Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil 12 (english version) E-Book

• Herausgeber: Edições Sesc SP
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Cadernos Sesc_Videobrasil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 218

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil 12 | METAFLUXUS focuses on the thinking of the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser. Constructed based on his way of understanding and delimiting contemporary cultural territories, this publication creates an experi- mental space in which different lines of thought and expression cross each other to project a hypertextual and imagetic metaflux that discusses contem- porary themes from a Flusserian perspective. The publication aims to create a space for dialogue between texts and images that flow into clusters, amalgams, and clots, and which disintegrate, melt, and dissolve into various metaflux- es of ideas and images, thus making a space-field of indefinite times and permeable layers inspired by the thought and oeuvre of Vilém Flusser. This ebook contains images that are best viewed on tablets.

Leseprobe

Built based on the thought of the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser, the Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil 12 | METAFLUXUS delimits an experimental space in which diverse lines of thought and expression intertwine in a metaflux of texts, images, and relations. Working as triggers for the construction of this fluid field, which seeks to discuss contemporary themes from a Flusserian perspective, the collaborations of artists, essayists, and researchers were organized in a numerical sequence, each constituting an independent entry point for the reading. Authors and sources are mapped on the index set at the beginning of the publication, and on the captions and image credits at the end of this e-book. The reader may read the content through a linear route or experiment a nonlinear reading by following the special links. There are three types of links that generate connections between the content: [‡] connects text excerpts where there are conceptual similarities; [→] connects the texts to the respective footnotes; and [||] connects the texts to the image galleries.

Index

.1 Leona Vingativa

My name is Leona, 2010

.2 Solange Farkas & Teté Martinho

Foreword, 2017

.3 Rodrigo Maltez Novaes

Editorial, 2017

.4 Vilém Flusser

On Doubt

This article was originally published as Da dúvida in the journal of the Institute for Technology and Aeronautics in São José dos Campos, Brazil, 1965

Translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes

.5 Soraya Guimarães Hoepfner

On Hate—An Apologia of Doubt, 2016

Translated by the author

.6 Vilém Flusser

Our Images

Published in Vilém Flusser, Post-History, Minnesota: Univocal Publishing, 2013

Translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes

.7 Padraig Robinson & Cathal Kerrigan

Gaze Against Imperialism

Audio transcript, Berlin, 30 April 2015

.8 Vilém Flusser

Vampyroteuthian art

Published inVilém Flusser, Vampyroteuthis infernalis. New York: Atropos, 2011

Translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes

.9 Emilia Thorin & Matilda Tjäder

A conversation on seed capsules, 2016

.10 Amanda Lioli & Leo Castilho

Good Evening! 2015

Translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes

.11 Cibele Lucena

Tongues’ Kiss, 2016

Translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes

.12 Kenton Card

Drifting: with a philosopher, a writer, and an urban planner, 2016

.13 Vilém Flusser

On Typography, 1989

Previously unpublished

.14 Fiona Hanley

Ode to the Letter, 2016

.15 Lifestyle Veneer

Sean Fabi

Love, 2016

Ming Lin

Synthetics, 2016

Will Davis

Habit, 2016

.16 Tiago Romagnani Silveira

Gradient (excerpt), 2017

Generated by a neural network

.17

[ || caption/credits ]

.1

My name is Nati Natini Natili Lohana Savic de Albuquerque Pampic de La Tustuane de Bolda, more commonly known as Danusa Deise Medly Leona Meiry Cibele de Bolda de Gasparri. The most spoken-of woman. The never-equaled girl. As well known as the Paris nightlife. As powerful as the sword of a Samurai. I’m as tight as a bassinette. I’m as thin as a watermelon. I have two sons, one googly eyed and a potbellied one. I married the owner of Parmalat and became mammiferous. I only suckle. I belong to the Brazilian Imperial Family of Orleans and Bragança, which is difficult to penetrate.

.18

[ || caption/credits ]

.2

The Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil 12 | METAFLUXUS aims to offer a relevant contribution to the study of the visionary writings of Villém Flusser, especially to the production that marks his long passage through Brazil. A close collaborator of the Associação Cultural Videobrasil, the curator Rodrigo Maltez Novaes develops here a project that goes beyond the elucidation of key ideas of the Czech-Brazilian thinker to become an editorial experience with a Flusserian bias, which provokes and organizes connections as well as resonances produced by his ideas in a varied scope from a group of more- and less-initiated collaborators.

This proposal extends the always-open range of editorial curation possibilities available in the design of the Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil. Dedicated to projects that seek a new gaze on print media and contemporary artistic production, this annual publication arrives at a point of transition, expanding toward digital media on two fronts: as an e-book, a platform whose specific resources allow the exploration of connections between essays and ideas in new ways; and as a product available for print on demand, in Portuguese or English.

The astonishing lucidity with which he foresees the complex relations that govern the contemporary world makes Villém Flusser an increasingly present and necessary reference. As the organizer, in 1973, of one of the first video-art shows held in Brazil, within the scope of the São Paulo Biennial, it is no wonder that Flusser has been invoked at different moments in the history of Videobrasil. And it becomes important to note that this new stage of the relationship between the Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil and its readers is therefore based around Flusser's thinking on the role of media in current times.

.3

This new language of which I am talking is not a made-up ad hoc fiction. It is emerging around us, and it starts to develop. It is a new art. New categories of thought—and therefore a new structure of reality—are being created in it and by it. The very fundamental structure “subject-object-predicate” is being reformulated. A new type of discourse is being elaborated.

Vilém Flusser, On Doubt (1965)

The Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil 12 | METAFLUXUS focuses on the thinking of the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser. Constructed based on his way of understanding and delimiting contemporary cultural territories, this publication creates an experimental space in which different lines of thought and expression cross each other to project a hypertextual and imagetic metaflux that discusses contemporary themes from a Flusserian perspective. The concept of metaflux was born in Berlin, during a period of research at the _Vilém_Flusser_Archiv, installed at the Universität der Künste (UdK). Between 2010 and 2015, as a research fellow in the archive, I coorganized a study group that I called the Flusserian Philosophical Fridays. The group met every couple of weeks to read Flusser, according to the author’s intention, who wrote his texts to be read and discussed in a group during the various courses he taught throughout Brazil and Europe.

The group eventually grew, stopped meeting regularly on Fridays, and became a fluid happening, which was then renamed the Flusserian Philosophical Flux (FPF). FPF attracted international attention quickly, and we were invited to organize meetings at different public and academic institutions in Europe, such as the Universities of Edinburgh and Newcastle, in England, the Humboldt Universität in Berlin, the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and the Institute for Interactive Design in Copenhagen. During the same period, I developed a series of seminars for UdK undergraduate students in art and design based on the FPF experiences. The concept of metaflux emerged from this process, focused on Flusser’s work, as a method of meta-epistemological research based on continuous dialogue.

The concept of intersubjective dialogue is one of the central themes in the Flusserian thought and one of the pillars of the idea of metaflux. Intersubjective relations are creative and poetic relationships, in the strict sense of the term “poetry.” As Flusser explains in various points in his work, the aim of poetry is to create reality. That which is poetic is transgressive: it subverts the relations that make up reality, thus generating a new reality. The basis of poetry is the attempt to change the form of languages in search of new realities. If reality is constituted from relations, then the poetic objective of this edition of the Caderno is to create different types of relations through the juxtaposition of texts and images. This is a poetic gesture that seeks new meanings by manipulating the form of the book as a means of publication.

Metaflux is, therefore, a meta-epistemological process that seeks reality through the creation of metanarratives. Organized visually, in a polyphonic and cartographic approach, the collaborators’ contributions become a continuous flow of metatexts and interlaced images in the publication, establishing dialogues with each other and with original essays by Vilém Flusser.

From Flusser’s work, four texts have been selected that represent different moments and facets of the development of his thought; together, they make up an arc that encompasses all the main lines of his work. [‡ On Doubt] (1965) is the result of the author’s first phase of production and has two versions; besides the one that is part of this edition, there is another, extended one, that would only appear as a book in 1999. On Doubt is the last text of the period in which Flusser focused mainly on the philosophy of language; it represents the beginning of the development of his philosophical project. [‡ Our Images] (1979) was written when he had already emigrated back to Europe and marked the beginning of his mature phase; its focus is the theory of communication. It is at this stage that the concept of technical image emerges, with which Flusser would work until the end of his life. Originally published in the book Post-History, from 1983, this is one of the first texts in which he explores the concept. [‡ Vampyroteuthian Art] (1981) is one of the chapters of the book Vampyroteuthis infernalis, a parascientific treaty on a species of squid that inhabits the depths of the oceans. For Flusser, the Vampyroteuthis is an allegory of the dialectic between the dimensions of reason and emotion, a dialectic that will never reach a synthesis. Finally, in the unpublished [‡ On Typography] (1989), written at the end of the author’s life, Flusser points to a new direction in his thinking, which was unfortunately interrupted by his untimely death in 1991, in a car accident in Prague.

The contributors who have written texts for this edition are artists and/or researchers with whom I have had contact during the period when I was a research fellow at the Flusser Archive in Berlin. All were invited to dialogue with the texts by Flusser selected for the Caderno. The desire was to create a space for dialogue that challenged the classical form of the academic journal. Thinking from a Flusserian point of view, some of the questions that challenged us were: How to create an academic journal in a nonlinear fashion? How can we explore and discuss the concepts contained in Flusser’s work in nontraditional or para-academic ways? How to work with texts and images so that each element retains its individual strength but at the same time is part of a “whole”? How to translate the concept of metaflux into a physical—and, therefore, fixed—medium?

Some of the answers to these questions emerged from Flusser’s own work and became the graphic-editorial method for editing the Caderno. The graphic design was incorporated into the editorial process as a cartographic tool to explore the relations and meta-relations between the elements that make up the two versions of the Caderno: print and digital. Both start from the same concept but reach different final forms. In the printed Caderno, the possibility of working with an expanded layout allowed the generation of juxtapositions between texts, and between texts and images that are not possible in the digital version. However, in the digital version, it was the possibility of creating hyperlinks between different types of content that generated relations. Therefore, although they yield different forms, both versions result from the same concern.

Finally, the Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil 12 | METAFLUXUS aims to create a space for dialogue between texts and images that flow into clusters, amalgams, and clots, and which disintegrate, melt, and dissolve into various metafluxes of ideas and images, thus making a space-field of indefinite times and permeable layers inspired by the thought and oeuvre of Vilém Flusser.

.4[ → 1 ]

Doubt is polyvalent. It means the end of a certainty. It means the search for certainty. It even means, if taken to the extreme, “skepticism,” that is, inverted certainty. In moderate doses, it stimulates thought. In excessive doses, it stops the intellect. As an intellectual experience, it is one of the purest pleasures. As a moral experience, it is torture. The starting point of doubt is faith.

Faith as the naive acceptance of facts (Wahrnehmen) is the primordial and primitive intellectual state. Doubt irrevocably destroys this naivety. The certainties that the method of doubt generates will never be as authentic as primitive certainty. They will always bear the mark of the doubt that brought them forth. Doubt is a method that seeks to create inauthentic certainties by the destruction of genuine certainties. Doubt as method is absurd. The following question arises: “Why do I doubt?” Which is of a more fundamental nature than the question: “What do I doubt?” And which implies another: “Do I really doubt?” Therefore, it is a case of doubting doubt, a last step.

Descartes (and together with him almost all modern thought) accepts doubt as indubitable. As a matter of fact, this naive faith in doubt characterizes the Modern Age whose last instants we witness. The faith placed in doubt during the Modern Age plays the role the faith in God played in previous ages. This faith resulted in an “idealistic” mentality and civilization. The indubitable doubt amidst a doubtful world. Doubt as the nucleus and as the last refuge of reality. The intellect, therefore, as the only reality. To doubt doubt would be an assault on reality’s last hideout. It would be the end of the Modern Age.

The doubt of doubt is a difficult movement of the intellect. It oscillates between two poles: “Everything can be doubted, even doubt itself” and “Nothing can be authentically doubted.” It oscillates between a radical skepticism and an extreme positivism. Kant affirms that skepticism is a resting place for reason, although it is not its dwelling. The same can be said of positivism. The doubt of doubt does not allow for rest. It is a fundamental indecision that Camus’ analysis of Sisyphus illustrates. The doubt of doubt, if sustained, throws the mind into the sheer absurdity of Sisyphus’ situation.

We are the first or second generation that experiences this type of nihilism; the total loss of faith, the madness of the all-enveloping nothingness. The symptoms of this abound: formal logic that reduces thoughts to tautology; existentialism’s “clear night of the anxiety of nothingness”; the conscious manipulation of concepts divorced from reality by pure science; the production, by applied science, of instruments that are destroyers of humanity, and that are, therefore, self-destructive; art that signifies itself; and an individual and collective carpe diem as the result of an emptying of values. The climate of absurdity results from such extreme doubt. Nothing has [‡ meaning]. Can this climate be overcome? Will our civilization survive the Modern Age?

I. On Intellect. Some specific Yoga exercises can radically go beyond Cartesian meditations. They reveal experientially not that I think but that I have thoughts. I can, in these exercises, eliminate all thought, but I shall continue being. Effectively, the Cartesian method proves the existence of thoughts, not the “I” that thinks. There is a humanist faith in the “I” that infiltrates itself, surreptitiously, in the Cartesian argument without having ever been doubted. The Yoga exercises are interesting in this context only inasmuch as they offer a point of view on thoughts: an inside-out perspective. Thoughts present themselves as the cloth in-between the “I” and the world of external phenomena. This cloth blocks, presents, and represents ([‡vorstellt], to use Schopenhauer’s word) the external world. Let us refer to this cloth as “intellect.” We can define the intellect as the field in which thoughts occur. This field is linked, in a certain way, to the “I” that has thoughts and to the world thoughts represent. At least this is our naive faith, without which the intellect would have no meaning. These connections are precisely the meaning of the intellect. However, these connections cannot be thoughts, given our definition of intellect. Otherwise, “I” and “external world” would be part of the intellect. The connections that unite the intellect to the “I” and the “external world” are not, therefore, thoughts. “I” and “external world” are unthinkable. Being unthinkable they are, paradoxically, indubitable. They will, therefore, as a consequence, be eliminated from the present argument.

[ || ]

The intellect defined as a field in which thoughts occur is a vision that resulted from a point of view. It is a point of view external to the intellect. The intellect is, from this point of view, an object. It can be “objectively” investigated. It has become de-psychologized. The thoughts that compose the intellect are not lived experiences, but objects of knowledge. An ontological difficulty hides within this point of view. Thoughts become objects of thoughts. This difficulty is a consequence of the doubt of doubt that fundaments this point of view. Let us pass, reluctantly, over this difficulty.

[ || ]

The intellect, as a field in which thoughts occur, renders the question “what is the intellect?” meaningless. A field is not a thing; it is how something occurs. The gravitational field of the Earth, for example, is defined by how its neighboring bodies behave. The intellect is how thoughts occur. In order to occur, the thoughts must occur one way or the other. The intellect is this “one way or the other.” Having denied ontological dignity to the intellect, we shall turn our attention to thoughts.

[ || ]

Thoughts as objects are complex formations. They consist of elements called “concepts” connected to each other by links called “rules.” At least that is how thoughts occur within fields called “intellects of one’s own type.” Other types of intellect can be imagined: for example, from the perspective of a European, intellects of the Chinese or Kwakiutl types. Within these other imagined intellects perhaps thoughts are not comprised of concepts. We shall restrict our argument to the type of intellect in which thoughts, as concepts linked by rules, are discursive processes. These are processes that discourse, that drive towards an aim, an aim called “meaning.” A meaningful thought is a thought that has reached its aim. Incomplete thoughts are meaningless. Once the meaning is reached, a new thought emerges. Meaningful thoughts are producers of new thoughts. The meaning of thought is another thought. Meaningless thoughts do not produce new thoughts. The criterion of meaning is the capacity for the production of thoughts. A meaningful thought can produce more than one new thought. The more meaningful a thought, the larger the number of thoughts produced. Chains of thoughts called “arguments” are thus formed. These in their turn, discourse in search of meaning, of which the meaning of an individual thought is only a subordinate aspect. The sum of arguments forms the totality of the discourse, which in its turn, flows towards meaning. By the very nature of the process, this meaning is unreachable. It lies within that “I” and “external world” that we have eliminated from our argument. Owing to its very character, therefore, discourse is a frustrated process. It lacks an ulterior meaning. This does not invalidate, however, the partial meanings of thoughts and arguments. Their meaning lies in the discourse and not beyond it. Only those who do not conform to this limitation imposed by the field that is the intellect fall back into anti-intellectualism: into a Wittgensteinian silence.

[ || ]

The search for meaning is synonymous with “doubt,” and doubt is, therefore, the slope of the discourse. It is the force that propels discourse. Partial meaning is the partial overcoming of doubt, and the unreachable total meaning is the guarantee that doubt is inexhaustible. It is the guarantee of the continuity of the discourse. As it runs, propelled by doubt, the discourse ramifies and amplifies. The field of the intellect amplifies. The number of reached partial meanings grows. We can, therefore, summarize the result reached up until now: The intellect is the expanding field of doubt in discourse.

II. On Phrase. What is a concept? We are tempted to answer that concept is that which gives origin to the word. The word would be the symbol of a concept. But would this answer be meaningful? Does it not simply represent the introduction of a new term that is identical to the old one and, in effect, its synonym? We may argue that there are concepts without words and words without concepts. That the two terms are, therefore, not identical. But the argument cannot be sustained. Concepts without words are a contradiction in terms, because a concept without a word, an unarticulated concept, could not participate in discursive thought. It would not be therefore a concept. And a word without a concept is equally a contradiction in terms, because every word, being a word, participates in discourse. “Word without concept” expresses only a distrust in the function of a particular word within the totality of thought, and not, as it would seem, confidence in two ontological layers: word and concept. The terms “word” and “concept” are synonymous formal aspects, although they may not be for psychology. The point of view of this argument is de-psychologizing, that is, “objective.” It will, therefore, use both terms as synonyms and will eliminate (in the manner of Ockham’s razor) the term “concept.” It will redefine thought as a complex of words organized by rules. And it will redefine intellect as a field in which rules organize words.

With this reformulation, we have moved the argument onto another terrain. We have relocated the consideration of thought onto the terrain of language, an adequate terrain. The preoccupation with the intellect is a discipline of language. Thought becomes a linguistic phenomenon called “phrase.” The rules that order the words in a phrase are called “grammar” sensu lato. Intellect as the field in which thoughts occur becomes language as the field in which phrases occur.

A word of warning: the sciences that investigate language are engaged in the analysis of spoken and written languages. The language considered within the present argument is “whispering.” Spoken and written languages are secondary articulations of “pure” language. The sciences of language do not distinguish rigorously between “pure” and “applied” language. For example, they sometimes address the problems of grammar (its “pure” aspect), sometimes phonetic problems (its “applied” aspect). A rigorous distinction is necessary. Investigations on “applied” language belong to the field of natural or social sciences. Investigations on “pure” language constitute the foundation of a science of the spirit (Geisteswissenschaft), in the Diltheyan sense, albeit in the sense of a de-psychologized science of the spirit. The latter frames the present argument.

The phrase consists, broadly, of five parts: (1) subject, (2) object, (3) predicate, (4) attribute, and (5) adverb. Attribute and adverb are complements and will be disregarded in the present argument. The subject is the group of words in which the process of the phrase initiates. The object is the group of words towards which the process of the phrase drives. The predicate is the group of words that joins subject and object. This description regards a standard phrase, to which every phrase could be reduced in theory. Within this standard phrase, subject and object are horizons between which the predicate projects itself. The phrase is a process of the type called “project.” It has the form (Gestalt) of a target practice. The subject is the gun, the object is the target, and the predicate is the bullet.

This form of the phrase is the structure of our type of languages and, therefore, of our type of intellect. Everything that occurs to us occurs in this form. Traditional philosophy makes the mistake of projecting this form onto the “external world.” It believes that the structure of language (of the intellect) mirrors the structure of an external reality. But there are languages of an entirely diverse structure. If there is something we can say about the external world, it is this: given the diversity of types of language, the structure of language does not mirror the structure of the “external world.” The so-called structure of the external world is referred to by Wittgenstein as “Sachverhalt,” that is, a relation between things. However, the term itself reveals that “Sachverhalt” is nothing but the structure of our phrases. “Phrase structure” and “relation between things” are synonyms, and the rest is a desperate metaphysical attempt to break with the limitations of the intellect: to break out of the cage of language. What cannot be spoken must be silenced. The grammatical analysis of the phrase is categorically the ontological analysis of reality.

Subject, object, and predicate are the forms of being that complete our reality. More precisely: they are the virtualities that realize themselves in the phrase. The subject realizes itself as it emits the predicate. The object realizes itself as the predicate hits it. The predicate, as it relates subject to object, establishes a “Sachverhalt,” that is, a situation of reality. The subject, if considered independently, is the search and the demand for reality. It is subjacent (sub-jectum) to the reality project. The object, if considered independently, is the opposition to this project (ob-jectum). However, subject and object, if considered independently, are not realized beings. They acquire effective reality (Wirklichkeit) within the situation of the phrase. The predicate, which establishes the situation, confers reality to the subject and the object. Subject and object transcend the situation, as long as as they are not predicated within it. They are only partially realized by the predicate. Every phrase is the partial realization of one (or more) subject and one (or more) object. The chain of phrases (the argument) is the continuous process of predication of subjects and objects with the aim of realizing them. Discourse as a whole is a predication process of all subjects and objects. Discourse is predicative.

“Reality” (Wirklichkeit