Re: [-empyre-] Bare Life Is Not About Art

[Aliette <aliette@criticalsecret.org>]

Leaving Spinoza for one time let us see what is ethic and morale at Paul
Ricoeur... Ethic: " visée de la vie bonne, avec et pour les autres, dans des
institutions justes" ; Morale: "exigence d'universalité: caractère
d'obligation de la norme"... So let me try to stay out of confusion between
ethic and morale ( front of the mission I prefer the adaptation ). Searching
to keep the safety of insubordination I range in the side of ethic;--

Regarding ethic as a deconstructivist question of phenomenology Jacques
Derrida said : "Qu'est-ce que je dis quand je dis : "ça me regarde" ?" What
I say when I tell me that "it looks at me"?

>From a part I agree with G.H. Hovagimyan.
>From another part I understand Ana Valdes request.

But her quotation of Giorgio Agamben reminds exactly of an unpleasant
impression that I felt by reading in " Remnants of Auschwitz" his evocation
of Primo Levi. That seemed particularly a point of view from an arbitrary
observation of laboratory. But Primo Levi was not still alive to revoke this
report of their meeting (Agamben having crossed Primo Levi). Primo Levi was
in a sort under the regard of a cool machine for the second time in his
life, the first time being the regard of the camp (the eyes of the Gaolers
more the eyes of the prisoners "surviving" both appointing a prisoner or a
prisoner become "mushlem" ?of whom Primo Levi reports in "If This is a Man"
and from another part testifying by the complex of the surviving man being
other); like a sort of revenge of the life (Agamben being alive sees Levi
such as a embodying realization of which he reports and analyzes) against
the death (Primo Levi being dead ?whatever?more the point of view from
Agamben to Levi yet dead suicides him for the second time). Here lives a
sort of philosophical abuse revealing into obscenity (I said me).

Anyway from very far it is not the book of the real time. But the terrific
work of the real time exists, which were the hard drawings of Zoran Music
when prisoner in Dachau. A way to survival, he said. What to say of it as
much more later, in the seventies, he returned to these drawings dressing
them into paintings? But nobody could have a judgment as it is both of Zoran
Music's own biography as pictography.

The documentary of creation as representative cinema surfs between report
and Art work : but I do not know of one not being relevant both as singular
critical point of view and as help in any sort at the moment or later; any
limits are reached by numerous photographers and rarely in cinema. More all
the filmic work of Frederick Wiseman even on department stores installs bare
life as the question of the "documentarist" filmaker through the
relationship of life with death (from his mother deportation). But "contre
exemples" exist such as certain filmic works of Robert Depardon.

Didnt' was the first anthological work asking such a mediatic question or
the book "In cool blood" by Truman Capote, in 1960?

Any references that surrounds me :

Quotation in the site of the publisher "éditions de minuit" of a review
extracted from Art Press ( issue 297 ) concerning aesthetician Georges
Didi-Huberman's book "Images malgré tout" ?where it is question of images in
certain circumstances (notoriously 4 photos from Auschwitz ): the question
of the truth as materialist reality of the life, and as common metaphysical
event, of the obscenity, of the testimony, on the irrepressible missing
representatitivity of the worst: "there is no icon of what happened in
Auschwitz".  
http://www.leseditionsdeminuit.fr/presse/art_press_images_malgre_tout.pdf

More you have the point of view developed by sociologist and anthropologist
of the contemporary, Bruno Latour co-curator of the exhibition "Iconoclash",
ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, in 2002, in his text ( part of the
book resulting of the exhibition ) : ³What is Iconoclash? Or is There a
World Beyond the Image Wars? ² ?Iconoclash.  Beyond the Image Wars in
Science, Religion and Art. ZKM, Karlsruhe & MIT PRESS, Massachusetts, 2002.
Abstract to Press information (Fr version):
" Pourquoi icono-clash et pas ­clasm ? L¹iconoclasme détruit une image, une
icône, une représentation. Devant ce geste on ne peut que se réjouir ou
s¹indigner. Dans un icono-clash ?néologisme inventé pour la cause? on ne
sait pas ce qui s¹est passé, le plaisir et la fureur se trouvent suspendus ;
leur font place le doute, l¹inquiétude et l¹incertitude sur ce qui se passe
vraiment quand on veut produire ou détruire des représentations. "
http://hosting.zkm.de/icon/stories/storyReader$64
That means for a part how the production and the destruction of
representations by icons install the experiment of the life far from the
represented events. Icono->CLASH as an accident: mutes the symbolic mirror
of representation into a representation not being a mirror but a proper
event.

Consequently installing the representation as event by the disappearance of
the living reference ; that produces the representation instead of the live
event: meta life as representation of the bare life?not being a materialist
reality designed by the concept of "bare life".

You can read a realization of entropy from the icono-crash effect in real
time of the life, by making its filmic documentary and more... in the novel
of science-fiction by Adolfo Bioy-Casares "The Invention of Morel" (1940).

>From post-modernity till nowadays as philosophical found in post dialectic
materialism, it seems that Jean Baudrillard is still available in his
exploration of bare life (through the event and the phenomena as materialist
reality of the life and as symbolic representation) and meta life (through
the signification and the representation as simulation and simulacrum ?among
which the question of commodity).

At last I want to say that I do not believe in memory (remember of Cannibal
manifesto:) Collective memory does not own to anyone, it is dynamic and
plastic (in the sense of iconoclash ? the exhibition) ? remember of
"créolités"; it is just an event when we think that we are consensually
plural as an exception of the social history... Under my point of view
collective memory is not the fact of Artists it is the fact of every member
of the city in cognitive disposition of the feeling of existing between
other existences, with a certain common changing mode. What does not change
in matter of testimony are archives, that could not be both of bare life
being testimony of former events.

Writers, artists, or thinkers probably they do not testify of other reality
than the one of their respective existence and mode of existence at work,
even they can sincerely wish to work for others or to others.

But surely Ethic has to avoid the confusion with the morale

To finish I want to note a correction about the word "purchase" that I used
by default in my former email telling of Fanon: of course he was not
"purchased" by the police, but PURSUED by the police;-)
Again, I apologize...

Cheers
A.


On 7/07/06 14:49, "Ana Valdes" <agora158@gmail.com> probably wrote:

> I think the point here is how much "bare life" is to feel yourself
> constrained, privated of your right to dissent, lacking your
> "citizenship". We gathered a lot of anger and a lot of passion, it's a
> bit difficult for me today to wake up the passion of a 19 years old
> girl in a woman of 53, but that's the challenge, to moce yourself
> between your own memory, the collective memory and the fiction and the
> narrative.
> Sarat Maharat wrote something wonderful about Memory and we met and
> discuss my project, to write about the prison in Aganbem terms, seeing
> it as a testimony finding it's place between the documentary and the
> literary.
> Ana
> 
> On 7/7/06, G.H. Hovagimyan <ghh@thing.net> wrote:
>> 
>> On Jul 7, 2006, at 8:12 AM, Ana Valdes wrote:
>> 
>>> the fields, move around stones to  place and move them again, the
>>> Sysiphous work, I did it.
>> 
>> In your snippet I can see a whole art work.
>> 
>> Richard Serra the sculptor tells a story of how, when he was a
>> rambunctious young man, his father would punish him by making him
>> move a huge pile of dirt by hand from one location of their back lot
>> to another location. When he was done, he and his father had an
>> aesthetic discussion about it's location. If they agreed the pile was
>> in the right place he was finished his task. If not he would move the
>> pile to the agreed properly aesthetic position.
>> 
>> 
>> G.H. Hovagimyan
>> http://nujus.net/gh/
>> http://post.thing.net/gh/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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