Magnes: Don’ t be silly, let’s think of ways to avoid strict rules and oppositions like good and bad.
Duchamp: A charming way could be to signal how oppositions and rules evolve. Where does the rectangle come from, why and how did mankind start to draw lines?
Realo: How brave and interesting, sorry but I prefer to watch Magneto.
Realotext: We have to exclude Duchamp. Yesterday he has set a link to Scientology. He did this with the picture of Sodahead.
This picture is an image for the slogan: Be the force with you! This is a slogan of Scientology. This is a slogan which reproduces a simple view on forces, a view which accepts only poles of good and bad energies.
D.: I’ve never read Descartes to speak of. … I am not a Cartesian by pleasure. I happen to have been born a Cartesian. The French education is based on a sequence of strict logic. You carry it with you. *
*Eric Cameron: „Given”. In: De Duve, Thierry (ed.): The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp (Nova Scoatia College of Art and Design, Halifax Nova Scotia). Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p. 17.
D.: A game of Chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn’t geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves; it’ s a drawing, it’ s a mechanical reality.*
* Eric Cameron: „Given”. In: De Duve, Thierry (ed.): The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp (Nova Scoatia College of Art and Design, Halifax Nova Scotia). Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p. 16.
D.: Cabanne asked me once:„What do you believe in?” and I answered: Nothing of course! The word ‚belief’ is another error. It’s like the word ‚judgement’,they ‘re both horrible ideas, on which the world is based. I hope it won’ t be like that on the moon!*
* Eric Cameron: „Given”. In: De Duve, Thierry (ed.): The Definitively Unfinished Marcel Duchamp (Nova Scoatia College of Art and Design, Halifax Nova Scotia). Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p. 6.
D.: Cabanne ask me also: „Nevertheless you believe in yourself?” and I answered: No.*
Jab: Words are like waves. Listening to words, speaking them out loudly, reading or writing them we adapt to unstable conditions.
Very Hungry God calls the idea of the human head as a vessel and reservoir in question, since the buckets are completely empty.
The materials of Gupta’s sculptures, utensils in everyday use in India, are also traditional attributes of the gods. As such, they are useful for spiritual orientation. His sculptures point to the ambivalent status of instruments that structure the relationship between Man and his inner world as well as his outer world. This inner world is considered by traditional Indian culture as a transit station. The artistic thematization of instruments and everyday materials as in Gupta’s work is sculptural and therefore visual-spatial, yet it can also be time-based and appeal primarily to the ear instead of the eye.
Excerpt of Pointers – Contribution to beam me up
Some say that line and color are subjects too difficult for a short note, other say they are not worth to talk about; Magnes suggests do reflect a line as a conjunction. A line is a line of force which runs from one pole to the other. J. doubts that. Speaking about poles is just a reflection of a theological figure: The figure of god and men. Writing is a sort of alignment between men and god.
D.: And color? The perception of color is not equally distributed. It opens a realm of fuzziness, which we have to overcome by a non-retinal art.
Vilém Flusser’s (12.5.1920-27.11.1991) theoretical work is an example of the critical understanding of the dominant role of writing in western society. On the other hand he serves as a counterexample: Flusser substitutes the domination of writing by the dominance of computing. He replaces one medium on the top of the hierarchy of communication by another one. His work integrates aspects of modern nomadism with the theory and history of exact sciences. As a writer he felt challenged by the impact of computer technology on text production. On the one hand Flusser argues that computer culture will dominate all aspects of civilized life, on the other hand he strengthens the position that this domination has to be counterbalanced by inter-subjective values. One part of his thinking is a prophecy, saying that exact sciences and their major tool – the computer – will overwhelm the culture of writing. He regards computer processed mathematical functions as far more sufficient in describing phenomena than writing. Therefore the art of bookmaking and of authorship will die. On the other hand thinking and philosophy will survive when the computer is used dialogically. Flusser believes that the computer on the one hand will help to establish a technocracy of scientists, a new authority, but on the other hand it can be used to set up intersubjective relations and to overcome the authority of monological narrators. Flusser points out the communicational and mediational potentials of the computer. We see Vilém Flusser engaged in a conflict between the traditional communication of writing and the event of computer based communication. Problematic is Flussers impetus to establish the sovereignty of the computer. He reorganizes written history under the effect of a technological revolution, and establishes by himself a historical order, leading directly to the advent of the computer, which he regards as a tool to establish a new technocracy. Often he writes that the remaining time in which to fight and avoid this technocracy is short.*
On occasion of Flusser’s birthday we post “Serie Flusser” from Darya Berner.
* Extract from Nils Röller: „Hierarchies of Communication“. In: Diebner, Hans and Ramsay, Lehan (eds.): Hierarchies of Communication. Karlsruhe: ZKM, 2003.