Scribere necesse est in english6/7/2023 Vilém Flusser's operational thinking enables us to keep possibilities of acting open for the future(s). And it has become abundantly clear that communication fosters not only cohesion and communality: it lives off seperations, absences, and it can be channeled into horrendous destruction, technical, ideological, and material. Instead, this idea confronts the hideous face of political techno-monsters, like the global surveillance agencies and overwhelmingly powerful monopolists that control and distribute services and commodities. The idea of an ongoing, never ending dialog in a worldwide, telematic parliament where one reaches agreement, finds orientation, forms views, and delights in intellectual stimulation, has its back to the wall at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This is how Vilém Flusser ended a lecture manuscript that he wrote in English in the late 1980s. One can hope for a future in which a life lived is only fulfilled when it is formed and informed together with others. Today, there is only one thing we can strive for: to become immortal in the memories and through the memories of others – »to become immortal in the others«. The Modern Age placed its trust in humans becoming immortalized through their works. The Christian Middle Ages relied on humankind becoming immortal in God. ![]() The past, which has become unreal, Flusser confronts with an intensified anticipation of what will characterize the beginning of the twenty-first century – through the media of the arts and his writings. His contributions to the figure of »homo ludens« were above all invitations to play with words and concepts, with artificial universes.Īlways journeying, out of place, not belonging to any academic discipline, and out of time in a twofold sense, this exhibition invites the visitor to embark on a minimal parcours that tracks the fleeting and fleeing life of Vilém Flusser as a model f the violent context that we call the twentieth century. With this code as orientation, he would switch from Brazilian Portuguese to French to English – the Esperanto of the telematic communications era – like a player. Yet operatively, most important if all for him was the antiquated and curious High German with its hard consonants that he had learned in Prague's Jewish society, and which enhanced the impact of his charismatic public appearances. the symbolic experimental field of writing and of texts.įor Flusser language was code, a code with no mother, unlike »mother tongue«.the imaginary and the boundaries-transcening domain of the arts.In his life that lacked firm ground Flusser only accepted two worlds as possible homeland: »Scribere necesse est, viviere non est« – writing is necessity, living is not. ![]() But above all else he lived in the academic forums and arenas, which were specially arranged for the passionate orator and in his texts, the majority if which he wrote on a mechanical typewriter with carbon copies for his own archive and for future generations. ![]() During the military dictatorship in Brazil Flusser returned to Europe where he lived in various provincial towns in Italy and Switzerland, before spending his last ten years in a village in France. Fleeing from the advancing German Army, the 19-year-old Flusser left Prague together with the family of his later wife Edith (1920–2014) for England and then Brazil where he lived for thirty years, primarily in the multicultural mega city of São Paulo. With this post-history begins.įlusser's thought and writings were a permanent experiment of existing and surviving on the run, in the intellectual diaspora, in his situation forced emigration. Only by passing through radical abstraction is a new concretion conceivable, and thus also a new and fascinating life. ![]() "Synthetic images are an answer to Auschwitz", Flusser forcefully argued in an interview he gave short before his death. the zero-dimensionality of numbers and algorithms (post-history).the one-dimensional linearity of texts and criticism (awareness of history).the two-dimensional reality of images (mental image, representation).the three-dimensional reality of grasping and handling (hands, tools).the multidimensionality of life which we share with animals (the beginning).Operationally, Flusser distinguishes five steps on his own special stairway to heaven for civilization: His particular variant of anthropology sought to forge a link between scientific methods and a new understanding of culture. In a supremely positive way he took up the challenge of rethinking the arts in view of the fact that our lives have become highly influenced and determined by technology. With texts bearing programmatic titles, such as »Into the Universe of Technical Images« and »Towards a Philosophy of Photography«, Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) became one of the most influential thinkers on communication and media in teh latter decades of the twentieth century.
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