ha, er, sna an SARAT MAHARAJ XENO-EPISTEMICS: maxesHiFT kIT FOR SOUNDING VISUAL ART ‘AS KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND THE RETINAL REGIMES (0000 Today the idea of visual art as knowledge oroductin presents ie as extca-rapid delay. A fist glance, the practice seems at one with the high-speed, imperial sweep of knowledge systems such as phiesapty, slence, socal theory. closer look shows tal cds with them. holds back and kagps them at bay stopping short of simply mieroning and miming thet elements. The relationship is nan-etnal, even allergic, Is less a replicator than a shredder-pulpor of readymade theory -a détournementof knowfedge systems. Kis @ generator of leas, bu the kings of feel-think-know antenna it thraws up are qute ciferent ‘rom discursive modalities. What athe curtraplions,tache sed gear ofthis knowledge radetion? How to sound ts erence? ‘0001 To war, lets look at how Henri Poincaré broached cilference: Are thera “other” feometries or are we lumped with Eucla? His question has a Shy dusty, Gate vt rew—2 flasback tothe spill avr of phicsophy of science debates into eary last-century art. The striking thing show he dealt wth iby proposing 3 “dictionary of geometies"—a device for ‘endering ron 3D terms ino tances 30. He meant if function ikea pormal Wevterbuct: Engish words in one column, German equlvalants in the nest. none side, non-Eucldean, 2 and A terms or whatever, onthe ether ordinary 30. the former translated into the latter without conradition, it would show they were workable propastions—not fanciful conjectures (0002 Somewhat ofbea, telegraphic but arresting versions ofthe Poincaré “convent crop ‘yp in Buchams epraw! af ptings and notes for te Large Glass project (1911-21). The ‘maths brain had come up with agrecsion code-reaker whereas Duchammp's"muckea-up dictionary” a shredéer-puper of grammar and its rigs. It seeks to dssoWve divisions and separations that words, nouns. adverbs, impose on the flutes of thought and experience. How to get away Him 30 gecmetic oyetas—fram the logic of solids ang haro-acg ents te continuly, motion, flux, space steams, time-lows? Hs dictionary isa Start. up programme for Seamless word-image runners and think-see-speak sequences—a Uiquis, grammatical inge. Would it ust about make it possible te tol counte-astoms, to boot up “othe kinds of at theorem? Hence his mind:boggler, "Can one make a work of at that's nol af Art?" 1s at all possible to elude aresdy-made at caegores, genres ane recelved clasiicaine —r0 wriggle tree of retinal repettion—in rds t.core un wth something ciferent, unknown, other? The ‘esti is tied up with Bergsons creationist viewn that evolution, emergence, exeatity, is not simply a run-theaugh ofa pre-given script with no room for unforeseeable cevelopment, eviation, chance. For him everything was not sttched up. By witue of the “vituality principe” things remained open fo mutations, Scatengs,coneination—tn the groduction af dtference or heterogeness, DDuchams teaser is inthis spirt—about artiste posites and divergences we cannot ‘ave an inkling of beforehand, What would “other” aesthetic geometries lok lke? What shape would they take? His speculations are “ia the iefinie"—where subject and objec cf ‘2cton ate hazy and indeterminate and we cant guess what comes nest.v The effects of car engine throbbing without pause, ready to shoc off in any rection Its about open-ended continaly—reauvty 2st scene funstrgtness, (0003 This highlights the fctrsin the contemporary at space: a. The focus only on something 25 demarcated as the “work of art" today i iting when swathes of art actly seem to be passing beyond the bounded erty into event, surge, duration, erosion, This crops up as multiplies of praduction sites op upin Arica, Asia, and elsen/ere. Developments in China, South Alia, India, Nigra—sites of emergency ang emergence suggest several incipient gractices, models and experiments, same hacaly recogrizable as art ters ofthe glly-mseum sytem. But they donot look eat they ‘count 2 at—spasimic,nterdscpinary probes, ans, haphazard cognitive iewestigationsdissipating interactions, imaginary archiving: epidemiotogical statistics, questionnaires and proceedings; ructens and commations that are net pe-scripte. Though they might spring {rom the visual ane cut across it, they ae not entirely tes to the retinal, They even short- Ccreuand fuse As cultural elements collide and coslesce, globalization adc up toa doubie-produc- tion: a ore towards standardization, erasue, flatlening outa lage of sameness. Against this, an unscripted ctive of ciference-production—the scene of exra-rapid cultural vanslation, cc Here wsual at knowledge becomes a matter of inventing other ways of thinking knowing, oer epistemological engines. involves watnishabl tinkering freturing, trashing ‘2nd startup fom scratch again. We have a cispesion of s2e-thnk-feel-map modaltios— from aétournement contraptions tat tur the 30 knowledge systems inside out through to non siscursve contances where the visual interacts with sonic-tactle-somatic eases ‘These modalities enable bath “ther” ways of knowing and waye of rowing “athermess* They are counts-epstemologicalges-—"reno-equipment” rigged out for racing. conducting, taxing on cfference—for clocking the “reign, unknown, alien.” But besies standing upto the weilworn, 3D geometries ofthe discursive dsciplines and countering them head on, ‘they also run rings around them, clare over them, pass beyond them. In ths sense they ate pare-epistemic probes. They whip up see-think-feel weather fronts—new affects, subjectvlies, feelings, emotional eddies and tidals—that trigger transformative thought, ‘con ané behaviout Let's look at them asatetical recessing plants churring aut ootons ‘ane patent for chipping i, action and vate inthe weld. Haw to sound them? ‘ASYLUM-SEEKER'S VOUCHER, .00cs vouchers rather than money to asylum seekers nd reugees, Only 10% of vouchers (0004 The UK government hes decided to scrap its witely condemned poy of issuing {e{500) value canbe exchanged for nat eash.Samalimes thsi oly enough fr the tip 1 @ ia supermarket tat accepsthe coupon. The slares often have separate checkouts, cashiers d ang quoues fr vouenehléers so a5 not to dla “regular” custmers atthe til. The rest of the vouener canon be swapped for asec lst of provisions. The eat of purchasable foocs has to be calculated careful fo the ast penny to match the value ofthe chit because | “i 1a charge i von back. The shop pockets whatever's “left ove.” Everybing’s cooked upto i a sopa "remainder" ending up in the asylum-séeker’ hands Be 09901 a1700117 ooocore” TOP Why the muscular measures? The cemainder—no mater how petty—represents the immer of a chance forthe asylum-seeker to pluginta ater choices, even to hagale Over UKasfunsears ut nee, 201 them, It sa chink trough which fo step Into the wider maney and cultural econory— experience that could undo the refuge's assigned lot. Small change begins to signify patel to become something ele, to overshoot mits, to metamorphose, locking his, the coupon tags the asyum-seeker with 2 sussed-out “dentty"—an tem in 2 90-xt eo. (0005 The voucher mirors the skimed, run of the mil ew of ana as sheer wansparent ‘wap that leaves no clo of deposit, no residue. The translator, on the contrary is almost, always caugnt up in a more knotted, smudgy dauble-move. He or she has to construct ‘meaning fst inthe source language in terms of ts lextute fee, mood. Then he or she has. to alr this semantic construct a second time round in the language ito which itis put Between the constuctions there flak af fi, 2 gaping non accordance ¥ . . (0006 We are brought up shor fore such unsquarabes with Boutique Product of Chote —_—_——— Feyadjos (1998). Stal for pedling stock, for touting Cth, fabric markt, bazaar at Batel, or the entrepreneurial primal scene? Have we stumbied ito an archive, a scrolls sanctum? Oris this the Stations stove af roils of canvas painting ready tobe flogged off by the metre-—endgame of artwork as cammodiy? As with Yinka Shonibare’s oral frocks, busts, hip-waps, mutent-ninja clobber and yardage, which are both from somewhere quite‘ment am identifiable ana‘rom the indeterminate xeno-sphere, the various semantic planes seem out ‘of true and do not akan. Ths isthe non-sync that hits us with Jens Heaning’s “foreign Ionguage” street bosdcass of Turkish jokes. We're notin ether, We haven't a clue as to vats going on, The cackle, gies of laughter and gutaws intensity anareness of belng lett ‘ut and of someting "el over"—an opaque xeno-stckiness. (0007 Wrestling wit hs remainder means to hae to translate yt again, to coin alternatives, lookalikes, stool pigeons, stand:in versions—a Buboizing, creoling aa. The Creole carpenter's “out of iter" bulding work sums up translation as rapping with nr-fit and the hotchpotch of variation it spawns The lopsed, wobble features of the dwelings he crate ‘luce the regen of architectural measure and veer of fem trom conformity to rule and ‘egulaton, His houses, shanties an lean-os are concrete instances of cifteence production naw other torgues, inflections, patos and “pidgiry lnguish” come to be harrmered out heterageness at ul tote (0008 At odds wth this crelzing, disseminating force, globalization amaunts translation in reduelive, steamvoller mede—accordng to the unbending measure of the law of teuivalence. The Poincaré converter, toe, seems to d just this by juxtaposing apparentiy incommensurable geometties at equivalents. But not only does it offer @ two-way convesion—both trom the 3D column to the next and vice vers2—it Is also based on an agreed upon foundation of maths grammar. Wit globalization we have no pregiven shared round except what it clears in ts wake—a terrain almost altogether shaped by Is wn Interests and power. “Other” cultures that cross its path are thus subjected to a one-way decoding: their elements ae rendered inteligible entirely in terms of its own log. Whatever dees not tits epistemic trameis ruled out, weated as something to be let out rather than a charged "leftover to be tussied with (0009 We can spotght he ames mits wth Ary Thompson's "Cartesian Transformations” 4 mathematical means for comparing related but ostensibly unike forms. His ick was to inscribe the figure of @cresture on a rectangular ga. By waring te i's coordinates ang abscissae—stetching and squashing its horizontal an¢ vertical ines-he showed how the ‘igured organism undergoes a corresponding alteration In his way, i Ikeness to other, apparently diferent eeatures becomes evident —ike those joke cg-pcs that show the US President morphing int his oppaste, not exactiy Osama bin Laden, We no longer read the cra figure frst and then the skewed, derivative one. Rather a joint, two-ay este fare comes to be constituted in which the figured creature may be read as ust another, somewst ‘dvergent version, Each appear as a de-iguing, ensmogiie presentation of te ater. (0010 The Cartesian grid alerts us oicentiy as interplay of sameness an¢ diference and the later terms as rather intertwined constructs. But at what pice? The law of equivalence lon which it hinges tend to iron eut disparate, unlike elements into uniform comparable Units. The fhus-amoiguites of difference that simaly passthrough the g's iter are 'gnored, On the one hand, a lope of samaness lakes charge—-a xenophobic drive in which the gr eases and eradicaes elements of ference and atherness that It cannot handle or assimlate. On the other, @ xenopailic dive: the grid effacesdiference by recasting and reconstiutingitinis own image and by puting it on show as a sign ofits. The roy is that te vouche is cles Buy Pass. What does ensue isthe retinalization ‘of diference the nolerf by passed eer dropped from vsti as the syste’ “remainder” or staged 2s asylum sooker. STORMING THE EUROTUNNEL FROM SANGATTE (0011 The Christmas, 2001, storming ofthe Euetunnel sa inmates of he Sangatteretugee centre scale the seourty fences, tear them dou, isk elected lines in attemps o boardamar uannnas trains for Dover. The event has since been replayed nighly the dribbleon ofa desperate ritual. As sorties ang raids on the Tunnel mouth on the French side become ever more reckless and dangerous, and 2s report of thwarted atlempts reach the English shore, the ‘whole Channel zone writs ite as a deadly, volte xeno-sphere, Here the contemporary looms up as an extensive xenographic realm shot trough with "writing te freign"—ith how to contrl ference, to ranage it and dispense wth Is the landscape of immigrants, _2sylum-seckers,clzndestiny, sans papiers, detainees, deportes, (0012 The terran everberates wih the kw gr of ant-immigraton,antasylum sentiment voices by several EU governments, The xenographic aso signals murcerous tribal-sectar an-ethnic flashpoins: Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Rwanda, Gujarat, Zara, the Philippines, the Middle East, Crina, Indonesia—tne ist does not tall off. “Insulated neighbourhoods and streets have imperceptibly come to be wired up through the pos- post Gutenberg media tothe experience of “otherness"—theough fashion, clothes, fod, sound systems and tourism —so seribbled overs the everday wit “elsewhere” elements mi The ‘world map is more tally drawn as 2 sprawl of xeno sites, chains of detention centres, refugee camps, containers, shins and estes: Woomera, Australia; Oldham, England: South Hil, Giasgow; Rostock, Germany—shoul feature a landmarks, ‘A peculiar non-{t sulluses the space: the “Malagasian,” Isabel, ead singor and troupe bailar for Jean-Marie Le Pen, does not ate match his ant+foregn views the skyrocketing, popularity of Pie Fortuy’s call for a "Lveable Netherands* based on an arti-Musim immigrant tickets up-ront gay stance seams out of stp with targeting other minors. Both stars throw out of joint expected lines of concordance between experiences of ‘exclusion on grounds of race and of sexual ference. As fraught markers of reinalizes ciffeence themselves, bth add factors that futher crosshatch the "ant-cusider texture of the xeno sphere (0013 In this seting, engaging with difference has come to be couched in steely ‘opposons—especally ater September 11. Whether the scanatia isthe “lash of civlizatons" (oF “dialogue wth Islam,” meeting and parleying tends to bei tems of what the grid can enterain-how to gare dawn and fx alfence ito “manageadie” equivalents, to corwert incommensurables into swappables. In 2 wry sideglance, Jens Haaning proposes an ‘exchange of ght bus wih @ Bombay sret. Are the sockets comoatible? Feeble eectrcty ‘against the creeping gloom of Nordic fundamentaliem? EU cultural diversity polices, ‘government multicultural peogrammes, UNESCO's global cultural diversity srategies— ‘though crucial and indigpensable—~tend to see enlightened tolerance as treating diferent cultures ina single ame and plane of convergence. The rouble is, ane fame ahways ends up more equa than othe. (0014. plane where no frame ends up on tap need nat imply some sr of oceanic frameless Condition. Its rather about where “all sides" undergo divestment, even critical break up, turbulence ané metéown It is where the mainstay of the law of equivalence—selfother, subjectobject divisions—dlssoWves in preparing the ground for reciprocal, reflexive contamination, Thais, for confab over “knowing-lvng” otherness without vilating it with ‘one's oun frame—en ethies-epistemics of ference, As sellotner routines of retinalized resentation grind down, an everaltering flow of becoming and difference comes into play. ‘What shreder-pulper's up tothe ob? PLANES OF PARLEY (0015 Against the its of ames ers, Caresin coordinates and thelr ind spats, look at the model ofa digital quid commons started by the Rags Media Collective with some patticinants ofthe Sarai group (Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Awacherdra Sharan). Rags have further develop this en thelr own in Coorainats oF Everyday Lite, Cire arte Ac, geri iha and in ata, A haan Pie Cpt Seg Sig tas Ur Deli, 2001-02 (eebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta). The “commons” ie neta rimmed, pre-scripted ferritory—though they ac through a dial gr ‘hey cannot totaly shake of. They wire upinterpenetaing perspectives, mulinks,crosscuting voce steams—an intensive plane of pare. OIG A ceference oftheir gear I to ancient English rights of passage and traversal, the reedom to ramble. The mesh of tals, walkways outs, footpaths, has to be used regula to keep the countryside open. Otherwise, they can be clawed back by andlor and lapse into Private ownership, Into adjoining property, the land system of grid divisions, frames, borders, hedgers, fences. The commens has to be afd again and again—conductvty sitched on trough every act of walking, e3ch ek and hike. As with data Was, each “undate and res" means quite ances grouping of partcipas, intersections, nodes ana trajectories. Eachtime another factor joins up, the assemblages overall shape mutates—a process of emanate-crystalize-vaporize. It embodies the idea of democracy as shape shitting non-denumerable, even “untealzabe,* rather than a head court, a toting. up of constituents be represented, The stress ison a pulsating ever reconfguting assemblage of non-ttalizble disparates—ot unlike how Hardt ané Negri see the "mulhude” in the face of globalization (0017 Wit the ers-coss ramble and meander, there fs let Up on surprise rendezvous, chance liaison, congantdetourng and banc aff. This pets company rom the Situationist érive that takes of ona skeleton script, 2 whispered finerary sprinkled wit planned stops, gathering points, crinkng hoes, bars, dives. At odds wih this pause and punctuation, the random stolis akin to embling seen, agrammatical scribbles, serendipitous crit—the Unlenowns of ged neat, moor, bog and fetlaose dune. ts cognitive modes stand up to the hydraulic knowledge systems; they run athwart the 3D gia of libraries, archives, repostries, storage vaults, shelves, decimal notation. As Ecke Bonk excavates the Bruder Grimms majestic Wortecoueh-—paradigm af 3D imaginstion—he diverts its tree: branch linearity with all over, random radings.& rizomalic counter-epistemic through which he ‘shoe wites the non-sequenial maou of conscausness and thought (0018 The plane of parleya sell-nising,se-erasng surface—overlans withthe platform ‘that snot simply about Deutsche Bahn artval and cepartue, calection and delivery. Is not reducible ta transmission bel for readyade ideas, a dspay pavilion, or pedestal. fa ‘soapbox, its in the combative, mesapronic way that Miche! Houellebeca’s noel, Paton, sounds ofan flr. But itis more he “pleau'—-a plane of consistency or eve inten Deleuze ang Gulla derved the noton from Gregery Bateson's ethnograpy ofthe “other” logic of Balinese culture. Is in contrast to “Western* mages of activity that build up to climax and crescendo, followed by Feeling dawn inthe elmps, whacked and spent tis about duration, prolonged immersion, sustairable asoration net cena replication but ‘about production. From Barthes’ Writing Degree Zero, we pass aver into Deleuze and (Guatan's wing at 2-1 dimensions. ‘The platiorm i test and ty laboratory ste in te way Gandhi took everyday experiance 2s raw material for “Experiments with Tuts” (Platorm2, New Delhi), The production of knowledge here is inseparable from thet ofthe ethical subject—~en intertwining sensed in ‘Stefano Boer and Multilcty’s Uncertain States of Eurspe (2000) and what he proposes in A Journey Through a Said Sea (2002). We have to prccess banks of hard data, images, information in 8 phased “procession” through the instalation. That a ship witha cargo of clandestinihad sunk off the Sicitan coast was consistently dried; evidence of body parts ‘ished up had been suppresses for fear of aureaueratc wrangles, or though inference; ‘oof surfaes in the form ofa young St Lankan’: passport ina pai of denims fed out of the sea. Creaking vessels plough the Advati,coreses wash up a te fatal shores, for Bost the Mediterranean becomes the xenographic dep.(0019 His mode! of epistemic-ethical process and procession must seem at odds with the "due process and parade” of the itemationat Court of Justice at The Hague. There the retina jurcical gris charged with showcasing human right nfl force. Inthe bullet rook vivine ofthe courtroom, extensive post post-Gutenberg media fr data retrieval and archiving help stage theta and sf through evidence about the pepetatrs, The forensic fore of the retinal-juridical modelo rah teling a gid of rule, eteria, laws—tnas to be suoplemented and fleshed out in a more processual accounting. Acts of passage, duration, crossing, ae the medals of tuth-tling fr Zarina Bhim reluring to Uganda twenty sit years ale Idi Amin chucked out the Asians. Qu of Blue (2002) stakes Cut the production of he xeno-ertory—from the fateful Uganda radio buletin on the expulsions through to racist reactions inthe UK, How is “etura’ to be seen-spoken so thet ‘what happened then, and wha s happening now, snot entirely submerged inthe immense horror afta as indexed in scenes of burning gasslana? Or latin the misty blue "Enis? highlands. Or postcolonial weeckage and vilence. Somewhere in the soundtrack the -squit’ ow whine-num-drone: a malarial snies—fver, sweat, opal hygine, but also ter contarsinatons, other transfusions of feeling and riendshi, SONIC WEATHER FRONT (0020 In todays sound-tmage fx, sound becomes a vlumizr. sacks up spatial backs ‘aroun tho mage, ampli¥ing the fel of archtetural-somatic expanse. To walk rourd Fiona Tan's San Sebastian (2001), projected on two sides ofa suspended Screen, to catch ether recto ar verso—one-eye trap ofthe retinal par excellence, Sound fils us in onthe “other ‘side." ow of young Japanese women sat an archary cas, line up of “mpassve” faces, en poise, suburban aspraton, sublime and mundane regimen, Ambient scuffing and must thicken the ar of concentraton—cose-ups of quivering lip, ele, bristling hairline, earlobe, heid-breath,rostl flare. Arrows zp by to thelr target in chorussne succession. The cycle of buldup-discharge cranks up again. We barely muster words to recount the tale of the pierced, trmented, ecstatic rartysaint when a sonic-somaic storm overtakes us 0021 At the other pole, sound is a corrective bast against retinal sufi, the glut of Image-sheen. It's dectinlzng force, biowtarch, oF paint-stripper—pivotal to visual ats knontecge today. 022 In the post post Gutenberg everyday, however, we experience sound nat so much as an ade to image as sound-image fusions and isione—a scene of maceration where ‘moving images, ils, soni stu telescope into see-hear sequences, into speakiston-eok sensatons. This miror-echoes our everyday, shopping mall experience of sound-image rmekdan—z feature of our tele eectronic immersion, (0023 The spotight on ambient scuff and “nose” is a tusle over what itis exactly sit primordial muck? O sit something churned out bythe sound economy? It seems to be at ‘once the excluded remainder, the penumbra of soni otherness, as itis the produced letover—the asylum seeker-relugee—of the sound system, The hunt i on for noise partizls, for vibration itselT—not ust the kind of dissonanc associated with africatives, guttural, plosives, but noise as an overall, feral, unknown possiblity. It neither the music system's dross nor simply the antithesis of music compostion—mare ofa de-geometriizng agent. t's aw data fr digtal-sonic concoctions ‘nanutactued in tension wth the visual but completely unscored—seno-soncs.Mae Dacha, Ws od Ps te i Gs yD Sosyatn er 957. ae oat cng nna Ua Pe cand os Note cara tnt, 01 vibration crackle of cosmic dust din of seace junk, stele wreckage, ana debris sound silence nose production (0024 A peculiar retinal-sanie turbulence orUnweter indexes this see-hear ecoramy: _2, By the retinal, Duchamp meant how inaletuel-conceptual processes intinle to visual experience come tobe shot-ckculte. The lnk wih te vgualcortexis switched off. The see-thnk acts feduced to fsson ofthe eye surface, neve-endtlation. This has perhas. to be distinguished from Matisse flowers who speak of sipping down the image ots bare retinal so that it bins to hun and spark as pure vibto, Howave, tis remains stil very ‘much about the image galvanized by music raher than noise, (nthe other hand, for Duchamp, retinal signaled, in somes ss afrative vn, take-over by sheer visualty is “glacial stare.” 1! meant shut down ofthe active cognitive dimensions of perception. He responded by forging an arti-etnal stance—possibities ofa sey matter art vlvng brain facts, mind data, coral curents.x By mid-century, retinalsm came to denote more narrowly consumerist spectacle, display, show, the magic spel of ads—critique of mass media spin doctoring.x! This also marked a shittowards defining realty as a matter ofthe “higher resolution ofthe image,” as ‘Simulation. 8y 2000, hi-tech retinalsm—sihtess sion generated ty computer analysis of ata that bypasses the viewer's cect act af seeing—gains more than a foothold a These ‘a up toa mega-retinal system wnere TY, ads, fashion, f00d, pop, heritage, stoet 52, ese, nave come to adoot irony, wt subversive mimicry once almost exclusively associated with visual art krowlecge. Even ant-retinal,“eyeproat” stances are up for grabs. How does the sonic enable visual art to diferente itself an from the retial octopus? ». Alongside, the mege-sonc system has had some ofits abiding oppositions interogated The dicing nes between sundslence, muschmusak, soniye, cliphoricstacophioics, have been bent, wisted and blurted with Afr-Atlantic crushers, Indo-UX raga pounders, heise cispensers and dubbers, cigkal sound disolvents and acids, junksound installations Once cordoned off as unsound, 2s xeno-orce, nase now becomes an extended sonic po! Duobing with possi, tis at odes wih te music system that Jacques Moned likened to DNAs single-minded replicating of exact copies of programmed sequences, Bu he noted, ientioss replication had a surprise side effect. It also preserved elements left Dering by friction, Perturbation, disturbance—chance pile-up of mistakes and misprints. As these “nie deposits" bul aa hey oreciptated change and mutation. In his werds, noise becomes the “progenitor of evltion"—agency for heterogeneis. Whatever the questions abut his theory, itis a suggestive model forthe unscripted constructions of some of today's sound-image Practitioners. They donot ust plug into given sound systems, sonorous rains, phrasings ‘They venture ino the unknowns af sound invention—neise-ructions, spurt, fermentsané soni erkzatons tht break wth retina repetition. (0028 Unwettrat Caria, Noting il, London (On August 27, 2001, a massive weather ron hits West Landon, Ladbroke Grove, and vii. Around forty static sound systems, Boom boxes, decks, acoustic outs, fan out under the ‘Westway fyewar arg beyond, The neighbourhood is staked out as @ xenographie arena— sounding and scribbling the alien inthe heart ofthe suburban. Words basted gut tram sound stacks stretch into phonic torrents. A whiplash of styles and feesback surplus thickens the air around the emmedsin crowd. You cannot stand back from these see-hear agglutinatons as they wee objects and atetacs forthe connoisseur. They do not addeess7a SARAr ManARAL the ear-eye but sweep over the boy ke 8 weather front. A fooding of neuronal networks, the sensation is of @ neavng, searing muscle throb-—af sonic-somatic stickiness. Other afets, emotions, sensations ar secreted, ther subjectvtes sweated into bing 0aMs ike Duehanp' singer tou he Werk of att he hoes uss stein tt became rose aed waren yeaa ihe eau eaten conmormee de ou. Hote Pease oy domino luis neni reken of a5 wle Pavel Brats Roa Movie 2000 where ‘Sinn nent nayetcnmne anos one camry orgs venient wre inby Bae fencing brougne pc. Cy aoe, cack, anon ead nd Frc ipinin gue prhsof e ceed tsnrptscaery ge at h turk anita ae Mua nator fostup ame he ang tn reve nad Gomis be usta gure The carats asa oa on was nn tnportos ark steaericbe aes a wth on par The alg tao dant etegn ign War ba Sb Sher vec! ter soe me newepsancs x27 In “Rietin Lago, he soi stat Ryuichi Sakamato se upbetneen urban seu anc jungle sik anc dowmpovrsuagets a fodng and impending mettown of Munatorn. ‘sae. State oder and labor regimen merge inthe soune image ofthe ines test for Giage's and shovlers at oe ef South Ata’ leaing gud mins it Stove McQueen's ester Daap(2002 Sto up, stp dwn, the meres ktock fines ane pacers, The air comesses wih exhalation, partn,hyperentiaing. Langs bam belows paring the tvs cif ora boat eps the chain garg goagas eh 3 the umboot slop, Sorting of he os, submision endurance of ave ad miro wears ine artes system captured tha es on nthe abou rsa rs ay. Rater than captvlte tthe abou rien, the Cabs resists suborinaon an erslavernent through se-annhlatn by jumping of fae sion eit In Queen's Carts Loop (2002), Trey’ vocal shvedder-plner mashes up arly uty of tune condersaton at shetty packed sons spt a pred ane, uray sou aka he we AVIDYA OR WON-KNOWLEDGE (0028 Souncing the difference of visuah ars as knowledge production Is 2 piecemeal makeshift, “definitively incomplete” jb. I takes on the striking notvnaism of Duchamp’ mind-bogger about “the work of at that isn't Ths pus tin head-on colision wath the view ‘hat we know what arti, tat it canbe defined in abstract and in advance. Such a view sees arts some sort of essence—precisely the ontological anchorage rom which ne sought to cout it adit His nominalism tests the idea that we should approach creatity with such 2 clean slate that each time a “work” is made it should be asi tis forthe very fist time. I throws up its own detntion each ime inthe process ofits creation—rules and principles through which to make sense of This unscrtenwse i at 485 wth knowledge systems that define themselves according to rigorous dscishinary boundaries, mathats, procedures. For a radical nominalism, the ‘isthe lmit—anything can become the receptr-conductr ea practice, There are no Dror known tls or knewable end that can be spoiled out before the event. How would one ‘ecogrize something so othe, So unprecedented? The discursive knowledge systems, on the ‘other hand, gravitate around known, clearly delimited objects of study. A tug owar ensues between models of knowing-finkingFor the 30 discursive formations, visual art seems largely kind of “a-knowedge.” in the provocative spi of “the work of at thts," why nat adopt the term "nar-krowlede”— espe is pejorative connctations-—for visual as’ cognitive processes? Nan knowledge, at any rat, isnot tall the same as "ignorance." I eles othe knowledge system's other,” that indeterminate, xeno-zone between "knowledue/ignorance.” Fo ths “intrathin® chink let's use the term Avigya, In Sanskrit vidya means "knowedge” as in the phrase “to soe-know": the Latin cagnate is veo, to see, and its medern English cousins "video." The efx A" signals the neutral ger, @semi-reeze. the idea is that "systematic knowledge" 1s neutralized in "vi" but nt entirely annulled. Vidva/avida are not quite binaries. The ater signals a Yesistantintermez20 potency as intimated in werd structures such as ‘ypicaltypicalcuntypical or maal>amovalcimmara—much as Quchamp dd by canceling “atist-ant-aris” in favour of “ana,” te “indeterminate practioner.” 029 Bich upo Kant Creve Kons rtques of Pare Reason, Pracical Reason, nd gement ad upto he rchebpa 4D Know i. The Criqus'fomidabl set consistent concept elaboration pies iso on the puny of its epstemolagica arehteture where ro grss emoieal materi inrces, As'e grand 30 conceptual geometry, the Criques are 30 sefsufclent and fil standard that no Poncaré converter woul even cream of ransiatng into “other 2, 2b, orran-Eutiean igo Is ths cystine conceptual sl containment that Alan Pipers shredcer-pulper messes op inher sties an Kan, er projet periorance pices andthe Catabts series (1970-71) wi a si of aluson to brut everyday experence-condtions of domestic labour, reterences to waran, the female subject nd patchy, Arian-Areran ie ad rac sc he artnones of eo and proce tara plsopher-as er utons pefgured conse ater moves towards deconstruct easing of » Kant—ot Spa cals “the structures of producton of postin reason °w Kant had Somctaman sink conduits caitaned agaist "unger wha “antaplog” pe pistes exoaton by Eran eet imum conctele,eniial kite. For Spats srt of ga" can be mst kina, — ‘a “mistake” that should be consciously cultivated with regard to Kant. What the “clanger” Shows up show hs clscouse' purty bth depends on the potion she cal the “nate infemant” and “orecoss” bts tout bof can aut in an eearance—3 iit of Enigtennent easn tats went and volt or Soak this uracoeged poste “he aborigna" or “the porest worn af the South for Tih T Ninh, "woman, naive, other” perhaps no estat of he a5humstear rugs wos oon ha “cing he cen and pong tach Piers counter Kat probe rings ino iby he paramo "worn cao phoso aher-as This net nike the Rags Meda Colecie's wat cogiive singin the name ofthe worn thinker of anent nde, Garay Lke Poe, se toe messes Up sitet ‘poston on tina ery inthe Upsnshads—expoundec ty Yegnaray, keeper fhe fret grads “thar now troup ter tarage of questo abo. deal mmaerlty w ‘and ts metaphysics am thee ance, owe amantamSonnetew 0030. Xencidal Concepts Say ee Cote ee atest eek For “non-knowledge,” the critique of 3D concept formations is a sine qua non, Theodor -Adomo fl the cance rid was soe up wh standard modes of tinking-knowng that it Seems he almost chucked “ebisterolagy” ise overboard serch for llermaie ‘the coitve modes fes the “Against Colstemolgy fog, Form the 3D gr obiterted tne ving, messy, uncaichable quality of things. He aw this as 2 murderous, “boca ive or, we might 0 today, xenco¢a! one—ihe elimination of what is unassimilabe, a foreign anc over However, he des not so much give upon lle concepts as ok to work ee a, age Des ak £8. abn, though hem, Thelcea would be 0 ae open "concep wth concen” a5 9st ee the nenconcesa “ilerence”focked up in hen.Perhaps sucha met-eistemis is deadbeat baceuse tis rtiaue from “above,” rom a rowing, tanscendentstancpoint. Beraon’s move was fo see al concephua-neletual, modes as rreceemabiy lumped with the bite 4D knowledge gr. They were cramped by at ne called ther “cinematograpical mechanismy"xt—ther reductive way a ealing ith the fu of eanscousness and intenstes by cuting therm up int stance etips and ein Cnt ip ae Ssrapshots—ty spatiaizing the tompora,by rendering svearing contre of becoming into state, geometic segments. The cenceptal-intelectia medetendec to gt caught UP imparting ts own ste, ending up a prec'in instrument but almost completely ou of touch with tte experience oF etference ant duration. On the other han, intuition and inspection apened tothe everatering low af iference and erative consciousness. For ‘Adorno, however, this smacked ofthe "tide of intuionism and an-conceptuaism "xm Between is para conceptal ult and Bergson’ exta-concepua, iti gear, anther Te tera, Ee a Wine, 005 op—the conceptual igo iy, 0031. cinema Blssomings How Deleuze ture the 30 concept system inside outs ied wth aconceptu forays. By recasting the phiosope’ 0b he makes i more akin the ast-reata'snkerng—ess ike the academic functonay at the concest-machine. Through imagining ad ing out concep fo 2 parca station, knowledge production becomes alive, ore dang id en tounge nto ings. tis able owe to wansformte nto 1 eit shaping rates, no conduct wth experence—escapig te san of ttul-dscurse reece. His model the at stusio—the unscripledness of sua ats, now it cobbles together ike mati ose tt wrk," The ga he has in min assemblg,“ Stecteness ceeper"—a “non conceptual conceptal moe, even agsbond, nen SCL mt » ‘Thomas Hirschhorn expresses tis détoumemento the second power in his Defouze Se Bat ca hae ay as a ‘Monument projec (Svigron, 2000), Though ho reer to speak of “spay” rather than * instalation, his sot 3 ena explcaton of Deleure. Hi strctures ant ecco ok, ata, Bavilon, pint, ibis stall thea of somewhat ramshackle erections and shacks ‘They at knoulecge production sirianes—agaregaons of random chat, startin, Seraps of axgumen,eocouter, aring—concentated, irom lanes of peon a pay, ‘Against gd 0 propasion, we have Hrsonnor’s saquences of evluton-erosions and eftcesanoes. He observed such adie “pisharies" at he ie of Princess Dinas death: desicatons an stenes woud sprout up spontaneous. Acund ore oF wo Mears, tango of Towers, bans, candles, cards, ters, nkets, keepsakes, qUeY spreads ot. Something teks, another snags an latches one growing-gatherin thats alt the rater equivalent ofthe weling ro emcton is damming and spl ort, the outpouring of feeling, get expressive sentiment, Production phases of buidup-ccharge, “tvand-contct lets evo aroun tne ibs sa-snack ar in is Bata Monument project (Kesiel, 2002). These afe mundane iand-cycles of eat-aigest within the megecculatry tat paral te “ple co-dspene" cycles Saale sawn the subime saci af he patie alone nis onn terms of “aan savor” These eyes of cinematic Bostoming, appearance, aegutinaton, manifest Hischon's Ihokctel-at contraptions across hi Spinav,Deleze, Batalepojects. They seston the museum-galery system a bi, they play ou principles of seorganization and sustanabilly—norids away from conations of art knowedge production actss the developing word in some Aca ete, asso up wth the landless, informal eters, street kgs, homeless driers, “slum dels,” urban folks, or bouts of actly somelnes todo ith sels of clearing lating, earring ley, pale, prysicel oiing, These hae ite to do wt the "wok ofa” a retinal ently, Conitve-eticaleizdes, wos vay fom each ater, he spasmie gle Hirschhorn Wiggers at Avignon, Amstercam, sel, letinglycrsses and echoes the convulsive lgi of blips and spurt in Ads, Caro, OarFauFematna Apt uses Catan cic Tina avy ro Nena Sos 38 pi, tert eo a a Ft, Pan A eta. ‘prt en romeo be (0082 adast Epistemology Itis bit of surprise thatthe unserptecness of non-knowledge locks So much like what Paul Feyerabend meant by “anything goes" in science. The popular idea that te uit, “impregnable” 30 knowiedge system is science remains ston But Its Close enough to ‘a itcame to be defied and delimited inthe phitsoaly of sience—within the formidable rules, sil principles and laws of Karl Popper's erica rationalism. For Feyerabend, “unending rigour was simply "octinie. It haraly squared with how scientific dscovery took place—mor olen its @ haphazard, far less rule-bound, eesshatched, even chaatic afc Against the stereotype of the 3D gant brain he sketched an “anarchist episterology Its slogan “anything goes" is both as provocative 28 the work of at that isnt” as itis @ Statement of fact on how thins happen in gracice—science 2s an anarchic enterprise. His cals fr open-endedness, fora mishmash of Inguly mades to counter totalizing dives of ‘he 30 science systom, for a species of xeno-epistomis He saw anarchism as *madicine for epstemology"—forthinking-methed that had boxed itself in with prescriptive rules tha nhiited exploration. Hie antidote wes a benign brand of anarchism-—a cose of Mikhail Bakunin if pat Daniel Cahn-Benalt ofthe 1970s, i ‘00ks fo expand independent thinking to shake free of rle Inspectors and authorities, la [Andreas Siekmann's Wir flven fr Bakunin (1992-96) tis is pictured asthe thizome—a on-herarchical, stateless society without @ central bark (Staatontosghet, keine Zentalbanken) and without contro! bunker or power hub. The priority is set-creanization inspired by he se-arranging nteplay of medium and material stucture which Varela and Maturana sw in bi-organisms, 8 orncole they called “utopoiesis. "ot ‘Feyerabend, however, et “Dadaist epistemology” was a beter description of fis stance The tendency ta bind scientific thought to ever more stringent rules and constricting methodologies wes a dex? AISS {0 the kinds of insight and new bearings sometimes ‘tumbles over by aeidant and chance. Dada non-earest, dic attude Is ray, inversion and wits ability to ser iself up, were liceating compared tothe aravitas of rulebook science sam By a Dadaist epistemology, he also meant dase of sel-eflxinty—mirore in Brecht, wham he adiited. Brech’s alienation effect—V-Effekt had shattered dramatic retinalsm and broken free ofthe naturalistic theatre staightiacket. "De failiarization devices’ were a tnic—xero-mechanisms for inducing new seawareness and thou. (0083 Ferewo tw Retinal Reason By "dssoient reason,” Adorna meant how the eral force of Enlightenment melted down lonpressive premodern knowledge formations and authorties only to end up a corrosive, dominating force lacking intolerance towards dfevence and aiversity—as instrumental reason aa Ina less sweeping account from quite another tradition, Feyerabend's "Farewell te Reason” Is nota vary ferent assessment of is carer, From within Bhlosaphy of science debates, his ew s that he screws are on reason, Kal Pope's anaconda “eval raoralsm” had seen tit. By severly daliiting its parameters, regulating is every move, whiting it down to atard core of eiteris,he had ended up getting rd of tose dithering, apparently \wooly-headed, meandering bits that were wal ots ingustv, exploratory thrust. On the caver hand, something ike Data's “unreasonable reason was Invigorating precisely because cts unabashed, nifty sense o instal, ober-ended contraction and mullite By placing reason on one sie ofthe continsum af the “creativity of cognition," with intuition on the other, Rudolf Arnheim saught to dispel the ea that reason was top ofthe ack and intuiton atthe moister bottam of the league. The ea of the “cognitive continuum" also showed overiaps, transitions, conduits aetween them, making absolute dvi ines lubious. However, he, 100, noe that reason hag progressively “hardened up" as Ceveloped in the course of modernity into sharp but constctive, rather lopsided mode. To Pightont these distinctions he looked at now Max Bense, in ane of his concrete poems, souehtto break up the rity of the Cartesian cogito ego—I think therefore:sana wanna ich denke ist etwas His shattering and déréalement ofthe Cartesian dil-rder ges us an aqrammatical sels: subjec- predicate nea ves way to random ramble. Are pints ou that, the semantic fsion tha follows, “slew o statements” s thrown up "think am; something exits; think something: samething thinks | am; thinking is something.” This mht lok tke ‘2 muddle tke gobbedegook, but it brings us close to that mix and rtch sorting out that Descartes ment ough before he could kroek things into the lucid she of the cit, The jumble, on te other hang, also reads ike a poetic statement where “feason unpacked” is itself ure scrutiny, nat contemplated perceptual “ke a play of storm clouds or oused flock of bis "oa we Bense's dréaoment gives usa gis of whats onthe “ther” penumval sie ofthe Sit Ann, Nw Ei 7 Pt ot Ber 30 Cartesian grid of eason—its xeno-modaities that fal outsiée the “norma sphere ot reason." Inthe Color Whee! Series insaltion (2001-02), Adin Pine’ shrecder-puier probes these norms from beyond the Enlightenment pale, fom the “outside” stant of Vedanta (cognate to vidya, to see-know", the rational eislectcal schoo of ancient indian ahiosophy elatested bythe eighth-century thinker Shankaracarye. Though he took colour (ano) 2s index othe social-cultural layering of selt—caste, ean, class—he saw these a5, ‘lime ilusons of dentty that had to be subjected to “dissent consciousness” This ‘ecals the trajectory W-E.B, Dubois mapped in his romantic novel Dark Princess (1928). Matthew Towns, atican-Armeican les the racism of he US fr cosmopolitan Bein. Inthe Unter den Linden, he defends Katine, Priness of rd, om Gi racist taunts Both undertake the agonizing journey through the categories of case, clan, cass, and race to “dissolve consciousness" figuted inthe image of Shva-Kalithe timeless male-female, Slack ‘One—represented by his lent ancient msther an the ol Virginia lve plantation, Perhaps no Poincaré converter can even begin to transiate Shankora's 4D reason to Enlightenment 30—so inconmensurable ae the conceptions and so unransatable Thinkers in the West tended to teat colour as secondary, an unstable even somewhat hallucinated experince, placed ousie the certtudes of "reason." Inthe Color Wheel Series, several alison telescope: the lol hawareslore colour card or combinatary, sic eycles, the ntry roulette, the spinon race, But the “colour of reason” cannot be sidestepped and Piper refers to white, quite “rationally” as *miscegenation of all coors’—a régement of te els tat bing ina sharp political immediacy. By juxtaposing Prayer Whee! to the igh-tech Pantone Matching System—the color contol whee tht sets standards, ents, clasiies—she puts the world of computstona, caleulatve reason alongside “Easton,” introspective nuit processes of cogiton—hal are normaly branded “mysticism” and bracketed out as the remainder,” fe “ouside” of reason, The shveder-puper touches ona fuitline that has come in or sutanes probing, especialy in Varla's neuroscience esearch. He has sought to Supplement studies of bain actly, consciousness and cognitive processes with stsies cintespective technolagies— mn the intensive, sereflesive modes of yoga and meditation, as manifest the Abhidharma __Faferoand. ran Se he Yor fa | ‘corpus and yoga suas tat had over centuries bull up a massive body of expertise onthe Ucinsanscsene ab “exraapd db” of consciousness :In the Cofor Wheel Series, the 30 reason grid comes face to face wth is “remainder"— sheer bration, “nose, the tongue of the “othe” The iscursive-analic in its igh form as. computation and calculation is thrown in wth the mantra—the non-discutsive sonic. The ‘mantra has todo with mathemates, arithmetic and the spel of ealculaton but ie ulimate sffec is that of pulverizing the discursive and reconstituting it a sheer viration—"noise." Taemantra becomes the “csoWent acl” of wo and concept, tuning things to wordless vibrato. Mantra 1 from Shankara's Atma-Boaha (Sel knowlege), and its countess permutations ass over into wration, into “noise” particles. Max Muller's commentary on Shankara's commentary on Patria reafirmed the pont that meaning does nat le ferally in the words of the sutras but inthe gaps between them, the elect ey and force between the lines. ‘Mer vanslating Ludwig Witgesten's Philosophical Investigations, Feyerabenc realized that Something ha gone quite dead win the jt-—mearing tel resined in between the aphorsms, In the way they relate, inthe strong seman currents a edlies between the lines. ‘The viewer-partcipantin the Col Whee! instalation is perched ona rotating seat. The mind-body sets into a slow movement, a 360° degree rotary, planetary cycles, cosmic revolutions. The mathematcal-computational comes face to face with a snic-somatic Kind sa of kro-hink-fet—what Vere cals “embeded anceractve”koowedge mh ‘amton Son Sere ees fr ‘The rotating seat sa See-know contraption that pus usin a 360" vision unfolding, a — ee continuous, unfuring belt rather than the Cartesian retinal er with its single focus and frame. The experience alerts us tothe fact that the retinal san undedable notion, internally unstable. ts content is perhaps best captured in Ducham's phrase “neighbouring metals of ‘osclatng densi” It vlatle dissatvnt, We should be wary thinking otk on in terms ‘of “spectacle’—as object af 2 extique af moral opposition as seems tobe the case with post‘Situationist responses fo the retinal. I is as constitutive of conditions of visual arts knowleoge production as colaur is for Shankaracharya. Visual ars knowiedge has to va roduced nat jus aginst but through and beyond i. Agprst the retina gd, the rotating eat evokes the iealconttapion wth 360° scope, wih something ke swvel-eye vison, with anallenveloping 360" wraparourd epistemic surface, studded with “retinal peepholes,' with something tke the compound eye. Or, 3 te shredder-pulper suggests, kindof vision vere everything Is seen somatically—here the act of see-think-fee! becomes, as Duchamp specultes wth regard to 4D vison, retinal tactiy, where sepings as palpable sipping nen kav nthe alm af one’s hard.” (0084 tceboxed Dosh ‘conceptual, Avdya, now “Acapitaism.” Maria Eichhorn uses the lst frm ina throweway remark on her project. Unde the notary’ eagle eye and stewardship fa jint stock company, 2 lump sum of atleast $0,000 euros has to be stashed away untouched in perpetuity Financia lw agreements ensure hw itis managed in deep freeze so as to outsmart gain oF interest. Every possible loahoe is lugged ‘The scheme is $0 lucid, calculated and rational tat i is absurd—tke the UK asylum-seeker’s voucher and its mad, intolerable cash freeze. The aura oflneless stasis contradicts both the resis ransatabilt afte aw of equivalence and the overall axcomatics of capitalsm—is capacity to overshoot ts own mis, Capital's cumulative, incremental thrust is thwarted, But it algo seems ke business as usual, Her Maria Eichhorn Aktongeselschat (Maria Eichhorn Pubic Lnited Company) is plo to sound other forms trading ane exchange, other dynames of as and gan ‘Addy ice storage cylinder stued with euros, nancial cryogenic: what happens on Resurection Day? The [lly seems to be ying dormant, cured up inside ave possbties of 2 "mutating capitalism. With Max Weber's money theology, we think of karma and capital, or monotheistic interdict on usury. The Islamic taboo on interest also suagestsitsel. But has ts “interest e022" ary rea! polenta as areistant “outside” force to prise open the grip of soba capital to create alternative value systems? Oris ita more than hostded moneyunder the matress or he elorious potatch—noble pre-capitalist ruses outwit by today's clever money? ‘The dosh is nether quite dead nor ving. It sin the imbo ofthe “acapitat” moce the "third way" thats neither Tony Blt’, par Colnel Gadchats Islam, between capitalism and socials. is perhaps te third way ofthe “social dvidend”—an uikely is, taking in Maynard Keynes through Fabian though to Chinese post-Cultural Revolution economies xX But the Eichhorn baffle slike Shannon's imarobable noise-feeder thal adds crackle to transmission to “aid communication. Like an acid agent or descaler, her tackle dissolves encrusted art-money theorems. It deretinalizes and itis doggedly eye proot—though itis rather a 3D dsquiston en capital nor as earnest s 1970s concepualsm itis at once typo-etnal and hyperretinal, At one pole, semi-detached, lacane, leery, there's litle to see, No gain or intrest forthe connoisseu's eye. A the ater, as fo see \wordvice capitalist money circulation ang consumerist spread mixed wit poverty, damage, bi. By pressing the freeze button on capitals loi, Eichhorn makes it appear “orelgn, shonin it up asi “ther.” Parapolyogic of xen epistemic Kicks in Sheet rr el Sern cu, Sorehot ae Repti rhe