this Friday I will be at my office on KNG20 (room T2.13A) cafe Le Journal (Neude square) all day to give detailed feedback on your papers. Please reply to this post at what time you would like to stop by; see the schedule below for available timeslots.

10.30 – 11.00:
11.00 – 11.30: Karin
11.30 – 12.00: Lina
12.00 – 12.30:

13.30 – 14.00:
14.00 – 14.30: Silvia
14.30 – 15.00: Tzoanna

15.30 – 16.00: Lisa
16.00 – 16.30: Klaas
16.30 – 17.00: Nina

as Prof. Frank Kessler and I stated at the first course meeting, we would like you to reflect on the various ways in which we have read, talked about and tried to (re)formulate theories of media and performance. Organized around the central theme that ‘the medium is a message’, the challenge to you was to wrap your heads around questions of mediality, and during the last few weeks you probably have found out, even if only for a moment, what you liked and disliked when thinking about theories, what your own position could be among the many positions we have discussed, in short, how you could “think x with author y” where ‘x’ could be any subject, theme, concept, approach or other element that could be connected to media and performance theory.

In the paper, which will have to take up between 5000 and 7000 words, we would like you to reveal and defend your position in this ‘thinking x with y’ in a well-structured and above all eloquently-argumented manner. Is McLuhan’s idea of what ‘a medium’ is still valid today, and how would you argue with him if you think it is not? If you think the Deleuzian approach to the virtual and the potential is interesting but does not give us any clue to whether it effects the general understanding of performances, how would you make that clear, what parts of Deleuzian thinking might still be useful, and what would you add yourself? We have seen that some scholars (such as Walter Benjamin and Bill Nichols) argue that our perception of the world changes with every medium, but are those changes always perceptible, and if so, what can we say about their manifestations in media and performance practices and about the directions those changes might guide us along?

These are but a few examples of starting points of your thinking. We would like to recommend re-reading articles and pay specific attention to not only the content of arguments, but also to their structuring, to the author’s style, and to what I like to call the argumentative disclaimers, the often small but very significant paragraphs or sentences that demarcate the context and range of what you aim to convey. Try to get a feel for where you are comfortable and where you are not, and then tackle the theoretical obstacles you come across.

We will use our final session on Monday 30 March (from 17.00-19.00) to discuss questions and ideas. I hope to disclose the location tomorrow morning; if you happen to miss my announcement, please convene at our regular location, I will make sure you are picked up or guided to the correct place   **UPDATE: THE LOCATION IS DRIFT 23, ROOM 0.13**

Afterwards… drinks!

Short Outline:

This text deals with the Deleuzian notion of virtuality that disrupts the distinction between ontology and epistemology, between the original and the copy, between the real and the virtual. Virtuality in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense is not a space, nor an ‘unreal image’ and not necessarily depending on technologies such as the cyberspace. It is not created by human beings, but creates, produces itself everything. Virtuality exists from the beginning of time and produces the actual. It thus constitutes the real and is not opposed to it. We could consider technologies as ‘virtual forces constitutive of the real’ (Wojtaszek 11) and not as tools that we use to imitate or reflect on a real. If we consider technologies and the body as connecting instead of opposing, we might be able to fully use the critical potential of the internet.

Much Longer Outline:

Virtuality is a concept that fundamentally challenges the western binary assumption that there is a real opposed to a virtual. Wojtaszek discusses in his article D&G’s response to this dualism. Traditional western thought, originating from Plato’s philosophy of images, makes a distinction between a real or original and a copy of the real that imitates the real, and does not contain the real as such. This copy has been considered secondary to the original. Technology has had a negative stance as it is seen as producing the copy. (Wojtaszek: 4)

Wojtaszek locates a change in this perception of technique in the second half of the twentieth century. Technology gains a more positive position because it is no longer seen as opposing or imitating a real, but creating what we perceive as real. ‘Technology found itself freed from the constrictive corset of rationalistic explanations and was given new space for selfexpression and experimentation.’ (Wojtaszek: 3) D&G’s concept of virtuality also goes beyond this distinction between a real and a copy and they argue that only “an image without resemblance” (Deleuze qtd. in Wojtaszek 4) or a ‘pure image’ (Wojtaszek: 4) exists. Deleuze and Guattari seem to agree with Baudrillard that there exists only simulation. But, they cannot make this distinction between the simulacrum and the real that in Baudrilard’s theory has ‘ceased to exist’. On the contrary, all there has ever existed is an unendless production of new copies. “Reality in all its difference and complexity cannot be limited to extended images humans have form-ed of it.” (Wojtaszek: 5) The ontology of the simulacrum is chaos and not anything original. “In-formality means that since the simulacrum begins with the formless (chaos), its repetition is always unformable (different), subject to events.” (Lawlor qtd. in Wojtaszek 5).

The idea that there is a chaos that continuously creates and produces does away with the idea of an original, but also gives up stable identities. It gives up a stable ‘being’, for a constant ‘becoming’ (Wojtaszek: 8). The body should be seen as constantly in motion, as ‘millions of machinic processes and connections which are productive and repetitive’ (Wojtaszek:6). This makes every human body a unique assemblage. And this brings us to the concept of virtuality. Virtuality is a constant production of interacting images. Human beings emerge from a certain ‘Mechanosphere’ and are in a proces of constant becoming. This involves also another idea of experiencing. Deleuze opposes the idea that human beings have a Kantian consciousness that allows them a stable identity and recognize and categorize sensations. According to Deleuze, sensations are not firstly filtered by the subject’s brain (Wojtaszek:12) and seen as if they exist out of the subject, acting upon the subject or being other then the subject. The conditions of experience differ. On a virtual level human beings are encountering virtual sensibilities that are immediately affecting the nervous-system, and therefore produce thought. On this level, there is no such thing as the other anymore, because there is no stable idea of a self and there exist only a constant production, a constant becoming. Technology is thus constitutive of the real. It produces interacting images, and not images that serve reflection and representation. If we think with Deleuze beyond images as representation of a reality, we could see the images as something that constantly creating reality. In this respect, an uncountable amount of possibilities can be created. ‘Actualization of the virtual always takes place by difference, divergence or differentiation’ (Wojtaszek 10)

The danger that the cyberspace is used to expose the binarized framework is very much present in our current use of technology. Instead, we could consider a human being on the virtual level as a constant production of images, in constant relation to other images. We could use the technologies that cyberspace provides to expand our experiences. “ a world where everything is possible.”

question:

-How ‘virtual’ do you think the cyberspace nowadays is (being thought of). (or: when did you feel posthuman (or merging with the technological) on the internet for the last time?)

- Do you think that technology a prerequisite to think virtual, to think of such a thing as posthumanism?

Are we toasting the end of media and performance theory tomorrow? (think figurative...)

I purchased the Essential McLuhan and The Global Village.

What the performance people might find interesting is that they had:
Micropolitics of Media Culture: Reading the Rhizomes of Deleuze and Guattari
(it is softcover 15E- includes Maaike Bleeker article)

And for the New Media geeks:  I spotted The Language of New Media (Manovich) and Hamlet on the Holodeck (Janet Murray). All second-hand, so for a reasonable price. (And yes, these examples are “old,” but they are part of the essential new media corpus)

Those interested in the perception of sound, watch Evelyn Glennie’s talk on TED and you can find her essay on hearing here:

Also just discovered her documentary ‘Touch the Sound’ on good old Tube:

The way I read Massumi’s interpretation of Deleuze, if Baudrillard’s theory is the diagnosis of our cultural state, Deleuzian thought is not exactly a cure, but a way out of this condition. What Massumi proposes is to consider ‘positive simulation’ (7) and I believe this is where his trouble with Baudrillard emanates from since simulacra ultimately is viewed as a negative domain due to its juxtaposition with the model aka real.

Deleuzian thought suggests to discard binary thinking as even the real is being constructed in the process of ongoing simulation. Massumi argues that instead of tracing the model in the copy we should distinguish between two modes of simulation – one of them being ‘reality’ as a construction of norms (or as Massumi refers to it ‘a network of surface resemblances’ (5)) and the other one being art – an antithesis ‘against the entire system of resemblance and replication’ (5). As Deleuze points out, ‘destruction of models and copies sets up a creative chaos’ (Deleuze, 1983: 56).

Without immersing ourselves into too much of Deleuze, it might suffice to say that his thought encourages the deterritorialisation, the creation of new territories, the flight (not the destination) and the opening up of potentialities. Massumi mainly resonates Deleuze (along with his accomplice Guattari) and suggests that simulation eventually might be a positivity as it has the potentiality to overthrow categories such as real, human, white, male, female, nation, desire, etc. As Massumi points out, the force and charm of Deleuzian thought is the fact that it deals with the here and now, namely advanced capitalism (did Karin mentioned Marx a while ago?) and situates us in the very heard of it. Its core is simulation and, I guess, we should perform a dance with it?..

QUESTION:

Firstly, how do you view Massumi’s stance towards Baudrillard? If you can recall Baudrillard’s text, do you also get the notion of a ‘nostalgia for the old reality’ (8) as Massumi describes it? Secondly, if you could bridge Smith’s text with Massumi’s, what parallels could you draw in respect to the trouble with representation? My ultimate rather personal formulation would be such: do media make you feel nostalgic about ‘the old reality’ or rather open up new territories?

References:

Massumi B. Realer than Real: The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari, in Copyright, no.1, 1987, pp. 90-97.

Deleuze G. Plato and the Simulacrum, in October, Vol. 27, (Winter, 1983), pp. 45-56

Nonrepresentational theory, as developed by human geographer Nigel Thrift, is aimed at mobile practices and notions of performance as a means to understanind human geography. It is a theory formulated as a critique of representation. Richard G. Smith is somewhat hesitant in complying with the notion of Thrift as interested in nonrep theory suggesting rather that Thrift provides more of a general antirepresentational theory. Within Thrift’s work he has, Smith points out, ommited the work of poststructuralists like Baudrillard (which he claims is consistent with the aims of the work) which could enable to help us think about nonrepresentational theories rather than nonrepresentational theory. In order to accomplish this Smith pushes and explores Baudrillard’s thinking from representational (the space of signs) to nonrepresentational theory.

At the crux of Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra/hypperreality is his combination of the Saussarian sign and Marx’s account of the commodity-form as to state that a commodity does not simply have a use value, or exchange vaule, but also a sign value.

Signifier exchange value
——— = ——————-
Signified use value

As we see above: the exchange value is to signifier as use value is to signified. To Baudrillard the signified an use value are just “illusory effects” and in his work he “exposes the absense of the signified and use value, which are the guarantees of reality of structuralism and Marxism, respectively” (Smith 78). What happens, furthermore, is that the exchange value is fused with the use value.

To understand this reasoning an analogy to cartography is employed (maps are herein equated to the likes of theory). Through examples it is demonstrated how there is a tension between the map (theory – summarizing the knowledge of a territory) and the territory (the real).What Baudrillard posits is how the current fase of capitalism is closed, beyond representation. Within the new phase the signified and use value are absent. In reference to McLuhan it is stated that we are now unable to distinguish between message and medium because the world cannot be represented because the signs of the real are being substituted for the real itself. There is thus an absence of a basic reality the fusion of the map and territory is the hyperreal – the image is the real. [sidebar: the irony of mad cartographers trying to make maps co-extensive with the territory and coming to realize that the closer the map (theory) comes to the territory (real) the more useless it becomes].

Baudrillard upholds four precessions of simulacra, the orders of the simulacra. The third fase concerns the implosion of binaries, and that representational theory, bound to the system in which it functions, is no longer useful. In order to challenge simulacra, which comes into play in stage 4 – the fase of pure simulation, Baudrillard must become nonrepresentational. This is a theory that explains the third and fouth order condition. Representational theories aborb simulation through an interpretation of false representation and are thereby only suitable in exploring the first and second stage. In the changing relationship between thought and reality we must “burn signs” which means undoing structures: to do away with contrasts and oppositions.

Smith, however, points out that Baudrillard is against Baudrillard! This is namely because he finds that the thoughts of Baudrillard are doubly nonrepresentational This double spiral consists of a spiral of the semiotic (the critique of rep theories and establishment of nonrep simulacrum) and the spiral of the symbolic (the development of nonrep theories).

In conclusion (I cite it at length because it is provocative):
“In journeying nothing adds up, there are no equations, and no summation. Hindsight, pretending to step outside of language and the simulacrum, creates the retrospective illusion of things coming together into ordered systems, but there are no unities or stable identities. Knowable structures do not underlie empirical events; reality is a play of forces in differential flux with no order, logic, or meaning. All is contigent, nothing has any meaning, all thinking is groundless, all we can do is throw ourselves into the play of the world and dance with it” (Smith 82, my emphasis).

Questions
I believe I get the greater project of this article (and it was less of a headache than I had anticipated whilst going through it earlier). I formulated two questions, but I will start off with a comment.

Comment: During one of the sessions we were discussing Baudrillard and, do recall my somewhat hesitance here trying to go back to Marxist theory- (but was again at a loss of finding precision in my idea), it was suggested that Baudrillard correlates simulation and simulacra with information technology and computers. We should read the 3rd footnote of the article, it makes a lot more sense than our semi-consensus!

1. How does Thrift’s nonrep theory differ from the one Smith has established for Baudrillard? In extension of this – why is Thrift seen as antirepresentational and Baudrillard extended into the realm of nonrepresentational theories?
2. What are the pro’s and con’s of nonrep theory in our enterprise as researchers? I.e. how theories change the reality, the need for structures (representation/maps) in research?*

* a friend of mine (who actually suggested this text to me a while back) coined the aphorism: “I don’t believe in dualisms, I believe in duality.” It seems to me his compromise between representational and nonrepresentational theory