Re: <documenta X><blast> home-affect

Philippe Codognet (Philippe.Codognet@inria.fr)
Mon, 21 Jul 1997 11:32:59 +0200

> I didn't intend to put forth Foucault's position as a comparison to
> Lacan (or as a response to your earlier post). I wanted to give
> historical background for thinking about contemporary space in terms of
> situated technological interventions (what we might think of of
> nonspace, derealized space, virtual space...).
> (Jordan)

Nonspace and derealized space are different from a virtual space, and indeed
could be approximated in our dear euclidian space, just as a-retinal art can
be realized by a work apprehended by vision - Duchamp's fountain.
It all depends on finding the good trigger...

Foucault's heterotopia is an interesting notion but it seems to me more
related to 60's (post-modern) artistic works, e.g. Morris, Smithson.
Especially because they use similar device
(mirrors, nonspace, enclosure/disclosure, order/entropy, etc).
By the way, for those of you considering that the world existed before
Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard and Lacan, it is interesting to note the
similarities with artistic devices used in the Manierist and Baroque works.

"the space behind the screen", is both of vision and of language, it is both
non-existent and real (I can "be" in the other side of the screen,
as opposed to a mirror), it can host distorted diffractions/avatars much more
complex than vision-based or social-based devices -- What is the relation
between me and the cyber-something of which you are currently reading a boring
prose ?

> Space is a purely verbal construction which has been spelled out in three
> dimensions and called geometry, the dimensions being those of the
> kinesthetically-imagined hoist or ball, imagined in an oral-anal
> manner...
> (Bracha)

Galileo was speaking of mathematics and (euclidian) geometry as the true
language of "the book of nature", following many medieval and Renaissance
philosophers ... I imagine that Bracha is refereing to
another type of (heter?)utopian "perfect language".
All languages are limited, all formal tools are imperfect,
and space is certainly not a purely verbal construction.

Philippe.