careful distinction between the modalities and the other categories, in the “Schematism” he treats all the categories in the same way. Considering the modalities all is said in the following few lines: The schema of possibility is the agreement of the synthesis of different representations with the conditions of time in general. Opposites, for instance, cannot exist in the same thing at the same time, but only the one after the other. The schema is therefore the determination of the representation of a thing at some time or other. The schema of effectivity is existence in some determinate time. The schema of necessity is existence of an object at all times.7

The contents of each schematic sphere is defined here differently. I cannot enter their analysis here. Instead my point is related to the simple fact that the Kantian elaboration lays bare. As the modalities are considered from the point of view of their schematisation, actually they are conceived as spheres, as simultaneous and concomitant dimensions of consciousness, each one of which containing its representations differently. The schematisation and the corresponding temporalisation of each modality divides our understanding of time in three different but concomitant modes of being-in-time, of intratemporality, each of which having its own consistency and logic. The time of the possible, as

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Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, p. 185.

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I suggest we call it here, consists of the virtual presence of the operations of our consciousness. The conceptual “reality” of an empirical object is established within this time, it is imagined independently of the effective perception, but yet in relation to it, as a possible perceptible object. The time of the effective in turn consists of the order of becoming, of the non-reversed series of events, where the objects are encountered and where they interact in a regular and predictable way. Whereas the time of the necessary concerns the mutual difference of the former ones, their necessary belonging together as well as their necessary nonidentity, the temporalisation of the experience “itself” as a finite transcendental unit. This third kind of temporality manifests itself mainly in aesthetic ways. In Kant, this happens particularly in the sublime experience, as the auto-reflection of the imagination enters and encounters its limits. At that same limit, as I have tried to show, the empirical and aesthetic reason coincide.

5. In order to get assured of what I have attempted to describe we once again only need to imagine it. As a result we may have a visual image, a representation or a picture, which abolishes its visibility, which breaks with every representative or pictorial order. We have come up with an idea of imagination which constantly escapes full exposure in order to give way for our connectedness with something else. Unlike in the case of the Kantian schematism, our view is not restricted to the introspection of the knowing subject. We can make the same transcendental observation by observing our fellow beings, other human agents, their acting and speaking bodies and their way of appearing. Every time we reflect them in this way, aesthetically and scenically, what we see “there” without seeing, what we become conscious of, is precisely the same modalotemporal or temporalo-modal structure, reflective difference or delay that we can recognize ‘within’ in our mind. What we witness to is the externalization of our transcendence, we imagine imagination as it takes place in others. This kind of imageless “view” engages our experience primordially and immediately, necessarily. This necessity is not of a logic kind, but of transcendental kind, related to the possibility of our experience: otherwise neither you nor me would exist. When we imagine like this, we do nothing very original, we do not invent new things, we are not creative. We are just establishing the possibility of a common world. However, as I have tried to show, our commonness is in itself built on a wonder. Our “intratemporality”, criticized by Heidegger, is in itself a

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compound, a result of a complex modal dynamics. If we really want to go beyond our given conceptions, we have to understand how and why they are produced.

References Heidegger, Martin: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Bloomington (Indiana University Press) 1990. Kant, Immanuel: Critique of Judgment, Hampshire & New York (Palgrave MacMillan) 2007. Kant, Immanuel: Critique of Pure Reason, Hampshire & New York (Palgrave MacMillan) 2007. Kirkkopelto, Esa: Le Théâtre de l’expérience. Contributions à la théorie de la scène. Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008. Kirkkopelto, Esa: “The Question of the Scene: On the Philosophical Foundations of Theatrical Anthropocentrism”, in: Theatre Research International, vol. 3 (2009) 3, pp. 231–242.



Negotiations and Metamorphosis: Carsten Höller’s SOMA and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster SABINE FLACH

“Ein Fieber, ein Traum versetzt uns in andre Räume” (Herder)

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“Representativeness in the sense of the perceptive fantasy”1 or “The world is what we perceive”2.

These two quotations – on the one hand Husserl’s ‘Representativeness in the sense of the perceptive fantasy’ and on the other hand Merleau-Ponty’s plea ‘The world is what we perceive’ will guide my following reflections on fantasies and imagination i.e. visual thinking to discuss the image and media concepts that are cohered to both ideas; or to be concrete: to built up a realm in which fantasies and imagination could first of all occur. “Perception is an individual process... that is the point. This exhibition is not a finished product. The images that are externally presented, the implicit symmetry, the pairing that is effectively all we find surrounding us. It is also about the internal- the internal symmetry, the inner pairings... This is what one must think through internally”, states Carsten Höller3 about his installation at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin in 2010 at the press conference for SOMA. SOMA4 – is an art-piece that contains 12 reindeer, 24 canaries, eight mice and two flies. Giant toadstool sculptures are planted on a ‘mushroom clock’ that

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Husserl: Husserliana XXIII. pp. 515, 517. Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. p. 13. Carsten Höller: Interview. The title SOMA does not only refer to the Greek term for body but also comes from the name of the sacred libation imbibed by the Indo-Persian followers of the Vedic religion, Hinduism's 5,000-year-old parent. Its ancient text, the Rigveda, the oldest of the four established writings contains 114 hymns to “creative juice”, supposed to offer immortality and – mainly – wisdom. Many things can be shown by seeing this installation as an example of research that draws approaches from the arts. I focus on a few aspects of the work that are

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the reindeer can turn with their antlers, and at the center is a bed on a platform complete with minibar which visitors could rent for a night. Moreover there are several observation posts for the visitors around the artwork. The installation is designed for the entire main entrance hall of the museum. The twist is that this is meant to be a scientific experiment, in which half the reindeer have been fed fly agaric mushrooms, which they consume naturally in the wilds of Siberia. It makes their urine hallucinogenic.

Fig. 1: Carsten Höller, Exhibition view of “Soma” in the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, SMB. Photo: David von Becker.

Before I focus with my following remarks on the visuality of the artwork, I would not fail to draw attention to the smells and sounds that make up this installation. It becomes clear through a work of art such as SOMA with all conciseness, that it does not make sense for an artwork, to assume an intellectual synthesis of media, objects and sensations, but that - as I have elsewhere shown already – it must be a synaesthesia, in which images, media and senses interact5.



5

related to image theory, but I will also touch upon the question of verbal communication of the Rigveda: A prosodic analysis of this text reveals that the constant alliteration that’s used in that hymns creates an hallucinatoric effect by itself. Flach et al: “Synaesthesia and Kinaesthetics”.

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This means that these conditions of an artwork interact with the other without merging into one another. Or simply: those who hear do not just hear, those who smell do not just smell, and those who see does not just see. In this way not just the question of how aesthetic experience is clarified, but moreover, how the demands of such a process is a condition of and for visual thinking6. Carsten Höller poses with SOMA a fabricated (fingere) so called doubleblind experiment in which some of the reindeer are fed with fly agaric while the others are not. The urine is collected by handlers and stored in refrigerators next to the walls, which also hold both dried and fresh fly agaric mushrooms. On each side, the reindeer urine is spread on the other animal’s food. From observation posts, visitors could watch the behavior of the canaries, mice and houseflies and form their own conclusions. Through participant observation the visitors reach their own conclusions about whether the animals show signs of intoxication, or not. However, because only half the reindeer are fed the mushrooms, it’s impossible to know which bottles, if any, contain hallucinogenic urine, or not. Precisely this indifference of the or not, which suited every condition of possibility, determines the basis for Höller’s double blind experiment. It is unclear and vague, leaving unresolved which part of the installation is the component of the experimenter and which is the experiment itself: where is the ‘test’, and where the ‘control’? Unquestioned is – allegedly – that the reindeer on the testside are fed with hallucinogenic urine. “At least in principle”, says Höller, helpfully; and moreover he explains: “The experiment is completed in the minds of the visitors”7 In other words, it’s an open question whether the reindeer are even fed the mushrooms at all. The power of suggestion, of fantasies, makes you likely to observe something that may never have taken place. Carsten Höller clearly depends on this uncertainty. It is his fundamental constituent, or even more, the basic condition of his artwork, which exactly as such retrieves a great potential for him. Within there is: “Something that we don’t know, the engagement with a very different range of possibilities.”8

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See for a theory of a visual thinking also: Flach et al: Other Sides of Cognition as well as the international conference “Imagining Imagination” that took place at the Royal College of Arts, London (June 10–11, 2011 in cooperation with Michael Schwab). Carsten Höller: Interview. Carsten Höller: Interview.

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Fig. 2: Matthew Barney, CREMASTER 1, 1995, production still. © 1995 Matthew Barney. Photo: Michael James O’Brien. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

“My goal is the maintenance of indifference“, describes Matthew Barney in an interview, a fundamental concern of his artistic work, especially his Cremaster Cycle. Even in the brevity offered here, the five part Cremaster Cycle can be described as Barney’s dispute with the processes of biological, psychological, and above all the visual emergence of form. Consisting of heterogeneous elements, the films confront viewers with a complex iconography that continually references historical, mythological, architectural, biological, but also personal and above all, visually imminent occurrences and phenomena to operate on multiple layers of meaning simultaneously. Cremaster creates spaces, places, species and situations which - exactly through the artwork itself – include the potential of a factual existence. Or even more, in almost the same manner as SOMA, Cremaster shows that pure fictionality as the counterpart of fact does not exist. Respectively, as a proceeding in the media-artwork the image scenes and scenarios of Cremaster are em-

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ployed as technical media intensifiers for every visual thinking. Explicitly for every fantasy or imagination they are the extension of the perception-space.9 The question that arises now is: how does the interdependency between fact and fiction in the artwork happen? If one follows fingere to its etymological roots, then it is clear that it does not mean the contrary of facts, but includes its whole range of meanings: i.e. forms, images, designs, suppositions. And fingere also means imagination. What does this signify for artworks? In the moment in which a being, a space, a situation appears in the artwork, it sets up as a work of art a double meaning. It is present in two ways: In the space of imagination in the artwork, as well – as a work of art – in the factuality of my perceptual world. And it is this – through the work of art produced – doubling of a spatial position that is relevant. For instance: a creature which appears in the artwork appears also to me and is therefore not outside, but always within my experience and perception of the world, without, however, aligning to it. It is this oscillation, this un-similarity of a specific spatial organization and perceiving that directly guides the most striking question for me. How could Höller’s and Barney’s ongoing subjunctivity for their artworks be described? How are the claims of ambiguity, possibility, and indifference, which are significant components of their works visualized and most notably, why? My thesis is that above all, that art puts forward specific visual forms, with which fantasies, imagination and imaginativeness are revealed; in a way their realization. Underscored in the phenomenological argument that in the image it is not only the historical what of the representation but much more the how of the image that is of concern. That it, in turn, divides the intentional how of being is addressed as the intentional sense from the how of actuality, as the style and degree of this demonstrative amplitude. In their modality they are closely related by degree. They share a single intention in so far as they are fulfilled only through perception.10 I would like to suggest expanding this argument: It is common sense that a visual experience does not result from eyesight alone. It utilizes the entire corporeality of the senses. Rather it draws upon the viewer’s complete physicality. However the variations of covetousness of sight do not remain disregarded. To the what and how of an image, moreover, is added a special partnering of wherein the special manner – a “medium of seeing, that in seeing itself participates in and is acknowledged as a medium”.11 We strive for meaning as some-

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Wiesing: Phänomene im Bild. Husserl: Hua III, 130–132. See for an extensive description of that argument Waldenfels: Sinne und Kuenste im Wechselspiel. Modi aesthetischer Erfahrung. pp. 42ff. Ibid. p. 43

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thing comprehended. From this it follows that, with an image or with art itself, it always comes down to the how and the wherein of cognition. Then, as Merleau-Ponty insistently remarks in his book Eye and Mind, perception – and this is a platitude of today – is always bound to a body – so: embodied.12 Pure physicality as embodiment alone does not explain much. It is more a complex structure – a spatial experience – that needs to be described. This means for an artwork that it can neither be understood as an expression of reality nor as the mere carrier of meaning, but as a relation between cognition and experience, referencing inner and externalized images, imagination and representation. The examination of a specific image status alone does not clarify the question of visual thinking. It is much more the place, space and role of images within a sensation that needs to be discussed. In short: the canonical theoretical questions for artworks, the “What is experienced” and “Who is experiencing” are under a phenomenological argumentation constantly interwoven with the question “How is something experienced?”13 It is this consideration that the appearance, condition and understanding of visual thinking is negotiated specifically as art. In addition art produces fantasies and imagination. And this is exactly the point for my following remarks: It is not only an active perceiving subject – that is us – thought determined, but rather, and more consistent: With art, our organization of perception determines attitudes of visible reality over recognition. In keeping with current ‘embodiment theories’, I’m assuming that the relationship of images, objects and spaces are significant for perceptions in and as images. These perceptions are not previously embedded in subjective bodies and senses. There is no concern to discuss introspection, i.e. external images are just imagined in a mental state. Central for my following argument is the interaction between the artwork, the multiple spaces that are created with and through the art and the acting bodies in those spaces. Precisely then these images show eminent structural affinities between thoughts, senses, experiences, fantasies and perceptions. This means, as Husserl points out already in all its clearness, images underlie a peculiar visual difference: between the what that comes into visibility through images and the wherein it becomes visible.14 Richard Wollheim,15 against Gombrich’s notions,16 convincingly outlines his idea of a “dual theory” which states, “that attention must be split between two things” – i.e. “When I look at a representation as a representation, then it is not only permitted, but is required of me that I see simultaneously the object and

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Merleau-Ponty: Das Auge und der Geist. Waldenfels: Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit. p. 25 Waldenfels: Sinne und Künste im Wechselspiel. Modi ästhetischer Erfahrung. Richard Wollheim: Objekte der Kunst. Gombrich: Kunst und Illusion. Zur Psychologie der bildlichen Darstellung.

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the medium.”17 But then – I think – the question of the relationship of various modes and dimensions of image perception are not answered, but first asked. My thesis is at first that the classical distinction that still dominates the discourse of art – between picture and tableau – as a material object image – and image or image – as ideally image content – is obsolete. But then there is always an event of vision, for which it requires more than the process to discuss pure vision alone. In my thinking, this would be an occurrence of seeing, for which more is required than a discussion of the process of simple optics. This occurrence is a process, a movement, from both external and internal stimuli, in which the unconscious is neither a mental individual matter, whose workings qua individuality must remain concealed, nor is it to be equated with collective – linguistic – structures, in which form is appropriated as singularly relational. Neither pure representation nor inaccessibly abstract, the unconscious plays a decidedly large role in the act of seeing. Just as Merleau-Ponty says, the unconscious is – in terms of a transformation of psychoanalysis into phenomenology – a matter of possible knowledge. That means in our context: the unconscious is an unreflective, which by reflection – i.e. a process of perception – becomes thematic.18 This also means that the question, ‘what is an image’ cannot be answered just from the artwork alone. The compulsory interdependence that must be shown is the one between the body that perceives an image, remembers, imagines or produces an image and the physical image itself.

II “Bevölkerte Räume”19 – Being in the Image Itself This type of seeing is bound to a very specific spatial sensation, at the place from where the occurrence originates. A physical event of the act of seeing is a full-body happening, hence there is a striking difference between the semiotic and purely cognitive positions. Yet they do not represent something – representé – they present something which is existent – présente – and this in a biological sense. If ‘I’ find ‘myself’ in the space and parallel to that have a space, is a concrete effect of a somatic coordinate system in which “the space is no (real or logical) environment into which the things integrate themselves, but (it is) the use by which a position of things becomes possible.” It is about a specific perceptual space, which – through the capacity of the ‘unconscious’ – arti-

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Wollheim: Objekte der Kunst. Waldenfels: Sinne und Künste im Wechselspiel. Modi ästhetischer Erfahrung. Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. p. 47.

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ficial spaces – say, those of art – through a physical experience can become a second nature.20 The art space, as a performative image scenario, is a medium that should be examined with this double perspective in mind: on one hand such a space is transparent, so it works as a place of passage, so that this medium should be understood in order to demonstrate, that it is exactly an experience of the senses “through which the subject matter first comes into being.”21 The senses are not only pathways (medium), which allow an understanding of the world, but rather, they are bound to the networks of embodiment; they function like objects, scenes, and scenarios in the artworks. So it’s not about fulfilling a priori constructed space, but to be aware of the perception of space. This emerges through things and physical presence, which is a matter of perception of space – particularly the work of art – understood as a perception of relations. This perception of an artwork is an exception, insofar as the reception of an artwork does not merge with its ‘reality content’ like in an everyday perception.22 When the focus is on the embodied meaning that neither belongs to the whole sphere of the subject, nor to the sphere of the object, then images always generate hybrid events. In view of visual thinking this means that these works do not show what a fantasy, an imagination is – in the sense of a systematic or classification purpose – but it is relevant for an artwork to show how they appear and divest, in the sense of an image scenario. The perceived or experienced reality of a fictional representation (Darstellung) is in its sense of reality not linked to dedifferentiation. Perception is then always already more than reception. It always produces more when it goes beyond the usual fields of perception. Perception becomes a modus in which singularities appear different and we perceive differently.23 However, this is possible if the viewer changes physical position in order experience art itself from another place. To create an image, one must at the same time, as Vilém Flusser describes: “withdraw in a way into yourself.” Appearing as a strange non-place, one needs to enter and from were one could create images. “Imagination (Einbildungskraft) is the peculiar ability to withdraw from the world of objects in one’s own subjectivity” Flusser writes.24 What would be the style of an emergent visibility? Which forms of images and spaces are appropriate for its appearance so that the entities of fantasies, the negotiations and transformations can occur?

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I follow exactly the argument in Waldenfels: Sinne und Künste im Wechselspiel. Modi ästhetischer Erfahrung. Merleau-Ponty: Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare. Wiesing: Phänomene im Bild. Waldenfelds: Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit, p. 170. Flusser. “Die neue Einbildungskraft”.

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III “We see more than we can ever notice or attend to”25 – Seeing against pure visibility “As long as we perceive the image as a little representation, which will pass and be processed by consciousness, we cannot understand how this image-thing (image-chose) establishes a relation with active thinking. It remains a given and sensual being, a mere veiled being” wrote Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his text “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man”. Michel Foucault, his most famous reader, added “In order to dream, you must not close your eyes [...]. The real image is knowledge. Words already spoken, precise inventories, masses of lesser information, tiny little pieces of documents and copies of copies bear the [...] experience of the powers of the impossible.” An image which is always more than a simple representation, like those of Carsten Höller, calls for a radical openness. His work requires “a different way”, first and foremost a potential, a potential for a more specific Wahrnehmungsmodus perception mode. The point is to open a dimension in which seeing itself gains an opticly additional value and in which the knowledge of the certainty that art does not necessarily have to reproduce what is visible, but instead what one has not yet seen. The mental image and the l’objet image are two sides of the same phenomenon. Their difference, if any, is that one image is ephemeral, but others can be permanent. The supposed dichotomy of external images, which rely on real canvas and inner images that arise from ding-free (ding-freie) images is rendered obsolete.26 Under this perspective images are embodied as pictures. We see pictures opticly and at the same time as images in the mind. Sensory experiences, as they take place in the works of Höller and Barney, cannot be taken for granted. Such experiences, in the context of perception, raise questions itself, which attempt to solve the puzzle of conscious experience. Ultimately the connection between the ability to perceive and the qualia of a sensation of perception arises. When the mode of perception stands at the center, the act of perceiving, which – as Merleau-Ponty put it in his Phenomenology of Perception, is a unity of the senses and not only the discursive conceptual thought at the center of the synthesis – “les sens traduisement l’un l’autre sans avoir à passer par l’idée” – so, perception is not only the sensitive experience of a subject, but is an ability, and will not only be perceived as the perceiver actively perceives.

 25 26

Fred Dretske: Perception, Knowledge and Belief. Selected Essays, p. 110. Waldenfels: Phaenomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit.

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This structural condition causes and requires a reciprocal influence, from which ex post can be specified, which was indeed the case. The ‘place’ – to give it a physical formulation – of these relational processes is: perception27. In this sense, the perceived thing is a nearly inexhaustible phenomenon. Unpredictability, indifference, opportunity, and complexity are the characteristics which make this process of perception so dynamic. Nelson Goodman asks the question “What is this that stands before me?” His enigmatic answer was: “It depends.” 28 It depends I argue, on the phenomenon and its essential truth. The factuality of the visual no longer needs to stand at the center. Rather the relationship between a particular image or the act of perceiving and the perception of that same image is prominent.

Fig. 3: Carsten Höller, Reindeer head. 2010. Heliogravre in three colors, on Somerset paper, ca. 77.6 x 69.0 cm, image 54.5 x 49.8 cm. Ex. 34/55. Inv. FV 90. Photo: Volker-H. Schneider.

 27 28

Schürmann: Erscheinen und Wahrnehmen. Goodman: Weisen der Welterzeugung, p. 114.

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Carsten Höller’s staging of intricate relationships between image, space, body, and perception could be described as a picture scenario par excellence. It portrays the relationship between fact and fiction without falling into an overused mode of – misunderstood – differentiation: the tableau vivant. Höller resorts to these image types, not only to show an unfamiliar combination of animals and objects in a space – this would be a simple accumulation – but – it shows the type of image itself, the event of seeing. It is the combination of things obviously impossible to combine – canaries, houseflies, mice, reindeer, a museum, people, a bed, etc. – made out of Foucault’s postulated impossibility, Höller’s possibility, in which he gives an image to the tableau vivant itself – in all its manifestations, from attitude to compliment.

Fig. 4: Matthew Barney, CREMASTER 3, 2002, production still. © 2002 Matthew Barney. Photo: Chris Winget. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

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Matthew Barney’s artistic spaces are populated by creatures, whose main feature is ambiguity, and whose appearances intentionally elude clear description. In Barney’s phantasmagoria each of his creatures remains as the place of metamorphosis itself. I argue that it isn’t about any kind of utopian subject design in the sense of a stabile newly-developed entity, rather, he looks to find images which show the dynamics of the process of shaping Gestalt. More clearly, the constant changes that Matthew Barney’s creatures represent show that perception already adheres to something artificial.29 “There are hallucinations because through the phenomenal body we are in constant relationship with an environment into which that body is projected, and because, when divorced from its actual environment, the body remains”30 writes Merleau-Ponty.

IV Einbildner – Transformation of the Imagination into Visibility At this stage it can be conceded that both artists span their work in each of the zones between phenomenon and appearance. The artworks are phenomena that do not mimetically represent what they are not. They are appearances with which something otherwise unseeable is felt and with that touchable. In truest reality, the artwork is a phenomenon. As an appearance it is an appearance of reality as a reference to a something. Perceptions as well as phenomena are made available; they show themselves in appearances that point to something else. In such an arrangement, no a priori constructed space allows perceiving without the object. This image-space is generated: through things and the relationships between them, especially through the relation to people. The space also allows – as in the previous discussion of seeing – an oscillation, a swinging, like the relationship between fact and fiction. By reverting to Michael Foucault’s concept of heterotopia as ‘The Other Spaces’, there is an interdependence between scene and scenario. In ‘The Other Spaces’ Foucault draws attention to the fact that we cannot “live in a homogenous and empty space, rather in a space that is full of qualities and perhaps also inhabited by phantasme. The space of our first cognition, the space of our dreams, the space of our passions - they all contain the same inner qualities [...]”31 For my thesis that artwork’s installation-space introduces an oscillation between scene and

 29 30 31

Waldenfelds: Sinne und Künste im Wechselspiel. Modi ästhetischer Erfahrung. Merleau-Ponty: Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. pp. 391ff. Foucault: „Andere Räume“.

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scenario, I would like to concentrate on Foucault’s third and fourth principles of heterotopia. In the third principle Foucault states that “The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.”32 In the fourth principle the philosopher explains “Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time – which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time [...].”33 This demonstrates that a work of art is never only displayed in one place where an occurrence of presentation is attained. The artwork withdraws from its positioning to notify a space in which the image-scenarios – as the interplay between perception, imagination, remembering and sensation – first occur. It is more of special arrangement that encompasses the viewer. A fundamental concern for Matthew Barney was turning the place of action into the carrier of action. Space itself is a type of protagonist in his films: “I always wanted to give a building, architecture, or a geological formation a leading role in a film. If things and places were given the kind of attention that is given to actors, their emotional characters could be developed. I am interested in giving emotional weight to a situation rather than letting it be carried by the actors.”34 In his films, he pushes against the intentionality of non-virtual immeasurable spaces, and favors regions and conditions that are arranged and integrated to a central position. Barney’s interest lies less in specific locations and more in performable atmospheres – a completely spacious quality, in which “the unconscious is not to be sought internally, on the other side of our consciousness, but rather in front of us as the view of our space”, writes MerleauPonty.35 With the word ‘space’ he refers to the outlays of consciousness, the participatory perception of the space surrounding any given object. Matthey Barney shows occupied spaces, in the truest sense. These areas are presented from a qualitative point of view in which the body qua sensitivity contracts and expands. Therefore: “the environment marks the difference between the world, as it exists as a world, and the world of this or that species. It is an intermediate reality between the world, as it exists for an absolute observer, and a purely subjective realm.”36 Only then, can the space – which we clamped between scene and scenario – become a qualitative space (in which several sensory qualities can be accentuated to different levels) able to occupy and move inside the space. All of this be-

 32 33 34 35 36

Foucault: „Andere Räume“. Ibid. Barney: Interview. Merleau-Ponty: Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare, p 233. Merleau-Ponty: Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung.

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longs to the discourse on mythical spaces. Merleau-Ponty, following Cassirer’s phenomenology, includes them in the symbolic world order. These spaces are not made mythical through objective configurations, but through associated meaning. To Carsten Höller SOMA is about the possible, made concrete through creatures, things, and food, which together create a zone of ambiguity and “oneirian dwelling”37 as Merleau-Ponty describes in “Germs of Reason”. Oneirian – from the Greek oneiron, the dream – describes a culinary aspect, the ‘feeling portion’ of hallucinogenic quality, found in anything from tobacco to opiates. Merleau-Ponty refers to the oneirian Ultra-Things because things of this form are conceptual and never fully determinable. The extreme presence of these things calls for a new way of handling them, with an understanding of space as something besides the objective geometry and limits of a given environment in which to extend images of the world.38 So the world is populated by Ultra-Things that make the world into a magnificent and sumptuous experience which allows for greater clarity; this is why we can consider Höller and Barney as dual protagonists that are alike and different.

References Barney, Matthew: Matthew Barney Interview filmed during the preparation of the exhibition “The Cremaster Cycle” at the Astrup Fearney Museum of Modern Art, Oslo. (October 2, 2011). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= VJfI1LRK0tc Dretske, Fred: Perception, Knowledge and Belief. Selected Essays. Cambridge (Cambridge) 2000. Fingerhut, Jörg, Flach, Sabine, Söffner, Jan: Habitus in Habitat III – Synaesthesia and Kinaesthetics. Bern, Berlin, New York (Peter Lang) 2011. Fingerhut, Joerg , Flach, Sabine and Söffner, Jan (eds.): Habitus in Habitat III – Synaesthesia and Kinaesthetics. Bern, Berlin, New York (Peter Lang) 2011. Flach, Sabine and Söffner, Jan (eds.): Habitus in Habitat II – Other Sides of Cognition. Bern, Berlin, New York (Peter Lang) 2010.

 37 38

Merleau Ponty: Keime der Vernunft, p. 235 Waldenfels: Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit.

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Flusser, Vilém: “Die neue Einbildungskraft”, in: Ders.: Die Revolution der Bilder. Der Flusser Reader zu Kommunikation, Medien und Design. Mannheim (Bollmann) 1995, pp. 141–149. Foucault, Michael: Andere Räume. In: Karlheinz Barck et al (Hg.): Aisthesis. Wahrnehmung heute oder Perspektiven einer anderen Ästhetik. Leipzig (Reclam Leipzig) 1992, pp. 34–46 Foucault, Michael: Nachwort zu Gustav Flaubert: Die Versuchung des heiligen Antonius. In: Ders.: Schriften in vier Bänden. Bd I. 1954–1969. Frankfurt/Main, (Suhrkamp) 2001, pp. 397–433 Gombrich, Ernst: Kunst und Illusion. Zur Psychologie der bildlichen Darstellung. Berlin (Phaidon) 2002. Goodman, Nelson: Weisen der Welterzeugung. Frankfurt/Main (Suhrkamp) 1984. Höller, Carsten: Carsten Höller – SOMA im Hamburger Bahnhof. Art-in.tv. (November 15, 2011). http://www.art-in-berlin.de/incbmeldvideo.php?id=2008 Husserl, Edmund: Husserliana. Edmund Husserl. Gesammelte Werke (Kritische Edition) Aufgrund des Nachlasses veröffentlicht vom Husserl-Archiv Leuven. Berlin (Springer) 2008. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. Berlin (de Gruyter) 1966/1974. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare. Hg. v. Claude Lefort. München (Wilhelm Fink Verlag) 1994. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Vorlesungen I. Schriften für die Kandidatur am Collège de France. Lob der Philosophie. Vorlesungszusammenfassungen. Die Humanwissenschaften und die Phänomenologie. Berlin (de Gruyter) 1972. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Keime der Vernunft. Vorlesungen an der Sorbonne 1949–1952. München (Wilhelm Fink Verlag) 1994. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Das Auge und der Geist. Philosophische Essays. Hamburg (Meiner) 2003. Schürmann, Eva: Erscheinen und Wahrnehmen. Eine vergleichende Studie zur Kunst von James Turrell und der Philosophie Merleau-Pontys. München (Wilhelm Fink Verlag) 2000. Waldenfels, Bernhard: Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit. Frankfurt/Main (Suhrkamp) 2004. Waldenfels, Bernhard: Sinne und Künste im Wechselspiel. Modi ästhetischer Erfahrung. Frankfurt/Main (Suhrkamp) 2010. Wiesing, Lambert: Phänomene im Bild. München (Wilhelm Fink Verlag) 2000. Wiesing, Lambert: Artifizielle Präsenz. Studien zur Philosophie des Bildes. Frankfurt/Main (Suhrkamp) 2005. Wollheim, Richard: Objekte der Kunst. Frankfurt/Main (Suhrkamp) 1982.

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List of Illustrations Fig. 1: Carsten Höller, Exhibition view of “Soma” in the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, SMB, taken on November 6, 2010. Photo: David von Becker. bpk, Berlin, Art Resource, NY. Fig. 2: Matthew Barney, CREMASTER 1, 1995, production still. © 1995 Matthew Barney. Photo: Michael James O’Brien. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Fig. 3: Carsten Höller, Reindeer head. 2010. Heliogravre in three colors, on Somerset paper, ca. 77.6 x 69.0 cm, image 54.5 x 49.8 cm. Ex. 34/55. Inv. FV 90. Photo: Volker-H. Schneider. bpk, Berlin / Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Volker-H. Schneider / Art Resource, NY. Fig. 4: Matthew Barney, CREMASTER 3, 2002, production still. © 2002 Matthew Barney. Photo: Chris Winget. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.



Plato’s Shade: Embodying the Cave in Phenomenal Art DAWNA SCHULD

“Imagine,” says Socrates, “human beings living in an underground, cave-like dwelling [...] Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them [...]” “I’m imagining it,” his student replies.1 Thus does Socrates, in dialogue with his student Glaucon, introduce the famous “Allegory of the Cave” in Plato’s The Republic. Socrates continues, describing this group of individuals enchained in darkness, perceiving nothing but flickering shadows cast upon a wall by unseen artist-puppeteers, and lit by an unseen fire. These shadows, he tells Glaucon, are poor approximations of the clearer visions available to those others who have been able to turn away from them, simultaneously attracted to and fearful of a light that floods the entrance to the cave and draws their attention outward. Freed from the cave entirely are those most enlightened individuals – the philosophers – who have emerged fully into the sunlight of the intelligible realm – that of Ideas. Plato’s tale is meant to undermine visual representation (those flickering shadows), dismissing it as merely privileging the perceptible at the expense of grasping the intelligible. But to make his point Plato nevertheless relies on the vivid imaging capacity of the human mind: his narrative depends upon a credulous audience, Glaucon, picturing the bizarre scene, imagining what it is like to be held captive within the cave and then desiring freedom from such a state. It is a compelling image: in the twenty-first century we still debate it and it continues to inspire a continuous stream of discourse on the contingent bonds of art and representation, including challenges to Plato’s metaphorical premise that knowledge equals enlightenment.2 Jacques Derrida, in contrast, has posited that a form of insight may be gained through blindness; that darkness, rather than light, lends cover to thought, fostering an opportunity for skepticism and the undoing of representation as mere mimesis.3 Derrida describes a kind of willful blindness on the part of the artist, a conscious estrangement from intellection that he/she must employ

 1 2 3

Plato: The Republic, p. 514. Sontag: On Photography, p. 24. Derrida: Memoirs of the Blind.

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in order to describe a subject.4 To this extent, Derrida is engaging the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who understands the intelligible as arising out of the perceptible.5 For Derrida’s “blind man” engages in a kind of phenomenological reduction, seeing the cave as it is perceived within its own murky confines rather than how it is conceived of externally. Thus might shadows lend shape to comprehension. Indeed, without their shade, Plato’s prisoners “suffer from sight”.6 In 1960s American art studios, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology increasingly held sway: art had asserted its own empirical presence in the slashes, dabs, and drips of Abstract Expressionism and later in the stolid objects of minimalism. At the same time, John Dewey’s aesthetic philosophy proved influential in re-framing art not as mimesis, but as experience.7 Everyday existence came under aesthetic scrutiny, from John Cage’s aleatory compositions to Andy Warhol’s deadpan superficiality. A generation of Americans assimilated the contingencies of experience that led to a historic re-positioning of the installation space, from locus to focus. Indeed, as discussed below, the art history lecture itself was subjected to analysis, with particular import for the way light was adapted as medium. And the artist became the subject of his/her work, immersed in its recesses and installed in its meaning. For artists James Turrell, Maria Nordman, and Eric Orr, all practitioners of a perceptually-charged variant of minimal art known as California Light and Space art, the question was no longer “how do we image the world?” but “how do we embody such an image or, rather, how does an experience itself become the work of art?” The shadows described in Plato’s allegory are two-dimensional and purely visual, yet the state imagined by Glaucon is more complexly spatial and temporal. For the allegory to hold, generations of Socrates’ students (ourselves included) must depend upon some knowledge or memory of the constituent feelings of “cave”. This sense of the cave derives from a physiological means of mapping experiences that most humans have in common, rather than in any fixed nature of the cave itself. By laying this claim, I am working against the supposition that an a priori idea of Cave is the thing Glaucon imagines, and so turn Plato’s example against him. I therefore posit that the framework for Glaucon’s imagined cave would comprise of his own experiences of lightcompromised enclosures. The reader, for whom Glaucon is a stand-in, similarly references such a state of being. The experiential antecedent to Plato’s Cave is an interior environment that radically dampens or even shuts off exterior senso-

 4 5 6 7

Ibid. Merleau-Ponty: “The Primacy of Perception”, pp. 12–42. Derrida: Memoirs of the Blind, p. 15. Dewey: Art as Experience.

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ry data, in combination with all the attendant feelings of the body state such a situation engenders. Indeed, the body’s biology is imperative to the experience. As neurologist Gerald Edelman writes: In the biological view, symbols do not get assigned meanings by formal means; instead it is assumed that symbolic structures are meaningful to begin with. ... [W]hen symbols fail to match the world directly, human beings use metaphor and metonymy to make connections, in addition to imagery and the perception of body schemes.8

The cave experience is particularly potent because of the sensory deprivation that occurs in such a “body scheme”, and thus it has important ramifications for how we understand the relationship of the senses to cognition. Whether we’ve spent much time in caves or not, key aspects of the experience are nevertheless familiar to us: these are circumstances in which we find ourselves enclosed in darkness, and with no direct access to the world beyond. Caves have long served as the sites for transformative rites throughout the world precisely because the experience within provokes a condition of perceptual uncertainty. It is little wonder then, that in an era of “consciousness-expansion” in California, alongside a growing interest in Eastern thought and meditation, that artists might become preoccupied with the void. Indeed, stated Orr: “The artist of the future will address states of mind”.9 As cognitive research shows us, merely imagining such a state evokes a similar, though less intense, physiological response, known as “neural modeling”.10 This correlative cave – constitutive of a recognizable, albeit changeable, relationship between the viewer and her circumstances – is the functional means by which an analogous affiliation from situation to situation can be established, and ultimately with which such individuated and disorienting experiences can nevertheless have communal meaning. By situating the cave experience within their practices, Orr, Turrell, and Nordman lent contour to the uncertainties of Plato’s imaginary realm. And in the wake of this phenomenological turn in twentieth-century art practices, numerous contemporary artists have chosen to make present the disorienting experience of the cave itself, opening it up for consideration on its own terms. Indeed, it is no longer uncommon in contemporary art to encounter work where artists rely upon the disorientations of space to beget meaning, presenting situated and embodied iterations of the cave. When visiting exhibitions and collections of contemporary art – especially installation art – we regularly encounter darkened spaces set apart within the larger gallery. In the 2005 exhibition, Ecstasy: In and Around Altered States, at the Museum of Contemporary

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Edelman: Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 239. Orr: “My Only Ism is Aphorism”, p. 241. Lakoff & Johnson: Philosophy in the Flesh, pp. 38–39.

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Art in Los Angeles, a viewer would at one moment be immersed in disorienting darkness, re-emerge into the dazzling light of a more traditionally modernist “white cube” gallery space, and then once again find herself plunged into darkness. This sequence repeated itself throughout the exhibition, pulsing sequence of blindness and bedazzlement.11 Considering the organizational premise of the exhibition, “in and around altered states”, the layout was effective, if somewhat nauseating. A tour of the exhibition would include an encounter with Erwin Redl’s coolly futuristic Matrix (2003); Pierre Huyghe’s fog-enshrouded Altar (2002); Olafur Eliasson’s strobe-lit rain curtain Your Strange Certainty Still Kept (1996); Ann Veronica Janssens’ throbbing, epileptic Donut (2003); and the thumping crash and clash of a small dance club designed by the collective, Assume Astro Vivid Focus, all of which necessitated darkened interiors and demarcated entry ways. This final work, which was the site for several live events during the course of the exhibition, clearly takes some of its influence from the psychedelic stylings of 1960s artist collectives like Joshua Light Show, who engineered dizzying atmospherics for artists like Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, and the Doors. Ecstasy as a whole has important precedents specific to Los Angeles, where the black cube has been a site for artistic experimentation for several decades, and significantly was utilized in the body of experiential work known as Light and Space art. In the 1960s, Southern California’s aerospace industry was thriving, spurred by the Cold War space race. Astronautics, or the study of spaceflight experience, necessitated empirical experiments in the void. The physical and cognitive effects of being constrained in darkness were measured and recorded in physical test chambers throughout the region, and these were made available to artists working in the region. Turrell, Nordman, and Orr all experimented extensively with the sensory deprivations of darkened chambers and incorporated those findings into their work. Like the Psychedelics, their work does not deal with light as a medium as much as it deals with the participating subject’s perceptual adjustment, a capacity that was stretched in the extremes of sensory deprivation experiments, which the artists themselves participated in to varying degrees and also occasionally conducted. The darkened voids of Turrell, Orr, and Nordman in particular prolong, even normalize disorientation so as to foster a state of being where uncertainty is cognitively productive. Perceptually demanding, these works extract a commitment from the viewer that goes far beyond mere looking and calls into question the nature of subjecthood.

 11

Blocker: “Blink: The Viewer as Blind Man,” p. 9.

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Fig. 1: Frederick W. Kent, Art history lecture using a slide projection of images, The University of Iowa, 1960s. Photograph, 4.3 x 6.3 inches (11 x 16 cm). Courtesy of the University Archives at the University of Iowa.

While the “caves” of Light and Space evolve out of the unlikely Southern California confluence of astronautics and psychedelics, they also have a pedagogical precedent, an experience long shared by artists and art historians alike: that of the art history slide lecture (fig. 1). It is worth considering that this very experience is instrumental in situating Plato’s Cave within a genealogy of installation art. In the 1960s and 1970s, young American artists increasingly derived their training from university programs rather than in traditional ateliers. There, in addition to receiving technical training in the plastic arts they also studied philosophy, literature, and art history. Those classes not only provided artists with a broader knowledge of their field, they also presented students with the unique experience of the slide lecture, one that involves sitting in a darkened room and focusing one’s attention on light-projected images. This circumstance, in many ways, is for skeptics: we are asked to think of what we are seeing as coherently representing a work of art which exists or existed elsewhere, but in order to make this correlation clear, we are made aware of the artificiality of the current viewing circumstances: i.e. the slide image is not a stand-in for the work itself but is merely its referent. “There is [...] no such thing as a truthful lantern slide”, wrote Philip C. Beam in a 1943 issue of College Art Journal, “If, therefore, the

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matter is relative, the decision should favor the slide which distorts the least, thereby bringing the spectator as close as possible to the original”.12 Unlike the poor chained souls in Plato’s allegory, the art history student recognizes the circumstance in which she encounters this imagery and is aware that it is illusory. But, given an increased attention to the phenomenology of one’s circumstances, the mechanisms of the slide lecture also prompt an awareness of the transformative potential of light and space. To a generation of artists engaged in re-framing art as experience, the slide lecture offers an embodied analogue to Plato’s cave. With Afrum-Proto, developed in 1966, Turrell made the projection itself – rather than any projected image – the subject of the work. More sculptural and literal than the two-dimensional slide or movie image, Afrum draws attention to the architecture of the space, particularly with regard to the way in which the corner of the room becomes the object of our attention. Intense light projected into a corner of the gallery space takes on the apparent dimension of a threedimensional cube. But when the viewer so chooses, she can also consciously invert this perception so as to see the work once again as dimensionless light upon the wall. In a more ambitious but also more personal project, Turrell extended the possibilities of a space animated by viewer engagement. Entitled the Mendota Stoppages, (Mendota being the name of the building in which his studio was held) Turrell experimented over several years (1969–1974) with blacking out the windows in his studio, while opening only slim apertures to let in exterior light: sunlight during the day; lights from the street and passing cars at nighttime. Thus, each time of day was a different movement. Turrell saw the stoppages as analogous to musical movements and he developed a number of “scores” for especially successful arrangements. Turrell was interested in exploring the analogous relationship of silence to darkness. In this interpretation, we can therefore understand that it is the apertures in Turrell’s Mendota project that act as the stoppages – they stop up ubiquitous darkness with light, like the light projected by Plato’s fire. In such an interpretation, darkness and silence are not absences but, rather, are understood as material knowledge. “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time,”13 wrote composer John Cage, whose practice influenced Turrell’s, especially when the composer spoke of the richness of his experiences within a sound-proofed chamber at Harvard in the mid-fifties.14 Fortuitously, Turrell was given the opportunity to experiment with anechoic chambers himself when he signed up to partner with Robert Irwin for the Art and Technology program at

 12 13 14

Beam: “The Color Slide Controversy,” p. 36. Cage: Silence: Lectures and Writings, p. 8. Turrell: “Art of the Senses and No Sense”.

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the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1969, an ambitious program that paired artists with area manufacturers and scientists. In this context Turrell and Irwin were introduced to psychologist Ed Wortz, who at the time was conducting behavioral experiments for a NASA sub-contractor, testing the limits of human physical endurance in altered states. These experiments leant shape to Turrell’s investigation of the “presence or quality” of light itself begun with the projection pieces.15 Wortz’s experimental bag of tricks included not only the anechoic chamber, but also “alpha conditioning,” and the “Ganz field” (ganzfeld), a homogeneous field of light perceived by way of a hemispheric structure that confined one’s vision to one and only one color, so that “light appears to have substance”.16 By adapting the ganzfeld to immersive room environments and “tuning” it to lower and higher levels of brightness, Turrell was able to lend even more presence to light. Within Turrell’s “viewing spaces” the flickering fire of Plato’s Cave takes on dimensionality: no longer merely the “object” of viewer attention as it was in the projection pieces, the light becomes a dense and seemingly palpable haze in which the viewer could lose herself. As Claire Bishop has noted, the effect of Turrell’s darker ganzfeld environments is to effectively obscure the boundaries between self and space, bringing about a state of “mimetic engulfment,” wherein “one begins to coincide with the space”.17 Rather than being in Plato’s cave then, Turrell’s installations present the cave as a state of being. The environment created by Nordman for the stable at Villa Panza, known as the Varese Room, 1975, is similarly striking for the depth of its emptiness. A central room is accessed via a small hallway or anteroom that dampens, but does not mask, the bright natural light of the exterior grounds. Upon entering a second access door on the side of the anteroom opposite the entrance, one is plunged into utter darkness. With no exit readily evident the visitor is forced to attend to his or her own, now seriously curtailed, perceptual faculties. After several minutes, vision will adjust to the darkness and two vague lines of light begin to appear, as if describing a volume of blackness deeper than the room on either side of it. To the left and right, the “lit” spaces acquire a semblance of cubic form while the central band of void perpetually expands, appearing deeper and higher than the rest of the room. Entering this environment is a commitment: once entered it cannot be easily exited. A visitor must wait out her own senses if she wishes to leave, but while she waits, the room acquires its own familiarity. As the lit volumes emerge, one is able to appreciate the necessary plasticity of the human visual system, and as it appears to seep in over several

 15 16 17

Orr & McEvilley: The Art of Light and Space, p. 72. Wortz: A Report on the Art & Technology Program, pp. 136–137. Bishop: Installation Art: A Critical History, p. 82.

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long minutes, the light performs the function of shadow in the outside world, delineating through negation: as with Turrell’s stoppages – or in Plato’s Cave – light becomes a confounding presence within the enveloping wholeness of darkness. The void created by Nordman’s intervention is somehow palpable, yet it offers few and only vaguely distinguishable features. There is no one moment that defines the work of art; it is an experiential event. The experience opens, gradually, with one’s immersion and closes, gradually, with one’s re-emergence into the Villa garden. Most of what I’ve described takes place within Nordman’s Villa Panza environmentʊthe immersive element in the cave situationʊbut that is not to say that its effects remain enclosed behind the door. The experience within is now overlaid upon experience without. While critics and visitors note the velvety tactile nature of the black volumes within and the extension of time the encounter elicits, they often (if not inevitably) fail to address what happens to the viewer upon her emergence from the void. Having adapted to darkness, they find the light startling, or even painful. The disorientation of emergence from Nordman’s room recalls a key component in Plato’s cave analogy. Stated Socrates: “When one of [the prisoners] was freed and suddenly compelled to stand up, turn his head, walk, and look up toward the light, he’d be pained and dazzled and unable to see the things whose shadows he’d seen before”.18 Adaptation takes place upon exiting the cave as much as it does upon entering. And the longer one spends in such a space, the brighter and odder the outside world will appear. If Nordman’s Varese Room instantiates Plato’s realm in terms of its ultimate capacity to “enlighten,” Orr’s work fully engages the shadows and embraces the void.19 In the late 1960s, Orr began to construct “shadows,” starting with Wall Shadow (1968, fig. 2), a deceptively simple site- and time-specific work wherein he “trapped” a shadow by building an seven-foot cinderblock wall along La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood, demarcating the rectangle where it blocked the sunlight on the street, filling in the outline with dark grey paint, and then removing the wall.20 Absent its generative wall, the shadow nevertheless asserted its presence even in the face of glaring sunlight. The artist’s role is therefore not to represent the intelligible world, but to foster unintelligibility, to fix the fleeting shadow and detach it from intellectualizing explanation and, in so doing, to render the invisible visible. Orr continued to install shadows in subsequent works, factoring them into a practice that at times more

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Plato: The Republic, p. 187. Orr: “On the Matter of Double Vision,” p. 67. This work was re-created on January 25, 2012 by John Speed Orr as part of the exhibition Perceptual Conceptual: Echoes of Eugenia Butler at Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND).

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resembled sympathetic magic than contemporary art making.21 Blood Shadow (1971), was a private collaboration/rite carried out with sculptor John McCracken that involved blood, shadows, moonlight, and a transformative trip from Venice Beach to Cairo, Egypt. With Time Shadow (1981), also more installation than performance, one could enter a cave-like space, blocked from the world by a lead-sheathed door and then, by following down a darkened corridor and around a corner, find a seat facing the infinitude of the blue sky, trapped and framed by a series of reflections onto a gold mirror.22 Orr’s relentless literalization of the shadow contravenes any misinterpretation of the work as anything other than imminent. Rather, his shadow traps emphasize a sensual relationship to the void (whether lightless or light-filled), a relationship heightened by works like Silence and the Ion Wind and Zero Mass where the void envelops and engulfs the viewing participant.

Fig. 2: Eric Orr, Wall Shadow¸1968. Performance; Cinder blocks, tape, grey paint, dimensions of wall approx. 84 x 120 inches (213.4 x 304.8 cm). © the Estate of Eric Orr.

In the installation Silence and the Ion Wind (1980) Orr created a complex interplay of sensory responses. The portals between rooms were lead-lined so as to block sound as well as what he termed “cosmic rays.” As sound decreased the

 21 22

McEvilley: “Journeys In and Out of the Body,” p. 19. Butterfield: The Art of Light and Space, p. 166.

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void expanded. Darkness became a directing mechanism in the second room for the viewer’s arrival into the “fullness” of the void in the final “Golden Room”.23 In the wall text, Orr wrote: “The Golden Room is an allusive structure for an elusive experience. Here is the opener of time. As you leave it, this room ties the axis in a circle returning your gaze to the door of light”.24 If this is “an allusive structure for an elusive experience” is it de facto impossible to ascertain to what it alludes? Orr’s cultural references are so rife and idiosyncratic that at times the work can be difficult to assess via the terms given. The viewer’s progression from darkness into light seems to have at least one familiar allusion, and that is back to Plato’s Cave, which likewise has its subjects emerging simultaneously into light and knowledge. But to achieve a moment of “powerful radiance” Orr’s subjects must experience emergence within the cave. The perplexing effects of the void itself somehow lead to understanding, not by any rational means but through the experience of the cave itself. The void that Orr sought was not the ultimate absence of light, but rather, like a black hole, its consummate absorption, an infinitely dense nothingness. Orr was especially concerned with the possibilities of creating a physical encounter with nothing. A practitioner of phenomenal art, he asserted that such an encounter with nothing must be predicated on experience. Similarly, Merleau-Ponty states: “Is not the experience of the thing and of the world precisely the ground that we need in order to think nothingness in any way whatever?”25 For Orr, emptiness was a temporal condition, the return to a state of potentiality. And his pursuit of the void led him, like Turrell and Nordman, to experiment with the anechoic chamber. Orr’s own involvement with the anechoic chamber brought about the construction of Zero Mass (1969–73 and 1983), a corner-less paper room that has surprisingly profound effects upon its visitors. Orr first began experimenting with Zero Mass in 1969 and first exhibited it in 1973 at the University of California, Irvine. It is an oval room, approximately 40 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 12 feet high (though the dimensions are incalculable while within the space), in which the ceiling, floor, and walls are shrouded by photographers’ background paper produced in rolls large enough that the walls have only one seam, which also functions as the means of entry. Zero Mass is set within a room or gallery that is lit only indirectly through a crack in the doorway, or a shaded window. In the short term, 15–30 minutes, Zero Mass is discomfiting; it is only natural to remove yourself from circumstances that compromise your most reliable source of information (vision) and the overwhelming tendency is to leave. But a longer sojourn begets acceptance, which in turn delivers a more

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Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., pp. 160–161. Merleau-Ponty: The Visible and the Invisible, p. 162.

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pronounced sensation that the boundaries between self and circumstance are dissolving. The disorientation of the void not only forces us to question our own stabilizing faculties but in rejecting the given, novelty becomes cognitively available. And in this regard, Plato is correct: the cave leaves us susceptible to the imagination. Zero Mass was always meant for very few participants. Orr had his own personal version for meditative purposes, but that should in no way imply that he thought of the experience as isolating. Orr fits in with the larger Utopiaminded element in Southern California in the 1960s and ‘70s seeking to “expand consciousness” through mind-altering experiences including recreational drug use. The experience within a work like Zero Mass is inter-affective even if it is not collective. The individual’s experience is not only meant to be analogous to that of a fellow viewer in 1969, but also to that of our prehistoric – and classical – forebears. Turrell, Nordman, and Orr in these works evoke the situated experience of prehistoric ritual cave sites rather than specific places. Our understanding of sensory deprivation provides a window into the experience of ancient shamans, who used the reduced salience of the cave to effect transcendent or altered experience.26 If we return, appropriately enough, to the Ecstasy exhibition, it would appear that Orr’s desire to create a primitive art for the twenty-first century had been achieved in and around the “altered states” the exhibition explored. “Phenomena-producers”27 rather than reproductions of phenomena (let alone mere objects), the works included in Ecstasy afforded viewers multiple opportunities for those who have seen the light to nevertheless return to contemplate the shadows. Iterative rather than metaphorical, the contemporary cave-as-installation becomes a site where viewer and circumstances together constitute a situation whence coherence emerges and continues beyond the installation space. Such works stand in contrast to Plato’s narrative, which emphasizes the incommensurability of experience within the cave to knowledge without. The erasure of boundaries in the dark brings circumstance to the immediate fore. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a disinterested position of autonomous selfhood vis-à-vis the work of art. In an ironic twist, the inter-connectedness of self and circumstance is therefore only recognized with the lights off. The cognitive self does not displace the immediately perceiving self but arises in tandem with its processes. While viewer disorientation is a key component in this art, this does not result in a temporary loss of self but rather, a discovery of how selfhood emerges.

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Lewis-Williams: The Mind in the Cave, p. 209. Eliasson: Olafur Eliasson, p. 14.

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We know what it feels like to be disoriented and confused when finding ourselves in a shadowy, undifferentiated space. Plato relied upon such recognition to conjure for his students a compelling allegorical form: the Cave. Thus, while laying claim to the eternal immateriality of the forms, Plato drew upon his students’ specific and embodied experiences of dark and disorienting situations to give shape to his argument. In the engulfing spaces of their work, Turrell, Nordman, and Orr gave shape to the experience of Plato’s cave, freeing the viewers within to find themselves in the shadows.

References Beam, Philip C.: “The Color Slide Controversy,” College Art Journal, 2 (1943) 2. Bishop, Claire: Installation Art: A Critical History, New York (Routledge) 2005. Blocker, Jane: “Blink: The Viewer as Blind Man in Installation Art,” in: Art Journal, 66 (2007) 4. Butterfield, Jan: The Art of Light and Space, New York (Abbeville Press) 1993. Cage, John: Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage, Middletown, CT (Wesleyan University Press) 1961. Derrida, Jacques: Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, Chicago (University of Chicago Press) 1993. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Dewey, John: Art as Experience, New York (Perigree Books) 1980, c. 1934. Edelman, Gerald: Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, New York (Basic Books) 1992. Eliasson, Olafur: interview with Daniel Birnbaum, in Olafur Eliasson, London (Phaidon Press) 2002. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark: Philosophy in the Flesh, The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, New York (Basic Books) 1999. Lewis-Williams, David: The Mind in the Cave, London (Thames and Hudson) 2002 . McEvilley, Thomas: “Journeys in and out of the Body: Proto-Materialism of Eric Orr” in: Images and Issues, 2 (1981). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston (Northwestern University Press) 1964. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: “The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Consequences”, in: The Primacy of Perception, Evanston (Northwestern University) 1964. Trans. J.M. Edie.

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Orr, Eric: “My Only Ism is Aphorism”, in Eric Orr: a Twenty-Year Survey, San Diego (San Diego State University) 1984. Orr, Eric: “On the Matter of Double Vision,” in Eric Orr: a Twenty-year Survey San Diego (San Diego State University) 1984. Orr, Eric and McEvilley, Thomas: wall label, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980; reprinted in Jan Butterfield, Art of Light and Space, New York (Abbeville Press) 1993. Plato: The Republic, p. 514a–b, Indianapolis (Hackett Publishing Company) 1992. Trans. G.M.A. Grube Sontag, Susan: On Photography, New York (Picador) 1990. Turrell, James: Art of the Senses and No Sense, Artist’s talk, Skirball Institute, Los Angeles, CA. February 13, 2005. Wortz, Ed: quoted in: Maurice Tuchman (ed.): A Report on the Art & Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 1967–1971, New York (Viking Press) 1971.

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Frederick W. Kent, Art history lecture using a slide projection of images, The University of Iowa, 1960s. Photograph, 4.3 x 6.3 inches (11 x 16 cm). Courtesy of the University Archives at the University of Iowa. Fig. 2: Eric Orr, Wall Shadow¸1968. Performance; Cinder blocks, tape, grey paint, dimensions of wall approx. 84 x 120 inches (213.4 x 304.8 cm). © the Estate of Eric Orr.

3. Thwarted Expectations

Fantasias – Experimental Induced Psychosis and Modern Aesthetics in 19th Century France GERHARD SCHARBERT

The topic of this essay is a constellation of experimental psychiatry and aesthetic theories circulating in the 1850s in France that founded the basis of modernism as we understand it today. The fact that this foundation was built in direct connection with the use of drugs to influence the brain and nervous system justifies the inclusion of this topic in a book entitled Embodied Fantasies. Sometime in the 1840’s, author Théophile Gautier received a strange letter at Rue de Navarin 14 in Montmartre, the ninth Parisian arrondissement. The post was from the painter Boissard de Boisdenier, who at this point in time lived on Ile St-Louis in brilliant old-world splendor in a city chateau. Je t’ai informé du jour, ૵ țȡĮIJȚıIJİ ĬİȠijȚȜİ, mais non de l’heure. Il faut que tu arrives demain vers la cinquième, MILITAIRE, c’est exigé pour que la fantasia puisse se développer agréablement et s’épandre sur tout la soirée. Tout à toi F. Boissard. ce Lundi.1 I told you about the day, my very best Theophilos, but not about the time. You should arrive around five, MILITARY, it is needed for the fantasia to develop nicely and spread over the whole evening. Yours wholly, F. Boissard. Monday

Here we find the key word fantasia, but what does it mean in this context? It refers to a gathering of select participants from artistic, musical, and literary spheres of France at the time, who under the observation of two medical doctors, namely Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours and Louis Aubert-Roches, orally consumed hashish, so that their inebriation and artificially-aroused fantasies could later be recorded.

 1

Album Baudelaire, p. 44.

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Between 1836 and 1840, Moreau de Tours became acquainted with hashish on a trip to the Orient with a patient of his colleague and teacher Dominique Esquirol. It is to Moreau that a field of French psychiatry is attributed, in which psychiatric diseases were primarily reduced to organic cerebral and nervous degenerative dysfunctions.2 He recorded the hallucinogenic effects of the drug initially through self experimentation. He realized that certain effects of consuming hashish resembled the state of consciousness when falling asleep or waking, which Moreau equated with psychological phenomena. In 1841, based on conclusions that Moreau drew through analysis of patients’ dreams, he advanced bold ideas paralleling dreaming with madness, and began distributing the drug to cause experimental psychosis. Later in 1845 he presented his results in Du hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale.3 In the preliminary stages of his scholarly publication, Moreau was openly interested in seeing confirmation of his theories and observations by the significant French writers and artists of his time, those contemporaries, whose “fantasies” embodied their professions: such names as the already mentioned Théophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, who affirmed with some affect Moreau’s experimental premises in a letter,4 the famous painters Eugène Delacroix and Honoré Daumier, the musician and professor of the Parisian conservatoire Mathurin-Auguste-Balthazar Barbereau; the world-traveler, architect and pioneer of iron construction Hector Horeau, who was killed later for being the chief architect of the commune de Paris and many others. “Properly speaking the whole youth of the French late Romanticism met there.”5 In the famed drug séances in the Hôtel Pimodan, where Baudelaire also occasionally stayed,6 Moreau not only took part as an obliging guest; he also provided colonial goods and products and supplied them to those present for consumption. Perhaps Gautier’s term Paradis artificiels (Artificial Paradises) refers indirectly to Moreau.7 In the Hôtel Pimodan arose the tableau that Moreau de Tours had been waiting for since its first opening, and especially since the experimental adoption of the use of datura stramonium for the treatment of hallucinations, that he had described in 1841. The setting was perfect: an establishment that aroused fantasy through its vastness and dilapidated golden splendor. A carefully selected group from literary and artistic circles was invited, who were uniquely capable of depicting their drug-induced experiences and sensitivities in words and images. In addition to the possibility of observing the physical effects of the

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This vengeful tradition is resumed in history of psychiatry as Hypothesis of Degeneration. Moreau: Du hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale. p. 31. Balzac: Correspondance éd. R. Pierrot Vol. V, pp. 69–72. Kittler: Das Nahen der Götter vorbereiten, p. 78 Pia: Baudelaire, p. 139. Gautier: Le Club des Haschichins, p. 214.

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drug, Moreau could compare its effects with the convulsions and confused expressions of the manifestly insane, and all of this in the distinguished atmosphere of an intellectual dîners. Moreau de Tours brought the literary-artistic salon of the July Monarchy and the Second Empire to a totally new reality. The salon became a laboratory, in which the experiment very directly and literally implemented the aesthetics of the métropole as a de-romanticized8 collision between the printed word, image and artificially-instigated psychological circumstances – just as shock and trauma are reflected back in each of Baudelaire’s early texts. Whoever wants to see the undistinguished atmosphere of these memorable historic soirées can reach for Théophile Gautier’s depictions, which poetically inflate these evenings. It can be said that they are re-romanticized. It can also be said that they were extraordinary. Moreau de Tours, however, collected his observations in a very detailed book, which he composed after his experiments in Hôtel Pimodan on the St.-Louis island in the Seine. Du Hachisch et de l’Aliénation Mentale. Etudes Psychologiques, was published in Paris and Leipzig in 1845.9 From the deceptive sobriety that runs through historic psychiatric knowledge, and seems unique to us even after nearly 150 years of such texts, we will now depart, this time with other intentions than Théophile Gautier, and move toward the yellow light of street lanterns shining on heavy brass handles of a large door, leading into the courtyard of an old palace. In order to enter into the equally deceptive intoxication of old knowledge, we are led from the shadows of the gate’s opening toward a grand winding staircase, partially covered in darkness, leading to the floors above, just as Eugène Atget captured for posterity in his photographs.10 On a foggy winter day it almost seems as though Paris defends its rank as the capitol city of the 19th century still today.11 It is the Hôtel Pimodan,12 formerly Lauzun, built between 1656 and 1657, a building with an eventful, though unspectacular past, which was intermittently the residence or property of generations of financial and military leaders of old France. After the islands of the Seine were joined in 1614 and the rapid development of the Ile Saint-Louis thereafter, the probable builder of this hotel was Louis Le Vau, Louis XIV’s unfortunate architect. The hotel is furnished in the style of the period still today.

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Friedrich: Die Struktur der Modernen Lyrik., p. 30; Modern poetry represents deromanticized romanticism Moreau: Du Hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale. Adam: Eugène Atget’s Paris, pp. 90–95. ... die Stadt, über die so viele Bilder des Unheils dahinzogen, daß sie verschont blieb, Adorno wrote fully right. “Im Jeu de Paume gekritzelt” in: Id.: Gesammelte Schriften Bd. 10.1 Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 325. Les Guides Bleus: Paris, Hauts de Seine, St. Denis, Val de Marne, and Hillairet: Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Paris.

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A transformation of old Paris-emergent historicism,13 however, simultaneously caused a group of artists, scholars, and intellectuals, who wanted to settle fantasias’ composition anew, hardly could have found better ambiance. Today such a space would be held tightly under lock and key and completely sealed off by a seemingly incognito, apparitional, and notorious entity, namely, the public sector.14 The in-between world of that Petits châteaux de bohême, as Gérard de Nerval called it, towered erectly over the mysterious island’s fading past in a Paris on the way to antiquated grandeur. Each historical hour spent there enabled the exploration of an expanding world of inebriation and fantasy. There from the wrecking ball of disregard and threatened existence rose the screen on which a beginning modernity came from the decay of old Paris, in a remarkable connection between the discounted past and alarming innovation. From the partial darkness of an historical exterior, figures became clear in front of the old gold background. These figures, whose evening meetings in the name of a fantasy were intended to take them to inebriation, then arrive. They are figures whose names in turn signify a constellation, names that today denote modernism: Honoré de Balzac, who thanked Moreau de Tours by letter for the receipt of the drugs and agreed with his ideas;15 Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Alphonse Karr, journalist and author, at the time leader of Le Figaro, Honoré Daumier, already mentioned Boissard de Boisdenier, painter and his colleague Paul Chenavard, and the musician Barbereau. In fact, Alphonse Karr reported that, le célèbre médecin des fous16 Dominique Esquirol complimented his friend and pupil Moreau de Tours in person at a meeting when Gérard de Nerval was also present. Finally, in attendance was a young man, who lived in the hotel on the third floor in a small apartment with a view of the northern arm of the Seine.17 Soon he, who had almost completely squandered the family fortune accumulated through marriage, was incapacitated through highly obscure legal proceedings by his step father (naturally aided by his mother).18 A portrait originating at the

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Indicating a well-known coincidence, George Eugène Baron Haussmann gave the advice to a historical commission to preserve in pictures and maps the same quarters, which his demolition troops should destroy. The Baron was indeed a really modern character! Since 1928 the City of Paris itself. Les Guides Bleus: La communauté de Paris, p. 197. Balzac: Correspondance éd. R. Pierrot, pp. 69–72. Richer: Nerval par les témoins de sa vie, p. 102. Hillairet: Dictionnaire Historiques des Rues de Paris, vol. 2, p. 88. The often mentioned Major Aupick, who was in fact never biographically described. One of the typical persons of the July-Monarchy and the Second Empire, who had a good career up to a general’s rank in the time of Napoleon III. and became later the Director of the famous Ecole Polytechnique. Pichois, Claude; Ziegler, Jean: Charles Baudelaire. Nouvelle Edition, Paris 2005, p. 327: L’école était commandée depuis le 28 novembre 1847 par le général Aupick. Cela peut surprendre : les grandes écoles ont souvent à leur tête une personne qui y fut

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time, an etching based on the painting by Emile Deroy,19 shows a bearded person who seems to be actively observing a real or imaginary society, smiling somewhat maliciously. Charles Baudelaire was soon to abandon that smile as well as the beard, though not the skeptical penetrating stare, in his future portraits, passed down to us by the new medium of photography. (Also in this way he distinguishes himself from his predecessors as a poet of the 19th century.) But in contrast to these “amateurs du délire”20, as Baudelaire sneeringly referred to himself and the other poets when remembering the experiences on the Ile St-Louis, the Docteur en Médecine Jacques-Joseph Moreau called de Tours oversaw the hashish séances in the Hôtel Pimodan as a professionnel, and not only because of his work in the psychiatric profession. Unlike the writers and artists gathered at the séances, he already had relevant personal experiences with the drugs which he recorded in detail and later included in his monograph Du Hachisch et de l’Aliénation mentale. Today, I will deal less with the psychiatric and neurological implications of the book, which under other circumstances are the subject of my current research, but rather use them to give summarized perspectives of their contemporary settings – views of poetry that seriously considered the corporality of these new experiences and, with the help of embodied fantasies, revolutionized aesthetics. Baudelaire’s Poem of Hashish employs the term pretexte21 in its double meaning. The definition signifies a prescription as well as a pretext for poetry. First published postumously in Petits Poèmes en Prose, it both inspired and stigmatized poets immediately succeeding him. If all of modernism flows out of an uncomplimentary neuropsychological comparison with simple-minded mental patients, when their soaring flights and hellish crashes are predetermined by the mysterious and powerful alkaloids found in inconspicuous plant material, then the letters of modernist poetry are the epitaph of any modern selfawareness. Arthur Rimbaud struggled through this; Stéphane Mallarmé compared the constellation of uninvolved stars that reflected themselves in letters, whose signification and non-signification should lie as close as possible to the act of silencing. A final consequence of which Baudelaire, at the end of Du vin



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formée. Aupick n’était sorti que de Saint-Cyr;] The circumstances of tutelle, as an economical castration the natural born field of every psychoanalysis, are still resting for psychiatric and juridical research. Nevertheless, there exists since 1991 the detailed study done by Jean Ziegler “Note sur la fortune de Baudelaire” in: Baudelaire, Charles: Correspondance I Paris 1993, pp. LXIII-XC. Pichois: Charles Baudelaire, p. 20. Baudelaire: Œuvres complètes, p. 343. Ibid., p. 420.

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et du hachisch, visionarily pronounced impersonnalité, ... objectivisme22 as a difficult prerequisite of the poetic. This can be illustrated in one of Baudelaire’s short prose poems, Artist’s Confiteor: How poignant the late afternoons of autumn! Ah! poignant to the verge of pain, for there are certain delicious sensations which are no less intense for being vague; and there is no sharper point than that of Infinity. What bliss to plunge the eyes into the immensity of sky and sea! Solitude, silence, incomparable chastity of the blue! a tiny sail shivering on the horizon, imitating by its littleness and loneliness my irremediable existence, monotonous melody of the waves, all these things think through me or I through them (for in the grandeur of reverie the ego is quickly lost!); I say they think, but musically and picturesquely, without quibblings, without syllogisms, without deductions. These thoughts, whither they come from me or spring from things, soon, at all events, grow too intense. Energy in voluptuousness creates uneasiness and actual pain. My nerves are strung to such a pitch that they can no longer give out anything but shrill and painful vibrations. And now the profound depth of the sky dismays me; its purity irritates me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the whole spectacle revolt me... Ah! must one eternally suffer, or else eternally flee beauty? Nature, pitiless sorceress, ever victorious rival, do let me be! Stop tempting my desires and my pride! The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist shrieks with terror before being overcome.23

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Ibid., p. 396. Baudelaire: Œuvres complètes I, pp. 278 and following. Que les fins de journées d’automne sont pénétrantes ! Ah ! pénétrantes jusqu’à la douleur ! car il est de certaines sensations délicieuses dont le vague n’exclut pas l’intensité ; et il n’est pas de point plus acérée que celle de l’Infini. Grand délice que celui de noyer son regard dans l’immensité du ciel et de la mer ! Solitude, silence, incomparable chasteté de l’azur ! une petite voile frissonnante à l’horizon, et qui par sa petitesse et son isolement imite mon irrémédiable existence, mélodie monotone de la houle, toutes ces choses pensent par moi, ou je pense par elles (car dans la grandeur de la rêverie, le moi se perd vite !) ; elles pensent, dis-je, mais musicalement et pittoresquement, sans arguties, sans syllogismes, sans Toutefois, ces pensées, qu’elles sortent de moi ou s’élancent des choses, deviennent bientôt trop intenses. L’énergie dans la volupté crée un malaise et une souffrance positive. Mes nerfs trop tendus ne donnent plus des vibrations criardes et douloureuses. Et maintenant la profondeur du ciel me consterne ; sa limpidité m’exaspère. L’insensibilité de la mer, l’immuabilité du spectacle, me révoltent ... Ah ! faut-il éternellement souffrir, ou fuir éternellement le beau ? Nature, enchanteresse sans pitié, rivale toujours victorieuse, laisse-moi ! Cesse de tenter mes désirs et mon orgueil ! L’étude du beau est un duel où l’artiste crie de frayeur avant d’être vaincu.

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This poem, one of the shortest texts in Petits Poèmes en Prose, is an example of the elements of a chronicling of the self, whose cognito begins to withdraw from the moi. A powerful female rival bewitched the once proud, selfgoverning first person narrator, until the empty tautology of his self-confidence finds itself reverted into its physical basis – the deep swishes of circulation and the high-pitched buzzing of the nervous system. At the height and brightness of the heavens, over the silent depth of the sea, this physical thinking is acoustically and optically observable and perceivable, and far from the trivial rules of normative poetics. It is not without reason that Baudelaire – pupil of the legendary classe de rhétorique of French higher education – called the elements of the trivium specifically by name. Already in Paradis artificiels, his discussion of human nature, Baudelaire was describing concepts uncharacteristic for the time, namely the bottomless and directionless cognitive expansion opened by music and drugs, written here as a consequence of seemingly subjective perception, that not only thwarts regular conventions/patterns, but abolishes them. The progression of such proclamation-structured “thought”, which perfectly corresponds to the identifying features that Moreau de Tours made accessible in the field of experimental psychopathology as observation intime24, became the source of all of these impulsions irrestibles25, the elimination of unified/ unification of moi,26 blended together with the act of writing itself. The striking point is that the moment before beauty collapses, the unique ideal remains, which modernism can ensure. This fatal avant of poetry later found itself updated by Arthur Rimbaud provokingly in a revolutionary future, but the striving toward beauty remained in future bitterness. “Inglorious, with ... Gestures of the breaking down lifting the modern up”27, as one of Baudelaire’s German translators determined in 1966 in light of such declarations. This defect seems inherent in the aesthetics of modernism and is the lucid reaction to patterns of description and definition which imagination’s place within pathology had already assigned. In a pupil’s room in the war-ravaged French province, the following words from Le Confit-

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Moreau: Du Hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale, p. 95. Neuropsychological research of today has proved, that during the silent reading of a text, the neurons and areas due to articulation are active too. Therefore Moreau’s obsevation of an interdependency between these neuronal activities and motor apparatus of speech is more than a psychopathological statement only. (See: Birch, Stacy; Pollatsek, Alexander; Kingston, John: “The Nature of the Sound Codes Accessed by Visual Language”, in: Journal of Memory and Language, 38 (1998), pp. 70–93. Many Thanks to Philipp von Hilgers, Berlin and Leopold Gutjahr, Salzburg.) Baudelaire: Œuvres complètes II, p. 134. Ibid. Baudelaire in a lucid manner links L’analyse and hallucination together with ਕȜȪȦ, the etymological stem! Kemp, Friedhelm: “Nachwort”, in: Charles Baudelaire. Mein entblößtes Herz. Tagebücher. Deutsch von Friedhelm Kemp, Frankfurt am Main 21986 [E.P. 1966], p. 84.

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eor de l’artiste were written, strikingly and even more momentously: “C’est faux de dire: Je pense: on devrait dire on me pense. – Pardon du jeu de mots. Je est un autre”28. And only two days later Baudelaire’s fatal avant was put into bold future tense: “La Poésie ne rythmera plus l’action; elle sera en avant”29. When Rimbaud dreamed of it later: posséder la vérité dans une âme et un corps30, it is declared in a final prose poem with the title Genius. Also, the end of this final fantasy, because its truth, simultaneously begotten and thwarted by psychiatry and drugs, is made impossible under this title: Le dégagement rêvé, le brisement de la grâce croisée de violence nouvelle!31 “I fear that we will not get away from God, because we still believe in grammar”32 – Nietzsche’s remark later declared with this something Arthur Rimbaud must have sensed: his departure from poetry, which he previously had led to an unreached peak, simultaneously pointed out the limits that were set by traditionally ordered beliefs about grammar as the basis for the brain function. Rimbaud chose something basic like the ether of damaged memory as a symbol for his future act of silence that would last longer, but be only partially communicative. Never again would exterior compulsion require drug-induced inebriation and escape; the hushing of a poet did nothing against the objectivity of symptoms that encoded what was to be found on the poet’s lips or pages. The journey which poetically at the end of Fleurs du mal leads to death, into the unfamiliar, is realized by Rimbaud. This distance about which both wrote, il s’agit d’arriver à l’inconnu, projects an all too familiar sense of misery in its colonial aspect. The “Ich-Zerfall, den süßen, tiefersehnten” (decomposition of the self, sweet and highly desired, to quote Gottfried Benn) would still need to be factually described by the literary modernity, even though 19th century psychiatry already presented it theoretically and experimentally. In the last chapter of Madness and Civilization Michel Foucault writes: Madness conjures a type of timeless cutting in [...] it causes neither descent away from, nor ascent toward human freedom. It shows freedom’s discontinuity, its determinism in the captivity of the body. In the body, the organic, the single truth of the individual, triumphs and can be scientifically observed and be perceived.33

 28 29 30 31 32 33

Baudelaire: Œuvres complètes, p. 249: One should not say: I think: one should say I am thought. Sorry for the play on words. I am another. Ibid., p. 252: Poetry will not give the pulse for action anymore; it will be upfront. Ibid., p. 117: holding truth in one’s soul and body. Ibid., p. 155: the perfect liberation, the wreckage of Grace crossbred with new violence! Nietzsche: Sämtliche Werke, p. 78: Ich fürchte, wir werden Gott nicht los, weil wir noch an die Grammatik glauben... Foucault: Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft, p. 546.

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Even this human truth is antinomic. In the short moment of modernism, which can be described as fanciful as defined by my talk, it seems appropriate to deliver something to the clinical insanity of scholarly reflection: the fragments of a discourse about the passions of memory registered in the body, as it is in this form that first psychoanalysis first took it seriously, in its own way. In memoriam Friedrich Kittler 1943–2011. (Revisited translation by G. S., Sabine Flach and Franck Loric)

References Adam, Hans-Christian (ed.): Eugène Atget’s Paris with an Essay by Andreas Krase, Köln-London (Taschen) without Year. Adorno, Theodor W.: “Im Jeu de Paume Gekritzelt” in: Id.: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 10.1, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1977. Album Baudelaire. Iconographie Réunie et Commentée par Claude Pichois, Paris (Gallimard) 1974. Balzac, Honoré: Correspondance éd. Roger Pierrot, Tome V: mai 1845 – aout 1850. Paris (Garnier) 1969. Baudelaire, Charles: Correspondance en Deux Volumes. Texte Établie, Presentée et Annotée par Claude Pichois avec la collaboration de Jean Ziegler, (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade) Paris (Gallimard) 1993 (E.P. 1973). Baudelaire, Charles: Mein entblößtes Herz. Tagebücher. Deutsch von Friedhelm Kemp, Frankfurt am Main (Insel) 21986 (E.P. 1966). Baudelaire, Charles: Œuvres Complètes en Deux Volumes. Texte Établie, Presentée et Annotée par Claude Pichois, (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade) Paris (Gallimard) 2005 (E.P. 1975). Benn, Gottfried: Gesammelte Werke in vier Bänden. Herausgegeben von Dieter Wellershoff, (Klett-Cotta) Stuttgart 1977. Foucault, Michel: Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft. Eine Geschichte des Wahns im Zeitalter der Vernunft, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1973. Friedrich, Hugo: Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik. Von der Mitte des neunzehnten bis zur Mitte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Erweiterte Neuausgabe, Hamburg (Rowohlt) 1979 Gautier, Théophile: “Le Club des Haschichins”, in: Marc Eigeldinger (ed.): Récits fantastiques, Paris (Flammarion) 1981.

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Hillairet, Jacques: Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Paris, 2 vol., Paris (Minuit) 1985. Kittler, Friedrich: Das Nahen der Götter vorbereiten. Mit einem Vorwort von Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, München (Wilhelm Fink) 2012, p. 78. Les Guides Bleus: Paris, Hauts de Seine, St. Denis, Val de Marne, Paris (Hachette) 1972. Moreau de Tours, Jacques-Joseph.: Du Hachisch et de L’aliénation Mentale. Études Psychologiques, Paris-Leipzig (Masson) 1845. Nietzsche, Friedrich: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden. Herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari (KSA). Zweite, durchgesehene Auflage, München-Berlin-New York (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag / De Gruyter) 1988. Pia, Pascal: Baudelaire, Reinbek (Rowohlt) 1979. Pichois, Claude; Ziegler, Jean: Charles Baudelaire, Nouvelle Edition, Paris (Fayard) 2005. Richer, Jean: Nerval par les Témoins de sa Vie, Paris (Minard) 1970. Rimbaud, Arthur: Œuvres Complètes. Edition Établie, Presentée et Annotée par Antoine Adam, (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade) Paris (Gallimard) 2005 (E.P. 1972). Scharbert, Gerhard: Dichterwahn. Über die Pathologisierung von Modernität, München (Wilhelm Fink) 2010.

Creative Processes within Fantasies: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung ARTHUR I. MILLER

Wolfgang Pauli’s interest in creative imagery extended into the fantasies, dreams, and visions which filled his waking hours as well as his scientific research. He explored this realm of thought with Carl Jung and came to believe it might hold the key to critical questions such as “What is consciousness?” In this essay I explore two episodes in Pauli’s active dream life: how Jung’s analysis of his dreams allowed him to come to grips with his first great scientific discovery while simultaneously alleviating his neurosis; and dreams couched in highly-charged Jungian archetypes that led him to another scientific discovery of cosmic importance.

Wolfgang Pauli: Wunderkind Born in Vienna in 1900, Pauli was a wunderkind. He read math and physics books as if they were novels and at age 21 obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Munich. His was a peculiar doctoral situation because he failed to solve his thesis problem which was to investigate the helium atom using the Danish physicist Niels Bohr’s atomic theory.1 But it was a magnificent failure because he showed conclusively that there were severe fundamental problems with Bohr’s theory – though he interpreted this outcome as his own personal failure. He went on to try his hand at the most difficult problem of the day – applying Bohr’s atomic theory to explore the characteristics of the light atoms emit when immersed in a magnetic field (the anomalous Zeeman Effect), and failed again.

 1

Early 20th-century scientists exploring the invisible world of the atom based their considerations on the image of the atom as a miniscule solar system, a basis of Bohr’s atomic theory. This was taken as a pleasing image in that the macro- and micro-cosmos seemed to mirror each other, extending the imagery from Newton’s successful theory of how the solar system works into the microcosm. Pauli’s results were harbingers of its demise, adding to experimental results showing that atoms were not really miniscule solar systems at all.

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By day Pauli was a staid Germanic physics professor. In 1934, after a year of analysis, he revealed the other side to Jung: On the one hand, [I had] a tendency towards being a criminal, a thug (which could have degenerated into me becoming a murderer), and, on the other hand being detached from the world – a totally un-intellectual hermit with outbursts of ecstasy and visions.2

By night he often frequented the Sankt Pauli, the notorious red light district in Hamburg. There he found the means to alleviate his personal anger and the strains put on his psyche by a life defined by physics research in which he was failing miserably. He dropped into the underworld of drugs, alcohol and prostitution. But the more he drank, the more obnoxious he became, often being involved in barroom brawls. He was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. To make matters worse he had great difficulties dealing with women in just about anything besides sex. As he wrote to his close friend and colleague, Gregor Wentzel: With women and me things don’t work out at all, and probably never will succeed again. This, I am afraid, I have to live with, but it is not always easy. I am somewhat afraid that in getting older I will feel increasingly lonely. The eternal soliloquy is so tiresome.3

At the end of 1924, while at the University of Hamburg, Pauli made his greatest discovery, the Exclusion Principle. It explained why atoms are structured as they are and also the periodic table of the chemical elements. It was cosmic in that it explained why metals are hard and why certain stars die as they do. But something deeply bothered him about the Exclusion Principle; it involved locating an electron in an atom using four numbers, instead of the usual three, the three dimensions of space. The fourth number had no visual image attached to it, nor could there be one. This great discovery, for which he would be awarded a Nobel Prize, did little to assuage his over-riding sense of failure. Two tragedies followed: in 1927 his beloved mother committed suicide and two years later he married a chorus girl whom he had met during one of his jaunts into the fetid demi-monde in Berlin. The marriage was a disaster and lasted less than a year. Far from taking his divorce in the witty sardonic way he presented it to others, it added to the weight of the issue that ate away at him – his perceived failures in physics research, which defined his life. His by then famous cutting comments, such as ‘why, that’s not even wrong’ and ‘so young and so unknown’ were becoming more frequent, engendering further dislike of him. His drinking, womanizing and bar-room brawls, in addition to quarrels with col-

 2 3

Meier: Atom and Archetype, p. 30. Von Meyenn: Wolfgang Pauli, p. 283a

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leagues that had come to the attention of the authorities at his university, put his professional life in jeopardy. Once again he was living two separate mental lives. To add to all this, his always vivid “ecstasies and visions” were seeping into his waking life.

Enter Carl Jung By the beginning of 1932, Pauli had plummeted to a frighteningly low point. In desperation he turned to Carl Jung who, at fifty-seven, was at the height of his fame. Before visiting Jung, Pauli immersed himself in Jung’s “analytical psychology”. Central to it are archetypes – latent potentialities whose origins remain forever obscure because they reside in the mysterious shadow realm of the collective unconscious about which we will never have direct knowledge. While the archetype itself cannot be represented, when energized it bubbles into consciousness as an archetypal image or symbol. Jung offered a typology of the mind based on two opposing psychological types: introverts and extraverts. He fine-tuned these notions with four basic functions, thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation, to be taken two at a time. Pauli realized immediately that he was an introverted-thinking type. With all that under his belt, he set out to see Jung in January 1932, at his fortress-like house in Küsnacht, just outside of Zürich. (Since 1928 Pauli had been a professor at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute, in Zürich.)

When Jung Met Pauli “When he entered my house”, Jung recalled, “I myself felt the wind blowing over from the lunatic asylum!”4 Jung sized Pauli up immediately. His thinking function far outweighed the feeling one which was buried in his unconscious. Pauli poured out his troubles to Jung. His situation had become critical. Pauli was in a panic over his “amazing dreams and visions” and felt he was about to “lose his reason”. Jung saw before him a “young man of excellent scientific education (but) a very one-sided intellectual”, a “hard-boiled rationalist” who did his best to “evade his emotional needs” as a waste of time since they had

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Jung: Collected Works 18, pp. 538, 540.

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nothing to do with science. “[Pauli’s dreams] contain the most marvelous series of archetypal images”, Jung said in one of the many lectures he gave on Pauli’s dreams. To Jung, Pauli was “chock full of archaic material”.5 After an interval Pauli began to meet Jung as regularly as possible on Mondays at noon at Küsnacht. Of the approximately 400 dreams that Pauli wrote up, Jung examined 59. Jung chose them because they were examples of the process Pauli underwent to achieve individuation, the centering of the personality between the conscious and unconscious, a process linked with the appearance of symbols such as the mandala. Jung’s method was to identify a patient’s dream images with those from alchemy, religion and myth, taking into account the four psychological functions. In this way he sought out archetypes.

Embodied Fantasies I: Pauli’s Dream Images6 Pauli dreams of being rooted in the center of a circle made by a serpent who bites his own tail. Jung takes an eighteenth-century alchemical tome from his shelf. He shows Pauli what alchemists call the tail-eater, or uroboros. The uroboros is also a symbol for the form taken by the central figure of alchemy, Mercurius, at the moment of the dark chthonic onset of the alchemical process of purification and so represents the prima materia or first matter, the ur substance from which the universe was created. The completed circle symbolizes the circular nature of the transformative process by means of which the four Aristotelian elements, earth, air, water and fire are transformed one into another. The uroboros establishes a protected area, called the temenos in ancient texts, where the dreamer can meet his unconscious.

 5 6

Jung: Collected Works 18, pp. 42, 173, 174, 538, 540. For a more detailed discussion of these dreams and others by Pauli, see Miller (2009), chapters 8 & 9.

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Fig. 1: Abraham Eleazar, Uraltes chymisches Werk: Ouroboros, 1760. Courtesy of Harvard College Library, Cambridge, MA.

A veiled woman appears for the first time in Pauli’s dreams. She is unknown and her technical name, Jung tells him, is the anima (Pauli’s female side). He shows Pauli a picture of veiled women like the woman in his dream moving up and down a staircase, symbolizing the ascent of the soul through the spheres of the planets to the sun-god, from whom the soul originates. The appearance of a personal figure, and not a symbol, says Jung, means autonomous activity in the unconscious. Something is about to happen – the anima is about to show Pauli the way to his unconscious and its contents complete with its unpleasant surprises, such as the irrationality lurking there. Pauli is fired up and eager to plunge into the sea of the unconscious.

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Fig. 2: William Blake, Jacob’s Dream, c. 1799–1806, Grey ink and watercolor on paper, 15.7 x 12.2 inches (40 x 31 cm). Courtesy of the British Museum.

His dreams shift to interactions between himself and three others, one of whom is always his anima, whom he ignores, indicating that she is still in the darkness of his unconscious, and so is his inferior feeling function. The dreamer’s psy-

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chic atmosphere becomes charged with energy surges from the deep unconscious, permitting constellation of archetypes. Jung points out to him that we should be prepared for alchemical parallels to enter our dreams, permitting a creative play with images, as well as a means for fusing together apparent irreconcilables –in this case the conscious and unconscious. Pauli’s successive dreams involve symbolism relating to four – the quaternity.

Cosmic Numbers Pauli wonders about the number four, the quaternity. What about the number three, he asks Jung, which personifies the Trinity and was so important to the astronomer and mystic Johannes Kepler, who was one of Pauli’s intellectual heroes. Could it have begun to dawn upon Pauli that his discovery of the Exclusion Principle involved a tension between three and four? Jung replies that we must bear in mind the basic issue of alchemy which is the reconciliation of opposites into unity. We know from ancient myths, he continues, that in the dark mists of history there arose a historical shift in the world’s consciousness towards the masculine while the feminine was set into the darkness of the unconscious. In pagan and Christian myths and alchemy, as well as in Eastern religions, odd numbers are attributed masculine characteristics. In Christianity the masculine Trinity, three, is the One. When a fourth is added it is always evil in the guise of the devil. Unity results from the fusing together of fours, such as the four opposing elements, and so the quaternity and not the trinity is correct termination of the search.

Mandalas and Individuation Jung interprets Pauli’s attempt in these dreams to achieve individuation as analogous to the alchemists’ striving for the lapis, the philosopher’s stone, which, in Jung’s psychology is the Self, or sum total of the conscious and unconscious, the goal of individuation. One way to accomplish this in alchemy is by squaring the circle, a process rooted in breaking down the original chaotic unity (the prima materia) into the four basic elements (earth, air, water and fire), a state represented by a square, and then combining them into a higher unity, a circle. The

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circle is the basic mandala of alchemy. After a year and a half of analysis, Pauli begins spontaneously drawing mandalas signaling that all four basic functions are fully in his consciousness. Further sessions with Jung result in his vision of the “World Clock” which sets him well on the road to achieving individuation. Pauli called it his “great vision – the vision of the World Clock.” It was an impression of “the almost sublime harmony”, he tells Jung.7 It is a complicated mandala, as we would expect of a complicated person. (fig. 3)

Fig. 3: Pauli’s “world clock” with four quantities symmetrically placed. For details see Miller (2009), pp. 151–152. Courtesy of William-Byers Brown and Suzanne Geiser.

Jung’s analysis drove home to Pauli why his struggle in moving from three to four in his discovery of the Exclusion Principle was so very difficult. Not only was Pauli grappling with physics but with his neurosis as well: in physics he struggled over using four instead of three numbers to completely characterize an electron’s state in an atom; in his psyche he struggled with having only three of

 7

Jung: Collected Works12, pp. 167, 203–204 and Collected Works11, p. 66.

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his basic functions in his consciousness, the fourth (feeling) being buried in the depths of his unconscious. In this instance, Jung’s analytical psychology provides insight into the creative moment. I next turn to a thought experiment of Pauli’s couched in Jungian archetypes which resulted in another cosmic discovery.

Embodied Fantasy II: A Creative Dream and Jungian Archetypes8 In his waking life Pauli was always preoccupied with issues of symmetry, both in physics and psychology – the conscious and unconscious as mirror images of each other. In 1952, while working on very abstract symmetries in quantum mechanics, Pauli had a dream. He dreamt that he was walking in the constellation Perseus and saw the double star system called Algol. The two stars were identical; they were mirror images of each other. This dream gave Pauli the idea to work on mirror symmetry, which physicists refer to as P, or parity, although, as he recalled, there was nothing really interesting in physics at the time regarding this problem. (Reflected in a mirror, a sphere still looks like a sphere and so possesses mirror symmetry. In physics, an equation obeys mirror symmetry, or parity (P) if, when its coordinates are flipped from left to right, the equation maintains its form. Thus, equations of physics do not distinguish between left and right. This is the same as saying that we cannot distinguish between an experiment and its mirror image. Intuitively physicists believed this to be the case. Besides, there were no data to assert otherwise.) But then Pauli had another idea, to explore two other symmetries that were of a reflective sort: to change all matter to antimatter (C, charge conjugation), and reverse the direction of time (T, time reversal). This work came to fruition in 1954 with one of Pauli’s great discoveries, the CPT theorem which boldly proposes the following equations of elementary physics. The equations that refer to elementary particles such as protons, electrons and neutrinos, retain their form even when the following operations take place – replace all matter with antimatter (protons with antiprotons, etc) – charge conjugation (C); change left with right – mirror symmetry or parity (P); and reverse the direction of time – time reversal (T). The operations C, P and T can be performed in any order. Pauli went on to further extract the deep meaning of CPT, and discovered that agreement with CPT is the same as the equations of elementary particle

 8

Miller: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit, chapter 14.

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physics agreeing with the theory of relativity, which is a sine qua non of physics. Pauli’s CPT theorem has proven immensely valuable in that it can be used to extract an elementary particle’s property of charge conjugation, parity or how it behaves under time reversal.

Embodied Fantasy III: A Dream for a Cosmic Mirror Symmetry In November of that year, Pauli had a dream so curious that it stuck in his mind for years afterwards. In the dream he is with a dark woman – his anima – in a room in which experiments are being carried out involving reflections. Others in the room think that the reflections are real objects, but Pauli and the dark woman know they are just mirror images. Pauli and his anima worry about there being no symmetry between objects and reflections. From time to time the dark woman changes into a Chinese woman who had appeared in Pauli’s earlier dreams, dating from 1952. Jung interpreted the Chinese woman as the holistic side of Pauli’s anima, in that Chinese philosophy seeks to reconcile opposites, like Yin and Yang. In June, 1956, two Chinese-American physicists, T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang, sent Pauli an article in which they argued that perhaps mirror symmetry, parity (P) might not always be conserved. Pauli chuckled and put it aside. But others took it seriously. In January 1957, a group of experimentalists at Columbia University headed by a woman, C.S. Wu, carried out a very beautiful high precision experiment that proved beyond doubt that parity was violated in the weak interactions, a class of interactions among elementary particles that includes radioactivity. They ascertained that a certain experiment and its mirror image were not the same. The New York Times called it a “Chinese Revolution”.9 Pauli could not fail to notice what a supreme example of Jungian synchronicity this was. A Chinese woman had played an important part in his dreams, particularly those involving mirrors and their reflections; and a Chinese woman had carried out the critical experiment that brought about the downfall of parity. Pauli confessed to his close colleague Markus Fierz that the downfall of parity caused him to “behave irrationally for quite a while”.10 Fierz told Pauli he had a mirror complex and Pauli admitted as much.

 9 10

Meier: Atom and Archetype, p. 76. Ibid, p. 76.

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He wrote to Jung about his shock at the Chinese revolution in physics. Mirror symmetry had always been important to Pauli both in physics and in psychology. In the course of discussions with Jung he concluded that mirror symmetry was critical because the conscious and unconscious could only be mirror images and so in balance with each other if it were valid. In Jungian psychology this is individuation, the ultimate state of enlightenment in which a person’s Self is centered between their conscious and unconscious. Pauli concluded that, as he had come to suspect, there were, indeed, psychological reasons behind his discovery of CPT, namely that mirror symmetry was an archetype. But archetypes reside in the mysterious shadow realm of the collective unconscious. So, how did it bubble up into consciousness? Pauli’s reasoning on this point is a wonderful example of Jung’s psychology in action as well as containing certain elements that are now part of modern ideas on creativity. During the day, in 1952, he had consciously worked on problems of symmetry and had become stuck and ceased work. The intense desire to solve a problem keeps it alive in the unconscious, which resulted in the energy necessary to spark the archetype of mirror symmetry and have it appear in consciousness as an archetypal symbol – the double star Algol. Pauli was convinced that the relationship between physics and psychology was that of a mirror image. Yet there was no longer any mirror symmetry. But, thought Pauli, this was not so shocking and physicists would have realized this had they looked into their psyche for more profound reflections: archetypes. The CPT symmetry that Pauli himself discovered is exactly that profound symmetry because it talks about mirror symmetry on the grandest of scales. It makes the stunning assertion that our universe cannot be distinguished from a mirror universe in which all matter is replaced by antimatter, all positions are reflections, and time runs backward.

The End of the Journey Pauli died in December 1958 in Zürich from a cancerous stomach tumor. His last request was to speak with Jung, rather than with his esteemed colleagues and sometime friends, Niels Bohr or Werner Heisenberg. Pauli never revealed to them or anyone else that he had been in analysis with Jung, fearing derision due to Jung’s low reputation among scientists, owing to his interest in alchemy and mysticism. He even forbade Jung to mention his name in the numerous lectures Jung gave on his analysis of Pauli, referring only to a brilliant scientist. Although Pauli’s association with Jung was well known, most considered it

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merely a frivolous episode in his life. Everyone failed to notice that what had began as a patient-analyst relation had grown into a colleagueship, then blossomed into a close friendship. The two men often met in the evening at Jung’s mansion with its magnificent view of Lake Zürich where they dined on sumptuous food, drank vintage wine and smoked the finest cigars. Their conversation ranged over physics, biology, psychology, Pauli’s dreams, Armageddon, ESPs, Jesus Christ and Yahweh. Their conversations deserve to be remembered because in many instances they were decades ahead of their day. In contrast with other physicists, Pauli considered quantum mechanics to be the ultimate theory in physics only because its subject matter is limited to atoms, electrons, protons and other elementary particles which are dead matter and so cannot illuminate issues such as consciousness. Jung agreed that this was the situation in psychology as well. Both men concluded that only a folding together of physics, psychology and biology, in some yet-to-be-determined manner could illuminate the deeper issues of life and science. Jung claimed that as a result of his analysis Pauli ‘became a perfectly normal and reasonable man,’ somewhat calmer and not so critical, who even ceased drinking.11 That was not quite the case regarding his critical acumen, although he reserved his barbs for the very famous. As to drinking, at parties Pauli was always seen with a glass in his hand. Alcohol, he felt, eased his bouts of depression. As Jung put it, a third of his cases ‘were really cured, a third considerably improved, and a third not essentially influenced.’12 Pauli fell somewhere in the middle. Jung often spoke about the case of the young intellectual scientist as a glowing example of his own lifelong belief that alchemical symbols shed light on the ‘development of symbols of the self’ – and, he may have added, of physics, too.13 As Jung reminisced, with Pauli he entered ‘the no-man’s-land between Physics and the Psychology of the Unconscious...the most fascinating yet the darkest hunting ground of our times.’14

 11 12 13 14

Jung: Collected Works 18, p. 175. Jung: Memories, Dreams, p. 165. Jung: Collected Works 12, p. 215. Jung to Ira Progoff, January 30, 1954. Copy at the ETH, Zurich.

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References Charles A. Meier (ed.), Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932– 1958 Princeton (Princeton University Press) 2001, with the assistance of C.P. Enz and M. Fierz, D. Roscoe (trans.), with an introductory essay by B. Zabriskie; originally published as C.A. Meier (ed.) with assistance from C.P. Enz and M. Fierz, Wolfgang Pauli und C.G. Jung: Ein Briefwechsel, 1932–1958 (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992). Jung, Carl: “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy: A Study of the Unconscious at Work in Dreams,” in: CW12, 1944, pp. 39–223. This is a translation of a portion of Jung’s, Psychologie und Alchemie (Zürich: Rascher Verlag, 1944). Jung, Carl: Memories, Dreams and Reflections, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffé. Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston, London (Fontana Press) 1995. Jung, Carl: “Preface to de Laszlo: ‘Psyche and Symbol’,” in: CW18, 1958, pp. 537–542. Jung, Carl: “Psychology and Religion,” in: CW11, Terry Lectures, (Yale University Press) October 20, 21, and 24, 1937, pp. 3–105. Jung, Carl, “Tavistock Lectures,” in CW18, pp. 5–182. This is a series of lectures Jung delivered at the Institute of Medical Psychology (Tavistock Clinic) in London, September 30 to October 4, 1935. Miller, Arthur I. 137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession, New York (W.W. Norton) 2009. Reid, Sir Herbert; Fordham, Michael and Adler, Gerhard (eds.), The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, William McGuire (executive ed.), R.F.C. Hull (trans.), 20 vols.; Bollingen Series 20, Princeton (Princeton University Press) 2000. von Meyenn, K. (ed.) Wolfgang Pauli: Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel mit Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg u.a. Band III, 1940–1949 [Scientific Correspondence with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume III: 1940–1949], (Berlin: Springer-Verlag), 1993.



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List of illustrations Fig. 1: Abraham Eleazar, Uraltes chymisches Werk: Ouroboros, 1760. Courtesy of Harvard College Library, Cambridge, MA. Fig. 2: William Blake, Jacob’s Dream, c. 1799–1806, Grey ink and watercolor on paper, 15.7 x 12.2 inches (40 x 31 cm). Courtesy of the British Museum. Fig. 3: William Byers-Brown, Pauli’s world clock. Courtesy of William Byers Brown and Suzanne Geiser.

Fantasies of the Catastrophe: Embodiment and Kinaesthetic Awareness in the Performance-Installation of Naoko Tanaka’s “Die Scheinwerferin” GABRIELE BRANDSTETTER

In her story Mein Japan (My Japan) Yoko Tawada, a Japanese author who has lived in Germany since 1982, writes of the Fukushima disaster as follows: “When I hear of a disaster, my heart automatically begins to beat more slowly, and I become calmer, as though I had taken a sedative. In order to survive a natural catastrophe, one must not get into a panic and start imagining terrible things. It is evident that I have unconsciously learned this attitude in Japan as a survival technique.”1 How are images of a disaster constituted? How are its before and after images narrated and commented on? And what forms of their embodiment and physical-emotional reactions are available to overcome them? Yoko Tawada’s description corresponds to the actions, experiences and general bearing of people in Japan after the tsunami of March 2011 – a kind of level-headedness, solidarity, and social order in the face of chaos and disaster, which were registered with astonishment in Western sociological commentaries and media discussions. No panic, no resort to states of emergency to prevent plundering,2 but “discipline and what seemed to be stoic resignation”, as the cultural historian Florian Coulmas found.3 In an essay inquiring into the lessons of the disaster Paul Carter writes that the civilizational shock triggered by the Japanese tsunami exposed our “lack of narratives, the failure of our prophecies”.4 What was needed was a “propaedeutics for the unforeseeable”, which meant “incorporat-

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Tawada: “Mein Japan,” p. 1. A phenomenon that was observed in the natural catastrophe of Hurricane “Katrina”. See in this connection Capeloa Gil: “Die Herren der Bilder,” pp. 195–206. Coulmas: “Freiheit und Sitte”, p. 44. It is a question, which was much debated by columnists. In an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Stefan Schulz conjectures that the calculations of the risk and the (abstract) figures of forecasts on the hazards of a worst case scenario –a “principle of mathemagic”– ultimately cause the “state of affairs in Fukushima [to lead] to a new composure, by making us realize that it is terrible, but ineluctable?” Cf. Schulz: “Zahlen zum Schönrechnen”, p. 27. Carter: “Freuds Salto”, p. 49.

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ing disaster in the here and now”.5 What might such an embodiment consist in? In what way would it bring experiences into play other than those provided by rational explanations, political discourses or media footage? To rephrase the question, is there a poetics, an aesthetics of disaster? And what key images could represent a disaster like the tsunami and that of the nuclear reactor in Fukushima? Does not this disaster and its media presence confirm Paul Virilio’s thesis that in the 21st century the “original accident”6 no longer exists and that these “disasters” follow an “invention” of the “technological unconscious”:7 a repetition which – as in the case of Fukushima, whose place in a “logical progression” from Hiroshima and Chernobyl was frequently remarked upon – already has a place in a “Museum of Accident”8 for an archaeology of disasters.9 If it is art that legitimizes the authenticity of the images through the power of imagination – thus creating the possibility of remembrance – what role is played by the “mediation” and “narration” of the disaster? For the latter is always a contingent event that bursts in upon a concrete social situation. The imaginative faculty is the basis, the motor of the images and narratives. For the Writing of the Disaster, which Maurice Blanchot makes the subject of his reflections, is a social construct and depends upon contemporary discursive practices.10 The “writing of the disaster” means both the communicating and prophesying of disasters, and “the writing done by the disasters – by the disaster that ruins books and wrecks language”.11 “The disaster, unexperienced. It is what escapes the very possibility of experience – it is the limit of writing. This must be repeated: the disaster de-scribes.”12 Such a “de-scribing” is the starting point for art and its capacity to transform the images and rhetoric of a disaster. How can art generate a subsequent, a “restorative fiction” to the “unleashing of violence”?13 And in what way do images and embodiments contribute to an experiential space in which narratives carry out a future-directed work on (past) experiences of catastrophic destruction? The view extends – in a situation in which the narratives and images are published and circulated from an inevitably subsequent perspective – not only into the future (of the 21st century), but also backwards – into a history in which

 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Ibid. Cf. Virilio: The Original Accident. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 23. See in this connection the article by Capeloa Gil referring to Virilio. Capeloa Gil: “Die Herren der Bilder”. Blanchot: The Writing of the Disaster. Ibid., p. ix. Ibid., p. 7. Capeloa Gil: “Die Herren der Bilder,” p. 205.

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different and yet similar narratives of violence and disastrous wars prevailed: as at the beginning of the 20th century. The religious and cultural historian HansJürgen Heinrichs speaks of the “disastrous Modern Era”.14 The ruins of the disastrous modern era, the nuclear power stations, testify to the relationship between feasibility and sacrifices.15 Ever since Aristotle the definition of the imagination and the imaginative faculty16 has included the ability to inwardly conjure up not only pleasurable fantasies, but also images of horror. In his major study Zur Geschichte der Einbildungskraft (On the History of the Imaginative Faculty), Dietmar Kamper has stressed that the catastrophic element is a key component of an aesthetics of post-histoire.17 Recent research in neurophysiology and brain studies confirms that the imagination mediates between sensuous experience and intelligence, between “sensory awareness” and mental/cognitive images. Seen in this way, the imaginative faculty is a central factor in “embodied fantasies”. It structures the relationship between man and his body and also his relations to his stock of images, myths, sagas, and memories of the culture in which he lives. This complex process of a constant transformation between the inner images of a “self awareness” and an outwardly directed “attention awareness” develops in paradoxical loops when the hazards of a catastrophic experience loom. At this point the imagination becomes a protective screen against the traumatizing violence of a naked reality. At the same time the fantasy images cover the trauma of fear and horror and take its place. The subsequent images of the disaster and its narratives of peril take the place of the disaster. It is precisely this linkage among “imagination”, “sensuality” and “embodiment” which gives rise to works of art, putting “reflective modes of experiencing” and “critical modes of narrations of the disaster” to the test. The example that I would like to present a close reading of in this connection could be seen as an allegory of the “embodied fantasies”, as a visio of the catastrophic. I would like to take the performance installation The Scheinwerferin by the German-based Japanese artist Naoko Tanaka18 as an example of exploring the

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Heinrichs: Die katastrophale Moderne. Cf. ibid., p. 74. Note on translation: In German the term Einbildungskraft is part of the tradition of a theory of imagination in philosophy and aesthetics. Kamper: Zur Geschichte der Einbildungskraft. Visual Artist Naoko Tanaka studied painting and fine art at the Tokyo Fine Arts University and in 1999 came to the Arts Academy of Düsseldorf in Germany with a scholarship. There she was co-founder of the artists’ collective Ludica, with whom she has been creating stage performances and dance installations. In 2010 Ludica was invited to Dance Platform Germany. Cf. Program TANZTAGE BERLIN 2011.

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ways in which images of disaster are embodied and the superimpositions of images and retrospective images that make the subsequent nature of narratives of disaster visible. Tanaka’s performance was conceived before the Fukushima disaster, having premiered in Berlin’s Sophiensaele on 14 January 2011. In this installation the performer shows an imagined journey in distorted shadow images that are projected onto a large split screen. It is a traumatic story with an autobiographical core. We learn from the program that Tanaka is using images of “her personal story of an eating disorder”19 which loom out of her memory like a horror trip: “images” of an individual crisis, indeed a disaster, become, in the context of the national disaster – the earthquake, the tsunami and the threat from the accident in the Fukushima nuclear power plant – a powerful visual evocation of a general threat. In this way Tanaka’s performance installation was subsequently seen as an ominous warning of the disaster. The same thing happened with the choreographed opera Matsukaze, composed (after a Noh play by Zeami) by Toshio Hosokawa and choreographed by Sasha Waltz, which was also interpreted in a new and different way after the occurrence of the “real disaster” in Japan. After March 11, 2011, the dark side of the Noh play was seen in the light of the tsunami.20 The meaning of deferral – as a difficult question of evaluating decisions, as a re-construction of the “factual” and as a coping strategy which makes use of the “fictional” – is clearly exemplified in the following texts: first in Evan Osnos’s critical and admirably researched article in the The New Yorker on the “fallout” from Fukushima;21 and secondly in an article by the well-known Japanese director Toshiki Okada who, looking back on March11, 2011, wonders what it might mean to “threaten reality with fiction”.22 What imaginations and fantasies do the images of Tanaka’s installation conjure up? And how are they embodied? It starts with the spectators entering the hall that looks like a room installation. They pass a table at which the performer is seated with her head on her arms as though asleep. Above her hangs a naked light bulb which flickers very brightly, as though something were out of order. Under the table and round about it all sorts of objects lie scattered.

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http://www.sophiensaele.com/produktionen.php?IDstueck=962 [21.02.2012]. When interviewed afterwards, Sasha Waltz said: “Needless to say, in the last days I have pondered whether I, as a consequence of this catastrophe, in regard to ‘Matsukaze’ as well, should reconsider everything and respond. ‘Matsukaze’ evokes the heaving seas, the waves; images of the tsunami come to mind.” Waltz in interview with Seifert: “Beauty in Impermanence,” p. 74. And in the press – also with regard to Fukushima – the end of the opera was interpreted as a “call for reconciliation with Nature”. Herzfeld: “Du heißt Wind, und du heißt Regen,” p. 26. Osnos: “The Fallout”. Okada: “Die Wirklichkeit durch Fiktion bedrohen.”

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Fig. 1: Naoko Tanaka, Die Scheinwerferin, 2011. Videostill. © Rompel / Tanaka.

They seem to be a chaotic jumble and yet are also like an elaborate and fragile landscape which has been put together out of everyday objects and things, such as knives, forks, spoons, discarded toys, the rails of a model railway, lattice work and a tangle of dried-up branches – a bizarre collection of bric-à-brac covered with the dust of forgotten childhood days. Only after all the audience have taken their seats, thus turning the setting of the walk-in installation into a theatrical space of “stage and auditorium” does the performance begin. Tanaka rises from the table and directs her gaze to a dummy lying there which uncannily resembles her. With a small but very powerful torch – a mini-spotlight – she examines the dummy all over.

Fig. 2: Naoko Tanaka, Die Scheinwerferin, 2011. Videostill. © Rompel / Tanaka.

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As in an anatomical experiment she penetrates the physical image of her double. Thus begins a journey into her own innermost world: By projecting her fantasies, fears and ideas onto her likeness and the surrounding space, she excorporates the “embodied fantasies” of her traumatic experiences. Tanaka uses the spotlight to explore under the table. The light bobs along, illuminating the objects from various angles. Knives and forks and other things, the dried twigs and trellis work, are projected on the back wall of the room in the manner of a shadow theatre. They appear as a monstrously prolific dream landscape. The images and sound collage of rattling subway rhythms suggest a dangerous journey, expressed in unforeseeable images, morphings, enlargements and obliterations, flashing by and disappearing.

Fig. 3: Naoko Tanaka, Die Scheinwerferin, 2011. Videostill. © Rompel / Tanaka.

Finally Tanaka stands at the edge of this installation/formation and illuminates herself from various angles with the spotlight, as she had done at the beginning with her dummy double. She sticks the torch into her mouth: head and neck seem to be illuminated from within by an eerie reddish glow, and her physiognomy is distorted as the boundaries between inside and outside have been shifted.

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Fig. 4: Naoko Tanaka, Die Scheinwerferin, 2011. Videostill. © Rompel / Tanaka.

The light goes out. The memorial theatre of an “embodied fantasy”, in which the performer is transformed into a “Schein-Werferin” in a disaster story, is over. The word used as the title of the performance, “Scheinwerferin”, is hard to translate. The term implies several levels of meaning, which play with the semantic field of “seeing” and “seeming”. First, in a technical sense, Scheinwerfer means “spotlight”, i.e. the powerful lighting equipment used in the theatre [Ger. Schein can mean either “(shining) light” or “(illusory) appearance”; Ger. Werfer means “thrower”, as in Speerwerfer – “javelin thrower”, tr.]. The feminine version of the term [the German ending –in corresponds to the English ending “–ess” in waitress or “–ette” in usherette, tr.] is unusual, a neologism which constitutes an anthropomorphizing of the device, the object “spotlight”: an “embodiment” of the thing in female form. A spotlight throws light on other people/things, while normally remaining invisible itself. Scheinwerferin, in the feminine, embodied form of the term, also suggests that someone here is casting a Schein about them while themselves standing in a shining light like an apparition (in a narcissistic way, though also in the aesthetic sense of Adorno’s concept of “apparition”). And, finally, Scheinwerferin also refers to the conditions of the presentation in the theatre and the production of (performative) images: Schein in the sense of illusion. The Scheinwerferin casts light on a Scheinwelt, a scene of fantasy.

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All these aspects of the title word “Scheinwerferin” are visually activated and embodied in the performance installation. In the words of Phillip Zarrilli: the vision, the “visio” of the Scheinwerferin is “enacted” as a physical process.23 Tanaka shows images of her physical fantasies and exhibits herself by transforming herself into the “pointing” (indexical) light (the “Scheinwerferin”). Its question is directed at the Schein in its secondary meaning of “illusion”, that transient empty surface which conceals a different reality, e.g. the machinery of the theatre, or the inside of embodied feelings. And Tanaka is also exploring the possibility of touching the feelings of others through the Schein/appearance of her actions as an artist. The process of seeing is itself placed in the (spot-)light here. For the observation, physical sensing and fantasizing of images is shown here in manifold scenes and traces. From the dummy through the dissolution in the chaos of the inner journey to the trans-illumination of one’s own body we see a performance of Tanaka’s “pictorial self”. It is repeatedly made clear how the imagination of one’s own body deviates from the performer body that we see in action, which implicitly shows the difference between body image and body scheme that is so characteristic of anorexia and eating disorders.24 Trauma and dangerous self-fantasies transmit and embody themselves in the hallucinatory images of an urban jungle. The imaginative capacity is presented in an “enacted process”. What seems to be of interest here is the embodiment and presentation of the inner images.25 Habitualized movements – which are learned via cultural bodily behaviors, such as walking or eating with a knife and fork (or with chopsticks) – are seized upon only to have their automatic routine interrupted. The embodiment, the mimetic assimilation of bodily actions in a process of “image-ination” is quoted in the performance. At the same time, however, a break appears in the repetition and transmission – in the sense of that idea of “embodiment” and “enactment” which Phillip Zarrilli describes for the body practice of performance as follows: “When one initiates doing a form of movement or enacting an acting score, one’s relationship to each individual repetition of that same form or structure is ‘similar’ yet ‘different’ [...]. As one learns to inhabit a form or a structure of action, one is attuned to an ever-subtler experience of one’s relationship to that structure.”26 Embodiment is seen by Zarrilli not as a completed action, but as a process that is in flux and situated in between

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Zarrilli: “An Enactive Approach to Understanding Acting” and “Toward a Phenomenological Model of the Actor’s Embodied Modes of Experience.” On body scheme/body image cf. Krois: “Beginnings of Depiction,” pp. 361–376. Within visual arts and aesthetics the concept of “embodiment” is discussed in philosophical terms of aesthetic experience, ecological significance, and self-consciousness. Cf. Crowther: Art and Embodiment. My argument focuses on embodiment as a mode of kinaesthetic, synaesthetic, and performative transposition. Zarrilli: “An Enactive Approach to Understanding Acting,” p. 645.

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what has been experienced and what is to come, between habitat and nonhabitat as a space of possibility. Tanaka’s performance takes place between such boundaries – and reveals it as a danger zone. For here the boundaries between imagines agentes of a hallucinatory anxiety scenario in the soul, the boundaries between body and environment, are blurred. Their blurring and explosive breaching leads to imaginations of the “inside-to-outside”: an excorporation of the catastrophic. Thus the performance opens up two versions on the subject of “images of the catastrophe” and “embodied fantasies”. In the embodiment of Scheinwerfen (spotlighting) the process of enacting images becomes self-reflexive. The spotlight, which shines inward and outward “throws” images onto the projection screen in a back-reflection – a process which leads to a re-vision of the terms “image” and “vision”. The range of “image” (image or picture) goes beyond the optical dimension to include a moving embodiment. This process of “enactment” incorporates the kinesthetic perception of the spectator. The “self-awareness” of the beholder of these body-images and fantasmatic image-journeys is affected by transmissions of empathy and “kinaesthetic imagination”.27 The spectator plunges into the flickering shadow images: into a vision of the chaotic. At the same time she observes the “showing” of what the conditions of this performance are: the work with the “spotlight” – as a “sine qua non” of the theatre. The projection of the images, their emergence and disappearance; the artificiality of the disaster images; their media construction – their illusionary, transient superficiality as well as their physical in-depth dimension. This finally raises the question of what access this opens to the imaginary. What images of a collective imaginary (as described by Cornelius Castoriadis)28 provide a basis for the fantasies and flickering shadows of this autobiographical story of a trauma? Tanaka’s installation alternates between an embodied experiment on herself and the images of a working through (in the Freudian sense) of her trauma as projected by light media into hypertrophe. In this shadow theatre the rigid, forgotten objects are re-animated: They are set in motion by the “Scheinwerferin” with a “proto-life”, like the “Undead”. This is the backdrop against which Tanaka’s installation could subsequently be read as a disaster scenario: the performance – with its structure of “doubling” and “embodiment”,

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Reynolds: Rhythmic Subjects, pp. 185–211. See also: Foster: Choreographing Empathy, pp. 6–14, 126–218. In his psycho-historical study of the “social institution of the imaginary” Cornelius Castoriadis advances the thesis that bourgeois (Western) societies, which see themselves as rational and pledged to the idea of political, technical and economic progress, are based on imaginary structures which subliminally erode this self-image. Cf. Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution of Society.

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of ex-corporation of traumatic fantasies – offers itself for a “re-thinking of catastrophes”.29 Not because it offers a reproduction or a representation of real disasters.30 It merely reflects those structures which are shaken by disasters: the social behavior patterns for dealing with risk, the gestures of rational and scientific mastery of nature and technology; and finally the culturally conveyed embodiments of behavior in view of a “hazardous future”: panic or composure and acceding to a community of fate, as related in Yoko Tawada’s story “Mein Japan”, written after the Fukushima disaster?31 The double meaning of “Scheinwerferin” shows us that the “embodied fantasies” can be both true and deceptive.



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See the conference thus named in Freiburg, May 4–6, 2011 (FRIAS); see website http://www.frias.uni-freiburg.de/institute/interdisciplinary-encounters-en/catastrophes [04.11.2011]. Exactly one year after the Fukushima disaster – as a reminder of the event and as a warning against a “hazardous future” – a whole series of performances of remembrance were held. Particular attention was attracted by artistic reflections on urgent open questions. Works like the string quartet “Limited Approximations” (premiere Lucerne September 2011) by the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, the theatrical works of the Japanese director Toshiki Okada (“The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise”), or Daisuke Miura (“Castle of Dreams”) made clear that a rational discourse in academia, politics and the public media is not enough to express those aspects of the catastrophic which lie beyond the boundaries of the imaginable and utterable. See in this connection the programs of the playhouses in Munich and Berlin in March 2012: Spielart-Festival Munich: http://www.spielart.org/ programm/ [06.03.2012]; the event entitled “No Go Area Japan – A Year After Fukushima” at Berlin’s Deutsches Theater: http://www.deutschestheater.de/home/sperrzone_japan/ [06.03.2012] as well as the works of the artists Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani: http:// fischerelsani.net/ [06.03.2012]. Tawada: “Mein Japan”.

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References “Beauty in Impermanence. Sasha Waltz and Toshio Hosokawa in Conversation with Ilka Seifert Regarding the Choreographic Opera ‘Matsukaze’, Creative Processes and the Catastrophe in Japan” in: Matsukaze (program, 2011), pp. 73–87. Blanchot, Maurice: The Writing of the Disaster, Lincoln and London (University of Nebraska Press) 1995. Capeloa Gil, Isabel: “Die Herren der Bilder. Die Verbildlichung der Katastrophe bei Walter Benjamin und Spike Lee”, in: Peter Hanenberg/Isabel Capeloa Gil/Filomena Viana Guarda et al (eds.): Rahmenwechsel Kulturwissenschaften, Würzburg (Königshausen & Neumann) 2010, pp. 195–206. Carter, Paul: “Freuds Salto. Turbulenz als Mechanismus des Eros oder die Lehren der Katastrophe”, in: Lettre International, 93 (summer 2011), pp. 48– 52. Castoriadis, Cornelius: The Imaginary Institution of Society, Cambridge (Polity Press) 1987. Coulmas, Florian: “Freiheit und Sitte. Aspekte der Naturkatastrophe in Japan”, in: Lettre International, 93 (summer 2011), pp. 43–46. Crowther, Paul: Art and Embodiment. From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness, Oxford and others (Clarendon Press) 1993. Foster, Susan Leigh: Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance, London and New York (Routledge) 2011. Heinrichs, Hans-Jürgen: Die katastrophale Moderne. Endzeitstimmung, Aussteigen, Ethnologie, Alltagsmagie, Frankfurt am Main and Paris (Qumran Verlag) 1984. Herzfeld, Isabel: “Du heißt Wind, und du heißt Regen. Ein Nô-Spiel, getanzt: Sasha Waltz inszeniert Toshio Hosokawas ‘Matsukaze’ im Schillertheater”, in: Der Tagesspiegel, 21 037 (17.07.2011), p. 26. Kamper, Dietmar: Zur Geschichte der Einbildungskraft, München and Wien (Carl Hanser Verlag) 1981. Krois, John Michael: “Beginnings of Depiction. Iconic Form and the Body Schema”, in: Jan-Christoph Heilinger/Colin G. King/Héctor Wittwer (eds.): Individualität und Selbstbestimmung, Berlin (Akademie Verlag) 2009, pp. 361–376. Okada, Toshiki: “Die Wirklichkeit durch Fiktion bedrohen. Der Regisseur Toshiki Okada beschreibt, wie der 11. März 2011 sein Theaterverständnis auf den Kopf stellte”, in: Theater der Zeit, 10 (2011), pp. 18–20. Osnos, Evan: “The Fallout. Seven months later: Japan’s nuclear predicament”, in: The New Yorker, 17. 10. 2011, pp. 46–61.

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Reynolds, Dee: Rhythmic Subjects. Uses of energy in the dances of Mary Wigman, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, Alton, Hampshire England (Dance Books) 2007. Schulz, Stefan: “Zahlen zum Schönrechnen. Warum wir aus Katastrophen nichts lernen”, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 185 (11.08.2011), p. 27. Tanaka, Naoko: “Die Scheinwerferin”; Concept, visual/sound design, Performance: Naoko Tanaka; Dramaturgic collaboration: Mariko Harigai; Duration: 30 min.; Supported by: POLA Art Foundation and Japan Foundation; 14.01.2011 (premiere) and 15.01.2011, TANZTAGE BERLIN/Sophiensaele, in Co-production with PACT-Zollverein Essen. TANZTAGE BERLIN 2011. 05. BIS 15.01, Sophiensaele Berlin (program 2011). Tawada, Yoko: “Mein Japan”, in: Christ und Welt, 12 (17.3.2011), p. 1. Virilio, Paul: The Original Accident, Cambridge UK and Malden/MA USA (Polity Press) 2007. Zarrilli, Phillip: “An Enactive Approach to Understanding Acting”, in: Theatre Journal, Vol. 59, Issue 4 (2007), pp. 635–647. Zarrilli, Phillip: “Toward a Phenomenological Model of the Actor’s Embodied Modes of Experience”, in: Theatre Journal, Vol. 56, Issue 4 (2004), pp. 653– 666.

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Naoko Tanaka, Die Scheinwerferin, 2011. Videostill. © Rompel / Tanaka. Fig. 2: Naoko Tanaka, Die Scheinwerferin, 2011. Videostill. © Rompel / Tanaka. Fig. 3: Naoko Tanaka, Die Scheinwerferin, 2011. Videostill. © Rompel / Tanaka. Fig. 4: Naoko Tanaka, Die Scheinwerferin, 2011. Videostill. © Rompel / Tanaka.

Patterns Which Connect: Embodied Fantasies FRANK GILLETTE

What follows is in large part high conjecture. It takes aim at combinatorial relations between phenomenology, experimental epistemology, and hypnagogia. In brief, and as I comprehend it, phenomenology aspires to acquire a primal innocence. Without assuming empiricism’s conceptual presuppositions, the phenomenologist emphasizes an intentional-internal character of consciousness, focusing on introspective analysis; uncovering manifestations of immediate non-contingent experience. Edmund Husserl, its central protagonist, conceived it as a descriptive indepth exploration of forms of moral, religious, aesthetic, conceptual and sensuous engagement. In general, his take on philosophy is that it is an exploration of “life-worlds” or an inquiry addressing the qualities of “inner life”. Husserl, in effect, argued that philosophy is not, and will not be, a form of factorial science. It has instead its own private, exclusive methods and findings, which are fundamentally distinct from the conclusions of such formal systems as mathematics and logic. Thus phenomenology assumes, while describing, the intrinsic features of “stuff” as they reveal themselves, open themselves, to intensified consciousness. All genuine art is an experiment in epistemology‚ an investigation into the nature of knowledge of “worlds” generated from a specific subjective view and grasp; governed in general, by historical and cultural brackets. Fundamentally, an “episteme” addresses the questions: What can we comprehend or know outright? How do we know it? Seeking and investigating the appropriate criteria for “truth” and what stands for reasonable belief; whether to rely on a customized mysticism, tradition, revelation, faith and intuition; or whether to invest one’s attention in coherence, correspondence, consistency and rational deduction, e.g. Cogito ergo sum. To the point: Experimental epistemology features salient aspects taken from pages in the phenomenologist’s play-book. It relies on the necessary, if improbable, fusion of the two. Hypnagogia was coined by Andreas Mavromatis in 1983. On the brink of sleep and wakefulness, hypnagogic events are typified and instigated by Lautréamont’s remark “A chance meeting between an umbrella and a sewing machine on the operating table”. By misplaced concretion, e.g. walking into a

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restaurant and eating the menu; by Dada’s exquisite corpse method of chance composition. And by perpetual shape-shifting. In many instances it may resemble an outright hallucination, e.g. the limpid unfolding of an iridescent egg emerging from a volcanic summit. Thus a nexus of phenomenology, experimental epistemology and hypnagogia in what follows: 1) Hypnagogic drifting 2) Dream soaked sleep 3) An external hovering, fully awake, observer 4) All three states of mind coexisting. From Yeats: So the Platonic year Whirls out new right and wrong, Whirls in the old instead; All men are dancers and their tread Goes to the barbarous clangor of a gong! Gong!... I am on a cusp, I slip into a vast expanding confusion. From bend of bay to swerve of shore, I’m neither awake nor asleep. I fall and squirm into fragmenting grasps drifting through hellacious trenches. I drink therefore I am... I slide into dreams of schism and conflicting splits... Re: what is not compulsory is prohibited, prohibitive and ferocious... beauty is fury, fury is beauty... I seek, anticipate, relief from unexpected searing insomnia, with its endless yokes of necessity, smirking facts, glib cheek, erupting in flushes and congealed cascades of toxic spew. res cogitans vs. res extensa, what exactly is any difference? After a pause, Whitehead reduces everything to its utmost simplicity and then distrusts it... thus we swim in his pools of distrust, in a counter-swarm of implication in which a frenzied simplicity claims its slipshod givens as self evident... Throw down the gauntlet... prepare for things unknown, brace yourself for current events, for a spinning eyeball, for comatose, catechistic whim and caprice... Manichaean torment, frothing-at-the-mouth, the usual twisted suspects... the usual maladroit diabolic morons... the usual phalanx of scabrous twerps... all gathered in a dipsomaniacal ball of melting wax. Cheers... a victory lap, mud in your eye... Mazel tov... And the whore of Babylon sat upon the waters. Fade to black. I slumber, shattered, sis boom bah, grinning without bearing it. With a whip and a chair I'm semi-awakened... in a crystal mist of lucid hallucinatory panoramas... festering rivulets, brunt rage, sticks-in-the-spokes, fusillades of shit, stygian gloom, ebullient sloth, craven idiocy, unadulterated Evangelical zeal... A malefic, brazen Hobbesian nightmare emerges, [illustrated by Bosch]

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featuring en masse turmoil groveling before wretched excess. Things thicken, beginnings fade, fame melts... sycophantic fits of pique dominate while desiccating those resisting slash-and-burn and party-till-you-puke crypto- ideologies. Hovering behind the eight ball, lavish nihilism prevails. I twist and roll over in my sweat-soaked bed. I’m nearly awake, but the stream of images and alien vocalizations yanks me back to the sheets. A monkey finger probes its left ear, preposterous dead reckoning follows: ‘twist & shout’ the ape croons in perfect Queen’s English with poise, precision, audacity. He forgoes the hysterical applause and evaporates. Jump-cut to numerous Barmecidal feasts, one after another, after another, featuring the obese, those suffering from fatal gout, and bulimics. A sloshed chanteuse slips off the over-lit stage, dropping and smashing her green glass eye. Fade to black. Tycho Brahe’s gold nose emerges from a quivering darkness... jagged supernatural music slices through bleak chambers, a resurgent Demiurge suddenly takes charge, confiscates Tycho’s gold nose, then sets off to a pawn shop. Fade to black. Worms of fear grow long and fat, gimlet-eyed lip service dismisses the worms for dwelling in a Potemkin village... Xenophon, drifting down from the cloud of unknowing, proclaims: Those who cannot govern their own lives will be given other masters... the quivering monkey returns, though a bit funky, a bit destitute, and announces his intention to assume the haywire duties of one of those masters... ham-fisted blather follows. I slip-slide left to right between soiled and sticky sheets. Slow fade to black. Flatulent worms return, join the fray. The monkey is quite pissed... he assumed Xenophon would gleefully provide him with exclusive access to the Nomenklatura. Worms meanwhile entertain revenge, conjure plots against the flea infested ape, while setting alight his Potemkin abode. The monkey (whose name, by the way, is Pangloss) is trapped in a juke box with endless Sex Pistol’s rustic tunes... e.g: Mother McRhee, Danny Boy and all that rot... ah... sweet revenge. Jim Nightshade arrives from elsewhere seeking counter-revenge, since he’s a dear friend of Pangloss as well as his brother-in-law... meanwhile back at their hardened bunker, Pangloss and Nightshade’s lumpen proles conjure up scenarios of worms on the rack, of boiling rancid oil, of germ-infested fruits and nuts, mostly mixed nuts. HCE, Earwicker himself, enters this puffery of a fool’s trip, of a fool’s command to make war on the erupting wizardry of Anna Livia Plurabellum, operatic bloody violence ensues... Fade to a dark bleeding red. All hands on dreck! Vile and violent mayhem spills into and over apoplectic, berserk, fatal picnics. Suddenly the blitz-praetorian guard takes over, easily assuming tantamount power. All is tracer bullets... keep those steaming nuke rods very very cool, keep the doors rigid and firmly concealed... flounce any and all positions which glorify Pangloss in the very best light... a radiant mon-

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key suddenly arrives flushing out the quaking scope of mere fat worms. I feel an urge to take a whiz, I am now awake and cannot recall most of the above. So what, who cares, fuck you, drop dead. Fade to black? Sleep arrives, neither Spartan nor Baroque push-back is at all useful, nor is it feasible. I resist to no avail... either-or... a smoldering flick of prior calamities pops up... self-sabotage and translucent pink demons enter stage left, combining withering intent with brass balls... we are off, slipping into deep smut... shifting sclerosis, slipping into drowning gasps. I resist this pathetic menace with wind shifts, screaming slip-streams, and nasty, gruesome incantations. There appears a flight of dragons without heads. I am off to the Arctic! Inscrutable, lush, and enfeebled by way of modernity’s sly tricks. In a sweat I ponder Progress, in its triumphant gangster capitalism’s slant. I ponder, for blatant example, just how it renders all things, all entities, destined for any and all markets... simply fungible stuff, granulating into cash... Abruptly, I roll over, and over again, then retreat from this gangster’s nightmare, and rise & shine... the stink is simply awful... I slide back into delusional freezing environs, then discover that I’m not really awake, I’m floating above tectonic frozen plates, while they slip and shift into pools of snake venom... God speed headless dragons... In a flip, fanfares flow, hemoraging blind elisions flow, sudden swirls of snarls arrive with cockand-bull alibis... Strip and flip, ice melts! Enter stage right: Billy the spear shaker and Willy the abject junky discussing the current value of Seneca, Pico della Mirandola, the Missa Solemnis, Jack the fat cat, Jimmy the bizarre wordsmith, Lady Gaga’s most trusted valet, among other esoteric slop and jive. Three stooges emerge from center stage, slop and jive have met their supreme masters, indeed. “It’s too good, it won’t work” as the late great Gaddis was fond to remind me... I turn over, I’m on my back... With a blast of noise and hunger, and a need for a stiff drink, I finally wake up. Kiss my ass, the phone is wailing off it’s hook... a swank robo-voice is selling me life insurance, I decline while wondering how in Hell’s due dalliance... Just how did this rookie metallic insect acquire my number? Never you mind, slack off, relax, chill... Knock back a single malt and return to sweaty sheets. Hagiographic chutzpah awaits. Lilliputians in drag confront drooling rabid psychotics with guns... A fragile, pellucid, crystalline probity has been defeated by armed-to-the-teeth psychotics. Lilliputians in fish net stockings with pink, blue, and violet wigs engage the savage gang... its a complete wipe-out, with a lemming-like disregard for them selves, the Lilliputians are toast... Shift to the drooling gang’s stentorian high fives... meanwhile, back at the morgue, preparations are underway for a shallow mass grave on the front lawn. Fade to black. Salad days arrive, amidst a wobbly equipoise... a reluctant misanthropy is out of with low tide, a sort of fragile good cheer sets in, rapid staccato images of Arcadian vistas alternate with compacted views of rambunctious children at

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play. All is apparently calm. Then I’m awoken... It’s a robo-call again, asking “would you please contribute to mumble-mumble’s re-election, it is urgent that...” click. I return to bed, thinking I will pick up where things left off. No such luck. Events turn ugly, swinging my cast of mind towards a self-induced miasma, wherein necessary angels of intention whisper into my deaf ear... ‘We don’t know what you want, but we do know you want more of it’... I regret that I repeatedly forget this simple self-evident truth... I’m no longer amused. I slip, stumble, crash. In the virulent grip of a fresh tart nightmare, I witness a spectrum, a very wide spectrum, revealing all available versions of grief, while eating the ass end off an aging goat. We may be lost, but we’re making very good time. Hence I’m now preoccupied with survival, any such version of “quick”, any version! Things come and glow spiting out the teeth of Michelangelo. With bare warning, there appears a flight of dragons without heads. L.H.O.O.Q... I need this like I need another mustache... Smile! From such chaotic slumber, I emerge reverberating... Appearances solidify. I’m alert, caught swinging on a pair of wind chimes. Concertina wire, short hairs plucked one by one, molars yanked, klige lights, all slink away. Spit and stomp, the remnants of that final transit-dream devolves. Fade to soft satin black. I skip, drifting while slipping, into a blend of some delusion’s fragile grasp. I’m on a glide path into a slugfest. All is maya. I grasp at straws‚ no avail, no transcendence, no nothing. Refreshed, I recreate, I fornicate, I stipulate‚ I kiss the bird in flight. Hypnagogia, which brooks no quarter, has swept and snuggled in again. God speed the headless dragons, speed a murmuration of starlings, an exaltation of larks, the murder of crows, while pale confabulations twirl. Cranial winds, with ominous tinctures of forms of things unknown arrive... a swift, sudden segue ensues... Now, out of somewhere, I slouch on a beach with a yellow gazelle. A wide blue-green sweep of shore coughs up Prospero’s reading stack, a bit drenched, somewhat mangled. I open salted sheaths, in a blink, a multitude of palimpsests, layer over layer over sliced peaches, aches, fevers, poxes... I take bumptious pause before kissing a horse on its toothy upper lip. Slow fade to black. Refrain, quit, throw in a molded towel... the near is ended, it’s a war of attrition... moods swing... depth, probity, and cogency evaporate, all is an avalanche of cauterized views, swelling in every direction, with every stench. Snap, I’m awake (well, sort of)... its that yelping phone again, it’s another wrong number, another round once again, in Morse code no less. Kiss my fling! Fade to sudden black. In a slippery flick of digits, I’m now swamped. An umber ugly moment prevails. Cutting to several quicks at once, squirming in my usual cups at Jungle

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Pete’s, reflecting on oily, bleak implications with one-trick mules in a God-eatGod Zeitgeist... boisterous within its pumps, mirthless intent, misological confusion, overwhelming insidious pits of revenge. Nonetheless this, all of this, unfolds within environs of sweeping, deep-seated hard-core embodied fantasies. Now, aroused, I stink again, ergo I am again, slipping back with uncommon surender... Breezy archetypes overlap, flooding bins with agents provocateurs, innocent bastards, and other elaborate plumage. Its all a hyper-tech blend of mashing buttons, flickering lights, twirling dials. Stomp: within the inner tantrums of twirling sub-psyches, aging bleeds caution... Drizzling collapse, barfs, spits, up-spurts of force multipliers... Carry on in the dark... chill, push off to the Crozet Archipelago... Ahoy mates! Quit, twitch, blink... Resume: calculate positions all conflicting intersections, while feats of clay emerge flaunting frail shapes... Frail horse, frail rider... As if from a shadow, Jack finally arrives no alibi, without apologies. Now, alarm! All hands on dreck! Once again I slip, drifting into the decomposing rules of the Marquess of Queensberry in a demolition derby. With effortless ease, I float. Hence the above scatter-shot ambience‚ a portmanteau‚ a paradoxical collage/ decollage in time, a farrago gliding adrift from hypnogogic to awakened states in all of their mutual regards.

4. Places and Spaces

Star Arts or Celestial Embodiments: Culturally Conventionalized Constellations and Ambiguous Artistic Asterisms in the Modern Projection Planetarium. BORIS GOESL

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars.1 Walter Benjamin, in: The Origin of German Tragic Drama The astronomy Newton gave us was a triumph over supernaturalism because it united the mechanics of the sub-lunary world with an account of the heavenly bodies [...]. Today, the biggest challenge is to explain our powers of thinking and imagination, our abilities to represent and report our thoughts [...].2 Barry C. Smith

Prehistory and Early History of Projection Planetariums Nowadays there are about 3000 projection planetariums all over the world.3 Étienne-Louis Boullée’s monumental, never-built Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, which would have been a 150 meter hollow sphere, can be considered a planetarium forerunner. Richard Sennett explicitly compared it to “a modern planetarium”4. This revolutionary proto-planetarium’s dome would have been pierced by “funnel-like openings”5 which embodied the artificial stars, which hence would have been illuminated by a real star’s light from outside: by the sun.

 1 2 3 4 5

Benjamin: The Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 34. Smith: “What We Know May Not Change Us.” Petersen: “The Unique Role of the Planetarium”, p. 102. Sennett: Flesh and Stone, p. 265. Ibid.

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More direct historic antecedents of the modern planetarium had been hollow-sphere walk-in celestial globes like the Gottorp Copper Globe (1654), Roger Long’s Uranium at Pembroke College, Cambridge, UK (1758), and the Atwood Sphere of the Chicago Academy of Sciences (1913),6 in the latter of which the stars were represented by tiny holes. Inside the Gottorp Copper Globe’s sphere, the stars were represented by gilded nail-heads which additionally have been painted over by allegoric, figured embodiments of the constellations. In Europe, since the first test performance in Jena 1923, and particularly since the world’s first permanent projection planetarium was inaugurated on top of the tower of the Deutsches Museum in Munich with a Zeiss projector in 1925, a downright boom of modern projection planetariums had set in. The first planetarium in the USA, the Adler Planetarium, Chicago, opened in 1930.

Mental / Optical Projection This contribution will now examine pictorial projections into the (artificial) sky in the double-meaning of the word “projection” mentally and optically: in modern projection planetariums, where the constellations are presented according to what ancient cultures have attributed as mnemonic shapes to the poor visual cues of the random distribution of the stars, “re-/productive imagination” can be practiced. Astronomical constellations principally are virtual patterns which can be envisioned by fantasy as proper images, mostly pre-specified by cultural conventions as concrete bodies, incarnate imaginations of fantastic animals, or ancient mythological, anthropomorphic physiques (e.g. the constellations of Ursa Major, the Hunter Orion, Perseus, Andromeda, Centaurus, Cassiopeia, etc.). In order to enable better orientation and navigation (providing recognizable patterns for orientation especially in the times before the compass had been invented) some structures were “read into” the order-less distribution of the visible stars. However, these constellation-imaginations, originally linked to mythical narratives and creatures, also have an enormous aesthetic surplus value which cannot be reduced only to their mathematical-navigational pragmatic function.

 6

Griffiths: Shivers Down Your Spine, pp. 122–124. See also Hagar: Planetarium: Window to the Universe, and King: Geared to the Stars.

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Priming Embodied Fantasies One challenge in the planetarium is to mentally connect lines and add further details to the highly abstract dot patterns of the stars in order to imagine the shape of a constellation thereby advancing from “the dot, the minimal visual unit, pointer, marker of space”7 via the line to the extensive shapes.

Fig. 1: Carl Zeiss AG, UNIVERSARIUM, Bochum Planetarium, Germany. Photo: Carl Zeiss AG.

Before the conventionalized constellations become disambiguated by superimposed slide projections of artistically ornamented illustrations onto the planetarium dome (fig. 1), they have to be imagined with the “inner eye”. The subsequent superimposed constellation projections then can illustrate fantastic images of the culturally conventionalized, imagined constellations by slide or nowadays video projections, using illustrations from ancient, medieval, or even modern celestial charts, ranging from allegoric, filigreed drawings rich in detail through to stylized, abstracted line drawings. After the concretized constellation-images have been projected against the backdrop of the naked firmament for the first

 7

Dondis: A Primer of Visual Literacy, p. 15.

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time, these already-seen embodiments act from then on as priming stimuli for subsequent inner images. The respective design of the made concrete constellations (as well as of panoramic vistas) of each single planetarium has been the business of special in-house “planetarium artists” such as David Porrazzo.8 In the case of New York’s (old) Hayden Planetarium, from 1954 to 1987 “that task has fallen largely upon Helmut Wimmer”, who was “considered the world’s leading planetarium artist”.9

Fig. 2: Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Celestial Map of the Northern Sky, 1515. Woodcut, 16.75 x 16.75 inches (42.7 x 42.7 cm). H 8765 © Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Grafische Sammlung, Nürnberg. Photo: G. Janßen.

 8 9

Hagar: Planetarium: Window to the Universe, p. 106. Yarrow: “Holiday Stargazing at Hayden Planetarium.”

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Prior to the 1952 publication of Hans Augusto Rey’s book The Stars: A New Way to See Them, star charts and also planetarium slides inspired by them illustrating the constellations used traditional, decorative and replete depictions of the constellations. These again were inspired by traditional works of art such as Albrecht Dürer’s celestial charts of 1515 (fig. 2), the first European printed star charts, which continued the representations of the constellations as visually styled by the ancients. Rey criticized the bad memorability of traditional, all too ornamental and replete illustrations of constellations, and hence he proposed a seminal concept of pictorial simplification. Rey provided a remedy against the bad envisionability of the over-detailed traditional depictions by inventing new, better remembered, “cartoonish” constellation diagrams. He wrote that the traditional overloaded constellation illustrations “may look decorative but the drawing has little to do with the stars. You cannot see it in the sky. It is confusing rather than helpful.”10 Moreover, he explained: The human eye wants to see shapes with a meaning. [...] It is a trend deeply rooted in the human mind, and we have good reason to believe that, long before recorded history began, man first found his way among the bewildering multitude of individual stars by seeing figures formed by star groups.11

Rey’s new design for a “reduced” constellation depiction in turn also influenced the design of many planetarium constellation slides in the subsequent years. Once the respective constellations are now recognized by a planetarium visitor with the help of the superimposed slide projections, in whichever design: traditional or stylized, it is much easier to envision the conventionalized mental projections when seeing the respective star dot patterns as sole abstract cues again after the projections of the aggregate constellations have been faded out. This ability to imagine the constellation merely supported by poor visual “starting material” (mere star dots) broadly corresponds to Richard Wollheim’s concept of “seeing-in”, which he explains as something over and above “straightforward perception”. Wollheim elucidates that in order to attain to “seeing-in a crucial development has to occur, and that is that the relevant visual experiences cease to arise simply in the mind’s eye: visions of things not present now come about through looking at things present”.12 In this sense the star dots of the planetarium projection are the guidance and framework, the c(l)ues for the mental images of the constellations. The stars are the present visible things looked at which trigger the occurrence of inner images of constellations not present to the eyes.

 10 11 12

Rey: The Stars: A New Way to See Them, p. 12. Ibid., p. 16. Wollheim: Art and its Objects, pp. 217–218.

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The intermediate stage of “putting the fantasy in the right way” can help to answer this book’s general questions, how something can be seen that is not there, and if perceptual seeing would be a seeing of the first order, while consciousness would define a seeing of second order13. Besides, the projected planetarium stars (light dots) for themselves, like the real ones, minimal visual units, or as it were pixel “avant la lettre” appear only in six discriminate brightness nuances (“apparent magnitude”) to the naked eye, having a maximum visual resolving power of about 1 minute of arc as a perceptual bottleneck. The historic main goal of planetarium technology has always been to minimize star diameters for perfect naturalistic illusion. Unlike the first Zeiss projector of 1923, with an angular resolution of about 25 minutes of arc for the brightest stars, still seen clearly as discs (coin-sized – “Pennies from Heaven”!), modern fiber optics can project “diameters subtending one minute of arc, so that all stars appear as needle-sharp, beaming points”.14 (fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Carl Zeiss AG, Reduction of star diameters since 1923. Photo: Carl Zeiss AG.

Fiber optics technology, introduced in 1989, then changed the level of illusion in planetariums categorically: in the context of a theory of realism as resemblance, the fiber-stars since 1989 indeed even feature a true-to-scale absolute size,15 as below the resolution threshold of the human eye there are no further relative internal size differences visible. One has to keep in mind that real stars (in contrast to other celestial bodies like planets) can never be optically (tele-

 13 14 15

Anker and Flach: Call for Papers, Embodied Fantasies Conference. Anon: “Planetarium Technology: Shrinking of Apparent Star Diameters.” See Gilmore: “Pictorial Realism”, p. 109.

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scopically) magnified in terms of angular measure: they always appear as nothing but punctiform. Furthermore the fiber-stars engender typical optical diffraction phenomena inside the eyes of the beholders.16 The actinoid appearance of these artificial stars with diffraction spikes and/or diffraction discs emerges and is due first and only to the diffraction within the vitreous body of the beholder’s eyes and also through the eyelashes. Thus, the typical beaming and actinoid shape of the artificial fiber-stars is not imaged in the projection, but is rather an artifact of vision, a subordinate effect of the laws of optics – hence a physically embodied, literally incorporated illusion. Coming back to my central thesis, one basic aspect of visual literacy in the planetarium is the training of the ability to recognize the conventions of the traditional imaginary structures called constellations. Paul Messaris notes that the term “visual literacy” reflects the agreement that “the comprehension of [...] conventions is indeed an acquired skill, comparable to fluency in reading or writing”.17 The skill to discern the highly conventionalized images of the constellations is very similar to the so-called “cooperation principle”,18 which originally meant that a representational system demands that the readers act according to a tacit contract; that one has to cooperate in a way with the “text” and that one should bear passages of high ambivalence. In a comparable way one has to show good will in order to “see” or imagine the constellations in the visually poor star patterns and this “reading” is highly protected by cultural conventions demanding interpretative cooperation: per aspera ad astra. The planetarium’s presentation of constellations also teaches that vision as a whole is dependent on learning to some degree, just as reading texts has to be learned with some difficulty and effort. Besides, Peter Sloterdijk states that one basic cognitive change in the 19th century was that with general alphabetization the constellations passed out of memory and so the pictorial scripture in the night sky had from then on few readers any more.19 Planetariums in return revitalize the ability to see or “read” the constellations. Of course one cannot write the simple equation that reading a text equaled analytically viewing images. The somehow misdirecting metaphor of “reading the sky” must not refer to a textual model of reading. The only “textual element”, so to speak, really “readable” in the sky would be the so-called “sky’s W”, composed of the five main stars of the “W-shaped” constellation Cassiopeia.

 16 17 18 19

Kraupe: “Denn was innen, das ist draußen,” p. 79. Messaris: “Film: Visual Literacy,” p. 189. Pratt: “Literary Cooperation and Implicature,” pp. 377–412. Sloterdijk: Sphären II, Makrosphärologie: Globen, p. 78.

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The mind tends to engage in a sort of attractor state when recognizing a structure easy to remember. So, once an asterism or constellation is noticed as, e.g. the “Hunter Orion” or as “Cancer”, it will be difficult not to see this mental projection anymore in the future when seeing the respective star dot patterns as cues again.20 Memory itself turns out to be the foundation of all sensory perception. In order to imagine forms and shapes of the asterisms or constellations the viewers have to apply basic “gestalt laws”. The gestalt psychological principles of grouping, our innate tendency to constellate single elements that look alike, i.e. similarity grouping (e.g. similarity of color or size) or that are close together, i.e. proximity grouping,21 can be most coherently illustrated by studying the universal grouping of single elements in higher-level shapes called constellations. Often established asterisms, namely the “Pleiades” (Seven Sisters), or the “Plough”, typically consist of 7±2 stars. The principle of the “magical number seven” as a measure for the capacity limit associated with short-term memory and perceptual tasks certainly has a bearing on this.

The Comparative Constancy of Culturally Conventionalized Constellations Not only that the visual appearances of the natural asterisms and constellationpatterns themselves do not visibly change their locations and relations in a human lifetime, even not for centuries, but also the cultural ascriptions which lend the stellar light-dot-patterns their constellation-names (and the so-called “constellations” indeed are nothing more than arbitrary attributions) themselves remained consistent and unaltered for millenniums. As Michael Lynch and Samuel Y. Edgerton remarked, the once established constellations “still persist in modern Western civilization, prejudicing our perceptions to this very day.”22 The cultural-historical ascriptions of constellations are surprisingly stable; as Dieter Blume explains, the constellations, being cultural positings and conventions, in the end have been unaffected by historical transitions for more than 3000 years. As Blume elucidates, still current constellations were described by Homer and Hesiod.23 They are labeled identically as in the ancient world.

 20 21 22 23

Lynch and Edgerton, Jr.: “Abstract Painting and Astronomical Image Processing,” p. 103. Kubovy, Holcombe and Wagemans: “On the Lawfulness of Grouping by Proximity,” p. 71. Lynch and Edgerton, Jr.: “Abstract Painting and Astronomical Image Processing,” p. 103. Blume: “Sternbilder und Himmelswesen,” p. 73.

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In addition, Simon Schaffer explained that the imagined order, mentally projected onto the stellar patterns, visually grouped together by cultural conventions in recognizable shapes is the very representation of changelessness, eternal validity and invariance,24 an utopian counterpart to the incomparably more volatile transitions of human culture. But all this is only true for the Northern Hemisphere’s night sky: constellations are nevertheless reflections of respective historical mindscapes. The modern constellations of the Southern Hemisphere (e.g. as seen from Australia), as opposed to the ancient, mythological constellations of the Northern Hemisphere had been labeled from the 1750’s onwards and hence rather are named, e.g., “Antlia” (meaning pump), “Microscopium”, “Telescopium”, “Sextans”, “Pyxis” (compass), “Puppis” (poop deck), and “Pictor” (easel). Reflections of the technological innovations of that time, from 1750 onwards, instead of mythological creatures, man-made technological artifacts had literally become “praised to the skies” by new, modern attributions.

Staring up Star-wards You cannot hear in your imagination what a closed e sounds like by opening your mouth wide. Try it, and you will notice that your e, unpronounced and existing only in your mind, will become a kind of ah.25 Alain

Similar to Alain’s argument for the (inter-)dependence of imagination on “appropriate” physical, motoric embodiment, it makes a difference to the visual overall impression if one has to crane the neck and look upwards to the sky (as well as to the artificial sky in the planetarium dome). The necessity of looking upwards to the stars in the un-tilted planetarium dome (fig. 4) is a crucial kinesthetic perceptual mode, different from straight forward viewing routines. It defamiliarizes perspective, and noticeably is bodily fatiguing; the dome virtually dominates vision, which works dependently from the other senses, here: kinesthesis, and equilibrioception or vestibular sense. Already Ernst Mach, referring to the direction of gravity, noted in 1897: “With looking upwards and looking downwards, fundamentally different space-sensations are associated”.26 And

 24 25 26

Schaffer: “Himmlische Mächte”, p. 40. Alain: Alain on Happiness, p. 50. Mach: The Analysis of Sensations, p. 113.

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some psychologists even attribute a psychomotor antidepressant effect to the act of looking up in general.

Fig. 4: Carl Zeiss AG, powerdome®SPACEGATE with SKYMASTER ZKP 4. Photo: Carl Zeiss AG.

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Soloptic Media: the Pure Visibility of the Stars If Lambert Wiesing’s phenomenological thesis that, in contrast to the only attached visibility of other objects, pure visibility is the essential quality of every image27 is true, then this observation counts twice for an image of the starry skies, which then is the purely visible mediation of the already purely visible. By having to look up to the dome, additionally a reinforcement or doubling of the planetarium’s, anyway increased emphasis on visuality (of something already purely visual) is achieved, considering what Ann Williamson explains about the so-called “eye-accessing cues”, in terms of neuro-linguistics, as eye movement directions seem to be associated with distinct sensorial modalities: “As a general rule, people’s eyes flick upwards if they are seeing something ‘in their mind’s eye’.”28

Firmamentalities The already mentioned necessity of looking upwards at the dome just as one has to look up at the real firmament, (hence the preserved, emulated physical configuration) also can be embedded into the broader context of an anthropology of star-gazing, as the Greek word for “human being”, anthropos, following one common etymology, allegedly means the being who looks up (to the firmament).29 However, Rémi Brague clarifies this common ascription, and reveals that this word origin actually is based on a historical misunderstanding: “Medieval authors [...] defined man (anthropos) using a fantastic etymology, as ‘the one who looks up’ (ano-athrein). Plato gave this explanation in a way that was undoubtedly not entirely serious. But it is reiterated with no apparent irony by an entire series of authors [...]”,30 e.g. by Ovid. Even more daring, anthropomorphic analogies between the shape of human body parts and the then supposed structure of the cosmos, were popular, as for instance in Lactantius: “the erect posture that allows man to contemplate the sky is for him a reminder of his origin; his mind is lodged in the citadel of his head,

 27 28 29 30

Wiesing: Artifizielle Präsenz, p. 32; or: engl. trans.: Artificial Presence, p. 20. Williamson: Brief Psychological Interventions, p. 45. Alloa: “The Madness of Sight”, p. 41, or also Harries: “Sphere and Cross”, p. 151. Brague: The Wisdom of the World, p. 99.

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which is of a perfectly round shape to imitate the universe”.31 Less audacious and over-generalizing than postulating an interdependence of mind, body, and even the whole cosmos as in Lactantius, the current embodied mind thesis relatively modestly relates the mind to the human body, saying that the human mind is determined by the form of the human body, and that cognition and ideas are shaped by structures of the body.32

Fundus & Cosmos Furthermore, modern projection planetariums generally address a completely different system of vision than all other visual media. Just as in the real night sky, one never can see all the stars in a planetarium’s dome at once but inevitably has to wait for, at a minimum, seven minutes until the less bright stars, albeit already projected, become visible, because only then the time-course of dark adaption transgresses the so-called rod-cone-break,33 the retinal duplex receptor system’s transition point between detection via cone- and the more sensitive rod-photoreceptors.

What a Day for a Night-dream or the Night is (Not) for Sleeping: The Cosmo-Narco-Hypno-Nexus Formerly, in planetariums, by regulation, straight-backed chairs were used in order to prevent the visitor from sleeping.34 Yet, after planetarium designers realized that the constant neck-craning itself was indeed bodily fatiguing and all too inconvenient, a concrete re-regulatory practice, influencing the interior design was introduced: reclining chairs were installed in planetariums. One cannot avoid acknowledging the direct sleep-inducing effect of a planetarium’s artificial night by day, especially with the newer reclining chairs. The planetarium experience could also be described as an artificial daydream or simulated waking dream. Jim Dwyer reported on visitors’ impressions of the new New York

 31 32 33 34

Ibid., p. 100. Vallverdú: Thinking Machines. See Schwartz: Visual Perception, p. 37. Hagar: Planetarium: Window to the Universe, p. 154.

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Hayden Planetarium: “Leaning back in their semi-reclining chairs, the audience members...sat with their heads back, mouths half-open, a narcotic glaze in their eye ... the epicenter of dozing would have to be the Hayden Planetarium”.35 Here also the power of a deeply rooted “cultural prejudice against reclining”36 (in public) finds expression, as many visitors typically admit with a guilty conscience that they got tired during the planetarium show: “Ms. Thompson offered mitigating circumstances [...] ‘We had a late night last night’ [...] Jonathan Dempsey [...] explained the hypnotic quality. ‘You’re lying back and it starts to go black,’ he said”.37

Gradual Visual Expression: to Lend Visual Literacy a Hand Rune Pettersson summarizes that “visual thinking is experienced to the full when seeing, imagining, and drawing coalesce in active interplay”.38 In planetariums, where connecting lines between stars can be drawn with an electronic pen onto an interactive touch-screen and instantly become projected onto the dome firmament, vividly shown in Iain Softley’s movie K-Pax (Universal, 2001) located at the Hayden Planetarium New York, the ability also to express oneself by means of images can be practiced in real-time. This instructive technique allows a hands-on “gradual production of visual thinking while drawing”, quite analogous to Heinrich von Kleist’s concept of a Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking, furthering the mentioned trinity of visual literacies. The ability to plot the disegno interno,39 to “draw visibly” (like “thinking aloud”), to outline fuzzy, incomplete by nature inner images and hence to make them publicly visible can be described by continuing Kleist’s analogy, which says, “The French say ‘l’appétit vient en mangeant’* and this maxim is just as true if we parody it and say ‘l’idée vient en parlant’”.40 Extending the argument towards visual literacy one might say “l’imagination vient en dessinant”. The epistemic benefit of the mere process of bodily committing one’s images of thought to “paper” means more than only recording what was previously perceived, but rather produces effects of its own, and develops its own (internal) dynamics of emergence.

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Dwyer: “An Eye-Opening Show. Eye-Closing, Too”. Cranz: The Chair, p. 158. Dwyer: “An Eye-Opening Show. Eye-Closing, Too”. Pettersson: “Visual Literacy”, p. 6622. Arnheim: Visual Thinking, pp. 97–115. Kleist: “On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking (1805)”, p. 405.

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Alternative Asterisms The possibility of alternative imaginings of the “constellations” among the celestial bodies, other than the traditional, ancient ones, has been realized through history. As Dieter Blume explains, Gregory of Tours intended to redefine the starry sky in 580. He reinterpreted the constellation of Cygnus (swan) as a Christian cross. Besides, Gregory of Tours’ inherent skepticism about images did not lead to figuratively recognizable constellation-illustrations but rather to abstract, diagrammatic configurations.41 Moreover, according to Simon Schaffer, later in history, the Christianized Augsburg celestial charts, for instance were further examples of alternative imaginings of appearances in the skies. This Coelum stellatum christianum (Augsburg 1627), e.g. envisioned “constellations” such as Salomon’s Crown,42 and the Archangel Raphael.43 Furthermore, as Schaffer continues, Erhard Weigel, professor of mathematics in Jena, e.g. intended to replace the ancient, pagan constellations by the crests of every single European ruling dynasty in 1688,44 a tendency which Schaffer calls the “the politicized sky”.45 In the end all the transitory attempts of such Christian and/or political redefinitions of the constellations, substituting sacred ones for the ancient constellations, did not stand the test of time: as discussed, we still, or again, use the ancient constellations as a standard. Yet, in today’s planetarium performances, especially for children, beyond studying and envisioning the predefined traditional constellations (i.e. mental imagining as a form of knowledge production), the incentive to envision one’s own individual alternative “constellations” or asterisms is another goal of planetarium education. For example, at the Peter Harrison Planetarium at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (UK), children are encouraged to imagine selfinvented “constellations” (principally: visual re-groupings), say “the spider”, or a stick-figure, or the like: a training almost of productive imagination in Kant’s terms. Yet, according to Immanuel Kant even productive imagination is restricted to certain limits of the given world. As he elucidated: The imagination is not so creative as one would like to believe. We cannot think of any other form that would be suitable for a rational being than that of a human being. Thus the sculptor or painter always depicts a human being when he makes an angel or a god. Every

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Blume: “Sternbilder und Himmelswesen,” p. 74. Schaffer: “Himmlische Mächte,” p. 46. Ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 46.

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other figure seems to him include parts (such as wings, claws, or hooves) which, according to his idea, do not combine together with the structure of a rational being.46

Hence the imagination of constellations in one’s mind’s eye is a sort of “semifantasy”. That means that even the “free” and non-instructed or not explicitly primed imagination of, e.g., a “spider”, or a stick-figure, or any other nonconventionalized “private asterism” is still dependent on the fundamental standards of visual thinking, which always is condemned to refer to and follow a recombination of already seen structures to some degree. As John Barrow summarizes, “(m)any peculiar myths are simply mnemonics for identifying the arrangement of particular groups of stars. The constellations have names that were picked out by other ancient cultures, who attached their own images on them. Today, we would no doubt make different choices”.47 Thus constellations are appropriate examples for a concept of pictorial complexity in terms of irreducibility. And therefore, the irreducibility of images as a feature of their complexity which is not a property of single stimuli, but rather “a property of an imagined – or inferred – set of alternatives”48 can be more profoundly clarified by the examples of the seen/imagined embodiments of night sky constellations.

References Alain: Alain on Happiness, trans. by Robert D. and Jane E. Cottrell, introduction by Robert D. Cottrell [December 24, 1913], Chicago (Northwestern University Press) 1989. Alloa, Emmanuel: “The Madness of Sight”, in: Silke Horstkotte/Karin Leonhard (eds.): Seeing Perception, Newcastle (Cambridge Scholars Publishing) 2008. Anker, Suzanne and Flach, Sabine: Call for Papers for the Embodied Fantasies International Conference in New York City, October 28–30, 2011. (February 12, 2012). http://arthist.net/archive/1231 Anon: “Planetarium Technology: Shrinking of Apparent Star Diameters”. (May 28, 2009). http://www.zeiss.de/planetariums. Arnheim, Rudolf: Visual Thinking, London (Faber) 1970. Barrow, John D.: The Artful Universe Expanded, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 2005.

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Kant: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, p. 68. Barrow: The Artful Universe Expanded, p. 191. Kubovy: “Visual and Design Arts”, p. 191.

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Benjamin, Walter: The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. by John Osborne, London/New York (Verso) 2003. Blume, Dieter: “Sternbilder und Himmelswesen: Zum Bildgebrauch des Mittelalters”, in: Horst Bredekamp/Matthias Bruhn/Gabriele Werner (series eds.) and Franziska Brons (ed.): Imagination des Himmels. Bildwelten des Wissens 5, 2, Berlin (Akademie Verlag) 2007, pp. 73–85. Brague, Rémi: The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought, Chicago/London (University of Chicago Press) 2003. Cranz, Galen: The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design, New York (W. W. Norton & Co) 2000. Dondis, Donis A.: A Primer of Visual Literacy, Cambridge, MA (MIT Press) 1974. Dwyer, Jim: “An Eye-Opening Show. Eye-Closing, Too. NAPS O.K. But no snores were heard at this planetarium film”, in: The New York Times, February 19 (2010). (January 3, 2012). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/ nyregion/21about.html?_r=1&ref=hayden_planetarium Gilmore, Jonathan: “Pictorial Realism”, in: Michael Kelly (ed.): Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Volume 4, New York/Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1998, pp. 109–110. Griffiths, Alison: Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums, & the Immersive View, New York/Chichester, West Sussex (Columbia University Press) 2008. Harries, Karsten: “Sphere and Cross”, in: George Dodds/Robert Tavernor/ Joseph Rykwert (eds.): Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, London/Cambridge, MA (MIT Press) 2002, pp. 150–163. Hagar, Charles F.: Planetarium: Window to the Universe, Oberkochen, Germany (Carl Zeiss) 1980 and Geislingen/Steige, Germany (C. Maurer Verlag) 1980. Lynch, Michael and Edgerton, Samuel Y., Jr.: “Abstract Painting and Astronomical Image Processing”, in: Alfred I. Tauber (ed.): The Elusive Synthesis: Aesthetics and Science, Dordrecht, Boston (Kluwer Academic Publishers) 1997, pp. 103–124. Kant, Immanuel: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. by Victor Lyle Dowdell, Carbondale (Southern Illinois University Press) 1978. King, Henry C., with John R. Millburn: Geared to the Stars: The Evolution of Planetariums, Orreries, and Astronomical Clocks, Toronto, Buffalo (University of Toronto Press) 1978.

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Kleist, Heinrich von: “On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking (1805)”, in: id.: Selected writings, trans. by David Constantine (ed.), Indianapolis (Hackett Publishing) 2004. Kraupe, Thomas W.: “Denn was innen, das ist draußen”. Die Geschichte des modernen Planetariums, Caelum 2. ed. by Thomas W. Kraupe/Ehrenfried Kluckert, Hamburg (Caelum Publikation Planetarium Hamburg) 2005. Kubovy, Michael: “Visual and Design Arts”, in: A. E. Kazdin (ed.): Encyclopedia of Psychology, Volume 8, Washington D.C., New York/Oxford (American Psychological Association and Oxford University Press) 2000, pp. 188–193. Kubovy, Michael, Holcombe, A. O. and Wagemans, J.: “On the Lawfulness of Grouping by Proximity”, in: Cognitive Psychology, vol. 35 (1998), p. 71. Mach, Ernst: The Analysis of Sensations [1897], Facsimile of 1914 edition, Chippenham (Thoemmes Continuum) 1999. Messaris, Paul: “Film: Visual Literacy”, in: Michael Kelly (ed.): Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Volume 4, New York/Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1998, p. 189. Petersen, Carolyn Collins: “The Unique Role of the Planetarium/Science Centre in Science Communication”, in Ian Robson/Lars Lindberg Christensen (eds.): Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2005, Munich (ESA/Hubble, ESO, ESA, IAU) 2005. Pettersson, Rune: “Visual Literacy”, in: T. Husén/T. N. Postlethwaite (eds.): The International Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd ed., Volume 11, Oxford/New York (Pergamon/Elsevier) 1994. Pratt, Mary Louise: “Literary Cooperation and Implicature”, in: D. C. Freeman (ed.): Essays in Modern Stylistics, London/New York (Methuen) 1981, pp. 377–412. Rey, Hans Augusto: The Stars: A New Way to See Them, New York (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) [1952] 1997. Schaffer, Simon: “Himmlische Mächte”, in: Horst Bredekamp/Matthias Bruhn/Gabriele Werner (series eds.) and Franziska Brons (ed.): Imagination des Himmels. Bildwelten des Wissens 5, 2, Berlin (Akademie Verlag) 2007, pp. 40–49. Schwartz, S. H.: Visual Perception: A Clinical Orientation, 3rd ed., New York (McGraw-Hill Health Pub. Division) 2004. Sennett, Richard: Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City, London (Penguin) [1994] 2002. Sloterdijk, Peter: Sphären II, Makrosphärologie: Globen, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1999. Smith, Barry C.: “What We Know May Not Change Us”. (October 10, 2011). http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_11.html#smith

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Vallverdú, Jordi (ed.): Thinking Machines and the Philosophy of Computer Science: Concepts and Principles, Hershey (IGI Global) 2010. Wiesing, Lambert: Artifizielle Präsenz. Studien zur Philosophie des Bildes, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 2005. Wiesing, Lambert: Artificial Presence: Philosophical Studies in Image Theory, trans. by Nils F. Schott, Stanford (Stanford University Press) 2010. Williamson, Ann: Brief Psychological Interventions in Practice, Chichester (Wiley and Sons) 2008. Wollheim, Richard: Art and its Objects, 2nd ed., with Six Supplementary Essays, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1980. Yarrow, Andrew L.: “Holiday Stargazing at Hayden Planetarium”, in: The New York Times, November 27 (1987). (January 3, 2012). http://www.nytimes.com/ 1987/11/27/arts/holiday-stargazing-at-hayden-planetarium.html?pagewanted= all&src=pm

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Carl Zeiss AG, UNIVERSARIUM, Bochum Planetarium, Germany. Photo: Carl Zeiss AG. Fig. 2: Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Celestial Map of the Northern Sky, 1515. Woodcut, 16.75 x 16.75 inches (42.7 x 42.7 cm). H 8765 © Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Grafische Sammlung, Nürnberg. Photo: G. Janßen. Fig. 3: Carl Zeiss AG, Reduction of star diameters since 1923. Photo: Carl Zeiss AG. Fig. 4: Carl Zeiss AG, powerdome®SPACEGATE with SKYMASTER ZKP 4. Photo: Carl Zeiss AG.



The Necessity of All Scales: Planetary Design in the Age of Globality MITCHELL JOACHIM

Globalization has a final outcome; it’s not unending. Without recourse, humanity is headed into the age of globality, the final state of the globalization process. Globality is the endgame, an all-inclusive terrestrial status. In this fullyconnected world, populations will compete with everyone, everywhere, for everything at all times in all scales. Vast net-worked communication linkages will reverse developing world economies and cause developed nations to partially corrode if not yield. A conceivable state of planetary equilibrium ought to influence the major sectors of industry, commerce, resource management, infrastructure, technology, energy, and governance with profound transformations. What is design like in this saturated condition of globality? The American economist, Jeremy Rifkin infers that the modern age has been characterized by a “Promethean spirit”, a restless energy that preys on speed records and rapid solutions, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix.1 The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, contemporaneous people find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet. Humanity expects jet airliners to collapse the space of a continent in a matter of hours. We have partly lost our sense of scale, time, and distance. Scale also determines our profound connection to place. Yi Fu Tuan’s environmental conjecture conveys knowledge and love of place with descriptions, maps and itineraries enabling people to appreciate their location as do aborigines or animals.2 Such literature also enlivens the experience of everyday places with new facts and rhetorical devices that can recalibrate familiar environs to keep alive a sense of the undiscovered country of the nearby. These texts direct both official and intuitive knowledge toward “topophilia”, the love of place. The intention is to expand our sense of the land, not to confine it to one size. We are in need of terrain propinquity, not dislocation.

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Rifkin: The Age of Access. Tuan: Topophilia.

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Already the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima have demonstrated long reaching influences on world-wide environmental health and ultimately on global financial markets. Effects of scale become constantly transferred between the irreducible and the colossal. Small changes ramify into massive results and vice versa. Globality operates in all scales simultaneously without privileging one form. Its very nature implies measureless shifts in size. Ideas of thinking inside strict categories of scale are defunct and counter-intuitive. Charles and Ray Eames provided the perfect case. Illustrated in the “Powers of Ten”, scale is conveniently defined in neat square-shaped frames.3 The point of their animation is to bridge the different perceptions of scale cohesively. Their concept is to empower individuals to visualize the ranges of observation melded as one. Unfortunately, a few viewers also interpret this to mean you actually should bracket places and things in specific scales. That’s a common oversight of their “Powers of Ten” message. Nothing happens in only one frame of space/time. Framing can help to study a phenomenon at a particular moment but things always stir. Moreover, artificially binding a place to a numerical scale is to some extent random and arbitrary. What law declares measures must be in units divisible by ten? In his lectures, Jamer Hunt points this out nicely by making a reference to the film “This Is Spinal Tap”. One scene in particular shows the actor, Christopher Haden-Guest referring to his guitar amplification equipment with a volume knob that goes to eleven. Within the central idea of this farcical narrative, scale is portrayed as being truly capricious. Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau intended an emphasis on scale in the book, S,M,L,XL, yet also alluded to the in-between thresholds and differentiation of projects.4 A false read of S,M,L,XL is to suppose that the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s (OMA) works fit cleanly into categories measurable by an orderly unit. What exactly is designated a “small” project: a door hinge detail, an elevator, a wooden deck addition? More notably, what “small” project does not have significant impacts on an extra-large scale? Everything has consequent ramifications. Rem and group of course are fully aware, but may have failed to communicate its grandiose message in the title. Similar to Powers of Ten, it underscores an explicit simplification in degrees of change. Urbanism cannot be compiled into tidy categories defined by size. Design needs to break out of the emblematic question of size, especially as it relates to one planet. One size does not fit all; rather all sizes fit one. Visualizing in one scale is markedly problematic. An analysis comparing the views of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Isaac Newton best demonstrates this assertion. Goethe pioneered a comprehensive lucid description of color

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Eames: Powers of Ten (film). Koolhaas and Mau: S,M,L,XL.

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within a perceptual human context.5 He ardently conveyed that colors were defined by an inseparable relationship called Zür Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors). One color cannot be reduced to a single element. It requires a setting of other colors and circumstances to be fully perceived as an observable phenomenon by humans. He proclaimed that to identify blue you need to, at some level, recognize red, orange, yellow, and the entire spectrum. Newton, in opposition, treated color analytically and saw each color as discrete wavelengths in an optical spectrum.6 Newton surmised it’s absolutely possible to observe one color disconnected from its domain. Every color has a particular frequency and can be defined as such. While both thinkers are correct, the problem design professionals have with scale is identical. Scale can be Newtonian and viewable at one frame of unitized reference. However, scale is best perceived holistically in relationship to other scales in order to understand its true phenomenon. Most archetypal designers tolerate a proclivity to divide concepts up into specific units. That is intended to help comprehend or visualize the problem better. However, this is inherently misguided. Design is a prescience that affects all disciplines and cannot be conceptualized as a bracketed or contained field. The condition of globality and scale asserts a restructuring of the design professions as we know them. This requires a new breed of designers who can speculate and produce at the nano-scale level up to feats of geo-engineering and beyond. These thinkers can be referred to as planetary designers. As a globalized meta-Pangea community, design is obliged to be pervasive. It simply cannot regulate itself to any one scale or project scope. If so, its relevance and instrumentality are greatly diminished. The principal operations of scale and systems that deploy it restrain and confuse the complicated reality of design problems. The more it’s used the more designers fail to envision the whole picture. Computer aided design is part of this dilemma, both a solution and a quandary. Most design software unwittingly forces designers into forms of measure. As soon as the file opens, designers are asked to define the units of measure, view ports, and scale. The same is not true when an individual picks up a pencil. Freedom to draw and therefore conceptualize without boundaries is practically inestimable. To paraphrase Frank Stella, “artists don’t think in units”. The processing capacities of computers distort the implications of measure. Software allows for seemingly limitless flexibility. Operators can shift from the smallest possible detail to the largest components. It’s possible to zoom endlessly outwards into entire regions. On one level, this is a tremendously effective visualization capacity. Consider the design of a rail spike and its connection to

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von Goethe: Theory of Colors. Newton: Opticks.

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the track; zoom onto the tracks themselves and further out to all the trains on those tracks and advance past Penn Station and finally out of the entire New York City metropolitan region. This is an acutely impressive tool. However the software does not make any distinctions about the conventions of physics and natural forces that govern each zoomed layer. In many cases the current limitations of memory also fail to provide all the essential detail within each consecutive zone. Furthermore, the material and chemical behavior of the objects and places are not described in relationship to each other beyond geometric location. Admittedly, the current trend is to restructure computation to account for these missing characteristics. Envision a computer program that fully simulates the ecosystem of the earth and all the associative quantum mechanics. It would be a Jorge Luis Borges map of the world in such vast specificity that it would correlate to the exact size of the world at 1:1.7 Additional scenarios of scale in relation to the planet are depicted in The End of Nature by Bill McKibben.8 He marshals the latest scientific evidence about the greenhouse effect, the depletion of the ozone layer and a harrowing array of other ecological ills, and unmistakably explains the frightening implications of the destruction cities have wrought on our planet. He questions ecological hysteria and reasonable scientific forecasts. Within either approach, The End of Nature has a philosophical position. McKibben declares confidently about the meaning of these changes, about the wretchedness of life where there is no escaping mankind. Although for centuries civilization has pillaged and polluted the earth, in the past those aggressions were relatively localized; now, with the globality shifts caused by greenhouse gases and ozone depletion, man and cities have altered the most elemental processes of life everywhere. Nature itself has been tainted, becoming the equivalent of a vast heated room. By turning nature into “an artifact” or by-product of economic development, society has lost something of profound importance: nature as a quasi-celestial source of ultimate meaning and value. It is this loss that McKibben refers to as an apocalyptic calamity. The ending of nature is something independent of, larger than, and uncontrolled by man. In this nihilistic world every measurable space has been touched by human interference. Here even the right of all life to breathe has been impacted. Multiple designers and planners have become concerned in recent years with revealing “truth windows” into nature to avoid its end. They highlight ecological processes in their designs so that the users of the environment may experience, comprehend, and appreciate the scales of those processes aesthetically. In practice, revelation of ecological process has meant everything from capturing storm water on the surface of the land before it drains away into sewers to

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Borges: A Universal History of Infamy. McKibben: The End of Nature.

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planting a row of trees in an urban plaza where a creek once existed. In addition, the ecological processes that are revealed may themselves be truly natural, in the sense that they could continue to subsist without the management of society, or they may be deeply artificial, engineered systems that need relentless supervision if they are to persist in an urbanized context. Ultimately, the intention is make the scales of ecology visual and thereby expose an alleged spectacle of beauty otherwise unseen. Our future in architecture recognizes that there is an immeasurable ecological quality that goes well beyond the borders of the building site. It’s clear that ecological principles comprise a web of interconnected concepts, and a breathing, healthy metabolism has to fit inside. Thus, architecture in the future or architecture even now must be understood without a solitary scale. It must be planetary, the extent of which contains the outer edges of the atmosphere all the way into the deep regions of inner space. The new sophisticated field of geo-engineering, for instance, exemplifies the lack of scale comprehension. In geo-engineering, exertion is made on the scope of an entire continent. Geo-engineers produce efforts equivalent to the Panama Canal as everyday feats. When looking at consequences and devices that can cause change at the regional level, we must look not at the region itself but the entire hemisphere, various megalopolises, as well as the smallest biological system. We must realize there is a kind of hubris, an unlimited bravery and power in conquering nature. Designing modifications at continental scale does infer accidents will be unmatchable. The issue of scale seems rampant in the discussion and polemics of ecological cities. Scale is a pervasive term in engineering, architecture, urban studies, and design. It serves as a constant and definitive point of reference to help elucidate a given project although not without fault. We have separated our professional disciplines, project scopes, and programmatic language in terms of size, a redundant supposition in the age of globality. How designers can play a significant role in this expansive territory and live up to our proleptic merit is worthy of understanding further. Designers’ responsibility is to re-tool the middle ground, the in-between, and the nexus points. In this case, infrastructure with applied innovative ecological directives becomes the penultimate goal, before completely reforming the world. Operations of infrastructure shape a broad range of circumstances. Infrastructure in all dimensions and extents is the actual frontier. Next to implemented technological, social, and ecological solutions from other disciplines, design innovations are rapidly being diminished if not surpassed by other competitive fields. We designers must take action and modify our stance on all scales and morphologies in order to have a positive effect on the global community. Our hypothesis is first and foremost based on one succinct predicate, the end of scale.

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Project Descriptions

Fig. 1: Urbaneering, Brooklyn NY, 2110.

Urbaneering Brooklyn 2110 Our primary assertion for Brooklyn 2110 is that all necessities are provided inside its accessible physical borders. We have designed an intensified version of Brooklyn that supplies all vital needs for its population. In this city, food, water, air, energy, waste, mobility, and shelter are radically restructured to support life in every form. The strategy includes the replacement of dilapidated structures with vertical agriculture and housing merged with infrastructure. Former streets become snaking arteries of livable spaces embedded with renewable energy sources, soft cushion-based vehicles for mobility, and productive green rooms. The plan uses the former street grid as the foundation for new networks. By reengineering the obsolete streets, we can install radically robust and ecologically active pathways. These operations are not just about a comprehensive model of tomorrow’s city, but an initial platform for discourse. We think the future will neces-

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sitate marvelous dwellings coupled with a massive cyclical resource net. The future will eventually arrive; how we get there is dependent upon our planned preparation and egalitarian feedback. The center of this city is not historic cathedrals or office towers but its infrastructure. Our core belief is that cities in the future will make a spectacle of their infrastructural elements. These elements provide the basic necessities for life. Credits: Mitchell Joachim, Maria Aiolova, Melanie Fessel, Dan O’Connor, Celina Yee, Alpna Gupta, Sishir Varghese, Aaron Lim, Greg Mulholland, Derek Ziemer, Thilani Rajarathna, John Nelson, Natalie DeLuca.

Super Docking: Brooklyn Navy Yard, NY͒͒ On an industrial site in Brooklyn, New York, Super Docking imagines a selfsustaining working waterfront that is the center for clean industries that are incubators for new technologies. The designed landscape is adapted to climate dynamics, outfitted for a living infrastructure that seamlessly connects land and water. The project interfaces the historic dry-docks, which are retrofitted into five distinct research and production facilities: massive 3D digital prototyping/scanning, replicable test beds for studies in limnology and restorative ecology, freight delivery of raw materials and finished goods, automated shipbuilding, and phyto-remediation barges for Combined Sewer Overflow (COS) issues. The surface of the site mitigates architectural space and river flows. It supports programs to clean polluted water and sets the terrain for privileging pedestrian movement throughout the site. The project docks are highlighted by shapeable deployable structures and membranes. It is an industrial ecology landscape established to manage both man-made and natural systems, with reinforced land use needs. The current urgency to aggregate areas for innovation with social and economic diversity is in demand. Our project encourages research, both as an industrial activity and as an ecological intervention to promote new products and areas of exchange. ͒͒͒ Credits: Planetary ONE, Mitchell Joachim, Nurhan Gokturk, Maria Aiolova, David Maestres, Jason Vigneri Beane. ͒Design Team: Carlos Barrios, Alex Felson, Walter Meyer, Melanie Fessel, Zarifah Bacchus, Ivy Chan, Courtney Chin, Adrian De Silva, Julianne Geary, Francisco Gill, Shima Ghafouri, Jacqueline Hall, Florian Lorenz, Bart Mangold, Chema Perez, Alsira Raxhimi, Daniel Russoniello, Melody Song, Katherine Sullivan.

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Fig. 2: Super Docking, Brooklyn Navy Yard, NY.

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References Borges, Jorge Luis: “A Universal History of Infamy”, in: On Exactitude in Science, London (Penguin Books) 1975. Koolhaas, Rem, and Mau, Bruce: S,M,L,XL, New York (Monacelli Press) 1995. Hunt, Jamer: “Manifesto for Postindustrial Design,” in i-D Magazine, December 2005. McKibben, Bill: The End of Nature, (Anchor) 1999. Newton, Isaac: Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light-Based on the Fourth Edition London, 1730, Dover Publications, 2012. Eames, Ray & Charles: Powers of Ten, American documentary film, 1968. Rifkin, Jeremy: The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life is a Paid-For Experience, (Putnam Publishing Group) 2000. Sirkin, Hal; Hemerling, Jim, Bhattacharya, Arindam: Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything, (Business Plus) 2008. Thompson, J. Michael T. and Launder, Brian (Ed), Geo-Engineering Climate Change: Environmental Necessity or Pandora’s Box?, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 2010. Tuan, Yi-Fu: Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values, (Prentice-Hall) 1974. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: Theory of Colors, Boston (The MIT Press) 1970.

List of Illustrations Fig. 1: Urbaneering, Brooklyn NY, 2110. Mitchell Joachim, Maria Aiolova, Nurhan Gokturk, Melanie Fessel, Dan O’Connor, Celina Yee, Alpna Gupta, Sishir Varghese, Aaron Lim, Greg Mulholland, Derek Ziemer, Thilani Rajarathna, John Nelson, Natalie DeLuca Fig. 2: Super Docking, Brooklyn Navy Yard, NY. Mitchell Joachim, Nurhan Gokturk, Maria Aiolova, David Maestres, Jason Vigneri Beane. Design Team: Carlos Barrios, Alex Felson, Walter Meyer, Melanie Fessel, Zafirah Bacchus, Ivy Chan, Courtney Chin, Adrian De Silva, Julianne Geary, Francisco Gill, Shima Ghafouri, Jacqueline Hall, Kelly Kim, Florian Lorenz, Bart Mangold, Dustin Mattiza, Chema Perez, Alsira Raxhimi, Daniel Russoniello, Melody Song, Allison Shockley, Katherine Sullivan.

Staging Nature MATHIAS KESSLER BY SABINE FLACH

Anything that exists has a certain space around it; even an idea exists within a certain space. (Lawrence Weiner) It is the globe that is most absent in the era of globalization: bad luck: when we had a globe during the classical age of discoveries and empire, there was no globalization; and now that we have to absorb truly problems […] (Bruno Latour)

Fig. 1: Mathias Kessler: Island 03, Careyes, Mexico, 2003. Digital C-print.

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Mathias Kessler by Sabine Flach

Staging Nature, the title of Mathias Kessler’s talk, develops a second look at what we call ‘nature’, its history, concepts and fantasies. His interest in the concept of nature was prompted in 2004 by a string of natural disasters and the ongoing media focus on global warming.

Fig. 2: Mathias Kessler: Jarrells Cemetery, N37º53.96’ W81º34.71’. Eunice Mountain. West Virgina, 2012, inkjet print. Site-specific wallpaper (images stitched via Photoshop algorithm).

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Where previously the concept of nature had been within the realm of the philosophical, it ultimately fell under the purview of the empirical sciences. This shift seems to have suspended any update of our own responsibilities in living and dealing with nature. Only in recent history we have changed this paradigm, a discussion which is still an ongoing struggle. In 1968, there was yet another shift in imagery and technology. The Apollo Mission transmitted the first pictures back to earth with the blue planet floating in the universe.1

Here Mathias Kessler explains his different views and ideas about nature that underlie his interest.

Fig. 3: Mathias Kessler: Ilulissat H001, Greenland. 2007, Digital C-Print.

Staging Nature, his artwork and related research aims to provide a new reflection and examination of our western landscape ideals. Some of these concepts exist in our memory and they override our day-to-day perception. It seems this longing for the sublime landscape and the awesome horror of natural disasters has doubled in our reality and created man-made often ravaged places. Our interest is to understand how historical concepts and ideals of nature merge with our current use of environments and its misuse. In which ways do these kinds of cultural and economic understandings of ‘nature’ form new concepts? In what ways do reflections of a subject in an environment relate to human concerns about home or even homesickness?

Fig. 4: Mathias Kessler: Kanzelwand 01, Austria, 2009. Digital C-print.

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Description by the artist.

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Fig. 5: Mathias Kessler, Picher 08, Oklahoma, 2011. Digital C-print.

A sense of homelessness and a strange feeling of abandonment are the basic emotions evoked by Mathias Kessler’s artwork. This is remarkable because his pieces are actually precise reproductions of striking interventions, radical modifications and irreversible changes in the natural world. It is acutely this seemingly innocent camera gaze, which makes evident that Kessler’s work is not about objective representation, but rather committed documentation. The focus of his work is the cultural space and the interaction of the technicalinfrastructural penetration of it. The medial representations and the history of imaginary, fantasized and symbolic topographies become “stratified space”2, a subject of various practices and disciplines.

Fig. 6: Mathias Kessler, Landscape you say, Picher. Oklahoma. 2011. Video (color, sound), 10:55 min. Edition of 5. Shot on HD Video transferred onto a DVD in a loop. (Fredas Cook’s talk on the disappearance of the town of Picher).

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Foucault: “Andere Räume”.

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The artist focuses his work on relationships between nature, its processes, and social implications. He uses, for example, the periphery of rural areas and the surrounding urban environments to highlight repressed and marginalized details and panoramas. In doing so, he intertwines aspects of the natural and cultural, of poetry and politics. Within the area of unoccupied space, Kessler directs his attention to some of the rustic vegetation. The artist documents and interprets layered boundaries demarcated by civilization and botanical phenomena through different media – such as text, photos, and video.

Fig. 7: Mathias Kessler, name of the show. Installation view at ME Contemporary Copenhagen. Front: Nowhwere to Be Found, Coe 2010. Aquarium, Humans Skull, Corrals. Middle wall piece: Holiday in the Sun, 2009. Video: Bringing Light to the Mountain, 2009.

The spaces which are generated through this artistic practice are “non-places and places.”3 The approach also allows the artist to point significantly at the ethnology of the loneliness of the present time. He creates “non-places”, i.e. spaces that are no longer living environments. They are, in fact, anthropological remnants. They point to emerging areas that have become blighted. This staging of space, in Augé’s sense, is positioned in the tension between place and nonplace. These networks of moving elements create new spaces, but no new places.

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Augé: Orte und Nicht-Orte.

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Particular attention needs to be given to this development in Kessler’s work, since the self-perception of individuals in their unique and societal environments is his central preoccupation. The balance between individual and society is important in his work; the concept of space as the room or location in which the work takes place cannot be divorced from the narrative. This means that the space is initially reflexive in the design of the work, or (in a radical conclusion) the content is determined only by the context. Site-specific art, such as Kessler’s, works with the structural, spatial and contextual conditions of a place. The analyses and interpretations of the space bring the artistic works in close context with the philosophical writings of Foucault in his essay Of Other Spaces. If the artistic conception of the work does not always allow a close reference to Foucault, it is, however, intended, because the qualities of the concept of space and its different forms of perception for social development in the late 20th Century are significant. For Foucault, the great obsession of the 19th century was one of the stigmas of the analysis of late modern society, the diagnosis of spatial relationships based essentially on epoch. However, the current era would rather be the epoch of space. We are in the era of simultaneity: we are in the era of juxtaposition, the era of the near and far, of the juxtaposition of the dispersed. We are [...] in a moment when the world is less than a great experience in life developing through time, but rather as a network that ties its points and crosses his web. [...] We are in an era in which the space presents itself to us in the form of storage and relationships. Our own era, on the other hand, seems to be that of space. We are in the age of the simultaneous, of juxtaposition, the near and the far, the side by side and the scattered. A period in which, in my view, the world is putting itself to the test, not so much as a great way of life destined to grow in time but as a net that links points together and creates its own muddle.4

This diagnosis of the world as a duality makes spaces appear as hybrids. Spatial perceptions are highly differentiated, as previously analyzed by Foucault, when he writes: The space in which we live, from which we are drawn out of ourselves, just where the erosion of our lives, our time, our history takes place, this space that wears us down and consumes us, is in itself heterogeneous. In other words, we do not live in a sort of a vacuum, within which individuals and things can be located, or that may take on so many different fleeting colors, but in a set of relationships that define positions which cannot be equated or in any way superimposed.5

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Foucault: “Andere Räume”, p. 34. Foucault: “Andere Räume”, p. 38.

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Fig. 8: Mathias Kessler: After Nature, 2011, Geodesic doom 98.42 inches diameter (450 cm), computer, plant EEG, electrodes, PHP databank, planters, botanic experiment. Exhibition view at GL Holtegaard Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Fig. 9: Mathias Kessler: Animated Casper David Friedrich, Das Eismeer, 2012. 3D animation with Microsoft Kinect gesture recognition algorithm.

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References Augé, Marc: Orte und Nicht-Orte. Vorüberlegungen zu einer Ethnologie der Einsamkeit, Frankfurt am Main (Suhrkamp) 1994. Foucault, Michael: “Andere Räume” in: Barck, Karlheinz u.a. (ed.), Aisthesis. Wahrnehmung heute oder Perspektiven einer anderen Ästhetik, Leipzig (Reclam Leipzig) 1992, pp. 34–46.

List of Illustrations Fig. 1: Mathias Kessler: Island 03, Careyes, Mexico, 2003. Digital C-print. Fig. 2: Mathias Kessler: Jarrells Cemetery, N37º53.96’ W81º34.71’. Eunice Mountain. West Virgina, 2012, inkjet print. Site-specific wallpaper (images stitched via Photoshop algorithm). Fig. 3: Mathias Kessler: Ilulissat H001, Greenland. 2007, Digital C-Print. Fig. 4: Mathias Kessler: Kanzelwand 01, Austria, 2009. Digital C-print. Fig. 5: Mathias Kessler, Picher 08, Oklahoma, 2011. Digital C-print. Fig. 6: Mathias Kessler, Landscape you say, Picher. Oklahoma. 2011. Video (color, sound), 10:55 min. Edition of 5. Shot on HD Video transferred onto a DVD in a loop. (Fredas Cook’s talk on the disappearance of the town of Picher). Fig. 7: Mathias Kessler, name of the show. Installation view at ME Contemporary Copenhagen. Front: Nowhwere to Be Found, Coe 2010. Aquarium, Humans Skull, Corrals. Middle wall piece: Holiday in the Sun, 2009. Video: Bringing Light to the Mountain, 2009. Fig. 8: Mathias Kessler: After Nature, 2011, Geodesic doom 450 cm diameter (98.42 inches), computer, plant EEG, electrodes, PHP databank, planters, botanic experiment. Exhibition view at GL Holtegaard Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark. Fig. 9: Mathias Kessler: Animated Casper David Friedrich, Das Eismeer, 2012. 3D animation with Microsoft Kinect gesture recognition algorithm.

Fantasy in a Non-Given World? ALEX ARTEAGA

In this essay I try to redefine the distinction between reality and fantasy. The classical distinction between these two concepts was based on the idea of a world, whose existence is independent of its perception. This foundation was put into question on the one hand by the phenomenology and on the other hand by the so-called magic realism. In both fields the categorical differentiation between being and knowing is reconsidered in terms of dynamic relationships or even of identity. The same way John Cage did in his text “Credo. The future of music”1 I have composed this essay in two registers2. In the first one I let Paul Auster – or should I better say Daniel Quinn? – express the oscillation between reality and fantasy through a selection of excerpts from the first novel of his New York Trilogy. In the second register I – if we still believe in the possibility of singular authorship – formulate this oscillation firstly summing up the enactivist approach to perception, secondly introducing in this theoretical framework the concepts of containment and contingency as conceptual tools to understand this fluctuation and thirdly pointing to a possible reason and a potential function of the appearance of experience in turn as real or fantastic. I hope that the structure of this text creates –in the same way as it happens in the pieces of John Cage– conditions of understanding: through the interaction of elements that do not relate to each other in a constructed way but through their coexistence in an open field. *** Much later, when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance. But that was much later. In the beginning, there was simply the event and his consequences.3

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Cage: “The Future of Music: Credo”, pp. 3–6. The original presentation of this essay as lecture included a third register: a soundscape composed of field recordings of New York City that I realized in the weeks that preceded the conference “Embodied Fantasies” and which was played simultaneously to the lecture. Auster: “City of Glass”, p. 3.

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A certain circular concatenation of events and consequences, of actions and reactions suffices to show the fragility of reality. Reality loses its cogency, its fixed aspect, and instead appears as a network of processes in which we act, being ourselves one of these processes. It appears as a flow of possibilities that will or will not be actualized depending upon the dynamic interconnection between them. Reality shows up as its own process of realization. This quality of the experienced world reveals its own process of emergence. The appearance of the world as a preexistent scenario in which we act without being an agent of its constitution gives way to a relational experience: a experience of co-generation. The firm, given world reveals as appearance, as the conscious manifestation of intertwined processes with which we – being ourselves a process – navigate, enacting through our navigation a route, contributing to the co-origination of a sense, of the direction of the common movement. The world shows up as a relational experience, as a conscious manifestation of the viable interactions between an organism – which appears as an acting self – and its physical environment – which manifests as a meaningful world. Expressed in classical phenomenological terms: the giveness of the intentional objects is replaced by the perception of the process of intentionality. Expressed in enactivist terms: the presence of a meaningful and solid world gives way to the perception of the process of sense-making.4 In this experiential context, perception reveals itself as a creative act. The dissolution of the world as an external given fact to us makes it impossible to conceive perception as an inward apprehension of the world, as an internal reproduction. Instead, perception must be understood as one modality of action that, intertwined with all the other modalities of the organism’s and its environment’s actions, contributes to our successful navigation in the emergent world. If this kind of experience of reality is not considered abnormal or a deviation of the right experience of the real world but as one possibility among multiple modalities of experience and if perception is not the reproduction of an apparently given world but a condition of its arising as appearance, what can fantasy be? The detective is one who looks, who listens, who moves through this morass of objects and events in search of the thought, the idea that will pull all this things together and make sense of them. In effect, the writer and the detective are interchangeable. The reader sees the world

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For an extensive account of the theories in which these ideas are rooted see Varela, Francisco J. / Thompson, Evan / Rosch, Eleanor: The Embodied Mind: Cognitive science and human experience, Cambridge (The MIT Press) 1991, and Thompson, Evan: Mind in Life. Biology, Phenomenology and the Science of Mind, Cambridge (Harvard University Press) 2007.

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through the detective’s eyes, experiencing the proliferation of its details as if for the first time. He has become awake to the things around him, as if, because of the attentiveness he now brings to them, they may begin to carry a meaning other that the simple fact of their existence. Private eye. The term held a triple meaning for Quinn. Not only was it the letter “i,” standing for “investigator”, it was “I” in the upper case, the tiny life-bud buried in the body of the breathing self. At the same time was also the physical eye of the writer, the eye of the man who looks out from himself into the world and demands the world reveal itself to him.5

In the experience of the world as a dynamic field of possibilities, the real appears as one modality of presence among other no less possible modalities. In the manifestation of the world as real, some aspects of the actual experience cohere and form a steady configuration. The real, as the specific modality of presence called reality, is only a temporary stabilization of the phenomenal emergence of sense-making. The real emerges as such, facilitating action in the domain of the organism’s interactions through the enaction of objects with apparently stable forms that fit with its sensori-motor skills. The organism, objectified as “I” – as a subjective self – grasps the same cup again and again, talks with the same person again and again and walks everyday along the same street to go to the same shop to buy the same bread again and again. Everything seems to be there, out there, in a very stable and coherent way; everything seems to possess intrinsic features. And this appearance facilitates the practice of these actions in the same way that the repetitions of these actions contribute to the emergence of those stable patterns of perception. He had always imagined that the key to good detective work was a close observation of details. The more accurate the scrutiny, the more successful the results. The implication was that human behavior could be understood, that beneath the infinite facade of gestures, tics, and silences, there was finally a coherence, an order, a source of motivation.6 It all made perfect sense.7

Another modality of the current experience can be categorized as fantasy. The very same ongoing network of processes that allows for the emergence of the real, the consolidation of the experience as real, also affords the emergence of the fantastic. You mustn’t assume that Peter always tell the truth. On the other hand, it would be wrong to think he lies.8

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Auster: “City of Glass”, p. 8. Ibid., pp. 65–66. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., p 5.

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The difference between reality and fantasy is not an ontological one. On the one hand, the real cannot be considered as something, or as some-things, existing independently of the perceptual activity of the experiencing subject. First, because the subject, who could express this consideration, has no other form of access to the experience of these objects than through his or her experience. Second, because subject and the objects the subject experiences co-emerge in the very moment of their experience, in other words, because subjects and objects share a single but complex process of mutual specification or codependent arising. On the other hand, fantasy cannot be understood as a mere product of the mental activity of the subject, as an illusion just existing in the inner space of his or her imagination. First, because what is traditionally called “mental” cannot exist aside the embodiment of the subject and thus it is not possible to confine an entity in the realm of the pure mental. And second, because the embodiment of the experiential category called “subject” is a process, which depends on other processes that evolve in the field experienced as “non-subject” in virtue of their mutual structural coupling9. My proposal is to substitute the ontological and categorical duality between reality and fantasy through a continuous transformative circulation between different modalities of presence of a single current process of experience. Two shaping forces articulate this elliptical dynamic of transformation: containment and contingency. Night and day were no more than relative terms; they did not refer to an absolute condition. At any given moment, it was always both. The only reason we did not know it was because we could not be in two places at the same time.10

A container is defined by the difference between two spaces: one, which is contained, and another, the space outside of its boundaries. The function of a container is to hold together – con-tenere – a certain number of entities that because of the containing action by the boundaries become a unity: the content. Containment is the origin of objectification, that is, the generation of objects. The line, which defines a container by determining its boundaries, traces a circular trajectory. The containing line circles back onto itself in order to hold, to control, to posses. When the experience is primarily modulated by containment, the world appears as an ensemble of objects. Each of them contains a perfectly delimited group of elements and features that cohere, that exhibit cogency because they act together – cogency, co-agere: to act together. And therefore these elements and features constitute themselves as an unmistakable unity, as a unit that cannot be taken as if it would be another one. It is the action of taking that de-

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Concept introduced by Humberto Maturana in Maturana: “Biology of Cognition”, pp. 2–58. Auster: “City of Glass”, p. 125.

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fines the unit as object. A unit that beyond a doubt seems to be not another unit and never able to become another one except under the transformative influence of extrinsic forces. Then doubts came, as if on command, filling his head with mocking, sing-song voices. He had imagined the whole thing. [...] It was all an accident, a hoax he had perpetrated on himself. [...] Quinn’s mind dispersed. He arrived in a neverland of fragments, a place of wordless things and thingless words.11

However experience can also appear as a field of dynamic and interconnected possibilities. What happens then, doesn’t happen because of the opposition of entities contained in itself but due to the convergence of interdependent elements that act as conditions of the happening. This dynamic opens unexpected worlds by virtue of its own systemic contingency. The line of contingency – con-tingere: to touch – is an open line that separates entities from each other not to establish a categorical difference, that is, to generate discrete, self-contained unities, but rather to create conditions for the mutual contact of apparently differentiated spheres, to generate possibilities for their reciprocal touch. The demarcation line between the contingent entities is thin and porous. It is contoured just enough to generate the minimal difference necessary to generate an enriching dynamic, an open-ended process of transformation. The world that emerges by virtue of the shaping force of contingency appears as a subtle, fragile system of reciprocal conditioned entities in contact, performing interleaved transformations. Still clinging to a resemblance of objectivity [...]. He had to admit that nothing was sure: it could well have been meaningless. Perhaps he was looking for pictures in the clouds, as he had done as a small boy. [...] It was like drawing a picture in the air with your finger. The image vanished as you are making it. There is no result, no trace to mark what you have done.12

Subjective autonomy – one necessary condition of experience – requires the circulation between containment and contingency. These polarizing forces operate in the dynamics of life itself. Life, understood as the emergence of sense out of the interaction between autopoietic and heteropoietic units, evolves as a result of the coalescence of two dynamics. The first is the operational closure13 of the autopoietic units. Operational closure is defined as the recursivity of the processes contained by the semi-permeable membrane of living beings. The

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Ibid., p. 71. Ibid., p. 70. Concept introduced by Francisco Varela in Varela: Principles of Biological Autonomy.

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second is the structural coupling between both autopoietic and heteropoietic entities. The conformation of experience as a conglomeration of containers or as a systemic network of contingent possibilities, depends on its suitability for the dynamic coupling between the acting organism and the actions of its environment. By a simple trick of the intelligence, a deft little twist of naming, he felt incomparably lighter and freer. At the same time, he knew it was all an illusion. But there was a certain comfort in that. He had not really lost himself; he was merely pretending, and he could return to being Quinn when ever he wished.14

The relation I propose to establish between reality and fantasy is an expression of the fluctuating modulation of experience through containment and contingency. Reality is a modality of experience conformed primarily by containment and thus constituted by clear and contoured objects, which relate to each other through categorical differentiation. Fantasy is equally a modality of experience, which is mostly conformed by contingency and thus appears as an open field of reciprocal transforming possibilities. So, now the question is why does our experience appear as real or as fantasy? The answer can be found by examining the relationship between the operational closure of the organism and its structural coupling with its environment in the frame of the circulation between containment and contingency. If the subject cannot bodily engage with a world emerging as an open field of possibilities, or in other words, if the subject cannot successfully realize his or her coupling with the environment on a level of a sustained physical activity, the experience appears as being merely mental, as being a mere fantasy. And sooner than later an objective world with which the subject is able to interact on a bodily level, will arise, therefore with the appearance of being real. Thus the appearance of experience as real or fantastic depends on the level of successful bodily interaction with the world that simultaneously emerges from the interaction between an organism – experienced by itself as subject – and its environment – experienced by the subject as world. The action in a world arising from an experience as primary modulated by contingency – the action in a world appearing as fantastic – will last as long as the necessity of a bodily interaction imposes its objectifying regime. Anything is possible Mr. Auster. You should remember that.15

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Auster: “City of Glass”, p. 51. Ibid., p. 65.

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In their fluctuation as different modalities of the appearance of our experience, fantasy and reality are functionally intertwined. Our bodily interaction with the environment allows for the emergence of a viable world that shows what is actually possible as well as what should be possible. The world appearing as real presents two sides of the same coin: the satisfaction of the possible and the frustration and desire for the impossible. The act of breaking the objective containment, or of making permeable the containing lines, and the resulting primacy of the contingent, are an adaptive response to this desire. Fantasy emerges as an expanded field, as an extension of the domain of the subject’s interactions through the appearance of a way to realize a possible future, that is, through the appearance of a potential and contingent sense. And the most important of all: to remember who I am. To remember who I am supposed to be. I do not think this is a game. On the other hand, nothing is clear. For example: who are you? And if you think you know, why do you keep lying about it? I have no answer. All I can say is this: listen to me. My name is Paul Auster. That is not my real name.16

References Auster, Paul: “City of Glass”, in: Paul Auster, “The New York Trilogy”, New York (Penguin) 1990. Cage, John: “The Future of Music: Credo”, in: John Cage: Silence. London (Marion Boyars Publishers) 1937. Maturana, Humberto: “Biology of Cognition”, in: Humberto Maturana and Francisco J. Varela: Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Dordrecht, Boston (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) 1970. Varela, Francisco J.: Principles of Biological Autonomy, New York (Elsevier North Holland) 1979.

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Auster: “City of Glass”, p. 40.

Seeing Red MARGARETA HESSE BY SABINE FLACH

We invited the artist Margareta Hesse to join our conference based on her laserinstallations in site-specific, yet highly symbolic spaces.1 With this invitation we were mainly interested in hearing more about two topics: first, how does the interaction among the audience, artificial light sources, a given space and synthetically-created soundscape produce meaning? We are interested in her phenomenological approach to certain spacial experiences. As Maurice MerleauPonty puts it: it is the interaction of two spatial conditions, the outer and inner environments, that produces the inseparability of outer and inner images2. For the clarification of a type of visual thinking, the main question lies in the significance of the use of media, and the specific arrangement of the entire environment. How does this setting change the perception of the space? Secondly, we are absorbed by the unique atmospheric conditions that Margareta Hesse’s installations provoke. Our concern is to understand how the interaction of participants in these special conditions generate a full range of emotions: alertness, fear, wonder et al. Alertness is a salient topic of this artwork and we are interested in its occurrence and manifestation. Alertness is evoked by a certain habitus; it forces the participants into careful negotiations with spatial coordinates. It produces a certain interactive behavior, consider to embrace Abwaegen (ponder). Waegen (balance or weigh)3 and Abwaegen (ponder)4 implies bodily as well as mental conditions of the partici-

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4

Margareta Hesse’s interest in laser installations is relatively new. She has worked in this medium since 2008. Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology de la Perception. Bernhard Waldenfels discussed the whole semantic field of weighing and balancing by including it in the context of Deliberatio, Imponderabilien Unwaegbaeres. moereover he brings the close to thinking, as in the french terms pensare and penser. In addition to that he explains the relevance of weights as in pendere (which is reminiscent also of balance and movement) and pondus, which is equilibrium and gravity of expression. Bernhard Waldenfels: „Phaenomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit“, p. 10. See for the German, “Wägen und Abwägen,” Bernhard Waldenfelds: Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit and Flach and Soeffner: Emotionaler Habitus. The German Abwägen and Wägen implies the process of an act, the weighing of an object as such and a mental condition of a subject which ponders – abwägen – the advantages and disadvantages of a situation for a meaningful decision.

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pants. It is a kind of pending – between two or more options – to see what will happen. And this pending – as the experience of possibilities, of the “not yet, but maybe soon” – implies alertness.

Fig. 1: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise II, 2009, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany. Photo: Marco Wittkowski, Dortmund.

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Fig. 2: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise I, 2008, Art Pithead Herne, Germany. Photo: Marco Wittkowski, Dortmund.

In an everyday experience, spatial awareness is a given factor, caused by a moving and acting body through coordination in an environment, which is first of all perceivable. The ongoing interaction of a body and an environment is a subliminal process of conscious awareness – to which subjects pay no attention. The opposite happens in Hesses’s installations. Spatial awareness, bodily conditions and sensual experiences are the material as well as the subject of her work. Actual perception indeed goes beyond the recognition of familiar surroundings and develops a new field of perception, in which everything in the environment occurs in a new light.5 Hesse’s installations are interactive labyrinths where expectation is thwarted by actuality. Upon entering the dark wet corridors of an underground room, the viewer is confronted with red laser lights. These lasers appear as hot fires intercepting the viewers’ ability to be alert. The attention the visitors pay to the spatial conditions of the installation is first of all caused by the absolute darkness of the chosen interiors. It is only penetrated by the red laser beams, on the one hand. On the other hand, acoustic perception of the humming and sibilant buzzing that chiefly make up the soundscape, produc-

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Waldenfelds: Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit, p. 170, and Flach: “On lament”.

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es an effect which is intensified by the temperature, water and odor of each specific and unique location. These arrangements of space interact with the visitors’ feelings and invoke unease and a sense of insecurity. Moreover, the visitor feels at the same time, a curiosity that draws him or her closer to the peculiar, pencil-thin light, with the desire to explore the harsh laser beams, which seem almost like glaring objects.

Fig. 3: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise V, 2010, Historic Waterreservoir, Museum Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin.

Margareta Hesse’s work creates embodied situations in which a visitor’s presence and awareness are always constitutive parts. She creates ambiguous zones of perception in which a space is no longer connected to its geometrical coordinates but instead to its perceived conditions.

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Fig. 4: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise I, 2008, Art Pithead Herne, Germany. Photo: Marco Wittkowski, Dortmund.

Lichtschneise V is a laser-installation made at the Historischen Wasserreservoir of the Mathildenhöhe Museum, Darmstadt, Germany. The installation contains six laser-modules, six deflector mirrors, one hazer, two ventilators, one DVDPlayer and two loudspeakers. The measurements of the given space were 25 x 25 x 10m; the water level was 20 cm. In that dark space, with its odors and temperature in combination with red laser light, the artist creates a double ambiguity for her visitors: while her work is always an installation in situ – an actual place and architecture that is in fact there and perceivable – her installations withdraw from specific use and meaning and become atmospheres. These conditions and passages guide the viewer’s attention directly and augment his perception of this unique situation.

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Fig. 5: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise IV, 2010, Zitadelle Berlin, Germany. Photo: Claudia Brunhuber, Paris.

Fig. 6: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise V, 2010, Historic Waterreservoir, Museum Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin.

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Fig. 7: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise II, 2009, laser installation in a bomb shelter, Dortmund, Germany. Photo: Marco Wittkowski, Dortmund.

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It is exactly that swift transition that seems to be the main issue here: from a room or space one could measure to a spatial situation one has to perceive – and with that transformation the participants’ experiences are re-routed into emotional arenas.

Fig. 8: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise VI, 2011, laser installation between four glass vitrines, Kunstverein Linz a. Rh., Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin.

Space and spatial experiences are never given a priori but are individual, and subjective as well as a collective experience. If it is a given factor that space is a product of our perception and knowledge as well as a result of our motor, cognitive, sensorial and bodily actions. What happens when a given geography is altered by ephemeral lighting conditions? The precise preparation of her installations, the exact measurements of the lasers in regard to the architecture, the considered placement of the mirrors, the odors, sounds and temperatures inside, create and magnify felt sensations. It is the “felt sense”6 that plays a significant role, in which the viewers’ imagination and fantasies come into play.

 6

Ratcliff: Feelings of Being.

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Fig. 9: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise VI, 2011, laser installation between four glass vitrines, Kunstverein Linz a. Rh., Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin.

Fig. 10: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise V, 2010, Historic Water reservoir laser installation, Museum Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin.

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Hesse chooses a red laser light for her installations. She does that because of its raw charge of emotions and powerful associative potential. The red color of the laser is associated with heat, with a dangerous situation that could cause serious physical damage to the participants. In this situation all senses are involved in the perceiving process – not just the eye or eyesight – but much more a total bodily experience. The spatial and laser-light situation provokes serious attention in the participant. However, this awareness is not just a state of cognition but is also a physiological one. Attention instigates a stimulus to bodily reactions. The participants feel, for instance, the tension of their muscles and the change in their body temperature. They recognize they are whispering instead of talking and behave carefully in this uncertain environment. It is this intertwining between the special spatial arrangements and cognitive and physical reactions that create the essence of her installations. Those who experience them – to put it again in spatial terms – are placed at the threshold between a sensation and perception and the actual physical installation itself. In the Lichtschneise, visitors encounter the light directly, even physically. They substantially experience ephemeral substances – light, fog, sound, temperature. These are combined with the atmosphere of the architecture, with the synthetic laser soundscape, with the noises of water, the meandering reflections of the beams of light in the water, with the aromas, the cool air and the dampness that make her installation an experience of the senses. And this stimulates fantasy. The over-engagement of all their senses makes the participants on the one hand aware of the environment and their concentrated reactions. On the other hand, this engagement of their senses, which intensifies and dramatizes their perceptions produces fantasies, because it is exactly this alertness for unexpected sensory experiences that causes the fantasy of danger, or the expectation that something unknown will happen.

References Flach, Sabine: “On lament”, in: Sabine Flach; Daniel Margulies and Jan Söffner (eds.): Habitus in Habitat I – Emotion and Motion. Bern, Berlin, New York (Peter Lang) 2010. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Phenomenology de la Perception, Paris (Gallimard) 1945.

Seeing Red

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Ratcliff, Matthew: Feelings of Being. Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 2008. Waldenfelds, Bernhard: Phänomenologie der Aufmerksamkeit, Frankfurt/Main (Suhrkamp) 2004.

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise II, 2009, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany. Photo: Marco Wittkowski, Dortmund. Fig. 2: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise I, 2008, Art Pithead Herne, Germany. Photo: Marco Wittkowski, Dortmund. Fig.3: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise V, 2010, Historic Waterreservoir, Museum Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin. Fig. 4: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise I, 2008, Art Pithead Herne, Germany. Photo: Marco Wittkowski, Dortmund. Fig. 5: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise IV, 2010, Zitadelle Berlin, Germany. Photo: Claudia Brunhuber, Paris. Fig. 6: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise V, 2010, Historic Waterreservoir, Museum Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin. Fig. 7: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise II, 2009, laser installation in a bomb shelter, Dortmund, Germany. Photo: Marco Wittkowski, Dortmund. Fig. 8: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise VI, 2011, laser installation between four glass vitrines, Kunstverein Linz a. Rh., Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin. Fig. 9: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise VI, 2011, laser installation between four glass vitrines, Kunstverein Linz a. Rh., Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin. Fig. 10: Margareta Hesse, Lichtschneise V, 2010, Historic Water reservoir laser installation, Museum Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Germany. Photo: Margareta Hesse, Berlin.

5. Pose and Expose

Body-Calligraphies: Dance as an Embodied Fantasy of Writing ALEXANDER SCHWAN

1. Simulacrum of writing As he moves through space, a dancer leaves no trace. The shape of the dancing body, constantly changing its outer appearance, is in no way a significant mark that could easily or unmistakably be deciphered. Dancing, after all, is not writing. But what if it were? What, if dancing were writing? What if it were an écriture corporelle, an instantly vanishing inscription in space, not necessarily readable but evident in its writing-like structure and appearance – like the calligraphy of an unknown language? What if dancing were writing? Or more precisely: what if dancing were something that could be regarded as something that seems to be like writing? Aware of the doubly counterfactual nature of that analogy – regarding something as if it were something else pretending to be yet a third something else (which it apparently is not) – I am thinking of dance as a simulacrum of writing and asking: what are the main similarities between writing and dancing which allow me to compare them? Which aspects of a moving body on the stage support the dance-writing analogy?1 That analogy deals intrinsically with the question of embodied fantasy. For spectator and dancer create together the image of dance as a radically ornamental and therefore opaque figuration of moving letters and ephemeral lineaments, existing neither merely on the stage nor simply in the perception of the spectator, but rather in the complex interdependency that arises between them. Thus, in order to properly examine the highly complex interweaving of fantasy and embodiment in dance I ask: where exactly does the figuration of pré-écriturelike forms take place? How does the Gestalt of a spatial writing suddenly emerge in the perception of the spectator? And how does this impression vanish within the next moment, leaving a perceptual afterimage of bodily movement that then becomes part of an imaginative diagram of lines or a phantasmagoric spatial calligraphy?

 1

Schwan: “Dancing is like scribbling”, pp. 59–60.

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2. The Dance Sections I address these questions with regard to The Dance Sections, one of the early pieces by the Flemish performance and sculptural artist Jan Fabre created in 1987 as a production for the eighth Documenta 1987 in Kassel and dedicated to the exploration of the analogy between classical ballet and calligraphy.2 In The Dance Sections, as in his later productions The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1990) and Da un’altra faccia del tempo (1993) or Je suis sang (2009), Fabre works with movement patterns from classical ballet, which his dancers exercise synchronically over and over again. Between each move they hold their poses for a long time before attempting to execute the same movement accurately once more –and then again and again. Fabre combines the canonical movement-vocabulary of Classical Ballet with the non-canonical text of ballet exercise, especially the preparations. Thus, he reduces the movement-patterns of his choreography to basic positions and orientations of the balletic body, such as écarté, effacé, tendus, port de bras, rond de jambe à terre, etc. Nearly the whole choreographic system of The Dance Sections can be described as a juxtaposition of these different preparatory movements, traditionally regarded as secondary and subordinate to the principal, more complicated figures, poses and leaps of a ballet performance.3 The strangeness of this juxtaposition is emphasized by a remarkable slowness with which the dancers repeat their movements. The stage of The Dance Sections is studded all over with Fabre’s famous bic-blue dashes. These dashes, so many and so tiny that they appear as one gleaming and mesmerizing blue surface, are literally written with blue-coloured BIC pens and often used by Fabre to cover papers, canvases and even entire rooms and buildings. In the of course of The Dance Sections these bic-blue dashes cover not only the stage but also the costumes of the performers; they dance in bic-blue overalls and with bic blue ballet-shoes. Thus, on the background of a literally super-scribed stage and dressed in literally super-scribed clothes the dancers inscribe the space with their preparatory ballet movements and create an écriture corporelle by using their bodies as writing instruments.4

 2 3 4

For the choreography The Dance Sections in particular, cf. Fabre: Das Glas im Kopf wird vom Glas; Fabre, Le temps emprunté. Brandstetter: “Neue Formen der Repräsentation”, p. 47. Siegmund: “L’ascension de l’écriture”, pp. 71–74.

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Fig. 1: Jan Fabre, The Dance Sections, 1987. Photo: Flip Gils.

3. Dance as a spatial inscription Following in a long tradition of combining writing and dance – which includes Raoul Feuillet, Stéphane de Mallarmé and Paul Valery, among many others – I focus on the original meaning of the word choreography, deriving from the Greek words gráphein and chorós, which literary mean writing and dance or place for dancing, so that choreography – or choré-graphie – refers to dancing as an ephemeral spatial scripture.5 The Greek word gráphein is of particular importance to my reading of The Dance Sections: I interpret the piece through a phenomenological lens, through which I see dance as a spatial, non-codified and radically ornamental from of writing, since the Greek word gráphein does not merely translate to writing, but also includes within its range of meanings scratching, carving, cutting.

 5

Brandstetter: “graph”, pp. 28–29.

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All these writing activities are in fact a kind of sectioning process, one which literally divides the clay or stone in which the scripture is written by establishing a difference between the carved mark and its non-carved surrounding space. And writing as carving and cutting is exactly what the dancers in The Dance Sections do: their dance sections the space on stage. With their slow and sharp ballet movements they cut and scarify the air, carving the space by opening their arms like scissors and by thrusting out their legs like razors or knives.6 And the dancers not only cut the space around them but interrupt the natural flow of movement as well. With the long moments of non-movement, in which they hold their poses, unwillingly and impalpably vibrating, they cut their dance into dance sections – as the title of the piece would have it. The poses they hold, systematized and codified in the vocabulary of classical ballet, appear as if they were graphemes, the distinct and smallest possible units of a writing system divided from each other by an inter-space in the layout. Jan Fabre enforces the impression of the body as a sharp writing instrument or weapon, and in accordance with the name he gives his dancers, warriors of beauty, in some parts of the performance his dancers are dressed in a kind of armour which brings to mind a lobster or bug – the latter of which is of course well-known in the art-universe of Jan Fabre. Secondly, the imagery of cutting – not necessarily as a destructive act, but rather as a deconstructive way of marking the material, of leaving a trace or scar – is reinforced by numerous pairs of scissors hanging from the ceiling and by pairs of scissors that the dancers wear as sticks in their hair buns. And thirdly, the female performer Els Deceukelier, standing on her platform at the rear wall of the stage during the whole performance, holds a pair of those scissors in her hands and uses them to comb her hair while artificial blood pours down her neck.

4. Écriture corporelle While all of these additional elements may enhance the perception of dancing as cutting and writing, my personal approach to the concept of écriture corporelle in the particular case of The Dance Sections goes a little bit further as I regard the movement of dance both as a process of writing and as the product of this process.7 Following this interweaving of process and product, Fabre’s dancers

 6 7

van den Dries: Corpus Jan Fabre, pp. 33–34. Barthes: Variations sur l’écriture, pp. 111–113.

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are exposed in a double sense: they expose themselves as moving bodies and they are exposed as the movement they fulfil. Or, put in the terminology of Jean-Luc Nancy and transferred from the realm of drawing and sketching to the realm of bodily movement, dancing can be seen as a forma formans converging with its own result as a forma formata.8 The figuration of the body – despite and because of the fact that it is visualized for only a very short moment before being transformed into another figuration – is indistinguishably intertwined with the process from which the figure emerges.9 Returning to the metaphor of dancing as cutting and writing: The lobsterlike movements in The Dance Sections split the space – that is the aspect of production – and in the same moment the dancers’ bodies fill the gap they synchronically cut – which is the aspect of product. Thus, the arms elevated to a port de bras en couronne wound the space and immediately refill it with the pose the dancer has just struck. Both the movement and the pose – and both the trace-like inscription and the letter-like figuration – are dancing seen as spatial writing and body-calligraphy. In The Dance Sections this graphical character of dance resembles the structure of the stage-background with its countless bic-blue dashes. These dashes do exactly what the bodies with their exactingly executed balletmovements do: they form a network of graphical marks, a text of pre-écriturelike forms, an ornament of lines and wrinkles. So both the dashes in their oscillating appearance, shining like the metal of the scissors, and the slow movements reflect on the origin of writing in the realm of uncoded graphism. They both form an opaque and untransparent text, whose marks, as in the case of ballet movements, may be attributed to a specific code, but are mostly in lack of any meaning or, more precisely, whose significance is only a potential one.10

 8 9

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Nancy: Le Plaisir au dessin, pp. 34–35. For a differentiation between forma and figura as well as for the history of the term figuration, cf. Auerbach: “Figura”. Concerning the term figura Auerbach emphasizes on the aspect of mobility and relates the term to the process of figuration, whereas forma refers to more stable aspects of visual phenomena. Repetition and interruption in particular – both highly important for the structure of The Dance Sections – are intrinsically related to potentiality, because they refer to either a past or an unknown, messianic future. Agamben: “Repetition and Stoppage”, p. 70.

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Fig. 2: Jan Fabre, The Dance Sections, 1987. Photo: Flip Gils.

5. Law of Dance But what are the rules of this spatial writing? Which law of dance has prescribed these movements or given the dancer the order to accurately exercise them? And how does it come about that this law is at once constituted, fulfilled and transgressed by the simple act of movement? These questions refer to the nomistic character of dance – with the term nomism deriving from the Greek word nomos for law – and deal with the structure of the choreography, its prescript and its rules of dancing and writing. It would be far too easy to identify that structure solely with the instruction Fabre had given his dancers in the process of rehearsing. The law of ballet that he actualizes and undermines is yet based on a long tradition of discipline over human bodies and the heteronomy of an ideal of beauty.11 Thus, Fabre does not only show the brutality of discipline and the inhumanity of order in classical ballet, but also the dependence of the law on obedience – and

 11

Legendre: La passion d’être un autre, pp. 97–100.

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on non-obedience and transgression. The result is not a reinforcement of the normativity of law, but a visualization of its unbreakable and highly complex connection to dance. According to Daniel Sibony, the situation, which propels the moving body towards the law is always that of a lack of structure or a manque de la loi.12 And that is exactly what The Dance Sections visualize: The dancers attempt to hold their poses accurately and try to move synchronically, repeating the same movement over and over again, like a peculiar exercise in bodily writing. But, over the course of these demanding repetitions, the movements unwillingly mutate, transgressing their own laws of synchronicity and exactness. Seen as this, the writing of the bodies is always a kind of de-writing and mis-writing of the pretext of choreography.13 The pure exactness does not exist, the perfect pose is just an ideal that can never be reached by human bodies because of their inconsistencies and individual structures of limbs and muscles. One dancer is always slower than the other, one will be faster, softer or more precise in his movement and no one can fully realize the prescribed movement. And they all fail in holding their poses: they start to tremble and shiver and move slightly. And by this, they unwillingly show that chaos and disobedience to the law always already have intruded into the realm of preciseness and exactitude.14

6. Mortification In The Dance Sections, like in the rest of his work, Fabre makes a strong use of the principle of mortification, appearing here in the slowness of the movements and the frozen character of the long-held ballet poses. His philosophy of dance, which regards complete immobility as the most important movement at all is parallel to thoughts of the influential dance theorist and choreographer Rudolf von Laban, for whom also the moment in which a movement is held is the perfect moment of that movement.15 Thus, the non-movement of the pause is not a

 12

13 14 15

I see my argument as related to Daniel Sibony’s understanding of the law as a kind of transcendental basis for any movement – in contrast to Pierre Legendre’s fundamental criticism of law in comparison to dance, which tends to be extremely problematic in its antinomistic prepositions and consequences. Sibony: Le corps et sa danse; Legendre: La passion d’être un autre; Schwan: “Tanz, Wahnsinn und Gesetz”. Brandstetter: “Notationen im Tanz”, p. 89. Gilpin, “Symmetry and Abandonment”, p. 171. Hrvatin: Jan Fabre, p. 87.

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contradiction to dance, but its mere densification. In the pause or pose, the dance folds back in itself, in order to release the concentrated movement by leaving the pose in the next moment. Because of the slowness of the movement and the immense use of interruptions in the Dance Sections, the moments in which the dancers really do move – lifting their arms, stepping in place, turning around, bowing and lifting again – these movements appear as if they were nothing else but a juxtaposition of very short poses. The fluxus of dance is interrupted by uncountable and nearly invisible pauses, or better: it is nothing more than a composition of short poses that the dancers slowly make their way through. Thus, The Dance Sections don’t emphasize the ephemerality of dance by speeding up movements and showing them as non-stable and always vanishing in the next moment; instead, they work the other way around, by slowing them to a standstill and by this come to the same result. The principle of death, which is the absolute non-movement, is therefore interwoven into the whole performance. There is not anything that is not yet affected by mortality. This aspect of mortification is highly important for the analogy between writing and dancing since writing is traditionally strongly related to death. In most cases the product of writing survives the process of writing with the consequence that the potential death of the author is always already part of the writing process. Fabre stresses this relationship between death and dance by using elements traditionally associated in the history of art with the vanitas motif such as naked female bodies or women combing their hair and looking in mirrors. Like his famous art-installations of thousands of dead bugs, the choreography with their long pauses and their radically pre-scribed and inevitably de-scribed movements deal with the instability of life and its destination in death and function as a kind of memento mori.16

7. The role of perception But where exactly does the figuration of pré-écriture-like forms in dance, either as traces or as shapes, take place? How does the impression of spatial writing suddenly emerge in the perception of the spectator? I will address these questions not solely in Jan Fabre’s The Dance Sections, but try to open up a more general discussion on a notion of dancing as spatial calligraphy.

 16

Laermans: “Death Foretold”, p. 121; de Brabandere, Jan Fabre, p. 22.

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First of all I’d like to underline the presupposition that perception itself is an act of bodily movement. We do not perceive the word outside our mind in a way of passive absorption, but rather are as perceiving bodies always already part of the world we are living in and moving through.17 All perception, and especially in the case of a dance piece, is highly corporeal, as it is structured by the sensual experience of being a body not only reacting to bodily action ahead of us, but also interacting with it kinesthetically. Thus, looking at a dance is far more than dancing with our eyes by focusing and defocusing; it is rather an experience involving one’s entire body and letting it sense the ongoing transformation of bodily forms in dance. Reading these forms as the figuration of a spatial writing deeply implies the imagination of the spectator who, in his wish to see the dance as writing, actively constructs inscription-like elements with the material of dance movements by mentally completing or diminishing their Gestalt, by subtracting or neglecting certain elements, while others are enforced or even added. Thus, the simulacrum of dance as writing is neither purely embodied by the dancers nor a mere solipsistic product of the fantasy of the spectator, but merely a co-creative work from both sides. It would be not be exaggerated to state that dance as writing does primarily exist in an inter-space between dancers and spectators or between the dancers themselves. But when this impression of an inscription-like Gestalt vanishes within the next moment, what happens then? Could it be that the perceptive afterimage of the Gestalt interacts with the following impressions? Traces of dance movements would then cross with the traces of other movements, forming spatial and fluid diagrams or simply curl in on themselves, as if making an imaginative extension of the dancing body. And the shape of letter-like marks, which our perception tends to see in the poses of the dancers would rapidly morph into other marks, extinguishing and overwriting one another as in a palimpsest. Whatever perceptive afterimage of the dance movements is left it will inevitably be transformed and become part of a phantasmagoric spatial calligraphy: dance as an embodied fantasy of writing.

 17

Noë: Action in Perception, pp. 72–73.

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References Agamben, Giorgio: “Repetition and Stoppage. Guy Debord’s Technique of Montage”, in: documenta GmbH (ed.): Documenta Documents 2, Kassel (Cantz) 1996, pp. 68–72. Auerbach, Erich: “Figura”, in: Archivum Romanicum, 22 (1938), pp. 436–489. Barthes, Roland: Variations sur l’écriture. Variationen über die Schrift. Französisch-Deutsch. Übers. von Hans-Horst Henschen, Mainz (Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung) 2006. de Brabandere, Adri: Jan Fabre. Kritisch Theater Lexicon, Brussels (Vlaams Theater Instituut) 1998. Brandstetter, Gabriele: “graph. Den Körper schreiben”, in: ballett international/ tanz aktuell (1999) 3, pp. 28–29. Brandstetter, Gabriele: “Notationen im Tanz. Dance Scripts und Übertragung von Bewegung”. In: Gabriele Brandstetter/Franck Hoffmann/Kirsten Maar (ed.): Notationen und choreographisches Denken, Freiburg in Breisgau/ Berlin/Wien (Rombach) 2010, pp. 87–108. Fabre, Jan: Das Glas im Kopf wird vom Glas. The Dance Sections, Gent (Imschoot, Uitgevers) 1990. Fabre, Jan: Le temps emprunté, Arles (Actes Sud) 2007. Gilpin, Heidi: “Symmetry and Abandonment”, in: Sigrid Bousset (ed.): Jan Fabre. Texts on his Theatre-Work, Brussels (Kaaitheater) 1993, pp. 163– 176. Hrvatin, Emil: Jan Fabre, La discipline du chaos, le chaos de la discipline, Paris (Editions Armand Colin) 1994. Laermans, Rudi: “Death Foretold and its Brief Hereafter. On the Limits of Representation in the Scenographic Work of Jan Fabre”, in: Sigrid Bousset (ed.): Jan Fabre. Texts on his Theatre-Work, Brussels (Kaaitheater) 1993, pp. 109–121. Legendre, Pierre: La passion d’être un autre. Étude pour la danse, Paris (Seuil) 1978. Nancy, Jean-Luc: Le Plaisir au dessin, Paris (Éditions Galilée) 2009, dt.: Die Lust an der Zeichnung, Wien (Passagen) 2011. Noë, Alva: Action in Perception, Cambridge, Massachusetts (MIT Press) 2006. Schwan, Alexander: “‘Dancing is like scribbling, you know’. Schriftbildlichkeit in Trisha Browns Choreographie ‘Locus’” in: Sprache und Literatur, 42 (2011) 107, pp. 58–70. Schwan, Alexander: “Tanz, Wahnsinn und Gesetz.” Eine kritische relecture von Pierre Legendre und Daniel Sibony, in: Johannes Birringer/Josephine Fen-

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ger (ed.): Tanz & WahnSinn. Dance & ChoreoMania, Jahrbuch Tanzforschung 21, Leipzig (Henschel) 2011, pp. 111–119. Sibony, Daniel: Le corps et sa danse, Paris (Seuil) 1995. Siegmund, Gerald: “L’ascension de l’écriture. Pas de danse, danse de l’écriture. A-libi, a-topie et ressemblances dans l’œuvre de Jan Fabre”, in: Littérature, 12 (1998) 112, pp. 71–74. van den Dries, Luk: Corpus Jan Fabre. Observations sur un processus de création, Paris (L’Arche) 2005.

List of Illustrations Fig. 1: Jan Fabre, The Dance Sections, 1987. Photo: Flip Gils. Fig. 2: Jan Fabre, The Dance Sections, 1987. Photo: Flip Gils.

The Grass is Always Greener: Self-Portraiture in the Age of Facebook SHELLEY RICE

Let us begin this discussion with an opposition, the two modalities of creative photography that defined the medium in the 1970s. On the one hand, we have Nan Goldin: the documentary photographer who began “performing” her slide show, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, in the night spots of the New York Downtown scene late in the decade. Nan’s startlingly intimate photographs of her friends – drug addicts, battered women, AIDS patients, punks and homosexuals, among others – updated Diane Arbus’ peep show into the lives of the down, desolate and desperate by proclaiming the personal involvement of their author. These exiles from the mores of Middle America were Goldin’s “constructed” family; her snapshots allowed her not to be a “supertourist”1 in other peoples’ realities, as Arbus was in the land of the little people and the transvestites, but to expose from inside the lives and loves, and the ties that bind, young people living on the margins of the urban landscape. There are many assumptions behind such a body of work, many attitudes that need to be “deconstructed” in order to understand the messages we receive from Goldin’s images. Over the years, Nan’s work has evolved as a narrative, with each of the photos functioning as a freeze frame in an ongoing film. Nan and her friends love and lose, live and die; they move, together and separately, though time and space, and the artist (as voyeur as well as participant) reacts to the changing surroundings and situations. Her involvement in these difficult, often tragic, scenarios is what holds us all in Goldin’s thrall. We know that she, like the battered women and addicts she depicts, cannot extricate herself from the web of doom within which she is caught, no matter how clearly she describes and analyzes her pain. The inevitability of this destiny is implied in every picture Nan takes; when she sends us “postcards from the edge” she allows us to feel the downward spiral, and thus to expand and generalize our own emotional experience of the human condition. The subjective, the invisible have all been made visible in this body of work. Through the magic of empathy (and the art world’s global distribution network), a private experience, once fixed by the camera, has moved into the public domain.

 1 Sontag: On Photography, p. 42.

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This “public domain” is a very important aspect of this discussion, since the relationship between public and private, between the external world and internal perception, is in fact what separates Nan Goldin’s work from Cindy Sherman’s. Nan is older than Cindy, and her embrace of the impassioned intimacy of humanistic straight photography marks her as someone coming out of photographic traditions begun in the late 19th century. The idea that a photograph can capture the subjective vision of the artist, can conflate human emotion with a visual image of the physical world, was first proposed by P.H. Emerson in the 1880s, and was for one hundred years the basic premise of Western art photography. That is, until the generation of Cindy Sherman, coming not from the photo field but from the art schools, began to redefine the way we look at – and relate to – pictures. For her and her postmodern compatriots, weaned on television and conceptual art, photographs did not embody the inner life of the artist – they shaped it. Sherman’s work begins not with the subjective responses of the artist/monad but with the shared cultural images, already in the public domain, that shape his/her sense of identity and the world. Her conflation of inner archetypes with outer media identifies the Self not with personal expression but with the collective icons that she, as a woman and an artist, appropriates as her own, and describes not within the time and space of her life experience but in “constructed” theatrical tableaux. Such an attitude toward pictures, which literally turned the entire photographic tradition on its ear, was shocking in the early 1980s, but its impact on both the art world and photography has been immense. But there is no clear evolutionary tale being told in this progression, no fairy tale about how the modernists were defeated by their avant-garde cousins. The relationship between documentary photography and directorial photography, the diverse ways in which the two describe identity and the self in photographic portraiture, weave a complex web of codependency. In order to see how these two opposing points of view on the medium have, in fact, merged to create contemporary photography, we need to cast our net wider than the borders of the United States, and move into the global image world to study the ways in which our new, international interconnectedness has affected the models women use to shape both their art and their life. Probably the most extraordinary example of the convergence of Goldin’s documentary style with Sherman’s postmodern ideas about constructed identity is a series of portraits by the Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra. Beginning in 1994 and continuing on an annual basis for a number of years, Dijkstra photographed Almerisa, a young Bosnian refugee in Holland. Having arrived in a strange country as a small child, neatly dressed in the clothing of her homeland, Almerisa’s passage through time shows a child growing into an adolescent, and finally a young woman. But this is a child of migration, one of many whose fortunes have been affected by war and whose personal growth becomes synon-

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ymous with adaptation to changing social, geographic and political circumstances. As she grows from a shy child in a plaid skirt to a self-assured teenager in jeans and tee shirt, she manifests not only biological growth but cultural assimilation, visible especially in the outfits that increasingly proclaim her identification with the dress, hair styles and body language of her Dutch peers. These are straight photographs, large-scale color portraits that embed Almerisa in specific times and spaces and connect Dijkstra to photographic traditions central to the medium’s history since the 1840s. But the meaning of the Bosnian Girl series places it squarely in Sherman’s postmodern corner: taking as her starting point the fact that all of us today forge our self-images within the context of expanding spatial parameters, Dijkstra shows us the process by which we construct and project our social identities in accordance with the visual cues found in our diverse and multiple local environments. This is art made in a global world, in other worlds, where local traditions and visual signs begin to give way to the international language of travel, tourism, the internet, migrations (whether forced or freely chosen), outsourcing and transnational corporations. All of us cross borders, breach boundaries, and know that when we do so we will be judged not by our intrinsic “character” but by our clothing, our body language and our hair style: those trivial markers that are the stuff of Chick Lit when we stay in the ‘hood with our childhood friends and observe the local customs. Globalization has changed all that. Not only do we now spend much of our lives in the presence of strangers who know little about our family background (and much less about our inner life), but we also need to provide these passersby with basic information about our origins –or at least the parts of our origins we want them to see. Identity becomes a fluid projection under these circumstances: a personal fiction “performed” in public and changed at will, so all need to know the ground rules of the masquerade. Participation in a global society, in other words, demands that we understand the relativity of fashion, in order to grasp and manipulate not only its aesthetic diversity but also its political and especially its symbolic implications. Visual clues no longer provide purely documentary information; specific choices of body language and hairstyle function as conceptual flags, signaling more general collective concerns. We are moving away from the humanistic idea that “character” is an internal state, essential to the monad and visible from the inside out. In today’s world, identity is selected by the individual, in response to outside signs and pressures, as a mode of communication. Visual choices can signify a whole range of social positions: class, ethnicity and gender, but also conformity, resistance, acquiescence, outreach and challenge. In short: on Facebook, in youth hostels, conference halls and international airports, we are all Cindy Shermans. This must change our way of looking at contemporary art: rather than simply an avant-garde style with market potential in a gallery, it does indeed reflect a

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new concept of identity construction that has currency among both artists and their audiences all over the world. Once again, a comparison of work by two photographic artists might help to clarify the relevance of this visual shift. Representing the older generation of American women, Mary Ellen Mark, in a series about runaway kids in Seattle or Indian prostitutes on Falkland Road, believes in the efficacy of “concerned photography”: its ability to bring back, from the far flung corners of the world if necessary, stories about those who suffer, who need the help of privileged people (like American viewers). Concerned photography is, above all, activist photography. Mary Ellen, the mobile eye, travels the globe and brings back postcards, describing the lives, geographic and social spaces, costumes and mundane activities of Others trapped in their local spaces and difficult lives. We stay home, and empathize (through magazines, or museum shows) with the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves. Working off of the “depth model” described by Fredric Jameson, the raison d’etre of her photographs is to present us with subjects, situations and emotions that resonate with, and communicate, a profound, and shared human condition. It should be noted that the “activist” in this equation is the photographer: she is the one who moves between worlds and transmits information, who functions as the “supertourist” Susan Sontag described. This idea of the roving photographer, so fundamental to the heyday of picture magazines like Life and Look, seems well nigh ridiculous by contemporary standards, when everybody is on the move all the time. The foil to Mary Ellen Mark in this comparison is Nikki S. Lee, the young Korean photographer who arrived in New York for graduate study during the 1990s and stayed. Nikki’s thesis project at New York University made her famous. A series of “snapshots” of the artist, dressed in the garb of various American subcultures, hanging out with Puerto Ricans and skateboarders, yuppies and exotic dancers, the elderly and the Middle Americans, they exhibited not only her photographic prowess but also her remarkable ability to blend in anywhere, with anyone. Whereas Mark uses her “outsider” status as a guarantee of objective reporting in the diverse situations within which she works, Nikki Lee makes art about being an outsider. Looking at the diverse subcultures of her adopted homeland, Lee coveted entry into their mysterious worlds. She realized that her understanding of collectivity in Asia –where social identity is defined by the group and not by the individual– would help her relate to various communities in the USA. “I take the snapshot format of the West, which represents individual memory and identity, and use it to describe the group identities I know from the East,” she told the author. Her version of multiculturalism is completely performative. Lee spends months studying the group she wishes to penetrate. She observes their rituals and codes, their shared body language and tastes; she shops for appropriate fashions, gains or loses weight, and learns requisite skills

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like pole- or swing dancing. By the time Nikki approaches her subjects and asks to be photographed among them, she has merged so completely with their style that even her Asian face does not mark her as a foreigner. Accepted by her new acquaintances even though she tells them she is an artist doing a project, Lee takes pictures that feign a completely credible intimacy. As an outsider, she knows that no one is foreign to her, and that we are all strangers in our strange land, which is far from homogenous. Whereas Mary Ellen Mark wants us to empathize with the humanity of everyone, Nikki Lee knows she can be anyone – by careful observation, and smart shopping. On a certain level, Nikki Lee’s work gives the lie to many of our assumptions: about intimacy and memory, about individuality and psychology, about the seamless relationship between internal states and external appearance. Surely the “Mother” of such critiques is the French artist Orlan, best known for the series of plastic surgery operations she underwent in the early 1990s, transforming her face into those of various saints and sitters from art history. These operations, however notorious, fit in with a more than 30-year career of performance art, photography, media and installation work examining the possibilities of what Lucy Lippard termed “transformation art”. Orlan’s physical mutation of her “real” face has always shocked Western audiences, who persist in seeing such an invasive action as damaging to the psychological health of the individual. The artist’s protestations to the contrary, her consistent assertions that her body is her canvas and has absolutely nothing to do with her psychology or internal life, seemed, until recently, like madness. But work like Nikki Lee’s gives credence to her minority reports. At the moment, Orlan is working with art about multiculturalism: she told me that ideally she would like to put skin cultures from four or five different races in a Petri dish, and “grow” it. The visual face of this project in galleries and museums has been a series of large-scale photographs in which the artist transforms her own face (through Photoshop this time) into a Hybrid of different races and cultural styles. Ethnographic pastiches are not new to the arts, of course: Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907 was followed by the significant photomontages by the Dadaist Hannah Hoch during the 1920s. Entitled Ethnographic Museum, this extraordinary series used the cut and paste method to merge racial and cultural characteristics of women, and thus to proclaim the fractured wholeness of us all. Hoch was a European bisexual, but in the postcolonial world of contemporary art it is often people of ethnic backgrounds who manipulate and proclaim the multiplicity of their identities. Claiming a voice in the art world dialogue that until now was only open to white men, they use both traditional and modern costumes and accessories to make statements about their past, their present and their possible futures.

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Fiona Foley of Australia, for instance, is an Aboriginal descendent of the Badjantal tribe; like Shigeyuki Kihara of Samoa, she uses her own body, and those of her friends, to reclaim the heritage lost during the years of colonialism by donning traditional dress and “re-enacting” racial roots. Kihara’s art makes reference to the ancient Samoan reverence for transgendered people, those Fa’a fafine who exist outside of binary notions of sexuality. Misunderstood by Westerners, this openness is highlighted when “he” (Kihara) morphs into a “she,” the odalisque exploited by colonialist photographers visually eroticizing natives for viewers back home.

Fig. 1: Shigiyuki Kihara, ‘Fa’a fafine; in a manner of a woman’ triptych 1/3, 2005, C print, 23.6 x 31.5 inches (60 x 80 cm). Courtesy of Sean Coyle and Shigeyuki Kihara Studio.

Others like Tracey Rose of South Africa use their self-portraits to challenge the injustices of their colonial histories. Dressed up like Saartje Bartmann, the South African woman caged and toured throughout Europe during the early 1800s as a “freak” of nature because of her copious physique, Rose defiantly claims this African Venus’ shame and sexuality as her own. The Brazilian artist Janaina Tschनpe makes photographs and videos that amplify the mythology of Iemanja, the Goddess of the Sea, and explore her capacity to embody the ancestral concept of feminine power. During the 1990s, Tschनpe worked within the favelas (the

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slums) of Brazil, helping women of poverty to reclaim their spiritual strength by choosing and then “performing” images of authority and fortitude.

Fig. 2: Janaina Tschäpe, Camaleoas 1 (Pool), 2002, R print, 34 x 50 inches (86.4 x 127 cm). Courtesy of Galerie Fortes Vilaça.

Fig. 3: Janaina Tschäpe, Camaleoas 2 (Forest), 2002, R print, 34 x 50 inches (86.4 x 127 cm). Courtesy of Galerie Fortes Vilaça.͒

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Along similar lines, the French-Tunisian artist JR pasted huge photographs, depicting the eyes of women living in the oldest slums of Rio de Janeiro, on the walls of homes built into the hillsides overlooking the city. Some of the sitters had relatives who’d been killed during recent drug wars in which the Brazilian Army and a powerful narco-mafia were implicated, and their collaboration with JR on these inescapable, powerful self-portraits was their way of affirming both their dignity and their existence. As JR said: “That favela (named Morro da Providencia) is in the center of town, but when you look at a map it is like it is not there. So the people were saying, ‘Hey, we are there, we are right there in front of you, and you pretend that we don’t exist.’ ... More and more, people are conscious of how the media portray them. They want to control their image.”2 Artwork involving masquerade is often seen as a uniquely female form of expression, but it is not –that is, in fact, only stereotypical thinking. The same tools, and postures are being used to great effect by men all over the world. This is especially true of those men who, for one reason or another, feel that they need to claim a place in the global dialogue dominated by white men. Probably the best known is the Japanese Morimura, whose series The Daughter of Art History is literally his attempt to put himself in the picture. Dressing up like sitters in famous works by Manet, Goya or even Cindy Sherman, his imitative photographs visualize the dilemma of artists who are left out of the dominant Western aesthetic tradition, uniquely because of their race and cultural background. Often cross-dressing to make his points, Morimura places himself in good company. Samuel Fosso from Cameroon, who grew up in an Africa heady with modernization, visually signals his participation in contemporaneity by donning the costume of a liberated American woman of the 1970s. Zhang Dali and Zhang Huan have both made photographic self-portraits, using their representations to comment on the relationship of the individual to the city (Dali) and to the family (Huan) in contemporary China. And the African-American Lyle Ashton Harris has made devastating self-portraits in which he conflates himself, through his dress and gestures, with Goddesses of both African-based religions and African-American culture (like Billie Holiday).

 2

Khatchadourian: “In the Picture: An Artist’s Global Experiment,” p. 58.

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Fig. 4: Lyle Ashton Harris, Billie #25, 2002, unique Polaroid, 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm). Courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery, New York.

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Cross-dressing is not simply a sexual transformation in today’s art world. One of the major themes of contemporary imagery is the way in which the new global situation makes demands on all of us that stretch not only our understanding of gender but also of political and religious allegiance. Lauren Greenfield and Sally Mann have both done substantial bodies of work about the “formation” of American girl culture in adolescence; but young artists faced with migrations, wars and social upheavals are working with different problems of acculturation. Rachel Papo, a young Israeli artist, has documented the visual manifestations of army culture –the boots, uniforms, guns, bars and body language– transforming young women serving in her country’s military. This version of cross-dressing plays with our stereotypic ideas of gender roles, but the young Papo’s matter of fact records of army life are a far cry from the horror expressed by the older artist Shirin Neshat in the 1980s. After the Iranian Revolution that left her permanently in exile from her homeland, Neshat created a series of black and white photographs of women in traditional Islamic dress, their bodies covered with calligraphy transcribing feminist Persian poetry, flanked incongruously by both guns and children. Another Iranian woman, Marjane Satrapi grew up in Tehran in the wake of the Revolution and was sent away to Europe by her parents as a young teenager. She has recently described the split value systems of young Muslims trying to adapt to life in the West in two graphic novels (recently made into a feature film) Persepolis 1 and 2. These contradictory yet coexisting value systems are, of course, at the root of our new global identities, and they shake up not only our notions of local space but also millennium-old ideas of local time and tradition. Mobility and international travel call into question everything we know, and build walls between the perceptual patterns of the generations. Children growing up in traditional families in the new skyscrapers of Taipei, for instance, like those depicted in the Taiwanese film YiYi, cannot abide by (or even understand) the Old World values of their revered grandparents. Living with the same schism between the international world of her experience and the traditional world of her upbringing, a Japanese artist like Mariko Mori works to create photographic tableaux, like the hilarious Tea Ceremony, which can merge the two. Standing on a street corner surrounded by businessmen rushing around in suits, she enacts the ageold role of the little woman who subserviently offers men a cup of tea. The incongruity of the temporal and social clash characteristic of the new globalization is also the subject of Annu P. Matthew’s art. Visualizing the “Flat World” of Thomas Friedman, which has deeply impacted the lives of those in her homeland, she makes portraits of people vacillating between their native dress and the modern business suits they are forced to wear if they want to survive and prosper in their outsourced Western jobs. Mobility, works like these seem to

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say, no longer requires a road trip. Some of us traverse borders, economic classes and cultures just by staying home. But others still crave the open road, and this essay will end by highlighting a few young lesbian artists who’ve made spatial mobility, especially across the USA, the subject of their works. Interestingly enough, two of the women mentioned here are rock stars, and the borders they cross are not only spatial but cultural: they move between mass popular culture and the elite precincts of the avant-garde art world. J. D. Samson, a member of the rock band Le Tigre, has done a whole series of photographs (with Cass Bird), entitled Lesbian Utopia. Published as a calendar in 2006 and shown simultaneously at Deitch Gallery in New York City, the series chronicles her travels in an RV with a group of women, and her various recreational stops at gay campgrounds across the country. Appropriating and embodying the masculine image of the mobility and freedom made famous by Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road in the 1950s, Samson also used the calendar format to transform herself into a postmodern, cross gendered pin-up. Her friend Wynne Greenwood, sometimes performing as Tracy and the Plastics, uses the road trip as a central metaphor in many of her art works. Traveling for her music career, playing concerts for audiences in strange places over extended periods, she has become highly sensitized to the differences between personal and impersonal encounters, in private and public spaces. Both the performance Room and the video Special Report (a hilarious faux news broadcast with a feminist flair, produced in collaboration with K8 Hardy) explore the implications of these aspects of contemporary experience. Works by these artists often help us to understand the old adage that “home is where the heart is” – but their new home is speeding along on the highway, and their hearts are reaching out to friends all over the globe. These young women, in other words, are a far cry from Nan Goldin’s sitters, trapped in their destinies and their lives. The road trip keeps moving the younger generation forward, expanding their horizons, allowing them to experience situations inconceivable to earlier generations of American women. We shall see – they will surely tell us – where all these global cross currents ultimately lead. *** This is an expansion/adaptation of an essay originally written for the catalog of the Role Models exhibition organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., in 2007–2008. Copyright 2011 by Shelley Rice.

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References Friedman, Thomas J: The World is Flat, New York (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux) 2005. Jameson, Fredric: “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, Durham, (Duke University Press) 1992. Khatchadourian, Raffi: “In the Picture: An Artist’s Global Experiment to Help People Be Seen,” The New Yorker, New York, November 28, 2011. JR quote and information about JR’s self-portrait project in Brazil. Lee, Nikki S., in conversation with Shelley Rice and her students at New York University, 2002. Lippard, Lucy: “Making Up”, The Pink Glass Swan, New York (The New Press) 1995. Orlan, in conversation with Shelley Rice, Paris 2004. Sontag, Susan: On Photography, New York (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux) 1977.

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Shigiyuki Kihara, ‘Fa’a fafine; in a manner of a woman’ triptych 1/3, 2005, C print, 23.6 x 31.5 inches (60 x 80 cm). Courtesy of Sean Coyle and Shigeyuki Kihara Studio. Fig. 2: Janaina Tschäpe, Camaleoas 1 (Pool), 2002, R print, 34 x 50 inches (86.4 x 127 cm). Courtesy of Galerie Fortes Vilaça. Fig. 3: Janaina Tschäpe, Camaleoas 2 (Forest), 2002, R print, 34 x 50 inches (86.4 x 127 cm). Courtesy of Galerie Fortes Vilaça.͒ Fig. 4: Lyle Ashton Harris, Billie #25, 2002, unique Polaroid, 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm). Courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery, New York.



Spiegelei LAURA TALER

Fig. 1: Laura Taler, SPIEGELEI, 2011 (detail); tables, mirrors, ball bearings, balloons, glass cloches, metal box, silver plates, magnifying lenses; 25 feet x 30 x 33 inches (7.62 m x 76.2 x 83.8 cm). Photo: Laura Taler.

The word Spiegelei is the German term for a fried egg served sunny side up, but literally it translates into English as mirror egg (Spiegel = mirror, Ei = egg). Another meaning of the word is the process of “mirroring”, which has deep roots in psychology and the neurosciences. With the recent discovery of mirror neurons, a subject’s sense of the external world can be related to issues of empathy, desire and even motor control. For me, Spiegelei alludes to the body’s ability to interpret and misinterpret the world around it. It suggests processes of (re)production, mimesis and examination that are central to my work, and it gestures towards a kind of absurdity and duality often found in Surrealist practices. Moreover, if you don’t under-

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stand the word you have to rely on an affective response to the physical aspects of the work – in other words, you have to trust your body’s reaction. It may not be insignificant that Spiegelei is a German word. I no longer speak German, but after Romanian, it was my second language, followed by Italian, Hebrew, English and French. I was born in Romania where I went to a German kindergarten, moved to Italy where I went to Hebrew school, and finally settled in Canada. By the age of nine I learned, or began to learn, six different languages. Often, I would mimic the movements, gestures and facial expressions of those around me to come to some kind of physical understanding of the situation. Even now, my body’s ability to respond to what is happening around me is what defines my practice. This is why I often use tango dance as a way to describe what is a complex, multi-sensory process. While I have found that most people understand tango as a practice that involves a leader and a follower, what they don’t realize is that tango is an improvised dance form where one partner proposes a movement and the other partner responds, allowing the first partner to respond in turn. The dance then is not about the leader pushing the follower around. It is a conversation in movement between two people where the affective resonance of each partner can get passed back and forth. When I describe my methodology as proposing something to the materials and allowing myself to follow them, I try to recognize that my creative process is like an improvised dance. The work then becomes a physical and material conversation, encouraging affective resonances to be exchanged. But affective registers that attract the body are difficult to classify within cognitive categories. And if affect is eventually processed, it sometimes changes into narration. In other words, a narrative can be formed once a logical, understandable sequence is achieved through the intellect, whereas affect manifests itself as dramatic intensity, something that is felt but not necessarily understood via intellectual recognition. It is for this reason, that affect cannot be narrated, mastered, or easily classified.1

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For a thorough articulation of affect and narrative in visual art, please see Ernst Van Alphen’s Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought, Chicago (University of Chicago Press) 2005.

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Fig. 2: Laura Taler, SPIEGELEI, 2011; tables, mirrors, ball bearings, balloons, glass cloches, metal box, silver plates, magnifying lenses; 25 feet x 30 x 33 inches (7.62 m x 76.2 x 83.8 cm). Photo: Laura Taler.

Butted up, one against the other, the tables in Spiegelei form an assemblage that stretches into the gallery. The little objects placed across these tables resemble organ-like structures and feel as if they are of the body, or of a new type of body forming. They feel sexual or (re)productive but are not gendered. While they are somehow related to a variety of bodily forms, such as eye, egg, seed, anus, testicle, breast, bellybutton, they are also unfamiliar. Not belonging to existing categories, they are somehow base, and their horizontal placement implies movement and pulse. Or as Bataille would say, they are “formless”.2

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For more on the interpretation of Georges Bataille’s formless (informe) in the context of works of art that could be described as unclassifiable, pulsating, base, and horizontal, see YveAlain Bois and Rosalind E. Krauss: Formless: A User’s Guide, New York (Zone Books) 1997, pp. 26–40. 

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Fig. 3: Laura Taler, SPIEGELEI, 2011 (detail); tables, mirrors, ball bearings, balloons, glass cloches, metal box, silver plates, magnifying lenses; 25 feet x 30 x 33 inches (7.62 m x 76.2 x 83.8 cm). Photo: Laura Taler.

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One night, after reading some of Louise Bourgeois’ writings, I lay in bed wondering what objects I might bring forth from my past. I am in a train compartment with my father, my sister and my mother. My father wears a little black fur coat, rabbit I think. It belongs to my mother and looks a little funny on him. We are at the border between Romania and Austria, the conductor slides open the door to our compartment and asks for our passports. Something is happening, I can’t describe it. Everybody is still and tight.

Of course there is no border between Romania and Austria: we were either at the border between Romania and Hungary or, more likely, between Hungary and Austria. But this is how I remember it. I find a short fur coat at the thrift store, it sits in the corner of my studio for over a year, but after the purchase of remnants of a staircase banister, and a number of coincidences, something quickly takes shape.

Fig. 4: Laura Taler, s(he), 2011; fur coat, chair, banister legs, glass balls, balloons, ball bearings, 24 x 24 x 72 inches (60.9 x 60.9 x 182.8 cm). Photo: Jeremy Mimnagh.

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s(he) has lost a leg and should have toppled over a long time ago, yet there it stands, stable but precariously so, presenting a stance that, however fragile, is also authoritative, confident, haughty, and maybe a bit protective. It is also grossly exposed. One could say s(he) is not wearing any pants, revealing a droopy scrotum/uterus-like sack, round and reflective breast/ball-like orbs, and a double bellybutton that implies some kind of dual birth. From afar, these genital-looking objects combine to look like a face, while the nose on the head, inside the upturned collar, droops like a penis.

Fig. 5: Laura Taler, s(he), 2011 (detail); fur coat, chair, banister legs, glass balls, balloons, ball bearings, 24 x 24 x 72 inches (60.9 x 60.9 x 182.8 cm). Photo: Jeremy Mimnagh.

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This haphazard but attentive process where found objects are repurposed makes me think of how the affective resonance of something from the past can be absorbed and reshaped through its relationship to other things, and that by doing that, something new can be made of the past. Instead of being carried or discarded, the past can be used to propel a movement forward. I like to think that this movement can be both personal and political because it includes personal shifts but also attempts to shift the way we relate to our collective idea of previously established categories and classifications.

Fig. 6: Laura Taler, double/double, 2011; suitcases, double-sided mirror, 44 x 40 x 18 inches (111.7 x 101.6 x 45.7 cm). Photo: Jeremy Mimnagh.



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Two identical suitcases hold up a mirror that is reflective on both sides. In double/double a conundrum is proposed: it is clear that the surface separating the two suitcases is reflective, yet the repetition of suitcases destabilizes this certainty by obscuring the boundary between the reflective and the transparent. This doubling, of both real and reflected object, plays with our desire to see, to remember, and to think we know what we see from what we have remembered. In the end, the body may not always be trusted, but it is our first point of contact and these works are a reminder that we are, first and foremost, bodies.

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Laura Taler, SPIEGELEI, 2011 (detail); tables, mirrors, ball bearings, balloons, glass cloches, metal box, silver plates, magnifying lenses; 25 feet x 30 x 33 inches (7.62 m x 76.2 x 83.8 cm). Photo: Laura Taler. Fig. 2: Laura Taler, SPIEGELEI, 2011; tables, mirrors, ball bearings, balloons, glass cloches, metal box, silver plates, magnifying lenses; 25 feet x 30 x 33 inches (7.62 m x 76.2 x 83.8 cm). Photo: Laura Taler. Fig. 3: Laura Taler, SPIEGELEI, 2011 (detail); tables, mirrors, ball bearings, balloons, glass cloches, metal box, silver plates, magnifying lenses; 25 feet x 30 x 33 inches (7.62 m x 76.2 x 83.8 cm). Photo: Laura Taler. Fig. 4: Laura Taler, s(he), 2011; fur coat, chair, banister legs, glass balls, balloons, ball bearings, 24 x 24 x 72 inches (60.9 x 60.9 x 182.8 cm). Photo: Jeremy Mimnagh. Fig. 5: Laura Taler, s(he), 2011 (detail); fur coat, chair, banister legs, glass balls, balloons, ball bearings, 24 x 24 x 72 inches (60.9 x 60.9 x 182.8 cm). Photo: Jeremy Mimnagh. Fig. 6: Laura Taler, double/double, 2011; suitcases, double-sided mirror, 44 x 40 x 18 inches (111.7 x 101.6 x 45.7). Photo: Jeremy Mimnagh.

Twilight of the Artworld: From Representation to Ontology in the Work of Matthew Barney THYRZA NICHOLS GOODEVE

Fig. 1: Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 17, 2010, Production still. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

Oh to put questions here for once with a hammer, and perhaps, to hear as answer that wellknown hollow sound which indicates inflation of the bowels... This little work is a grand declaration of warfare: and as regards the auscultation of idols, it is no temporary idols, but eternal idols which are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork... Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or Philosophize with a Hammer1

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Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols, Preface.

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Thyrza Nichols Goodeve If resemblance haunts the work of art, it is because sensation refers only to its material: it is the precept or affect of the material itself, the smile of oil, the gesture of fired clay, the thrust of metal, the crouch of Romanesque stone. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?2 Of course, without the theory, one is unlikely to see it as art, and in order to see it as part of the artworld, one must have mastered a good deal of artistic theory as well as a considerable amount of the history of recent New York painting. It could not have been art fifty years ago. Arthur Danto, “The Artworld”, The Journal of Philosophy, 19643

What better idol than Arthur Danto’s artworld of 1964? (Matthew Barney would be born three years later). Art is what is constituted by the institutions and discourse of its times. So then, what is this?

Fig. 2: Matthew Barney, Casting Reservoir, 2010, Cast iron and graphite block, 8 1/4 x 370 x 248 inches (21 x 939.8 x 629.9 cm); 30,000 lbs (13,608 kg). Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

 2 3

Deleuze and Guattari: What is Philosophy?, p. 166. Danto: “The Artworld”, p. 581.

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And this?

Fig. 3: Matthew Barney, Canopic Chest, 2009–2011, Cast bronze, 73.5 x 165 x 243 inches (186.7 x 419.1 x 617.2 cm). Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

And this?

Fig. 4: Matthew Barney, DJED, 2009–2011, Cast iron and graphite block, 20.3 x 406 x 399 inches (50.2 x 1031.2 x 1013.5 cm); 13,750 lbs (6237 kg). Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

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And how do we account for them? We know they are art because they are in a gallery (the Gladstone Gallery on West 21st street, fall 2011) but how are we supposed to approach these sculptures? What is the sensation one gets from hovering about these massive, lead, iron, and bronze beings? What are their effects? When I saw them my senses were drawn to a primordial, earthly sense of time so grand and big as to be nothing more than a cosmic time suggesting deep extended geological temporality, even death. But, death that is a becoming not ending. Yes, I sensed that hard-to-comprehend Nietzschean eternal return tucked inside the cast bronze dirt of Canoptic Chest and DJED, as well as the complexity of George Bataille’s informe – something that refused to be formed like spit – stop motion oozing, and yet generative; a world where a dictionary “no longer gives meaning of words, but their tasks”.4 On top of Canopic Chest sits a polished crowbar. What is this? Is it surrealism, i.e., the embodiment of unconscious fantasies mixing the real with the fermentation of time in a manner that does leave one convulsing? (“Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be.” Andre Breton) Yes, but as I alluded to above it also carries the heavy fumes of ritual and excess of Bataille who, as a philosopher, was well known for criticizing Breton along with his movement. Many years ago, I drew on Donna Haraway’s notion of “cyborg surrealism” from Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™ to characterize Barney’s work, along with Moriko Mori’s.5 I never followed up on the concept. But I was onto something. Haraway’s often-trivialized notion of the cyborg is not a figure of representation but of ontology. In other words, her 1984 essay “A Manifesto for Cyborgs,” and subsequent work, is about changing notions of what it is to be human. The cyborg is a deep, philosophical concept, not a cheap platform for creating hybrid imagery. Barney’s work is sometimes judged by a certain school of art historians for whom art must be critical, or it must not be. His artwork is dismissed, envied, put down as the work of a blockbuster artist – a charlatan or showman.6 I find this fascinating and have long thought it was a misreading of art of the 90s by hard-core modernists who expected work to embody certain theoretical models (or fantasies), i.e., the good art object is self-enclosed and not dependent on outside explanations, narratives or research. This strikes me as missing a whole shift in the early to mid-90s when Barney’s appearance in the art world was contemporaneous with a range of artists whose work was based in research and complex narratives (Michael Joaquin Grey, Matthew Ritchie, Ellen Gallagher,

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Bataille: Visions of Excess, p. 31. Goodeve: “Mariko Mori’s Cyborg Surrealism” Keller and Ward: “Matthew Barney and the Paradox...”

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Eve Andrée Laramée, Ann Hamilton). None of these artists’ work can be reduced to a message or judgment. It is not that this art does not think – it does, but outside, or beyond, the Cartesian cogito. So in answer to my question “what is this and what do we do with it?” it functions as philosophy, while not being or becoming philosophy. In other words, I agree with Deleuze – while categories between science, art, and philosophy do always blur, borrow, and resonate one with the other – it is important to maintain distinctions between philosophy and art. Nonetheless, Barney’s work operates within the anti-Cartesian philosophies of Nietzsche, Bataille, Deleuze, and even Michael Foucault. In his preface to The Order of Things, Foucault writes, “Strangely enough, man [...] is probably no more than a kind of rift in the order of things [...],” followed by the sentence that got him into a lot of trouble in 1966: It is comforting, however, and a source of profound relief to think that man is only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, and that he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form.7

It is the discovery of this “new form” that Haraway’s theoretical work and Barney’s art is all about. For among many things, The Cremaster Cycle is a creation myth of our time, a time of Ovidian metamorphoses of “bodies and forms” (The Metamorphosis), where every boundary known to “man” has imploded, so much so that no one flinches anymore at our genetic proximity to primates and mice, nor that little tiny nanomachines are being built to enter our systems in order to help cure disease. Cats glow in order to find a cure for AIDS and computers win on Jeopardy. Who and what we are – and are becoming – is one long TEDTalk, ever pondering just how far we will take the planet and prosthetisize our bodies. Ancient Evenings, Barney’s current seven-part opera and collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, takes us into the afterlife of The Cremaster Cycle, specifically the underworld destination of the Chrysler Imperial (born in 1967 the same year as Barney). In the extended work, it is the car whose body is transvaluated, ritualized and embalmed. Inspired by Norman Mailer’s outrageous novel of the same name, it is set in Egyptian mythology where phalluses emerge out of stomachs and “there is a river of feces deep as a pit” that the dead must swim across. In the 00s, Barney did a performance in Manchester, England and in his Long Island studio called Guardian of the Veil. Wearing a live dog situated in a tiny throne on his head, Barney plucked the entrails of the Chrysler Imperial and placed them in the ritual canopic jars Egyptians use to put the entrails of dead

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Foucault: The Order of Things, p. xxiii.

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humans during the mummification process. In REN, a performance in a Los Angeles car dealership in 2008, the carcass of the Cremaster Chrysler was dragged along with heavy ropes and greased planks of wood in ancient ritual form by several brawny men as in an Egyptian funeral. As spectators looked on, it was then butchered like a piece of meat by a large metal hacking machine, enclosed inside a glass showroom. Back to the question: what is this and why is it not just about artworld judgments. In a nutshell, Barney’s work is not about representation but about Being and as such fits into the Deleuzean model of art as sensation and affect. It is also Nietzschean in its suggestion of a temporal loop of the eternal return. His work is not merely a living aesthetic system made up of parts, but like the crowbar on top of The Canopic Chest it ausculates, pries and breaks up whole notions of art, life and death.

Fig. 5: Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, KHU, 2010, Performance still. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

I guess the question I end with is, can one call Barney’s art the embodiment not just of fantasies (after all, what is not?) but also of ontology itself? For here aren’t we – the earth, the art object, this thing called human – all living things enacting, repeating and embodying what the writer Neville Wakefield put so simply in his essay, “The Wound, the Prayer Sheet and the Nail”:

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In ways more or less elaborate or brilliant, we are only ever preparing for death.8

Fig. 6: Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 17, 2010, Production still. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

Barney claims he will continue to make his willful Drawing Restraint pieces (he’s up to #17) until the day he dies. As he put it, “wheel chair and ramp!”

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Wakefield: Prayer Sheet with Wound and the Nail, p. 15.

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References Bataille, Georges: Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927–1939, Stoekl, Allan; Lovitt, Carl R. and Leslie, Donald M., Jr. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1985 Editions Gallimard, 1970. Danto, Arthur: “The Artworld,” The Journal of Philosophy, 1964. Deleuze, Giles & Guattari, Félix: What is Philosophy? Hugh Tomlinson & Graham Burchell, translators, New York (Columbia University Press) 1994 © Les Editions de Minuit, 1991. Foucault, Michael: The Order of Things, New York (Vintage Books) 1994. Goodeve, Thyrza Nichols: “Mariko Mori’s Cyborg Surrealism,” Parkett 54, 1998/99. Keller, Alexander and Ward, Frazer: “Matthew Barney and the Paradox of the Neo-Avant Garde Blockbuster,” Cinema Journal, 45 (2006) 2. http://www. jstor.org/stable/i371798 Nietzsche, Frederich: Twilight of the Idols, or Philosophize with a Hammer, “Love of Fate Series” Chapko, Bill (ed.) Common, Thomas (trans.) Kindle edition. Wakefield, Neville: Prayer Sheet with Wound and the Nail, catalogue for exhibition at Schlauger Basel, Basel (Schwabe Verlag Basel) 2010.

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 17, 2010, Production still. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Fig. 2: Matthew Barney, Casting Reservoir, 2010, Cast iron and graphite block, 8 1/4 x 370 x 248 inches (21 x 939.8 x 629.9 cm); 30,000 lbs (13,608 kg). Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Fig. 3: Matthew Barney, Canopic Chest, 2009–2011, Cast bronze, 73.5 x 165 x 243 inches (186.7 x 419.1 x 617.2 cm). Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Fig. 4: Matthew Barney, DJED, 2009–2011, Cast iron and graphite block, 20.3 x 406 x 399 inches (50.2 x 1031.2 x 1013.5 cm); 13,750 lbs (6237 kg). Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Fig. 5: Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, KHU, 2010, Performance still. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Fig. 6: Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 17, 2010, Production still. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels.

The Phantasmagoria of Everyday Life: The Visceral-Somatic Viewer of Hiroshi Sugimoto and Adolph Menze ELLEN ESROCK

We are phantasms and we are haunted by phantasms. We are phantom-like when we feel absorbed by paintings, books, theater, into something beyond ourselves through spiritual encounters and sensual experiences. To feel such absorption is to be where you cannot really be – to have corporeal boundaries that are permeable. Such hauntings are not pathological. They occur at the core of our biological being, in ordinary situations. They are even more ordinary than the psychopathologies of everyday life Freud identified: slips of the tongue, accidental gestures, forgotten and misremembered information, all which reflect, for Freud, the emergence of unconscious desires. My effort here is to bring to light the phantasms that appear in our experiences of visual art. Drawing upon the cognitive neurosciences for support at various junctures in the argument, I propose two categories of phantasmic experience, and I use these categories to anchor descriptions of nuanced, bodily experiences of viewing that would otherwise go unrecognized or deemed insignificant. The first is a simulation, a concept adapted from the cognitive sciences. The second, which is more phantasmic, I call a “transomatization”. Simulations occur when we watch others perform goal-directed motor activities, like kicking a soccer ball or reaching for a glass of wine. When observing, we activate in our own brain the same set of motor circuits that would be activated were we engaged in that activity. This mechanism operates also for the somatosensory experience of touch. When we see a person touching or being touched by another person or an object, the same brain structures are activated as if we were performing the action or being acted upon.1 We even respond to somatosensory information when we view inanimate objects touching one another, although the effect is more robust when a human being is involved.2 This mechanism occurs not only for perceived actions and for somatosensory experiences of touch but also for emotions we perceive in others.3

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Gallese: “The Roots of Empathy”, pp. 172–180. Ebisch, et al.: “The Sense of Touch”, pp. 1611–1623. Dimburg: “Facial Reactions”, pp. 643–647.

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Most important, we produce these same experiences when we see visual representations of these same kinds of actions, emotions, and somatosensory experiences, and all this happens continually and automatically, with liminal or no awareness.4

Fig. 1: Adolph Menzel, The Balcony Room, 1845. Oil on cardboard, 22.8 x 18.5 inches (58 x 47 cm). Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Photo: Joerg P. Anders / Art Resource.

To illustrate a simulation I turn to a painting by Adolph Menzel, The Balcony Room (1845). Menzel, born in Breslau in 1815, was a major German illustrator and painter who painted military and imperial subjects, as well as city life and domestic interiors. Although The Balcony Room shows no human being whose implied gestures the viewer might imitate, the viewer is sufficiently engaged with the representation that she simulates the sensory feel of its various nonhuman components. Intrigued and delighted, the viewer activates motor neurons

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Freedberg & Gallese: “Motion, Emotion and Empathy”, pp. 197–203.

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related to the hand, which would be involved in reaching towards the spirited curtain. Additionally, the viewer imaginatively experiences the texture and weight of the curtain material, as well as the thermal sensation of a light breeze on the skin, which activates the somatosensory areas of the brain. Whereas the simulation is explicitly imitative, the transomatization is nonimitative, or less imitative.5 With a transomatization the viewer uses some bodily part or process as a substitute – a non-mimetic replacement (trans-somatic) – for components of the visual world that one seeks to engage. Some components of the viewer’s body might substitute for a component of an artwork’s representational content: a) the weight of a painted rock, its formal features; b) color or line, its structural properties as a material artifact; c) the coldness of a bronze sculpture or the roughness of an unpainted canvas, or even the artist’s activity of creating the work; d) the movements of the artist’s brush or chisel. The transomatization is an operation of relabeling – or reattributing – a bodily experience. In effect, we latch on to something in our bodies as a substitute means of experiencing something about the visual artwork. The motives for these bodily substitutions differ, though they can be understood in terms of a desire to approach objects for real or imagined actions. According to neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp’s investigations in evolutionary biology6 (1998:198), these approaches might emerge from primitive emotions instigating play, exploratory behavior, or social attachment. From the framework of psychoanalysis, these same behaviors might suggest regression to a developmentally primary state of pleasure seeking.7 Through this substitute use of the body we become what Claude Lévi-Strauss8 terms “bricoleurs”: we create something – in this case, affective or cognitive experiences afforded by an art object – using material that we find at hand. And what is at hand for the viewer is the body. The transomatizations formed by the viewer might enlist various components of the body. One kind of transomatization involves a general awareness of

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Simulations and transomatizations should be understood as occupying polar ends of a spectrum, for there are varying types of resemblances, some more like conventional mirror images and others are like schematic images. Panksepp: Affective Neuroscience, p. 198. A fuller discussion of the transomatization exceeds the bounds of this paper, but the concept is taken up in (Esrock 2001, 2005) under the term “reinterpretation” and in (2010) without use of either term. A richer explanation of the concept would involve pointing out the close relationship between touch and vision that prefigures all activity, the limitations of physically or imaginatively acting on objects, the use of bodily awareness as a marker of external experience, and the usefulness of viscero/somatosensory substitutions in general for enactive theories of perception. Lévi-Strauss: The Savage Mind, pp. 16–36

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our internal milieu.9 When turned inward, we can have feelings of “pain, temperature, itch, sensual touch, muscular and visceral sensations, vasomotor activity, thirst, air, and ‘air hunger’”.10 In effect, it is these aspects of the internal milieu that we are aware of when we answer the question “How do you feel?”11 Such awareness is termed “interoception,” and it contrasts with “exteroception,” which is our awareness of events occurring outside the body. According to Antonio Damasio, our interocepted bodily state constitutes an emotional state that is always a background presence to consciousness, like a mood that colors our ordinary consciousness: “The background body sense is continuous, although one may hardly notice it, since it represents not a specific part of anything in the body but rather an overall state of most everything in it”.12 Return to Balcony Room and regard the mirror. It reveals a wellupholstered, striped couch and a nicely framed picture above. However, the specificity of the sofa reflected in the mirror is not echoed in the room itself, where, opposite the mirror, there appears to be the hint of a blurry, grayish brown sofa, and above that, another ambiguous form, an unpainted, rectangular patch on the wall. Scholars have commented on the tension between the refined and sketchily rendered areas of the painting and on the strange, animate presence that permeates the entire balcony room. Art historian Claude Keisch (1966), for example, writes: An almost empty room in which just a few everyday items of furniture distributed according to a very equivocal law of chance arrests our gaze, the only event a slight puff of wind, and light the only protagonist: rays of light coming through the curtain – exactly at the median axis – and shining on to the ground... The objects are depicted with varying degrees of precision. Oscillating between clear, palpable expression and the summary suggestion of a phantom-like half-presence... The meaning of the light patch on the bare wall in particular remains an enigma: a reflection of sunlight? Did the house-painter break off work there, or did Menzel himself leave his picture ‘unfinished’? Thus half of the picture exists without material substance: a signifier without a signified.13

The entire painting is filled with an uncertainty, for as viewers enter the space their gazes begin to circulate without finding an obvious place to rest. As noted, the only action is the gust of wind entering the window and filling out the curtains with a suggestion of animateness – a phantom presence that circulates about the room. Similarly, the white light flowing onto the floor from the door seems lively, moving, and animate in a way that the pieces of furniture are not.

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Solms and Turnbull: The Brain and the Inner World, p. 36. Cameron: “Interoception: The Inside Story”, p. 500. Craig: “How Do You Feel?”, p. 655. Damasio: Descartes’ Error, p. 152. Keisch and Riemann-Reyher: Adolph Menzel, pp. 187–188.

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I propose that we, as the viewers motivated to become more deeply involved with the painting, gaze affectively at the blur and feel, interoceptively, our own bodies. What the viewer sees and what the viewer feels interoceptively are “mingled”. As in ventriloquism, in which audiences experience sound emerging from an inanimate dummy that attracts their visual attention, the visually perceived painting becomes the displaced site of the viewer’s felt interoceptive experience. Through this kind of mingled looking, the viewer permits the strange diffuseness of this brackish sofa to be constituted of her own bodily feeling. Thus, the viewer’s body functions as a phantasm, leaving its corporeal site to inhabit the ambiguous sofa under a new guise. This is a transomatization.14 Breathing is a second bodily system that is highly amenable for transomatization. As a critical, life-sustaining biological system, breathing is semiotically rich and affectively powerful.15 The intake of air and its release into the world not only satisfies a primary biological need, but it also serves as a cultural means of transformation. For many cultures breathing has served as a vehicle for merging inner and outer realities. To the ancient Hebrews breath is associated with spirit and wind, to the Navajos it is associated with awareness, and to the Chinese it is linked to the concept of Chi, which is a spiritual breath/air force that circulates among all things. Within the tradition of Western psychotherapies, breathing is regarded as a conduit for emotion and consciousness. The viewer’s breath becomes especially significant with The Balcony Room because the painting thematizes air movement. Currents of air move around the room, endowing the gauzy curtain with a sense of life. My own breathing seems enmeshed in the breezy movements of the curtain, whose animation stems partly from the transomatization of my breath into represented curtain/wind. My breathing, however, functions not only as the substance of the breezy curtain, its texture, weight, and temperature, but more generally, as an energy that circles throughout the room, a more abstract concept. Breathing, transfigured, haunts the painting. While my eyes travel through Balcony Room on Menzel’s fluid, quick brushstrokes, I find that my breathing seems to carry my gaze from one point to another, like an aerial vehicle. My gazing itself seems airborne, propelled by my own breathing. The coordination of breathing and eye movement is especially close when the eye is racing up and down the curtain onto the floor with its stretch of sunlight. These eye movements are consistent with those art historian Michael Fried (2008) attributes to the embodied viewer of Balcony Room, who

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For an expanded analysis of the viewer in regard to Michael Fried’s Menzel’s Realism, see Esrock, 2010. Shiff: “Breath of Modernism”, pp. 185–214.

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lets his eyes repeatedly flicker up and down the curtain, “accelerating to the bottom of the canvas,” and spilling onto the floor.16 Our bodily transomatizations are even more phantasmic when we consider the temporal aspect of viewing. I find that if my body mingles with Balcony Room at one point, the effect of this transomatization can linger slightly, even when I am not looking at the particular section of the painting that I connected with previously. Indeed, when my interest shifts from the curtain and window to other parts of the canvas, either through a change in retinal focus or through a shift in attention, my breathing and eye movements sometimes continue to carry a slight memory of their former integration. In such cases, I feel as if my breathing is creating, or detecting, a gauzy curtain over the represented reality of chairs, mirror, sofa, and rug. In effect, memories of my transformed body are being infused into the ongoing experience of viewing, thickening the present with echoes of the uncanny recurrence of my own transformed body.

Fig. 2: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tyrrhenian Sea, Scilla, 1993, gelatin silver print, 47 x 58.75 inches (119.4 x 149.2 cm). Courtesy of The Pace Gallery, New York.

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Fried: Menzel’s Realism, p. 86.

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The concepts of simulation and transomatization are pertinent also to art works that are contemporary and more abstract than Menzel’s paintings. Here I turn to the “Seascape” photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto, born in Tokyo in 1948. Sugimoto photographed an extensive sequence of seascapes, over a long period of time, trying to render something primordial that has preexisted human beings.17 Upon entering an exhibition at the Pace Gallery in New York City (2010), I find a series of large rectangular photographs in tones of black and white. I approach a particular work to see what becomes visible. The photograph is titled Tyrrhenian Sea (1993). By moving close to the imposing photo, my gaze is kept within the boundaries of its frame, creating a sense of visual immersion in the seascape. I see, very faintly, suggestions of a horizon. In the other photographs the horizon varies – some very sharp, others less accessible, though with all, the horizon is in the center of the frame. Such a vantage point is unusual, for if a viewer were standing on land, the horizon would be lower and the sky more dominant. But these photographs do not have this natural perspective, and this creates a certain physical instability in my grounding, which is unfamiliar. These immersive and destabilizing elements contribute to a sense of being enveloped by misty vapors, surrounded by nothing but water and air without anything solid to hold onto – and no trace of human beings. Although a small strip of water in the foreground is discernible, it is faint and provides no strong anchor for viewing. There is a feeling of floating. If a viewer imagined herself to be floating in the water, this experience would be a simulation. However, this is not the direction I seem to take, for I find no ready mental images of this kind of floating. While ungrounded, I search for the area where the sky meets the ocean, as this is a possible marker amid the dimly contrasting elements. The horizon as such is not visible, though it is implied by subtle differences between sky and sea areas. Enveloped in barely differentiated air and water, I cannot penetrate deeper into the image. Transomatizations are at work with this unfamiliar diffusion. I propose that my interoceptive awareness of the body’s inner milieu stands in for the atmospheric quality of the water and air. In effect, the suffusion a viewer feels is constituted of a relabeled bodily awareness. This is a misattributed bodily experience.



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Adams: “Out of Sight, Out of Body: The Sugimoto/Demand Effect”; Bryson: “Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Metabolic Photography”.

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Fig. 3: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Marmar Sea, Silivli, 1991, gelatin silver print, 47 x 58.75 inches (119.4 x 149.2 cm). Courtesy of The Pace Gallery, New York.

Sugimoto’s seascapes also engage the viewer’s breathing. Although Marmar Sea (1991) is indistinct at the horizon line and suffused with mist, the sea in the foreground extends more deeply into the image, and its waves are more clearly defined than in the other seascapes. As with Tyrrhenian Sea, my interoception stands in for the diffuse aquatic environment that fills the image. However, with this photograph there is a clear linear movement to the water. As I stare at the water moving in bands across the photograph, my breathing in and out seems to coordinate with these waves. I can feel the sea waves, constituted in part by my breath, moving back and forth as lines within my own body. When this rhythmic breathing takes on the character of the waves in a transomatization, my breathing is sometimes felt to exist as part of the photograph and other times the represented waves are felt to exist inside of me, mapped onto my own breathing. Both of Sugimoto’s photographs are good candidates for describing the fragmentation process I introduced with Menzel’s work. As these photographs are meant to be viewed as a set, the gallery viewer would have numerous encounters with absorptive marine images. What is the cumulative effect of view-

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ing this series? Recall how, after a day on the ocean, one sometimes feels the movement of rhythmic waves while sleeping? Perhaps after leaving Sugimoto’s Seascapes, and here I am only conjecturing, a viewer might have momentary flashes of a rhythmic breathing and a recurrent bodily movement that gives the impression that they are more than ordinary breathing. What it is the viewer cannot say – it is as if the familiar body is haunted by something outside of it. This would be a partial transomatization, for the body would feel meaningful and affectively inflected, but what it originally signified – water, lightness, primeval substance – would be absent. Our nights as well as our days are rife with phantasms we create in ordinary and extraordinary moments of viewing. This is a time when the sister arts can join with the life sciences to illuminate our phantasmic interconnections with our world.

References Adams, Parveen: “Out of Sight, Out of Body: The Sugimoto/Demand Effect”, in: Grey Room, 22 (2005), pp. 87–104. Bredekamp, Horst: The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art, and Technology, Princeton (Markus Wiener) 1995. Bryson, Norman: “Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Metabolic Photography”, in: Parkett, 46 (1996), pp. 120–131. Cameron, Oliver G.: “Interoception: The Inside Story – A Model for Psychosomatic Processes”, in: Psychosomatic Medicine, 63 (2001), pp. 697–710. Craig, A. D.: “How Do You Feel? Interoception: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of the Body”, in: Nature Reviews Neuroscience, (2002), pp. 655– 666. Craig, A. D.: “Interoception: The Sense of the Physiological Condition of the Body”, in Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 13 (2003), pp. 500–505. Damasio, Antonio R.: Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, New York (G.P. Putnam) 1994. Dimberg, U.: “Facial Reactions to Facial Expressions”, in Psychophysiology, 19 (1982), pp. 643–647. Ebisch, Sjoerd J. H.; Perrucci, Mauro G.; Ferretti, Antonio; Del Gratta, Cosimo; Romani, Gian Luca, and Gallese, Vittorio: “The Sense of Touch: Embodied Simulation in a Visuotactile Mirroring Mechanism for Observed Animate or Inanimate Touch”, in: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20 (2008), pp. 1611–1623.

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Esrock, Ellen: “Touching Art: Intimacy, Embodiment, and the Somatosensory System”, in: Consciousness & Emotion, 2 (2001), pp. 233–253. Esrock, Ellen: “Embodying Art: The Spectator and the Inner Body”, in: Poetics Today, 31 (2010) 2, pp. 217–250. Freedberg, David and Gallese, Vittorio: “Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience”, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11 (2007), pp. 197–203. Fried, Michael: Menzel’s Realism: Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin, New Haven (Yale University Press) 2002. Gallese, Vittorio: “The Roots of Empathy: The Shared Manifold Hypothesis and the Neural Basis of Intersubjectivity”, in Psychopathology, 36 (2003), pp. 172–180. Keisch, Claude, and Riemann-Reyher, Marie Ursual, eds: Adolph Menzel 1815– 1905: Between Romanticism and Impressionism, New Haven (Yale University Press) 1966. Lévi-Strauss, Claude: The Savage Mind., trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman, Chicago (The University of Chicago Press) 1966. Panksepp, Jaak: Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, New York (Oxford University Press) 1998. Porges, Stephen W.: The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation, New York (W. W. Norton and Co.) 2011. Shiff, Richard: “Breath of Modernism (Metonymic Drift)”, in Visible Touch: Modernism and Masculinity, ed. Terry Smith, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 1997, pp.185–214. Solms, Mark, and Turnbull, Oliver: The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of Subjective Experience, New York (Other Press) 2002.

List of illustrations Fig. 1: Adolph Menzel, The Balcony Room, 1845. Oil on cardboard, 22.8 x 18.5 inches (58 x 47 cm). Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Photo: Joerg P. Anders / Art Resource. Fig. 2: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tyrrhenian Sea, Scilla, 1993, gelatin silver print, 47 x 58.75 inches (119.4 x 149.2 cm). Courtesy of The Pace Gallery, New York. Fig. 3: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Marmar Sea, Silivli, 1991, gelatin silver print, 47 x 58.75 inches (119.4 x 149.2 cm). Courtesy of The Pace Gallery, New York.



Contributors

Suzanne Anker is a visual artist and theorist working at the nexus of art and the biological sciences. Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally in museums and galleries including the Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian Institute, the Phillips Collection, P.S.1 Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Japan and the Mediznhistoriches Museum der Charite in Berlin. Her seminal text The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (co-authored with the late Dorothy Nelkin) was published in 2004 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. She is the Chair of the Fine Arts Department of School of Visual Arts in New York since 2005. Alex Arteaga Artist, head of the Auditory Architecture Research Unit and visiting professor in the Master’s program for Sound Studies (Berlin University of the Arts), and research fellow at the Collegium for Advanced Study of Picture Act and Embodiment (HumboldtUniversität zu Berlin). His research focuses on artistic practice as phenomenological practice and on the aesthetic production of knowledge in the framework of embodied theories. His recent publications and projects include: “Sensuous Framing. Grundzüge einer Strategie zur Konzeption und Verwircklichung von Rahmenbedingungen des Wahrnehmens” (Berlin 2011); Die Lebendigkeit des Bildes. Ansätze einer enaktivistischen Begründung, in: H. Bredekamp and J. M. Krois: Sehen und Handeln. (Berlin 2011); Das Primat des Prozesses. XX Fragmente über radikale Verkörperung und ihre Erschließung durch eine bildschaffende Strategie, in: U. Feist and M. Rath: Et in imagine ego. Facetten von Bildakt und Verkörperung (Berlin 2012); the sound installation “suburb.wasserspeicher” (Berlin 2010) and the video installation “emerging environments 4. arabiakeskus” (Helsinki 2012). Gabriele Brandstetter Professor, Freie Univesität Berlin. Research interests include history and aesthetics of dance from the 18th century until today, interdisciplinary cultural studies, especially in dance and theatre. Publications include ReMembering the Body. Eds. Gabriele Brandstetter and Hortensia Völckers. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2000; Bild-Sprung. TanzTheaterBewegung im Wechsel der Medien. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2005; Methoden der Tanzwissenschaft. Modellanalysen zu Pina Bauschs ‚Sacre du Printemps’ (2007); Tanz als Anthropologie. Ed. Gabriele Brandstetter and Christoph Wulf. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007.



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Contributors Mika Elo Postdoctoral researcher and director of Media Aesthetics Research Group, Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Department Media. His research and teaching focus cover fields ranging from visual arts and art theory to visual culture, theory of senses, media theory and philosophy. Recent publications (in English) include “Digital Finger: Beyond Phenomenological Figures of Touch,” Journal of Aestehtics and Culture vol 4. (2012); “Negotiating epistemic interests and aesthetic stakes,” Näyttämö ja tutkimus. The Yearbook of Finnish Theatre Research, Vol 4. (2012) and “Walter Benjamin On Photography: Towards Elemental Politics.” Transformations 15. (2007) Ellen Esrock Associate Professor of Literature at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Research interests include embodied cognition and affective experience of the verbal and visual arts, theory of photography, phenomenology of literature and art. She has published The Reader’s Eye: Visual Imaging as Reader Response (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1994) and translated Umberto Eco’s The Aesthetics of Chaosmos: The Poetics of James Joyce (Harvard U. Press, 1989). Currently, she is working on Touching Words and Images: Empathy and the Visceral Sensory Body. Sabine Flach Professor of Contemporary Art and Art Theory at the School of Visual Arts, Fine Arts Department, New York. Research interests include: epistemology and methodology of contemporary art; praxis and theory of contemporary art, and aisthesis and media of embodiment. Her recent publications include: Ed. with Sigrid Weigel, WissensKuenste. The Knowledge of the Arts and the Art of Knowledge, Weimar (2011), Habitus in Habitat III – Synaesthesia and Kinaesthesis, ed. with Jan Soeffner & Joerg Fingerhut, Bern & New York (2011), Ed. with Daniel Margulies & Jan Soeffner, Habitus in Habitat I – Emotion and Motion, Bern & New York (2010). Frank Gillette Artist. Faculty, Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts. A pioneer of early video art, his work is in numerous private and permanent public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art and Tate Modern, London. He holds fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Dare Foundations, as well as the American Academy in Rome. Boris Goesl PhD Candidate, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), Department of Media Studies and Art History. Research interests include: media, literature and psychology. Among others he has published the article “Die Welt als Bildpunkt: Pale Blue Dot. Voyagers Bild von der Erde (1990) als Visualisierung eines kosmologischen Maßstabskonzeptes,޵ in Maßlose Bilder. Visuelle Ästhetik der Transgression. Eds. Ingeborg Reichle & Steffen Siegel. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2009.

Contributors

269 Raul Gomez Valverde Artist. Faculty, School of Visual Arts, Fine Arts Department. Solo exhibitions include To look and to look, PhotoEspaña, Madrid (2010); 2010–2030, Ventana244, New York (2011); and Raul would like you to be critically happy, C Arte C, Madrid. Group screenings and exhibitions include: Art Museum of the Americas. Washington, DC, (2012), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Vigo, Vigo (2012), Anthology Film Archive, New York (2011); Instituto Cervantes, Milan (2009); Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid (2008); and Royal College of Art, London (2007). Recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, the Injuve Prize, and Fellow of the AIM program at the Bronx Museum of Art. gomezvalverde.com Thyrza Nichols Goodeve Writer. Faculty member at SVA since 1999 in Art History and Film, and the MFA programs in Art Writing and Criticism, Art Practice, and Computer Art. Research interests include modernism and modernity, contemporary art and radical ontologies in science, philosophy and art. Her most recent publications include “Bill Berkson: Fingers at the Tip of His Words,” Bill Berkson, 2012 (forthcoming); “The Artist’s Book, A Matter of Self Reflection,” catalogue essay for One of a Kind: An Exhibition of Unique Artist’s Books, Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Spring 2011, and ‘Words have “Wings that Fly from the Mouths of Others’: Performance in the Work of Lesley Dill,” I Heard a Voice, HunterMuseum, Chattanooga Tennessee, 2009/10. Selections of her writing can be found at spikemagazine.com Margareta Hesse Artist and professor at University of Applied Sciences of Dortmund, Germany, Design Department. Main interests: laser-installations and working with translucent materials. Most recent exhibitions include: Lichtphase, City Gallery of Brunsbüttel, Germany / Kunstverein Linz am Rhein, Germany, 2011; Lichtschneise, Museum Mathildenhöhe, Historisches Wasserreservoir, Darmstadt, Germany, 2010, and Lichtschneise, laser-installation, published by City Gallery of Brunsbüttel and Peerlings Gallery, Krefeld, Germany, 2011. Mitchell Joachim Architect. Associate Professor at New York University and The European Graduate School, Switzerland. He is a 2011 TED Senior Fellow and co-founder at Planetary ONE and Terreform ONE. Interests include socio-ecological and infrastructural strategies for urban environments, green design and sustainability. Joachim was featured in a cover story in Popular Science, “Environmental Visionaries: The Urban Remodeler,” and honored by Rolling Stone in “The 100 People Who Are Changing America.”



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Contributors Mathias Kessler Artist. His work explores western relationships with nature and the impact of art historical tropes on our perception of nature. Solo exhibitions include “Lost Paradise,” Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; “I’ll Survive,” Rosphot National Museum for Photography, St. Petersburg and “After Nature,” GL Holtegaard Museum, Copenhagen. Group exhibitions include “Hoehenrausch 2,” Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz; “Point of intersection Linz,” Art Museum Linz and “The Invention of Landscape,” Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City. Awarded the Staatsstipendium fuer Fotografie, Vienna. Esa Kirkkopelto is currently working at the Theatre Academy Helsinki as professor of artistic research and vice-rector. Born in 1965, he is a philosopher, artist-researcher, former theatre director, playwright and convenor of the “Other Spaces” live art collective. He is the leader of the “Doctoral Programme of Artistic Research,” Theatre Academy Helsinki, Academy of Fine Arts, Sibelius Academy, Aalto University, as well as “Asian Art and Performance Consortium” Theatre Academy Helsinki & Academy of Fine Arts. At the Theatre Academy, he has completed a research project “Actor’s Art in Modern Times” about the psychophysical training of actors. His PhD on philosophy was completed in 2002 at the University of Strasbourg and he is the author of Le théâtre de l’expérience. Contributions à la théorie de la scène (Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne) 2008. C.S. Meijns PhD Candidate, University College London, Department of Philosophy. The main focus of her current research is on the history of the philosophy of mind and psychology, in which she investigates changing conceptions of the relation between sensation and thought. She further specializes in early modern philosophy, metaphysics, and the philosophy of art and aesthetics, with a special interest in theories of imagination and the ontology of mind. C.S. Meijns has held teaching assistant positions at UCL and Utrecht University; she is the S.V. Keeling Research Assistant in Ancient Philosophy 2011–2012, and a member of the Center for Computing and Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Studies, University of London. In the past she has been a co-organizer of the London Aesthetics Forum, also at the Institute of Philosophy (2009–2011). Arthur I. Miller Emeritus Professor of history and philosophy of science at University College London. He is fascinated by the nature of creative thinking and, in particular, in creativity in art (on the one hand) and science (on the other). His latest book is Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung, W.W. Norton, 2009. The paperback version is 137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession, W.W. Norton, 2010. Among his other books are Empire of the Stars, Little Brown, 2005, and Einstein, Picasso, Basic Books, 2001.

Contributors

271 Shelley Rice Arts Professor at New York University. A critic and historian of photography and media arts since the early 1970s, she has published columns in The Village Voice, the Soho News and Artforum, and has contributed to magazines as diverse as Etudes Photographiques, Tate Papers, The New Republic and Aperture. Her books include Parisian Views and Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren and Cindy Sherman, both published by MIT Press. She has curated a number of exhibitions, like Deconstruction/Reconstruction at the New Museum (1980) and Inverted Odysseys at the Grey Art Gallery (which won the AICA Award for the Bests Photography Exhibition in the United States in 1999-2000). Grants and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hasselblad Research Grant, two Fulbright Senior Scholarships (in France and Turkey), grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C., and the PEN/Jerard Award for Non-Fiction Essay. In 2010 she was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and in 2012 she served as the Invited Blogger for the online magazine of the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. Gerhard Scharbert Dr. phil., M.A., lecturer for Kulturwissenschaft and Aesthetics at the Humboldt-Universität, Berlin. Former Member of the Centre for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) Berlin. Research fields include literature and science; language, literature and neurology/neuroscience and cultural bases of philology. Latest publications include Dichterwahn. Über die Pathologisierung von Modernität, München, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2010; Pantke, K.-H; Scharbert, G et al.: Das Locked-in Syndrom. Geschichte, Erscheinungsbild, Diagnose und Chancen der Rehabilitation, Frankfurt am Main, Mabuse Verlag, 2010 and “Freud and Evolution”, in: Hist. Phil. Life Sci., 31 (2009), pp. 295–312. Dawna Schuld Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN Ph.D. in Art History, The University of Chicago, 2009. Research focuses on contemporary art (1960– present), especially American art of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly minimal and installation art. Current work explores the role of the viewer as the “conscious medium” in California Light and Space art. Recent publications include “Practically Nothing: Light, Space, and the Pragmatics of Phenomenology”, in Robin Clark, editor. Phenomenal: California Light and Space. Berkeley: University of California Press; San Diego: Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, 2011, and “Lost in Space: Consciousness and Experiment in the Work of Irwin and Turrell”, in Matthew C. Hunter and Roman Frigg, editors. Beyond Mimesis and Convention: Representation in Art and Science. Amsterdam: Springer Verlag, 2010.



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Contributors Alexander Schwan Dance Scholar. DFG Research Training Group “Notational Iconicity,” Free University Berlin. Areas of interest include postmodern and contemporary dance, dance and religion, floriography. Recent publications include “Expression, Ekstase, Spiritualität: Paul Tillichs Theologie der Kunst und Mary Wigmans Absoluter Tanz” in Fischer, D. E. & Hecht, Th. (Hgg.): Tanz, Bewegung & Spiritualität, Jahrbuch Tanzforschung Bd. 19, Leipzig 2009. “Tanz, Wahnsinn und Gesetz: Eine kritische relecture von Pierre Legendre und Daniel Sibony” in Birringer, J. & Fenger, J. (Hg.): Tanz und WahnSinn/Dance and ChoreoMania, Jahrbuch Tanzforschung Bd. 21, Leipzig 2011, S. 111–119; ‘Dancing is like scribbling, you know’. Schriftbildlichkeit in Trisha Brown’s choreographie, “Locus” in Sprache und Literatur 44, S. 58–70. Laura Taler Interdisciplinary artist working across a range of media including dance, film, sound, sculpture, and installation. Recent exhibitions and broadcast include Spiegelei, 2011, Gallerie AxeNeo7, Quebec, CBC, Bravo!, TfO, ARTV (Canada), Channel 4 (U.K.), NPS (The Netherlands), ABC (Australia), IBA (Israel), and SVT (Sweden). Latest publications include: Kleist’s Puppet Theatre and the Art of Tango: Looking for the Backdoor to Paradise and “ici uniglory” in Tension/Spannung, Christoph F. E. Holzhey (ed), Turia + Kant, Vienna/Berlin, 2010.

Art / Knowledge / Theory Edited by Suzanne Anker and Sabine Flach Art / Knowledge / Theory is a book series that explores artistic modes of expression as forms of knowledge production. It focuses on transdisciplinary, epistemological and methodological approaches to contemporary art. Linking artistic and scienti¢ c practices, tools, techniques and theories, the volumes investigate the cultures of aesthetics and science studies as they relate to works of art. Art / Knowledge / Theory analyzes the role of art in contemporary culture by probing the philosophical, historical and social parameters by which images are accessed and assessed. As an amplification – as well as intervention or even a correction – to historical research, this series questions the state of the art and knowledge within a culture, characterized by technology and science.

Volume 1

Suzanne Anker, Sabine Flach (eds) Embodied Fantasies: From Awe to Artifice 2013, ISBN 978-3-0343-1102-1