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UNKNOWN QUANTITY by Paul Virilio [Hardcover] unknown
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- GenresPhilosophyTheoryArt
Hardcover
First published May 1, 2003
45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 2, 2018
"Daily life is becoming a kaleidoscope of incidents and accidents, catastrophes and cataclysms, in which we are endlessly running up against the unexpected, which occurs out of the blue, so to speak. In a shattered mirror, we must then learn to discern what is impending more and more and more often - but above all more and more quickly, those events coming upon us inopportunely, if not indeed simultaneously."
"The World is deeper than the Day thinks," wrote Nietzsche at a time when the only light in question was still that of the sun. But already, here and there - and often even everywhere at once - contemplation of the screen no longer merely replaces the written document, the writing of history, but also that of the stars, to the point where the audiovisual continuum actually supplants the substantial continuum of astronomy.
In this "writing of the disaster" of space-time, in which the world becomes accessible in real time, humanity falls victim to myopia, reduced to the sudden foreclosure of a confinement created by the time accident of instantaneous telecommunications. From this point on, to inhabit the integral accident of globalisation is to asphyxiate no only sight, as desired by Abel Gance and later by cinemascope's advocates among film-makers, but the daily life of a species endowed, for all that, with the movement of being.
At this stage of incarceration, terminal history becomes a process running behind closed doors, as was so well explained by the inmates of the concentration camps: "Our horror, our stupor, is our lucidity." - Paul Virilio
"The fall, if we look closely and critically, is a hybrid. It is a transformation, embracing at least two systems, one changing into the other. A process and a philosophy, the fall is a becoming, and a paradox, because it is two different, even opposing, things at the same time." - Lebbeus Woods
"We dreaded a nuclear war, a nuclear bomb. Nobody had yet imagined that the military atom and the pacific atom were allies, partners. One thing is clear today: the face of the enemy has changed. And despite all our attempts to go into hiding, even from ourselves, nothing will protect us. No technology will act as a shield for us. The catastrophes are no longer accidents; they are the principal product of our civilization.
Books and films have often portrayed the Apocalypse, but reality has proven to be even more fantastic."
"I thought about the artistic character of Evil, about Evil as form of knowledge. Life often challenges us to believe in its veracity. I suddenly felt to what extent my faith in documents was naive. The document, after all, is just a human version of reality. It is an infatuation. Humans have wholly invested themselves in it: they put their knowledge and ignorance, their beliefs, superstitions, in short, their entire life in it. Our human lives, so small and imperfect.
Art is a struggle against the disappearance of traces and the idea that we will disappear, that we will go through life without leaving behind a trace, cannot even be fathomed. On the one hand, there is nothing authentic about our stay on Earth since reality continually eludes any attempt to grasp it an, on the other hand, we constantly yearn for happiness. In a sense, we yearn for a sign. The world in three dimensions agrees less and less with the modern human being. We find it too cramped. Mankind tries to break through to some far away place...into inconceivable, inaccessible infinity...
How did Chernobyl change me? With tenacious and rapacious claws, it definitely snatched me away from materialism. At the end of the day, materialism is a revolt against infinity, against mystery." - Svetlana Aleksievich
"The World is deeper than the Day thinks," wrote Nietzsche at a time when the only light in question was still that of the sun. But already, here and there - and often even everywhere at once - contemplation of the screen no longer merely replaces the written document, the writing of history, but also that of the stars, to the point where the audiovisual continuum actually supplants the substantial continuum of astronomy.
In this "writing of the disaster" of space-time, in which the world becomes accessible in real time, humanity falls victim to myopia, reduced to the sudden foreclosure of a confinement created by the time accident of instantaneous telecommunications. From this point on, to inhabit the integral accident of globalisation is to asphyxiate no only sight, as desired by Abel Gance and later by cinemascope's advocates among film-makers, but the daily life of a species endowed, for all that, with the movement of being.
At this stage of incarceration, terminal history becomes a process running behind closed doors, as was so well explained by the inmates of the concentration camps: "Our horror, our stupor, is our lucidity." - Paul Virilio
"The fall, if we look closely and critically, is a hybrid. It is a transformation, embracing at least two systems, one changing into the other. A process and a philosophy, the fall is a becoming, and a paradox, because it is two different, even opposing, things at the same time." - Lebbeus Woods
"We dreaded a nuclear war, a nuclear bomb. Nobody had yet imagined that the military atom and the pacific atom were allies, partners. One thing is clear today: the face of the enemy has changed. And despite all our attempts to go into hiding, even from ourselves, nothing will protect us. No technology will act as a shield for us. The catastrophes are no longer accidents; they are the principal product of our civilization.
Books and films have often portrayed the Apocalypse, but reality has proven to be even more fantastic."
"I thought about the artistic character of Evil, about Evil as form of knowledge. Life often challenges us to believe in its veracity. I suddenly felt to what extent my faith in documents was naive. The document, after all, is just a human version of reality. It is an infatuation. Humans have wholly invested themselves in it: they put their knowledge and ignorance, their beliefs, superstitions, in short, their entire life in it. Our human lives, so small and imperfect.
Art is a struggle against the disappearance of traces and the idea that we will disappear, that we will go through life without leaving behind a trace, cannot even be fathomed. On the one hand, there is nothing authentic about our stay on Earth since reality continually eludes any attempt to grasp it an, on the other hand, we constantly yearn for happiness. In a sense, we yearn for a sign. The world in three dimensions agrees less and less with the modern human being. We find it too cramped. Mankind tries to break through to some far away place...into inconceivable, inaccessible infinity...
How did Chernobyl change me? With tenacious and rapacious claws, it definitely snatched me away from materialism. At the end of the day, materialism is a revolt against infinity, against mystery." - Svetlana Aleksievich
September 24, 2011
the writing was disappointing, probably wanted a little more from it since i've been really interested in the idea of accidents and disasters..
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews