[-empyre-] deconsim

[Sean Cubitt <seanc@waikato.ac.nz>]

Saul gets it right, and my last post was a little previous: "those 
artists whose works do not attempt to suppress the
real by giving it symbolic form/meaning -- as such their work does 
not  veil the
real -- but gives us access to its indeterminacy"

Adorno has been a big influence on me: the effort of refusal, the 
refusal of everything that is, in oprder to maintain some possibility 
that the world might be otherwise. But it seems that nowadays, in the 
North Atlantic, that negativity has become coffetable theory, 
artschool hegemony, the neo-rock ideology, and no longer therefore 
potent at all - as if capital is nw happy to make a commodity 
spectacle of its own barrenness, racism and corruption.  The 
'informe' is in this context a decisive moment of changing direction, 
because it emphasises the positivity of being, as opposed, let's say, 
to the hegemonic heideggerianism of deconstruction-simulation (the 
west's response to diamat), hung between the fading of being and 
nihilism. It is only a moment. But it is a moment.

Like the idea that we make our own history not under circumstances of 
our own choosing - but we make it. To asset with wit that there is 
after all something rather than nothing, but that this 'thing' is 
more das Ding than datum: that is smart. On the other hand, is it 
enough?


--
Sean Cubitt * Screen and Media Studies * University of Waikato * 
Private Bag 3105 * Hamilton * New Zealand * seanc@waikato.ac.nz * T: 
+64 (0)7 838 4543 * F: +64 (0)7 838 4767

http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film