index issue #1

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NDEX2 Editorial

Chus MartnezI Celebrate Mysel and SingMysel. Anachronism as Method

7 ZoomJos Luis Pardo

The Philosophical Gestureo Deleuze

10 DisplayNataa IlicSalon 54: On Becoming the End

14 MediterraneansReza Negarestani

All o a Twist

18 Artistic researchThe Otolith Group

Occluded Oceans, OpticalWaters: Notes on TheDrexciya Mythos II

22 AcademiaFranco Berardi Bio

Sensibility and Semiocapital

Biannual JournalSpring 2011Number 1

Artistic research, thought and education


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Editorial teamXavier AntichMela DvilaTeresa GrandasSoledad GutirrezAna JimnezBartomeu MarChus MartnezClara PlasenciaIdoia Villanueva

EditorChus Martnez

Coordination and editingPublications Areao MACBA

Design and layoutEnric Jard, Meri Mateu

TranslationsJane Brodie/e-verba translations:pp. 2-6Wade Matthews: pp. 7-9

CopyeditingKeith Patrick: pp. 1-24

Published byMuseu dArt Contemporanide Barcelona (MACBA)www.macba.cat

Images o the works: the artists o the photographs: Courtesyo The Museum o Modern andContemporary Art, Rijeka, Croatia(pp. 11-12); Courtesy o The OtolithGroup and LUX, London (innercover, p. 19); Jordi Puig (pp. 4-5);Raael Vargas (pp. 2-3); The BritishLibrary Board ( Add. 46700, . 32 )(p. 8)

CoverPhotograph by Francesc Catal-Rocao the second exhibition rom theGrupo R, Industria y arquitectura,held in 1954 at the Galeras Layeta-nas in Barcelona. Fund F. Catal-Roca Photographic Archives oArxiu Histric del COAC Withthe contribution rom CollegidArquitectes de Catalunya.

Inner coverVideostill rom the lm Otolith III,made by The Otolith Group in2009. MACBA Collection. MuseudArt Contemporani de BarcelonaConsortium.

Pre-printingSCAN 4

PrintingIGOL

ISSN printed edition: 2014-0193ISSN digital edition: 2014-851DL: B-43640-2010

TypographiesGotham Narrow, DTLDocumenta

PaperBiberist Furioso 135 g and 115 g
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/


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Biannual JournalSpring 2011Number 1

Zoom

How is it possible to put together anarrative o art? Zoom is a space o

intellectual and bibliographic pointo reerence.

Editorial

Issues and terms that drive anotherand new thought rom and about ar

Display

How are exhibitions brought aboutWhat does their research involve?This section attempts to make visibthe processes by which exhibitionsare conceived and dened.

Artistic research

Why and how do I do what I do? Atalk about their projects in the rst

Academy

What is the role o education? Howcritical visions constructed? Acadedeals with the relationship betweeand the human sciences, as well as

critical-social intervention both withe museum and beyond.

Mediterraneans

A space or dialogue on the Near EaEurope and North Arica. Dierentoer new ormulations regarding c

art, religion, education and the comuture o the societies in the Mediteregion.


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I CELEBRATE MYSELFAND SING MYSELF.ANACHRONISM AS METHODChus MartnezHead o department in the curatorial oceo documenta 13; associate curatoro MACBA.

Editorial


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In the last decade, we have seen how historians, curaand institutions have subjected contemporary artistiduction to a reading dened by the philosophy o histhus making works conorm to history and systematthe experience o them according to the illusion o susedly objective parameters. This approach is mediatethe primacy o the question otheme that o which speaks such that theme and meaning become synmous, making us orget that there are other ways o sying. Herein lies the reason or the renewed interestnotion o anachronism and its potential as a method could allow us to escape the omnipresence o hermen

The anachronic designates a situation where theanalysis o rhythm replaces the analysis o duration asole orm o grasping time. Rhythm is tempo: powervibration, movement; duration, on the other hand, ismelody o history.

Insoar as the understanding o history means dting a chronological axis upon which events are ordersole task o the historian is to ceaselessly insert the stthat have not yet been included in that great continuonarrative. Meanwhile, the institution (where an exhibis understood as a way o institutionalising a materialreduced to the place where the legitimacy o a right a

a public orm. The act that the exercise o revision anrecovery o things orgotten provoke unanimous resproves that a tting vocabulary has been ound, one tserves solely to avoid the unpredictable unction o erience in art.

Furthermore, the impact o this re-writing resethe relationship between a text and a staggering numo ootnotes that interrupt the reading to remind us twriting eludes the author and that countless parallel take place and have taken place synchronously with tgreat text. Those actions were hidden, but the time hcome or a reordering, and that means nding a hole diachronic axis upon which history is written. The wthe past, to use Thomas Manns phrase, blossoms onsurace and drowns it. Nothing exists in the singular longer. We can no longer speak, or instance, o a Moty, but rather all its multiples. Yet, contemporary art sto continue to be indivisible (perhaps that is the rst tom o its anachronism). Alongside this endless searcplurals, in the bosom o history there lies another onsearch o those individuals artists who seem to be

View o the exhibitionThe Modern and thePresent. Change oCentury in the MACBACollection where someo the works executed,between 1955 and

1961, by sculptor andpotter Antoni Cumella(191385) are displayed.

In the exhibition it isargued that the aesthetico modernism inCatalonia was streng-thened rom the 1950swhen art, architectureand design werestrongly connected.

Providence is the reason that manhimsel sometimes reappears indierent centuries.

Balzac, Letters


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sed sincerity with which it is believed that art and cu

but not, or instance, science must speak.In this dialectical interplay between great narratacademic appendixes, the past and history are manieas a new acet o culture and o its present power: thisthe power to delve into adventures o logic that mighto a new episteme, but rather the de acto ability to inde or exclude. Nonetheless, this explosion o voices apoints o view has contributed to maintaining a degrcondence in public opinion thanks to the constant eat ceaseless expansion implied by historiographic revand its relationship to contemporary art. The worst eo the enthusiasm inspired by the possibility o interin, interrogating, interering with, modiying, amend

taking back and aecting hegemonic narration is the dency to endlessness. Each ootnote serves both to cland obscure in a new way, one that rather than provinew consciousness o the issue at hand or o contribuan understanding o the relationship between contemrary art and time, between production and the inextrcomplexity o the contexts in which it appears, placesbeore endless windows through which we peer; alw

Josep Maria MestresQuadreny, L'EstroAleatorio. Six Concertsor Soloists and Orchestra(detail), 197378Mixed media on paper41.9 x 89.1 cmMACBA Collection.Museu d'ArtContemporani deBarcelona Consortium

L'Estro Aleatorio is thesynthesis o a stage othis Catalan composerswork. It encapsulatesthe techniques he usedand evidences theinfuence that scienticthought and mathe-matical randomnessexercised on his work.The scores, which inthis case are circles osounds, visually repre-sent his idea o music,where sounds cannot beunderstood individually,but rather as par t oa unique sound eldequally aected by thelaws o chaos anddeterminist phenomena.

gers to time, who escape the wanderings o the present. In

the last decade we have seen a heightening o the sensitivityto the exceptional in art, to those who, at least apparently,remain infexible to the logic o globalisation. The prolie-ration o projects on those others those who think and actwithout us, so to speak also orms part o this operation orecovery, which no longer symbolises justice, but the vastseductive power that myth, archetypical being and the ge-nuine still hold in our culture. What these projects evidenceis our ear o entering into a state o permanent instability.

The political importance o recovery as a tactic isdirectly proportional to the impossibility o ormulating amore complex statement o the relationship between con-temporary art and a discontinuous conception o time, that

is expressed in rhythms and cannot be represented asduration. In other words, a way o understanding timethat is indierent to the idea o progress and is thereorerelieved o the imperative o innovation. This understandingo time has no qualms about repetition, about imitatingwhat has already taken place. Generating doubt about theseconstant reincarnations and about the spontaneity othe contemporary would provide a way around the suppo-


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under the promise o completing history. We can assume

the risk that disconcertion brings. What is harder, though,is to ace the act that there are those who attempt to replacethis strain o research not by adopting another logic but byemulating this eort and reducing it to a mere gesture thatcredibly illustrates the choreography o this explosion ohistories within history.

The problem lies in the act that the politically correctis not a method, but rather a strategy to avoid conronting atechnical diculty: the understanding o times that cannotbe reduced to duration, the grasping o rhythms that do notgive rise to a continuity, that operate outside the melody ohistory. The desire to avoid incoherence by abandoning thephilosophy o history stands in contrast to the need oneupon which Schelling insisted long ago to delve into otherlanguages that ormalise art objects, their ability to becomeacts and the role that individuals play along lines that dis-tance us rom the predictable; an exercise still more com-plex at a time when citizen-spectators are more passive thanthey are liberated in relation to what they expect rom art.

The language that has contributed to producingwhat is socially known as contemporary art partakes o

the lyrical genre. It is a language geared towards creenthusiasm, not method; a prose characterised by treul choice o terms that deend the importance oeyes, the choreography o agency, the value o the hon the heart rather than in the pocket. The inquisito eelings even good ones is as much a part o totalitarian world as the global economy, but it is cin good will while, with tr ue disdain, it attacks themoments o lie.

How to nd a way out o this melodicway o unstanding history without losing sight o rigor or respsibility? The null, that which seems to have strayed meaning idiocy, nonsense merits our attention asbeore. In these orms o absentmindedness lies a newimagination o the private, a way o resisting the powempathy in all its strains, whether real or virtual. Misa thoroughly dened present allows a part o artistic gence to elude the desire or art and institutions to berespond eloquently to their times. In other words, it an escape rom responsibility understood as the imponeed to answer or, to clariy and not to expose oursethe exuberance and lightness o thought.1

This insistence on placing art and culture in the pruns the risk o turning objects and ideas into a mere so the ghosts that ll in the empty place o a time lackiresources, exhausted rom having repeated the obviouoten. Too much preterit as Didi-Huberman says 2 rthe risk o being nothing more than residue, regardlehow positive it may be. And it is impossible to speak outure since, despite a dierent rhetoric, it is a symmeorm o the past. Hence, the importance o the extempraneous, o that which is not relevant. While anachronis not the solution to our problems how to escape rohistorical culture, rom the ever o history? 3, it do

ormulate a possible means to a dierent method, to that, though still incipient, is capable o putting us atdisconnection and a skewed time.

Any question o method becomes a question othat is, a question that must truly consider a term largorgotten in philosophy and art theory: rhythm. Theanachronic names a dierent rhythm, the possibilitystraining an analysis o meaning rom a dierent anglorces the subject and the context whether institutinot to review the conditions rom which it puts orexperience and the interpretation o artistic productipurposeully leave out art itsel, since no art can be cored contemporary; that is an institutional consideranot a question o practice. Indeed, the thesis would bart is always anachronic. And what must be reconstr

1 Nietzsche said that those who deended the notion that thinking was atask should be attacked.

2 Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant le temps. Histoire de l'art et anachronimages. Paris: Minuit, 2000.

3 An expression used by Nietzsche in the prologue to his Untimely Med(1873-1876).


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is the very idea o anachronism as error about time.4 One othe ultimate aims o artistic production is to transorm ouridea o time. The anachronic implies accepting the importanceo rhythm as undamental to understanding the relationshipbetween matter and energy. Rhythm here has no connectionwhatsoever with the virtual or the cosmic. In relation to artwe, like Gaston Bachelard,5 should speak o a rhythmicrealism: the introduction o material and conceptual para-meters geared towards reeing us rom the need to constructcultural identity in terms o the philosophy o history.

Insisting that the anachronic is not an aberration but aneed means that we must distance ourselves rom a methodo reading and interpretation dominated by the notion oduration, and instead delve into another method, into acontingency o heterogeneous times that provide otherkeys to pursue the question o meaning.

Duration implies order: rhythm, intensity. This die-rence has epistemological consequences: it means orgettinghermeneutics, putting away philological tools and inventinga new critical imagination. Hence, the assertion that the ana-chronic entails a risk (a challenge that art aces) means rejec-ting a whole set o conceptual exigencies to be able to express

onesel in a oreign language, to introduce another rhythmand to generate a strangeness that orces us to reassemble thecurrentunease. The question now is i academies and insti-tutions are willing to give up the ironclad alliance betweentime and space and to assume once and or all that leaving thesystem behind is not synonymous with chaos.

4 Jacques Rancire, Le concept danachronisme et la vrit de lhistorien,LInactuel, no. 6, 1996, p. 53.

5 Gaston Bachelard, La Dialectique de la dure. Paris: Quadriage / PUF, 1950(in the chapter on the analysis o rhythm).

A series o books that provide an in-depth athe concept o the anachronic and the impo time in the world o contemporary art:

Bachelard, Gaston. La Dialectique de la durQuadriage / PUF, 1950. (English: The DDuration. Manchester: Clinamen, 2000

Belting, Hans. Toward an Anthropology oge, in Marit Westermann (ed.),Anthroo Art. New Haven: Yale University Prespp. 4158.

. Image, Medium, Body: A New App

Iconology, Critical Inquiry, vol. 31, no. 2005, pp. 30219.

Derrida, Jacques. Spectres de Marx. Paris: Ga1993. (English: Specters o Marx. New YRoutledge, 1994).

Didi-Huberman, Georges. The SuppositioOn the Once, the Now, and the ModernM. Todd (trans.), in R. Francis (ed.), NegRapture. The Power o Art to TransormChicago: Museum o Contemporary Arpp. 4863.

. Devant le temps. Histoire de lart et anisme des images. Paris: Les ditions de 2000.

. Dialektik des Monstrums: Aby Wathe Symptom paradigm, in David Peterand Christine Riding (eds.),Art Historyno. 5, November 2001, pp. 62145.

. Artistic Survival. Panosky vs. Warand the Exorcism o Impure Time, ComKnowledge, vol. 9, no. 2, spring 2003, p

. The Imaginary Breeze: Remarks ono the Quatrocento,Journal o Visual Cvol. 2, no. 3, December 2003, pp. 2758

Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly matters: HauntinSociological Imagination. Minneapolis: Uo Minnesota Press, 1997.

Leebvre, Henri. lments de rythmanalyseditions Syllepse, 1992. (English: Rhythnalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Lie. LContinuum, 2004.)

Loraux, Nicole. loge de lanachronisme enLe Genre humain, no. 27, 1993, pp. 2339

Michaud, Philippe-Alain.Aby Warburg andge in Motion. Cambridge, MassachusettsBooks, 2004.

Mitchell, William J. Thomas. What Is an Im

Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. ChicagThe University o Chicago Press, 1986, p3146.

Rancire, Jacques. Le concept danachronismvrit de lhistorien, LInactuel, no. 6, au1996, pp. 5368.

Rohy, Valerie.Anachronism and Its Others: Race, Temporality. New York: SUNY Pr

Wind, Edgar. Warburgs Concept o Kultusenschat and its Meaning or AestheticEloquence o Symbols. Studies in HumanOxord: Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 213


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THE PHILOSOPHICAL

GESTURE OF DELEUZEJos Luis PardoPhilosopher and essayist, he is senior proessor atthe School o Philosophy o the UniversidadComplutense de Madrid. In 2005 he was awardedthe Premio Nacional de Ensayo or his book,La regla del juego (2005). He is a leading gure inthe spread o Gilles Deleuzes philosophy thanksto books such as Deleuze: violentar el pensamiento(1990) and his articles and translations o worksby that French philosopher.

Gilles Deleuze is a well-known name in contemporarythought, in social sciences, among art critics and theoristsand in innumerable other contexts. A little bit o Deleuzeseems to go well in any scenario, or he is correctly consi-dered (Foucaultdixit) the right thinker or our times. It is

no doubt legitimate to use Deleuze to add an intellectualand provocative tone to any proposal and sometimes hisown striking ormulations seem to call or exactly that.Wasnt it Deleuze who said that a philosophers work is atoolbox rom which we should take what proves useul tous? Certainly. Yet it is equally certain that when he said that,the tools he had in mind were not the verbal ormulae onends in a particular authors work, but rather the concepts,better yet, the livingconcepts; not so much what philoso-phers say (no matter how grandiloquently) as what theyactually do, even when the latter is much more dicult toidentiy. Their activity is dened by how they handle theirown thought, how they propose, interweave or untangle itsparts, organise its sequences, organise or construct its ele-ments, choose their subjects and elaborate their materials,or how they move rom one problem to the next, and howthey build or destroy a question. We could call such gesturesa thinkers style, that is, what sets his or her characteristicmovement light-years apart rom those whose work seemsto dier very little in terms o content. For example, it hasbeen brilliantly hypothesised that Hegel and Nietzsche

actually share the same approach, but this in no way nates enormous stylistic dierences; not only in howwrite, but also in how their thought moves, which issignicant.

In the case o Deleuze, this movement is insep

rom a vast operation that brings a substantial part ohistory o philosophy into play, discarding habitualnections and establishing other unexpected ones (Hthe most radical o empiricists, goes hand in hand wSpinozas absolute rationalism, and the latter is simtaneously wed to Nietzsches irrationalism). And wDeleuze suggests that his use o the history o philois comparable to collage, we should not mistake thismetaphorical hyperbole or provocation. We must intead consider collages complexity (it is much moremerely gluing one thing beside another) in the lightDeleuzes procedure or combining authors and coWhat the Deleuzian tone mentioned above oten lthe density o this movement, which depends on a history both general history and that o philosophthat we could reasonably consider contra-historicaDeleuzes philosophy stands as a rigorous reversal oprogramme o classical thought the approach so dand accurately dened by Aristotle as a ocus on beibeing that is, the link that ties thought to presencsimultaneously avouring the present as a nuclear o

Zoom

Some kind o innocence is measuredout in years. You dont know whatits like to listen to your ears.


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Illustration by Lewis Carroll or the rst manuscript oAlices Adve ntures UnderGround.

When I say Alice becomes larger, I mean that she becomes larger than she was.By the same token, however, she becomes smaller than she is now. Cert ainly,she is not bigger and smaller at the same time. She is larger now; she was smallerbeore. But it is at the same moment that one becomes larger t han one was andsmaller than one becomes. This is the simultaneity o a becoming whose charac-teristic is to elude the present. Insoar as it eludes the present, becoming doesnot tolerate the separation or the distinction o beore and ater, or o the pastand uture. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic o Sense. New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1990, p. 1.


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o time, establishing the basis or what would remain orcenturies the space o representation in the broadest senseo that term. The experiment that Deleuze pits againstthat programme this is always a matter o experimentingwithout any advantage beorehand ollows the path obeing qua becoming, that is, an eort to conceive o mo-vement to the degree t hat it is not subject to the demandso presence and fees rom representation and the present,with respect to both o which it is structurally later orearlier. And i this is a orceul position to t ake in this area,it is no less so when the conrontation takes place in thescenario o modern philosophy, which boasts o havingreed itsel rom the limitations o antiquity. For Deleuze,modernity in philosophy has two aces. First, Spinoza, theounder o a mater ialist immanentism o unprecedentedambition, and second, Kant, who reed time rom all itsormer bonds with respect to its content, conjuring up thegure o the vicious circle. The titanic battle betweenthese two impulses in Deleuzes work (metaphysical andtranscendental, dogmatic and critical) is, however, essentialto understand his change o course around 1966, whichallowed him to ormulate in Dirence et rptition

(1968) (Dierence and Repetition, 1994) a discourseon method that, with minor changes, remained in orcethrough his nal investigations.

We could not even sketch out that discourse here,but let us point out at least three images that may help toreveal the secret o a stylistic gesture that not only allowsus to accompany a thinker, but also requently turns outto be our reason or doing so. As any more-or-less aithulreader o Deleuze knows, our means o access to any givenproblem is the apparition o another scenario, a sort oextraordinary parallel world whose rules in no way coin-cide with those o our own (Bergsons order o the virtual,

Spinozas viewpoint on eternity, and so on). It is neces-sary to travel to t his world through the looking glass,although there is no possibility o communicating with it,so every attempt to break down the barrier that separa-tes us rom it ails. The only way out o this impasse is tochange our point o view, discovering that it is not at all amatter o travelling to another place or world as the scen-ario that gave rise to such seductive thought representsnot an empirical or spatiotemporal order, but rather a con-dition or limit; the limit and condition that underlie theexercise o subjective capacities such as memory, sensitivity,understanding and reason (or example, the discoveryby Prousts hero that the orgotten is not so much themnemonic content o the past as what allows the empi-rical exercise o memor y, and cannot, thereore, be oundin any earlier or later present). Finally, what denitivelyescapes representation and only appears there as antasy,what actually sustains it, must also have a present and berepresented, even thought this can only happen throughction and with a certain dilapidation o representation inan ontological sense, but also aesthetically and politically.

Reading Deleuze is largely a matter o sharing this emental journey through which his thought attains tcapacity to diagnose our present by connecting withthe movement that denes the selsame, irreduciblenot always agreeable newness o our time.

Jos Luis Pardo, Madrileo by birth, but not by charac

In July o 2010, Jos Luis Pardo gave a courthe summer session o MACBAs IndepenStudies Programme (PEI) entitled Body wiOrgans: The Philosophic Gesture o Gilles DIn it, he delved into the work and thoughtFrench philosopher. Some o the contents

course are available in audio ormat atwww

A orthcoming book by Jos Luis Pardo to beby Pre-Textos will g ather his most imporwritings on the work o Deleuze. It consisa re-edition o his Deleuze: Violentar el peto (Deleuze. A Shock to Thought), rst puin 1990 and out o stock in Spain; a collecarticles written ater 1990 entitledA propde Deleuze (Regarding Deleuze); and a neon Deleuze entitled Cuerpo sin rganos (BWithout Organs) .
http://www.macba.cat/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=69&inst_id=385&lang=ENG&PHPSESSID=7kd98jqiigpkpnjula09i6u721http://www.macba.cat/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=69&inst_id=385&lang=ENG&PHPSESSID=7kd98jqiigpkpnjula09i6u721


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Display

SALON 54:ON BECOMING THE END

Parties) a kind o reduced Komintern whose memcomprised the leading Communist Parties o the USSPoland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgariaand Yugoslavia, as well as the Communist Parties o and France without the presence o the Yugoslav deleissued a resolution denouncing the Yugoslav politicleadership as enemies o the revolution and betrayethe international solidarity o workers. Being expellrom the amily o Communist Parties, the Yugoslabroke o all diplomatic, economic and milit ary ties the USSR, and proceeded to orge an independent aauthentic path or the construction o socialism. Th

included a separation rom the Soviet basis o Marxiand the reinterpretation o Marxs or iginal model, aas the abandonment o Socialist Realisms approachthe organisation o cultural production, leading to areconguration o the cultural eld related to it. In thathe reconstruction o modernism entailed a massiveinstitutional reorganisation, the reinorcement o thque cultural space o Yugoslavia, as well as the dismanrearticulating and overcoming o the narrow nationramework o modernism.

Cultural changes were gradual, but dramatic noless. In 1949, the leading party ideologist, Edvard Karproclaimed the withdrawal o the Party rom culturaaairs, and in 1952 Miroslav Krlea, a writer and intelo considerable political authority, deconstructed SoRealism as reactionary, apologetic bourgeois art in a sdelivered to the 3rd Congress o the Association o Wo Yugoslavia. From 1950 onwards, in an attempt to sits willingness to open communication channels to tWest, Yugoslavia began participating in the Venice BNevertheless, heated debates about the proper expre

Art historian, critic and curator. Member o theindependent curatorial collective What, How & orWhom (WHW), a non-prot organisation or visualculture ormed in 1999 and based in Croatia. Thegroup WHW directs Galerija Nova in Zagreb andhas curated projects such as the 11th InternationalIstanbul Biennial (2009).

I there is one exhibition that marked the establishment o amodernist paradigm in ormer Yugoslavia ater the SecondWorld War, it was the exhibition Salon 54, held in theFine Arts Gallery in the city o Rijeka in March 1954. Thenarrative o modernism it established lasted throughout thesocialist decades and with minor adaptations survived thebreakdown o the State and subsequent ounding o a newcultural identity in which nationalistic elements and ideo-logical re-interpretations o an anti-communist characterreigned supreme.

The exhibition installation, organisation and cataloguetexts were the collective work o a team o authors, inclu-

ding Mica Baicevic and Radoslav Putar. Arguably the mosttalented and prolic critics among the younger generation,since the beginning o the 1950s they had expressed in thedaily press a clear educational agenda, a ormal-analyticalapproach and a belie in the possibility o the positive,transormative impact o art on social lie.

Salon 54 is generally considered the high point othe postwar process o ounding a new cultural policy inYugoslavia and the reconstr uction o modernism. It ranparallel to similar processes taking shape in the context opostwar Europe, characterised by a dire economic situa-tion and the increasing ears o escalations in the ColdWar. But in Yugoslavia this process was distinctivelymarked by the end o the short but restrictive episodeo Socialist Realism and the radical social changes takingplace when Yugoslavia broke away rom the USSR in 1948ater the level o political independence o the YugoslavParty had become unacceptable in the eyes o the mono-lith Eastern Bloc. The result o months o pressure andtension, Inormbiro (Inormation Bureau o Communist

Nataa Ilic


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View oSalon exhibition oContemporarypainting and scheld 722 Marat the Fine Arto Rijeka (todaMuseum o Mand ContempoRijeka).


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gestures. They were especially prompted by the appeo radical abstract art in the work o the artist group E51,3 arguably the rst neo-avant-garde movement in war Yugoslavia. The group exercised a lasting infuensubsequent generations o artists and cultural worker

In their maniestos EXAT 51 promoted the colleaspects o work, the reedom o experimentation and

social engagement o art in the synthesis o all artisticorms, abolishing the separation between ne and apart. Their enlightened position was carried by a desirto actively participate in the concrete reconstruction material and social reality within a total socialist tranmation o society. Reclaiming the legacy o the Russiavant-garde and the idea o abstraction as a revolutionart or a revolutionary society, EXAT 51 shattered thedominant traditionalist view obsessed with authentiand with local values reduced to modalities o the SchParis rom the rst hal o the twentieth century. Havpredecessors in local tradition other than pre-war Baunctionalist architecture, EXAT 51 nevertheless creaan important link in the small trajectory o avant-gar

View o the exSalon 54

3 EXAT 51 (abbreviated rom Experimental Atelier) was an artist group aZagreb between 1950 and 1956. Its members were the painters, VladoBoidar Raica, Ivan Picelj and Aleksandar Srnec, and the architects VjRichter, Bernardo Bernardi, Zdravko Bregovac, Zvonimir Radic and VZaharovic.

o socialist ideas continued or several more years, dur ingwhich the reconguration o the bureaucratic institutionallandscape secured the transer rom the context o interna-tional proletarian culture into the context o the bourgeoisculture o the West.1

Through the selection o works, their contextualisa-tion in the installation and the mediation o the critical,

analytical texts within the publication, Salon 54 deter-mined the outcome o the polemics on Socialist Realism,deeating those traditionalists who, whether advocatinga return to pre-war modernism or deending SocialistRealism, basically only struggled over lucrative positionswithin current cultural conjuncture, thereore being unitedagainst any radical maniestations o modernism: not onlyin the 1950s, but or decades to come. During this time thecultural mainstream adopted as the dominant expressiono its tastes what the art theorist Miko uvakovic callssocialist aestheticism,2 a moderate modernist art rooted inthe tradition o a pre-war modernist compromise betweenabstraction and guration. But in the early 1950s debateson the proper nature o socialist art were not mere empty

1 Ljiljana Kolenik, Izmedu Istoka i Zapada. Hrvatska umjetnost i likovna kritika50-ih godina (Between East and West, Croatian Art and Art Criticism o the1950s). Zagreb: Institut za Povijest Umjetnosti (Institute o Art History), 2006,p. 156.

2 Miko uvakovic, Umjetnost i ideologija. Pedesete u podijeljenoj Europi (Artand Ideology, 1950s in the Divided Europe), ivot umjetnosti, n. 71-72. Zagreb:Institut za Povijest Umjetnosti (Institute o Art History), 2004.


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experimentation that art historian Jea Denegri denes asthe second line. As an artistic movement that intervenedin the dominant ideology, proposed the abolition o artisticautonomy and, ater the countrys split rom Stalin, turnedthe lack o artistic autonomy into a strategic advantage opento the possibilities o an authentic new uture in the contexto Yugoslav socialism and its quest or the true origins othe revolution, EXAT 51 armed repetition as an authenticmodernist gesture.

While the State did not recognise the authenticity othe social experiment in EXAT 51s programme,4 or thosewho were unsure about the Partys stand on the issue oabstraction, in 1954 Kardelj conrmed the Partys intentionto distance itsel rom cultural aairs. In the same year theGallery o Contemporary Art, the uture Museum o Con-temporary Art, was inaugurated in Zagreb.

Salon 54 assured the inclusion o abstraction in thecontext o modernism, although the question o its ideo-logical acceptability lingered as long as the late 1950s,when philosopher Rudi Supek salvaged it rom ideologicalsusceptibility by introducing the notion o alienation:something that would prove so dear to humanist, Marxist

philosophers in the 1960s. The revalorisation o traditionas resolved in Salon 54 as the narrative that outlinedExpressionist and Constructivist tendencies as two broadly-dened dominant movements, thus orging conceptuallinks between the contemporary abstraction o EXAT 51and the rational experiments o pre-war modernism wasinscribed as the background o a striving or a commoncultural space within Yugoslavia and as an infuence onthe transormation o society in general. Salon 54 includedpaintings by EXAT 51 members Picelj, Srnec, Raica, Kristl,but the promotion o a socially-engaged geometrical abs-traction was not partisan, the selection including other, less

radical versions o abstraction besides. In many ways Salon54 thus opened the path to high modernism that cancelledthe utopian projections on relations between art and lieand strived or dierent utopias, i at all. Incidentally, in anunproblematic way it also serviced Yugoslav cultural strategy,that adopted and careully promoted its liberal image.

This also means thatSalon 54 should not be inter-preted as the moment o triumph o a liberal victory over adogmatic and oppressive regime, as clichd interpretationswithin the ramework o dissident art and the simplistictypology o a Western-centric narrative on modernismwould have it, but as the moment o normalisation inwhich the novelty o the Yugoslav revolution and the anti-ascist struggle in the Second World War ceased to be the

active principles o a collective social experiment. Sawas as much the expression o rebellion against the ising bureaucratisation o culture, the rst curated exhdesigned to argue, explain, and document the artisticrents o its time and their relations to a recent past, asas it was the symptom o a normalisation that markeend o revolutionary transormations o society. Howto rethink the specic conjuncture oSalon 54 rom tgloomy, de-politicised post-socialist perspective stucnationalistic mythologisations and the blunt armthe existing state o aairs means in no way to regardailure, but rather as the old within the legacy o a soalternative to modernism in its de-culturalised orm, oo the dominant narrative that depoliticises communas utopia, as the expression o a collective endeavour the moment when its content was negotiated as a reapossibility.

4 EXAT 51 members Picelj, Richter and Srnec did develop a number o successularchitectural designs or Yugoslav pavilions at trade airs around the world,whose meager documentation is perhaps the best indicator o what EXAT 51srealisations would have looked like.

June o 2009 witnessed the ounding oLInternationale, a transnational platorm

museums in Europe whose aim is to share cand question the dominant narratives o artThe ounding members o LInternationale Moderna Galerija o Ljubljana (Slovenia), thKoller Society (SJK) o Bratislava (Slovakia)Abbemuseum (VAM) o Eindhoven (the Nlands), the Museum van Hedendaagse Ku(MHKA) o Antwerp (Belgium) and the MuContemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).Starting on 13 May, MACBA will present exhibition organised by LInternationale, entitled Museum o Parallel Narratives. In

ramework o LInternationale that will brtogether more than a hundred works by keEuropean artists in the Collection o the MGalerija o Ljubljana. A number o events wheld in conjunction with the exhibition, ina roundtable scheduled or 14 May and theo Yugoslavian lms entitled We Cant Pro

Well Do Anything Except Experiment. ExpFilm in Yugoslavia, 1960 80 on 18 and 25During autumn, a selection o works rom thCollection will orm part o a major exhibitioheld at the Moderna Galerija o Ljubljana.At the same time, LInternationale is org anseries o seminars with the participation oMACBA Independent Studies ProgrammeThus ar, events have been held in the citiebljana, Vienna, Bratislava, Warsaw and BaFor urther inormation, visitwww.macba.http://internacionala.mg-lj.si/.
http://www.macba.cat/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=69&inst_id=385&lang=ENG&PHPSESSID=7kd98jqiigpkpnjula09i6u721http://internacionala.mg-lj.si/http://internacionala.mg-lj.si/http://www.macba.cat/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=69&inst_id=385&lang=ENG&PHPSESSID=7kd98jqiigpkpnjula09i6u721


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ALL OF A TWIST

In order to think narration in a world that is devoid o anynarrative necessity an expanding space into which allideas o embodiments dissolve and an absolute time whoseradical contingency aborts any necessary dierence towhich a narrative can be applied rst we must redeploythe hierarchy o thought in nature as the view point or

locus o speculation and narration. The exteriority andcontingency o the real or the cosmic abyss is not whatshould or can be objectied by thought; on the contrary,it is thought that is objectied by the exteriority andcontingency o the real, which simultaneously and in everyinstance gives rise to thought and usurps it. The veryhierarchy o thought that was supposed to bring the possi-bility o refection on the object or event X is tur ned upsidedown and inside out, the space o refection itsel becomesa playground or the exteriority and contingency o objectX. Now i narration is both to know and to relate, notonly is the narration o/about the contingent realitytwisted with a logic endemic to tales o spirit possession(when I think, it is actually the outsider, the demon insideme that thinks through me), but also it is unolded withthe dynamics inherent to conspiracy theories (all relations,adventures and plots are twistedly driven by a secretagreement or complicity between contingent andindierent objective worlds the more epical the narration,the thicker the conspiracy, the more elliptical the deptho the complicity).

In this hierarchical corruption o the narrative, tration o any trivial or non-trivial reality turnsrom ba reection on the world and objects to being an inecthe world and objects themselves in their exteriority antingency. With regard to the narrative nomenclature,is the name given to this troubling turn whereby con

aspects o the real reclaim the plot and undamentallythe course and hierarchy o narration. In the wake o whimsical imagination and extravagant plots are hardmore than intuitive errancies since any mundane andcial world will turn out to be a local mode o dynammaterialisation o an incalculably weird universe. Thethereore, has a spontaneous ability to reclaim and rembilise all orms o plot, perspective and history by orcollusion or contamination on behal o a contingent oIt is this ability that gives the twist a veritable narrati

capacity that is asymptotic to crime, horror, conspiradetective ctions.

When the twist occurs that is to say, when it sthe trajectory o the refection on behal o the contino the objective relations and contorts the course o tnarrative orientation it orces a sweeping or perhapa pulverising re-evaluation o the entire narrative trajThis is especially evident in variants o pulp ction rhorror stories to detective thrillers, crime novels andpiracy ctions. The so-called plot twist seizes the refspace o narration or simply turns the knowing o t

Reza NegarestaniPhilosopher and writer born in Shiraz, Iran. He is theauthor oCyclonopedia: Complicity with AnonymousMaterials (2008), a work o theory-ction on theMiddle East. He has also written or such journalsand anthologies as Collapse, Angelakiand CTheory.

Mediterraneans


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Jorinde VoigtAxiom X, 2010Ink and pencil 51 x 36 cm


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narration into the narr ative object o contingenciesand, thereore, subjects the narration to an inquisitivespeculation rom the perspective o complicity betweenobjective resources, which in radically contingent ways playtheir infuence over the narrative causality. What used tobe knowing is now, all o a sudden, revealed to be a literarygimmick acilitating a plummet into what was alwaysalready there but could not be refected upon a short-livedresolution (dnouement) degenerating into a cosmic conspi-racy at the speed o a trashy airport thriller.

In the wake o the twist, the causal meshwork o thenarration is orcibly revised to a new system that is deter-mined by the contingency o the twist. For this reason, thetwist, ar rom being mythoclastic, is at once pro-narrativeand mytho-accelerative; rather than shattering the plot(mythoclasm), it remoulds and accelerates the plot throughreconstructing the causal system rom the viewpoint o anineradicable alien presence that has suddenly erupted or haslong resided in the narration as an alien seed around whichthe plot has been crystallised.1 Yet this alienating shit operspective is precisely equal to a descent wherein thenarrative has to unconditionally adopt any (alien) point

o view as the plot loses its established ground and thecontingent depth is traversed. Sometimes this alienatingdescent is only registered as a vertiginous eect or a shock(c. the plot twist as a shock in pulp narratives, especiallygiallo ction). Other times, the descent becomes the narra-tion itsel. In the crime novels o Jim Thompson, such asPop. 1280 (1964) and The Killer Inside Me (1952), the rstperson voice o the narrator is itsel the twist that orms thenarrative while calmly under nonchalant infuences o aglobal unconscious pushing the entire (narrative) worldo the cli.

The speculative power o the twist on the causal

conguration o the narrative is analogous to the shock otrauma that sometimes simply overthrows all that has beennarrated. Yet there are also times when, instead o infict-ing a shock, the twist perorates the causal system o thenarrative rom all directions, changing the plasticity and theormation o the narrative to a new narration whose everyrelation is a twist, a contingency in complicity with another

contingency ad infnitum. The twist, in this sense, beanother name or speculationrom the other side, oneendemicity to the narrative dynamism makes its roletively problematic and whose irrepressible persistenca thoroughgoing re-examination and reconstructionnarrative world through the medium o contingencyrom the outside allies it with the orce o trauma. Sintrauma is both an overthrowing contingency and a returing building process that changes the horizon accoto contingent orces and objective resources o the O

Now imagine a narrative book ocused on a placthis planet called the Middle East, with its oil and dusdriven everyday lie, with its controversial yet terrestpolitics, its religions, its arid and hot climate. What wbe a veritable narrative o this place? One possible cawould be a geo-political narrative shaped by embracia Middle Eastern viewpoint (the victim, the other, thMiddle Easterner). Another alternative would be a glplanetary narration (the Middle East as technologicalethnologically and economically inhomogeneous, thbreeding ground o terror or the land o ancient wisdYet both these narrative viewpoints harbour a twist

that might creep on them at any moment or no reaswhatsoever, conscating their narration on behal ochasmic reality that can be narratively abricated by tcomplicity o cosmic viewpoints a narration accretethe perspective o anonymous (cosmic) materials. Inting the Middle East, the triad o the narrator, the narand the narration turns into the narrative object o cocontingencies, extra-terrestrial gravitational elds aninfuences: its petropolitics become the epic o hydrobons rom a nether point o view, its religions, politicdemography are revealed to be links in complicity beterrestrial dynamics, solar radiations and stellar death

wars the t actical mobility o nested geo-cosmic traumstrategic perspectives spawned by contingent distribuo cosmic matter throughout the planetary body. Whwas supposed to be a theoretic or ctional speculatiothe Middle East turns out to be a narrative rom a chapoint o view. It is not so much that this narrative is hor suspenseul; it is the usurping nature o this aliena

1 One example o this resident model o an object that randomly or homoge-nously constructs the plot around itsel is the so-called Chekhovs gun, anobject that early in the story is introduced to the reader, then it is abandonedand only later toward the end resuraces to overshadow all human characters,narrative events and their relationships. Contrary to Chekhov who believedthat an element introduced in the story must be used at some point, the gunis merely a orce o contingency that might or might not (or no reason at all)resurace later in order to seize the trajectory o the plot. Hence in order tounderstand the unction o Chekhov's gun, one must twist Anton Chekhovsown words: One must put a loaded rife on the stage even i no one is thin-king o ring it.


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twist that nds its narrative asymptote in horror, conspira-cy and crime ctions. When it comes to astute realism, theregional or local speculation must be rethought and reor-mulated rom the universal or cosmic point o view, but todo so means to arm the vertigo o the twist that opens theregional (the Middle East) into the cosmic and to prioritisethe role o the contingent turn by which the cosmic abrica-tes global and regional localities.

Here the twist as the orce o the realist speculation(realist in the sense that it is asymptotic to the contingentreality that drives the universe) approximates the unction othe philosophy o Speculative Realism in which speculationis not driven by our grounded experience or refection butby the exteriority and contingency o a universe that alwaysantedates and postdates us (that which thinks us rom theother side). Ironically, philosophy seems to have strived thislong only to become, belatedly, a crime ction, a conspiracythriller in order to embrace the orce o the radical twist andpaint itsel yellow. This calls to mind the image o a philo-sopher who has realised that in speculating the world, it hasbeen the world and its strange aeons that have twistedlynarrated her all along.2 The philosophers vocation is to

recognise the abyssal cosmic twist that has given birth to herspeculation and to adopt the cosmic perspective as the onlyviable commitment to reality. Thus spake Sutter Cane in TheMouth o Madness (1995): For years I thought I was makingall this up, but they were telling me what to write. 3

2 H. P. Lovecrat, The Call o Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. New York: PenguinBooks, 1999, p. 156.

3 In the Mouth o Madness, directed by John Carpenter, written by Michael DeLuca, 1995.

Launched in 2006, Collapse is an independnon-aliated journal o philosophical resedevelopment. Each volume o this internat

recognised journal has a specic theme andtogether new works by and in-depth intervcontemporary artists, philosophers and sciewho are leaders in their elds. Through thisertilisation, the journal attempts to develoand productive inquiry at the oreront o ccultural, political and philosophical debate.Negarestani is a regular contributor to Collaalso an associate editor o the orthcoming vThe next issue oCollapse will be vol. VII: Materialism, to be published in 2011. For inormation, visitwww.urbanomic.com.

Cyclonopedia is the rst horror and theorybook rom and about the Middle East. It is Eastern odyssey, where the author connecappalling vistas o contemporary world pothe politics o oil and the War on Terror toarchaeologies o the Middle East and the nhistory o the earth itsel. As a work o spephilosophy, Cyclonopedia addresses the evlie and politics o the region in the orm ohorror novel in which voices o human naare gradually replaced by inorganic noises.story is meticulously told rom the ever-twperspective o cosmic processes o ormatiReza Negarestanis orthcoming book Thequistis a hybrid o classical philosophy anddraws on various genres o drama and persuch as Greek tragedy and Viennese ActionThe Mortiloquist, the history o Western pphy is staged by barbarian outlanders.

Reza NegarestCyclonopedia:

Complicity witAnonymous MMelbourne: re2008.

Collapse:Philosophical Rand DevelopmFalmouth: Urb2010.
http://www.urbanomic.com/http://www.urbanomic.com/


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Artistic research

OCCLUDED OCEANS,

OPTICAL WATERS:NOTES ON THEDREXCIYA MYTHOS II

Some o the questions posed by the artwork HydraDecapita might be speculatively ormulatedthrough reverse engineering any one o its pointso departure. A rst scene: imagining WilliamMorris, standing in his ront room, ater dinner.In the company o his evening guests, he is singingthe our paragraphs o Chapter XIV o Volume 1rom Modern Painters, published anonymously,to great acclaim, in 1843, by John Ruskin. Devotedto a deence o John Mallord William Turnersindenite depiction o ocean in Slavers ThrowingOverboard the Dead and Dying Typhon ComingOn rom 1840, Ruskins text inaugurates a certaintendency towards mimetic excess in British artcriticism. Second scene: comparing as manycatalogue reproductions o Turners 1840 paintingas possible, in an attempt to understand its peculiarresistance to oset litho printing technology.

Third scene: wondering how to induce as manymoir intererence patterns as possible in anattempt to engineer varieties o optical water andtypes o ata morgana.

Reverse engineering these episodes does notlead back towards the intentionality or motiva-tion o authorship o a work like Hydra Decapita;instead it reconstructs, partially, the movement bywhich a work withdraws rom those intentions;it begins to measure the distance by which a workrecedes rom the aspirations invested in it. Thesepractices o withdrawal constitute an attempt toinitiate Edouard Glissants demand or an opacityin which a practice o sel-authorisation legitima-tes itsel through the ormulation o an appearancethat simultaneously withdraws itsel rom visi-bility. Opacity announces itsel as a private imageconstituted rom publically circulating materials;

The Otolith Group

The artwork o The Otolith Group, ounded inLondon in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and KodwoEshun, presents a refection on perception andthe nature o human memory t hrough lms,texts and activities related to media archives.


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Videostills romthe lm HydraDecapita I(2010)by The OtolithGroup

Hydra Decapita Iwas presented atMACBA romFebruary to May2011 as part othe exhibitionThe Otolith Group.Thoughtorm . The

rst iteration oHydra Decapita II(2011) was alsopremiered atMACBA in May.The completedHydra Decapitatrilogy, co-produ-ced by the FundaciMACBA, willbecome part o theMACBA Collection.


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it articulates a public secrecy that allows or theappearance o a political dimension that Glissantdescribes as the right to a shared obscurity.

The monochromatic light oHydra Decapitaimplies a desire to share this obscurity, to poten-tiate that which occlusion makes possible. HydraDecapita does not emerge into the light o pro-jection; instead it withdraws into the sky-less,land-lost black ocean o Drexciya. Apart romenlightenment, apart rom transparency, allured bythe severity o its constraints, a lure that occults itsluminosity.

In the sequence o records released between1992 and 2002, such as Deep Sea Dweller(1992),Bubble Metropolis (1993), Molecular Enhancement(1994) andAquatic Invasion (1994), the Detroit-based duo Drexciya successively, stealthily inltra-ted the unctional demands o 1990s dancefoorsacross Europe, America and beyond with an elabo-rately recessed esoteric ctional system.

What enthrals The Otolith Group are theways in which Drexciya invites and incites a mode

o what McLuhan calledparticipation mystique.The duos rst album, The Quest, compiled its rstsingle releases onto a single CD. The Questwasaccompanied by a short statement, written by agure nominated as The Unknown Writer, printedon the back inside cover, accompanied by a map,in our stages, printed on the ront inside cover.These ormulations articulated, or the rst time,the sonic ction that had previously been hinted atby the titles o those earlier singles. The statementand the maps elaborated and encrypted those her-metic allusions. The statement read as ollows:

Could it be possible or humans to breatheunderwater? A oetus in its mothers womb iscertainly alive in an aquatic environment. Duringthe greatest holocaust the world has ever known,pregnant America-bound Arican slaves werethrown overboard by the thousands during labouror being sick and disruptive cargo. Is it possiblethat they could have given birth at sea to babiesthat never needed air? Recent exper iments haveshown mice able to breathe liquid oxygen. Evenmore shocking and conclusive was a recent instan-ce o a premature inant saved rom certain deathby breathing liquid oxygen through its undeve-loped lungs. These acts combined with reportedsightings o Gillmen and swamp monsters in thecoastal swamps o the South-Eastern United Sta-tes make the slave trade theory startlingly easible.

Are Drexciyans water breathing, aquaticallymutated descendants o those unortunate victimso human greed? Have they been spared by God to

teach us or terrorise us? Did they migrate rom theGul o Mexico to the Mississippi river basin andon to the great lakes o Michigan?

Do they walk among us? Are they moreadvanced than us and why do they make theirstrange music?

What is their Quest?These are many o the questions that you

dont know and never will.The end o one thing... and the beginning o

another.Out The Unknown Writer

The Middle Passage becomes an incunabulaor the ctionalisation o the human species viaprocesses o orced adaptation, mutation andevolution. The antasy o origination is replacedhere with a able o mutation. Drexciya operated asa hypothetical mythology, capable, on one hand,o registering the implications o a non-reversiblediaspora while simultaneously operating as a con-vergence between the organisation o sound and

the assemblage o ction in the guise o elaboratelyarranged escapism.

What could be discerned in the Drexciyamythos was a abulation that pursued the impli-cations o orced mutation. By seceding rom thepolitical category, the philosophical claim and onto-logical condition o the human, Drexciya retroactedreceived ideas o the post-human as a comingcondition. The Drexciya myth was nothing lessthan a redreaming o the biopolitical atrocity o theMiddle Passage; a revisionist electronic song-cyclein which the implications o nancial speculation

o a trade whose promise to pay was insured bycargoes o bodies were carried over into a ctionalspeculation on death, marine evolution, terracentri-city and post-humanity.

Living through the contemporary crisis omarket undamentalism and inhabiting the ideo-logical rubble o neo-liberalism oregrounds theunderstanding that practices o speculation were,and remain, as much nancial as they are ctional.Between the publication o Paul Gilroys The BlackAtlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness in1993, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Redikers TheMany-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners,and the Hidden History o the RevolutionaryAtlantic in 2001 and Ian Baucoms Specters othe Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and thePhilosophy o History in 2005, a notion o Drexciyabegins to emerge. Drexciya is thinkable as a spectreo the sub-Atlantic, a revenant that resuraces andresubmerges with each cycle o capital accumula-tion. Baucom explained that what is at once obsce-


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ne and vital to contemporary understandingo the ull capital logic o the slave trade is tocome to terms with what it meant or this tradeto have ound a way to treat human beings notonly as i they were a type o commodity but as afexible, negotiable, transactionable orm o money.Without this nancial revolution in the businessoperations o the slave trade, there would havebeen no incentive or Captain Luke Collingwoodto do what he did, that is, to condently massacre132 slaves aboard the Zong, secure in the convic-tion that in doing so he was not destroying hisemployers commodities but hastening their trans-ormation into money.

Drexciya invites the assemblage o a con-stellation o intersections between atrocity andinsurance, servitude and credit, and the oceanand mortality. Each o these intersections haspersisted into the present, inviting degrees ochronological disturbance whose eects are dicultto calculate in advance. Impossible not to hear inDrexciya the murmurings o an anthropological

exodus rom capitalism that continually convertsutures into nance in order to put bodies to death.

Occluded Oceans, Optical Waters: Notes onThe Drexciya Mythos II is the second in a series oessays exploring the constellation o ideas aroundDrexciya. The rst essay Notes Towards An Out-line o the Drexciya Mythos was presented on8 February 2008 at the Broadway Cinema &Media Centre, Nottingham, as part o the Cultureand Slavery talks series in partnership with NewArt Exchange, Walsall, and Nottingham Contem-

porary. Notes Towards An Outline o the Drexci-ya Mythos is published in Alex Farquharson (ed.),Histories o the Present, Nottingham, UK:Nottingham Contemporary, 2011.

MACBA presented the work oThe Otolitin the exhibition The Otolith Group. Thoug

held rom February to May 2011. Curated bMartnez and co-produced with the FondaMAXXI o Rome the exhibition was concea place that could allow visitors to understgroups methodology.A conversation between Anjalika Sagar anKodwo Eshun (The Otolith Group) and cChus Martnez is available in audio ormawww.macba.cat, and on Rdio Web MACBFONS AUDIO and SON[I]A recordings thwith the collectives work. For urther inovisithttp://rwm.macba.cat/.

A Long Time Between Sunsis the title o theexhibition in which The Otolith Group preits Otolith Trilogy. Under the same title, thiwhich unctions as an archive, collects a grethe material related to t he production o thThe Showroom and Gasworks o London, aas the Fondazione Galleria Civica de TrentoCant Dance, I Dont Want To Be Part o Yoution o Amsterdam and MACBA o Barcelonparticipated in the publication

The Otolith Group, Will Holder(eds.). The Otolith Group. A

Long Time Between Suns. Berlin:Sternberg Press, 2009.
http://www.macba.cat/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=69&inst_id=385&lang=ENG&PHPSESSID=7kd98jqiigpkpnjula09i6u721http://rwm.macba.cat/en/home/http://rwm.macba.cat/en/home/http://www.macba.cat/controller.php?p_action=show_page&pagina_id=69&inst_id=385&lang=ENG&PHPSESSID=7kd98jqiigpkpnjula09i6u721


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SENSIBILITYAND SEMIOCAPITALFranco Berardi BioGraduate in Aesthetics, writer and media-activist,he teaches Social History o the Media at theAccademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan. Politicallyengaged rom the sixties, he was coounder oRadio Alice (1976) and the magazineA/Traverso(197581), and more recently o the Rekombinantwebsite (20009). His books include: The Factoryo Unhappiness (2001) and The Soul at Work(2009). His next book,Ater the Fut ure, will bepublished in 2011 by AKPress.

During the present economic crisis, which is aneect o the transition beyond industrial capital-ism towards the universe o semiocapital, we haveto reconsider the genealogy o economic reasonin the context o the history o art and media thatcontributed to shaping social sensibility, as wellas in the context o an educational system thatlikewise helped shape the social accessibility tointellectual exchange and production.

What is o particular interest to this text is

the modelling o sensibility, the aculty that makesit possible to understand what cannot be expressedin codied terms (i.e., in words, gures, digits).Thanks to the modelling o sensibility, economicreason has conquered the paradigmatic place thatis semiotising the whole at a deep level, at the levelo unconscious reactivity, at the level o sensualperception. This is why the relation between econ-omy and aesthetics is crucial to the understandingo the present cultural becoming, i we think oaesthetics as a science o subjective sensibility andnot as a study o the artistic object.

The predominance o economic reason in themodern mind has arisen rom the integration othe economy and the inosphere. The inosphere in which inormation both emanates and circulates is aecting the nervous system o society, thesocial psychosphere, and in particular is aectingsensibility.

The mutation o the inosphere at the end oindustrial modernity is producing a shit in social

perception: the end o modern bourgeois culture, andthe instalment o a semiocapitalist post-bourgeoisculture, can be better understood i we reer to theeclipse o the Protestant sensibility and the returno the Baroque spirit in the eld o social perception.

The Protestant imagination, which accordingto Max Weber is prevalent in the ormation omodern bourgeois culture, is essentially based onthe severity o verbal semiosis, and is suspiciouso the deceptive language o images. Basically,

in joining the bourgeois proprietary instinct theProtestant spirit rejects Baroque ornamentality asa waste o both labour and time.

While the Baroque draws its strength romdeterritorialisation (conquest, prolieration o images,triumph o the dissipative energy o the imagination),Protestant culture arms the individuality oChristian consciousness as the site o the uniquenesso truth (implying a direct relation between theindividual Christian and God, and a direct relationbetween the bourgeoisie and their property). Protes-tant sensibility is by nature puritanical and severe.

While the terr itorialised bourgeois economywas based on the iconoclastic severity o iron andsteel, post-industrial production is based insteadon the kaleidoscopic, deterritorialised machine osemiotic production.

In Lchange symbolique et la mort(1976)Jean Baudrillard writes: The reality principlecorresponded to a certain stage o the law o value.Today the whole system is swamped by indeter-

Academy


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minacy, and every reality is absorbed by the hyper-reality o the code and simulation.

With Richard Nixons decision in 1971 toend the convertibility o the US dollar, an aleatoricregime o fuctuant values was inaugurated, andbecause o post-bourgeois deterritorialisation theentire system ell into indeterminacy: the relationbetween reerent and sign, simulation and event,value and time o labour, is no longer xed andguaranteed. Language is no longer just a tool orrepresenting economic process; it becomes themain source o accumulation, constantly deterri-torialising the eld o exchange. Speculation andspectacle intermingle, because o the intrinsicinfationary (metaphoric) nature o language. Themetaphoric potency o language opens the doorto semiotic infation, to the over-inclusivity othe message. The linguistic web o semio-productionis a game o mirrors leading to bubbles, bursts andthe unavoidable crises o over-production. Simu-lation and ractalisation are essentially Baroquecategories, and the Baroque spirit is revived by the

regime o nancial indeterminacy and prolieration.In its prevailing orm, modern capitalism was

based on the commensurability o the relationbetween labour and value. In traditional pre-capitalisteconomies, the value o goods was merely linkedto the relationship between resources and socialneeds, but the dynamics o capitalist accumulationredened the measure o value on the basis o thetime expended on its production. In the sphere omodern capitalism, the value o a product is denedby something that is on average measurable: theamount o time socially needed or the production

o goods. Bourgeois capitalism was predicated onthe production o a territorialised orm o wealth,and the modern bourgeoisie was an essentiallyterritorialised class. The very denition o thisclass is related to the territory obourg, the townor city where productive energies are assembled,where actories are built and property is protected.Thereore we can speak oaectio societatis, as thebourgeois capitalist is devoted to the physical placewhere wealth can be produced, the community oworkers whose exploitation makes the accumulationo capital possible and the community o consumerswho make possible the realisation o its value.Consequently, bourgeois society is the place ouniversal, rational measurement: truth, conventio-nal agreement on something that does not dependon arbitrary will, but on a undamental convention the relationship between labour time and value.

The Weberian identication o capitalismand Protestant ethics somehow overshadows thesecond stream o modernity, that which emerges

rom the Counter-Reormation and the Baroque.This second modernity became subordinate andmarginalised when the industrialisation o thehuman environment reduced the social eld to aprocess o mechanical production and reproduc-tion. But since the sixteenth century, the CatholicChurch has been a centre o cultural and economicpower based on imagination and deterritorialisa-tion. The spiritual and immaterial power o Romehas always been based on the emanation and themanipulation o the social imagination. This hassomething to do with the genesis o Italian ascism,both in its Mussolini and Berlusconi versions.

Protestant modernity dened the canon omodernity, but the Baroque stream never disap-peared. Rather, it went underground, tunnellingdeep into the recesses o the modern imaginaryonly to resurace at the end o the twentiethcentury when the capitalist system underwent adramatic paradigm shit towards a post-industrialsociety, as language and the economy becameincreasingly interwoven.

The new production sphere, which I callsemiocapital, is centred on the creation and com-modication o techno-linguistic devices, whichhave a semiotic and deterritorialised eature. (SeeMarazzi, 2009; Virno, 2003.)

At this point the Baroque stream o moder-nity re-suraces. Semiotic production is transerredrom the severe space o reerential denotation tothe vertiginous kingdom o prolierating appear-ances and polisemic connotation. In the sphereo Baroque sensibility, the research o meaning isdoomed to all into desingano (deception), because

o the absence o any ontological oundation andbecause o the perpetual sliding and shiting romone level o simulation to the next. Jos AntonioMaravall speaks o Baroque cosmovision, i.e., a cos-mology based on the relativism o vision, on theever-changing point o view o the subject and onthe prolieration o images. The Baroque desinganois an eect o the spread o images, o the realistic(and deceiving) representation o space.

To close with a political question: how canwe start a process o autonomisation rom theBaroque eect o semiocapitalism without goingback to the old ashioned ethics o the Protestantbourgeoisie? How can we start a process oautonomous subjectivation in the precarious andractalised condition o creative work nowadays?In Europe, as elsewhere, the educational system,which was built as a crucial dispositive o modernprogress, is under attack rom privatisation, under-nancing and subjugation to the dogmas o corporateprot. The post-bourgeois leading class o nancial


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NDEX Number 0 included contributfrom Xavier Antich, Julie Ault, JohanBurton, Bartomeu Mar, Chus MartnChristoph Menke, Piotr Piotrowski,Natascha Sadr Haghighian and ElizabSuzanne Kassab.

NDEX Number 2 will include contribfrom Xavier Antich, Yto Barrada, CriFreire, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Hassanand Antonio Vega Macotela.

Would you like to read NDEX onlinVisitwww.macba.cat/index

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capitalism is destroying the state school systemand is subjecting university education to theinterests o the economy.

We cannot go back to the old educationalsystem; we cannot restore the school o the past,which was an expression o the bourgeois state.We have to reinvent the autonomy o knowledgeand the social role o learning and research. It ispossible that creative sensibility will be the rsteld o transormation and reinvention o theeducational system, and will be the leading orcebehind the transition toward a sel-organisationo the general intellect, beyond the alternatives osevere Protestant bourgeois power or the Baroqueregime o nancial power and semiocapital.

Consulted bibliographyBaudrillard, Jean. Lchange symbolique et la mort.

Paris: ditions Gallimard, 1976. (English ver-sion: Symbolic Exchange and Death. London:SGAE, 1993).

Echeverra, Bolvar. Vuelta de siglo. Mexico DF:

Editorial Era, 2006.Marazzi, Christian. Capital and Language: Fromthe New Economy to the War Economy.Los Angeles: Semiotexte, 2009.

Virno, Paolo. Quando il verbo si a carne. Linguaggioe natura umana. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri,2003.

Weber, Max. Die protestantische Ethik und derGeist des Kapitalismus, appeared in instal-ments in the Archiv uer Sozialwissenschatund Sozialpolitik 19045 (English version:The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit o Capita-

lism, Talcott Parsons (trans.), with orewordby R. H. Tawney. London: Unwin UniversityBooks, 1930).

Franco Berardi will be at MACBA in autumn 2011 to par ticipatein a lecture held by the Independent Studies Programme (PEI).For urther inormation visitwww.macba.cat.Franco Berardi is one o the authors who will contribute tothe project100 Notes 100 Thoughts, a project o documenta 13and Hatje Cantz that explores how thinking emerges and lies atthe heart o reimagining the world. For urther inormation visitwww.documenta.de.
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ndexis available at

Insisting that the anachronic is not an aberration buta need means that we must distance ourselves rom amethod o reading and interpretation dominated bythe notion o duration, and instead delve into anothermethod, into a contingency o heterogeneous timesthat provide other keys to pursue the question omeaning. Chus Martnez

And when Deleuze suggests that his use o the historyo philosophy is comparable to collage, we shouldnot mistake this or metaphorical hyperbole orprovocation. We must instead consider collagescomplexity (it is much more than merely gluing onething beside another). Jos Luis Pardo

We have to reinvent the autonomy o knowledgeand the social role o learning and research. It ispossible that creative sensibility will be the rst eldo transormation and reinvention o the educational

system, and will be the leading orce behind thetransition toward a sel-organisation o the generalintellect. Franco Berardi

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