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12 Years Ago: The Columbine High School Shootings

On this side and that of the gaping hole of the world, hollowed out in the name of ‘globalisation’, it is indeed the community which is separated from and confronted with itself. In times past, communities were able to think of themselves as distinct and autonomous without seeking their assumption in a generic humanity. But once the world completes the task of becoming global and once man completes the task of becoming human (it is in this sense, too, that he becomes ‘the last man’), once ‘the’ community sets itself to stammering a strange uniqueness (as if there should only be the one, and as if it should possess a unique essence of the common), then ‘the’ community takes in the fact that it is the community itself that gapes—yawningly open to its unity and to its absent essences—and that it confronts within itself this break. It is community against community, foreign community against foreign community and familiar community against familiar community, each rending itself in rending the others that are themselves lacking the possibility of communication, of communion too. Monotheism in itself confronted with itself—like theism and like atheism—is, for this reason, the schema of our present condition.

☛ The Confronted Community by Jean-Luc Nancy, tr. by Amanda Macdonald (Postcolonial Studies, vol. 6, no 1, pp. 24-25, 2003). Originally published as La Communauté affrontée, Paris: Galilée, pp. 16-17, November 2001 (©)

Here’s the original French text:

De part et d’autre de la béance du monde creusée sous le nom de «globalisation», c’est bien la communauté qui est séparée et affrontée à elle-même. Jadis les communautés ont pu se penser distinctes et autonomes sans chercher leur assomption dans une humanité générique. Mais lorsque le monde finit par devenir mondial et lorsque l’homme finit de devenir humain (c’est en ce sens qu’il devient «le dernier homme»), lorsque «la» communauté se met à bégayer une étrange unicité (comme s’il devait n’y en avoir qu’une et comme s’il devait y avoir une essence unique du commun), alors «la» communauté comprend que c’est elle qui est béante ―ouverte béante sur son unité et sur son essence absentes― et qu’elle affronte en elle cette brisure. C’est communauté contre communauté, étrangère contre étrangère et familière contre familière, se déchirant elle-même en déchirant les autres qui sont elles-mêmes sans possibilité de communication ni de communion. Le monothéisme en lui-même affronté à lui-même, comme théisme et comme athéisme, est pour cette raison le schème de notre condition actuelle.

From a recent study on student homicidal violence in schools:

The number of school shootings known so far may have been underestimated. Robertz and Wickenhäuser reported 99 offenses between 1974 and 2006 and since then, additional offenses have occurred. Especially since 1999, school shootings have proven to be a global phenomenon. By now, reports about such offenses may be found throughout the world (for example, in Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Japan, China, United Arab Emirates, Finland, Sweden, or Austria). Germany alone has experienced twelve homicidal attacks by students or former students since 1999.

Although the occurrence of school homicides in so many countries is troubling, it must be remembered that they are statistically rare events and represent a small fraction of violent crimes by youth. Nevertheless, school shootings have a devastating impact on schools and communities, and have raised public concern like few other crimes. The reaction to school shootings has had a tremendous impact on school safety and security policies, as well as the everyday functioning of schools. (BONDÜ, Rebecca, CORNELL, Dewey G. and SCHEITHAUER, Herbert (2011). “Student homicidal violence in schools: An international problem”, New Directions for Youth Development, vol. 2011, issue 129, pages 13–30, Spring 2011, PDF, DOI: 10.1002/yd.384)

This article was first published online on April 13, 2011. It is part of a special issue: Columbine a Decade Later: The Prevention of Homicidal Violence in Schools.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on April 20, 2011 ― Published in Communication | Tagged: Columbine, community, destruction, globalisation, Jean-Luc Nancy, mass murder, representation, school shooting, war, world

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ alleged Communist propaganda: the FBI files and HUAC hearings

☛ Federal Bureau of Investigation, file no. 100-HQ-138754 “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), Part 7 of 15, Serial 251×1, original page 160 (page 67 of the PDF document compic7b.pdf). Click for larger size.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is 11th in AFI’s list of the 100 best American movies ever made. According to Variety, a sequel is said to be in the works (“‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Sequel in the Works” by Dave McNary, Nov. 18, 2013).

Still from the opening credits of Frank Capra’s movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1944)

However, for a short while between 1947 and 1956, it was also listed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the suspicion of being a vehicle of Communist propaganda. Here, relevant files from the FBI’s archive are provided as well as links to 2,000 pages of excerpts from the “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” document.

• • •

• It’s a Wonderful Life: the FBI files

In his book J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of Hollywood’s Cold War, author John Sbardellati introduces the political controversy that once surrounded Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life :

Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (RKO, 1946) pivots on the clash of values between the populism of George Bailey, played of course by James Stewart, and the bottom-line ethics of Henry Potter, played so memorably by Lionel Barrymore. The film is now a perennial holiday classic, and has earned distinction with its inclusion, in 1998, on the American Film Institute’s list of the top one hundred American film (ranking number eleven). But modern-day viewers might be surprised to learn that at the time of its release, It’s a Wonderful Life appeared on another, secret, list of films maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Such distinction was earned not because of popularity or artistic merit, but rather because of the bureau’s suspicion that Capra’s movie contained Communist propaganda. (New York: Cornell University Press, 2012, pp. 1-2)

The FBI memorandum concerning Frank Capra’s film It’s A Wonderful Life is actually part of the massive 13,533-page FBI file no. 100-HQ-138754 titled “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC). The entirety of this document is not available online, but excerpts are (see below).

According to John A. Noakes’s detailed analysis of those files, the FBI memorandum concerning Frank Carpa’s movie It’s A Wonderful Life was created on August 7, 1947:

In a report dated 7 August 1947, however, the Los Angeles field office finally proved a review of the content of eight films in general release during 1947, including It’s a Wonderful Life. To determine which films were subversive and to identify the actual subversive content, the Los Angeles field office utilised a report issued by a self-assembled ‘group of motion pictures writers, producers and directors who had been alerted to the common menace within the industry’. This ad-hoc group identified three categories of ‘common devices used to turn non-political pictures into carriers of political propaganda’. Applying these ‘common devices’ to It’s a Wonderful Life, the Los Angeles field office concluded that in at least two ways the film served as a ‘carrier of political propaganda’. (“Bankers and Common Men in Bedford Falls: How the FBI Determined That It’s a Wonderful Life Was a Subversive Movie”, Film History, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1998, p. 314)

Among the group who produced the analytical tools that were used by the FBI in its analysis of It’s a Wonderful Life was Ayn Rand. Later, on October 20, 1947, Ayn Rand would also testified in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (more about that in the second section). According to another FBI memo related to “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry”, Rand had in fact published a similar report all by herself:

Rand published a booklet which was designed for furnishing information concerning the type of Communist propaganda used in motion pictures. This booklet was distributed to producers and publishers. It is her intention to testify before the House Committee regarding the content of this booklet. (FBI files on Ayn Rand obtained through the Freedom of Information Privacy Acts. Retrieved from PaperlessArchives.com)

FBI memo regarding a booklet published by Ayn Rand on the subject of Communism and motion pictures. Retrieved from PaperlessArchives.com

As his source, John A. Noakes quotes the microfilm collection edited by Daniel Leab Communist Activity in the Entertainment Undustry; FBI Surveillance Files on Hollywood, 1942-1948 (1991, Reel 3, frame 134). Although the content of the 14 microfilm reels is not yet available online, their accompanying “Guide” is (PDF).

Up to a certain point, the FBI Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Reading Room was providing a link to an index of 2,008 pages of excerpts from the original “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC) file (the last update is from in June 6, 2001). The FBI FOIA Reading Room website has since moved and the files were apparently taken offline in the process (the new FBI Records: Freedom of Information/Privacy Act website also has an electronic reading room called the Vault, but I could not find the 2,008 pages of excerpts from the COMPIC file). The files are still available on the old FBI FOIA Reading Room website through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

The same files have also been uploaded on the Internet Archive. The 2,008 pages excerpts of the FBI “COMPIC” file no. 100-HQ-138754 are divided in 15 parts, spread across 26 PDF documents (about 93MB). All the PDF documents are properly identified and the number of pages each contains is provided as well. The files are also hosted on AboutFacts.net were they were accessible at the time of writing: “FBI Investigation of Motion Picture Industry”.

The group to which Ayn Rand was associated and whose report was used by the FBI to list It’s a Wonderful Life as an instrument for Communist propaganda is discussed on one page in particular, included in Part 7 of 15, Serial 251×1, PDF 7B, of the COMPIC excerpts:

Federal Bureau of Investigation file no. 100-HQ-138754 “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), Part 7 (of 15), Serial 251x1, detail from page 150 mentioning Ayn Rand (page 57 of the document compic7b.pdf).

Federal Bureau of Investigation file no. 100-HQ-138754 “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), Part 7 (of 15), Serial 251×1, detail from page 150 mentioning Ayn Rand (page 57 of the document compic7b.pdf).

The earliest mention of Capra’s movie It’s a Wonderful I could find in the excerpts available online is from October 11, 1947¹, in the same PDF document. It is part of a sub-section on the “Analysis of Motion Picture Disclosing Communist Propaganda Therein”, itself included in Section IV: “Communist Influence in Motion Pictures”. In the excerpts provided through the Freedom of Information Act, it spreads on pages 159-160 and corresponds to Part 7 of 15, Serial 251×1 (pages 66-67 of the document compic7b.pdf: page 160 is actually displayed at the beginning of this post). The same analysis (redacted in the very same way) is also reproduced on pages 12 and 13 of Part 9, Serial 1003-part 2 (pages 13-14 of the document compic9a.pdf, see below). The reproduction in Part 9 is slightly more legible.

Federal Bureau of Investigation file no. 100-HQ-138754 “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), Part 9 of 15, Serial 1003 (part 2), page 13 (page 14 of the document compic9a.pdf).

I made a transcription of the film analysis (a partial transcription was previously shared on Wise Bread).

“IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE”

Released by RKO Pictures, Inc. on December 19, 1946
Producer — Frank Capra
Director — Frank Capra
Screen play — Frances Goodrick, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra
Cast: Starring — James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore

According to the Informants [REDACTED] in this picture the screen credits again fail to reflect the Communist support given to the screen writer. According to [REDACTED] the writers Frances Goodrick and Albert Hackett were very close to known Communists and on one occasion in the recent past while these two writers were doing a picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Goodrick and Hackett practically lived with known Communists as Lester Cole, screen writer, and Earl Robinson, screen writer. Both of these individuals are identified in Section I of this memorandum as Communists.

With regard to the picture “It’s A Wonderful Life”, [REDACTED] stated in substance that the film represented a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as “scrooge-type” so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists.

In addition, [REDACTED] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. [REDACTED] related that if he had made this picture portraying the banker, he wold have shown this individual to have been following the rules as laid down by the State Bank Examiners in connection with making loans. Further, [REDACTED] stated that the scene woundn’t have “suffered at all” in portraying the banker as a man who was protecting funds put in his care by private individuals and adhering to the rules governing the loan of that money rather than portraying the part as it was shown. In summary, [REDACTED] stated that it was not necessary to make the banker such a mean character and “I would never have done it that way”.

[REDACTED] recalled that approximately 15 years ago, the picture entitled “The Letter” was made in Russia and was later shown in this country. He recalled that in this Russian picture, an individual who had lost his self-respect as well as that of his friends and neighbors because of drunkeness, was given one last chance to redeem himself by going to the bank to get some money to pay off a debt. The old man was sympathetic character and was so pleased at this opportunity that he was extremely, inferring he might lose the letter of credit or the money itself. In summary, the old man made the journey of several days duration to the bank and back with no mishap until he fell asleep on the homeward journey because of his determination to succeed. On this occasion the package of money dropped out of his pocket. Upon arriving home, the old man was so chagrined he hung himself. The next day someone returned the package of money to his wife saying it had been found. [REDACTED] draws a parallel of this scene and that of the picture previously discussed, showing that Thomas Mitchell who played the part of the man losing the money in the Capra picture suffered the same consequences as the man in the Russian picture in that Mitchell was too old a man to go out and make money to pay off his debt to the banker.

In the FBI COMPIC file, It’s a Wonderful Life is preceded by a similar analysis of The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) and followed by that of The Farmer’s Daughter (H.C. Potter, 1947). Other films targeted by this “analysis” include Keeper of the Flame (George Cukor, 1942), The Master Race (Herbert J. Biberman, 1944), The North Star (Lewis Milestone, 1943), Pride of the Marines (Delmer Daves, 1945), A Song to Remember (Charles Vidor, 1945), and a couple of others (see below).

Federal Bureau of Investigation file no. 100-HQ-138754 “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), Part 7 (of 15), Serial 251×1, detail from index of section IV (page 9 of the document compic7a.pdf).

The list was updated until December 31, 1955. In the running memorandum dated from January 3, 1956, it is recommended that the memorandum be discontinued (see FBI file no. 100-HQ-138754, Part 10 of 15, Serial 1103: page 3/130 of compic10a.pdf). This memorandum therefor contains the last update of the “Analysis of Motion Picture Disclosing Communist Propaganda Therein” (which listed new films as well). Again, Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life is mentioned, but much more briefly (Part 10 of 15, Serial 1103-part 1: page 33/129 of compic10b.pdf). However, this document is hardly legible:

Federal Bureau of Investigation file no. 100-HQ-138754 “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), Part 10 of 15, Serial 1103 (part 1), p. 3 (page 33 of the document compic10b.pdf).

• • •

• It’s a Wonderful Life: the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings

The so-called “analysis” included in the FBI “Communist Infiltration-Motion Picture Industry” file wasn’t the only place Frank Capra’s movie It’s A Wonderful Life was discussed in relation with communist propaganda. The subject was also raised in October 1947 during the Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) which resulted, among other thing, in the systematic blacklisting of Hollywood artists. The public record of the Hearings Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry (80th Congress, 1st Session, October 1947, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1947) are available on the Internet Archive as well. This time however, It’s a Wonderful Life was presented in a better light.

Many important personalities went to testify in front of the HUAC, including Gary Cooper (on the Oct. 23: pp. 219-225) and Walter E. Disney (on Oct. 24: pp. 280-289). In the FBI file on “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), those witnesses where categorized as being “friendly”:

Federal Bureau of Investigation file no. 100-HQ-138754 “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), Part 7 of 15, Serial 251x1, p. 187 (page 94 of the document compic7b.pdf).

Federal Bureau of Investigation file no. 100-HQ-138754 “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” (COMPIC), Part 7 of 15, Serial 251×1, p. 187 (page 94 of the document compic7b.pdf).

Among them was Ayn Rand, who testified on October 20 (pp. 82-91). At the time, she was enjoying a significant success as a writer with her book The Fountainhead published four years earlier: it had already sold 360,000 copies, according to Rand. Since she was also intermittently employed by Hollywood, she appeared in front of the House Committee as an expert witness. She had been asked by Committee investigators H. A. Smith to review the movie Song of Russia (1944; IMDb) in order to determine how it could work as a vehicle for Communist propaganda (see an excerpt on YouTube; for more about Ayn Rand’s testimony, see Ayn Rand and Song of Russia: Communism and Anti-Communism in 1940s Hollywood by Robert Mayhew, 2005).

However, the relevant testimony in regard to Frank Capra’s movie was given On October 21, 1947 by film critic and former screenwriter John Charles Moffitt (pp. 108-128). Moffitt had once belong to the Communist party but had since broke with it. When asked by HUAC Chief Invesigator Robert E. Stripling if Hollywood is in the habit of portraying bankers as villainous character, Moffitt takes the opportunity to try to clear the reputation of Frank Capra’s movie It’s A Wonderful Life: he tries to argue that the film isn’t, in fact a Communist movie. His explanation caused quite a commotion in the audience:

MR. STRIPLING. The term “heavy” has been used here as a designation of the part in which the person is a villain. Would you say that the banker has been often cast as a heavy, or consistently cast as a heavy, in pictures in Hollywood?
MR. MOFFITT. Yes, sir. I think that due to Communist pressure he is overfrequently cast as a heavy. By that I do not mean that I think no picture should ever show a villainous banker. In fact, I would right now like to defend one picture that I think has been unjustly accused of communism. That picture is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. The banker in that picture, played by Lionel Barrymore, was most certainly what we call a “dog heavy” in the business. He was a snarling, unsympathetic character. But the hero and his father, played by James Stewart and Samuel S. Hines, were businessmen, in the building and loan business, and they were shown as using money as a benevolent influence.
THE CHAIRMAN. I must insist that we have order. People in the audience are the guests of this committee. Those people include the witnessess who are going to be called before the committee. We just must have order all the time. Go ahead.
MR. CRUMM. All we ask, Mr. Chairman――
THE CHAIRMAN. I said we want order.
MR. CRUMM.All we ask is the same right accorded to Howard Hughes.
THE CHAIRMAN. Just a minute. Come away. Everybody sit down. Will all you people who are standing up please sit down? And the photographers.
MR. MOFFITT. All right.
THE CHAIRMAN. Go ahead.
MR. MOFFITT.Well, to summarize, I think Mr. Capra’s picture, though it had a banker as villain, could not be properly called a Communist picture. It showed that the power of money can be used oppressively and it can be used benevolently. I think that picture was unjustly accused of communism. (Hearings, pp. 122-123)

Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Eightieth Congress, First Session, 1947, detail from p. 123.

• • •

^1. Since 2006, two images have circulated online that reproduced two pages from the COMPIC file (see below). One reproduces (most) of the “analysis” from Oct. 11, 1947 (referenced above), while the other is the title page of the “running memorandum” about COMPIC as of May 27, 1947 (page 3/80 of FBI file no. 100-HQ-138754, Part 3 of 15, Serial 157×1, compic3a.pdf).

Low resolution screenshot of two pages from the COMPIC file displayed since 2002 at PaperlessArchives.com

Because of this association, the FBI memorandum about Frank Capra’s movie It’s A Wonderful Life is often wrongly dated from May 27, 1947. It didn’t exist at that time: the memorandum from May 1947 makes no mention of Capra’s movie. It simply announces the upcoming section ―still to be written― in which the analysis would later be added (“IV. Communist Influence in Motion Pictures”).

The two images (613 x 791px) of the FBI memo pertaining to It’s A Wonderful Life first appeared online on Paperless Archives, where the 2,008-page excerpt of FBI file no. 100-HQ-13875 can be bought on CD-ROM. The first available crawl of the site by the Wayback Machine is from January 4th, 2002 and the images are already there. In December of 2005, a thread on Metafilter linked to the Paperless Archives images as it documented the “subversive” side of Capra’s film: see “It’s A Wonderful Life. It’s A Subversive Film” (Dec. 15, 2006). A few days later, a smaller version (370×480) of the same two images were used to illustrate a post about the FBI report over at Wise Bread: “FBI Considered It’s A Wonderful Life Communist Propaganda” by Will Chen, Dec. 24, 2006; updated Mar. 8, 2012). A transcription of the pages was also provided. The post on Wise Bread, along with a cropped image of the FBI memorandum, was picked up by Boing Boing the same day (Dec. 24, 2006): “Old FBI memo: “It’s a Wonderful Life” is commie propaganda”.↩︎︎

• • •

Still from the ending sequence of Frank Capra’s movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1944) @ 2 hr 9 mins 15 sec.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on December 21, 2013 ― Published in Art, Communication, Movies | Tagged: Ayn Rand, communism, culture, entertainment, FBI, Frank Capra, Hollywood, ideology, industry, Joseph-McCarthy, propaganda

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GPS – Lost with it, lost without it

– Gary Larson (1993). The Far Side Gallery 4, Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, p. 12.

Forget about cellphones causing car accidents. In the UK, a ridiculous 300,000 car crashes have been caused by GPS. And, according to a survey commissioned by Brit tabloid rag The Mirror, 1.5 million drivers have swerved through traffic when following their sat-nav’s instructions a little too closely.

– SORREL, Charlie (2008). «GPS Causes 300,000 Brits to Crash», WIRED, July 22, 2008

DAMIAN Pinkus is married but he likes to tell people he has a girlfriend he keeps in his car. Her name is Muriel – “which is a pompous name, don’t you think?” – and she speaks in a cool, soothing voice. He says he loves her but what he means is that without Muriel he’d be lost. Muriel is Mr Pinkus’s portable navigation device, or global positioning system, which, depending on your point of view, is either the best thing to happen to Australian marriages since the invention of the shed, or the worst thing to happen to our roads since planners decided that trucks and holidaymakers could co-exist on a two-lane Pacific Highway.

– OVERINGTON, Caroline (2008). «GPS drivers lose their minds to life on dash», The Australian, August 2, 2008.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on August 7, 2008 ― Published in Technology | Tagged: accident, car, driver, global, GPS, Lost, machine, positioning, space, system, Technology, way

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Deleuze on Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” (1969)

☛ Christie’s: “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” by Francis Bacon, oil on canvas, in 3 parts, each: 78 x 58 in. (198 x 147.5 cm.). Image retrieved from Christie’s e-Catalogue (requires Flash), pp. 26-27.

This triptych from 1969 ―not to be confused with “Three Studies For Portrait of Lucian Freud” which I wrote about earlier― broke some records when it was sold at auction by Christie’s, on November 12, 2013:

It took seven superrich bidders to propel a 1969 Francis Bacon triptych to $142.4 million at Christie’s on Tuesday night, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. William Acquavella, the New York dealer, is thought to have bought the painting on behalf of an unidentified client, from one of Christie’s skyboxes overlooking the auction. (The New York Times: “At $142.4 Million, Triptych Is the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at an Auction” by Carol Vogel, Nov. 12, 2013).

It is for others to discuss the significance or insignificance of this new record. Here, following some comments by Gilles Deleuze, our attention will concentrate instead on the boxes in which each one of the three versions of Lucian Freud’s body seem to be framed:

In short, the painting is composed like a circus ring, a kind of amphitheater as “place.” It is a very simple technique that consists in isolating the Figure. There are other techniques of isolation: putting the Figure inside a cube, or rather, inside a parallelepiped of glass or ice; sticking it onto a rail or strech-out bar, as if on the magnetic arc of an infinite circle; or combining all these means ―the round area, the cube, and the bar― as in Bacon’s strangely flared and curved armchairs. The are all “places” [lieux]. In any case, Bacon does not hide the fact that these techniques are rather rudimentary, despite the subtlelty of their combinations. The important point is that they do not consign the Figure to immobility but, on the contrary, render sensible a kind of progression, an exploration of the Figure within the place, or upon itself. It is an operative field. The relation of the Figure to its isolating place defines a “fact”: “the fact is…,” “what takes place is…” Thus isolated, the Figure becomes an Image, an Icon.

LEFT: Photograph of Lucian Freud (detail) by John Deakin, circa 1964. © The Estate of Francis Bacon; RIGHT: “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” (detail) by Francis Bacon, 1969. Image retrieved from Christie’s e-Catalogue, pp. 150-151.

Not only is the painting an isolated reality, and not only does the triptych have three isolated panels (which above all must not be united in a single frame), but the Figure itself is isolated in the painting by the round area or the parallelepiped. Why? Bacon often explains that it is to avoid the figurative, illustrative, and narrative character the Figure would necessarily have if it were not isolated. Painting has neither a model to represent nor a story to narrate. It thus has two possible ways of escaping the figurative: toward pure form, through abstraction; or toward the purely figural, through extraction or isolation. If the painter keeps to the Figure, if he or she opts for the second path, it will be to oppose the “figural” to the figurative. Isolating the Figure will be the primary requirement. The figurative (representation) implies the relationship of an image to an object that it is supposed to illustrate; but it also implies the relationship of an image to other images in a composite whole which assigns a specific object to each of them. Narration is the correlate of illustration. A story always slips into, or tends to slip into, the space between two figures in order to animate the illustrated whole. Isolation is thus the simplest means, necessary though not sufficient, to break with representation, to disrupt narration, to escape illustration, to liberate the Figure: to stick to the fact.

LEFT: Working document retrieved from Bacon’s studio showing Lucian Freud photographed by Daniel Earson, 1963; RIGHT: “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” (detail) by Francis Bacon, 1969. Image retrieved from Christie’s e-Catalogue, pp. 158-159.

Clearly the problem is more complicated than this. Is there not another type of relationship between Figures, one that would not be narrative, and from which no figuration would follow? Diverse Figures that would spring from the same fact, that would belong to one and the same unique fact rather than telling a story or referring to different objects in a narrative whole? Nonnarrative relationship between Figures, and non-illustrative relationships between the Figure and the fact? Coupled Figures have always been a part of Bacon’s work, but they do not tell a story. Moreover, there is a relationship of great intensity between the separate panels of a triptych, although this relationship has nothing narrative about it. (Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation, tr. Daniel W. Smith, New York: Continuum, [1981] 2003, pp. 1-3).

“Three Studies of Lucian Freud” (detail) by Francis Bacon, 1969, oil on canvas, each (unframed): 78 x 58 in. (198 x 147.5 cm.). Image retrieved from Christie’s e-Catalogue, pp. 56-57.

In a recent essay he wrote at the invitation of Leopold Lambert forThe Funambulist Paper, Dan Mellamphy discusses the “binding of the body” in the work of Francis Bacon, Hans Bellmer and others. At one point, picking up from Deleuze’s comment (reproduced above), he hints at an important influence through which the French philosopher might consider the figure/ground relationship:

Deleuze’s use of an uppercase F in ‘Figure’ […] serves to distinguish it from normative figuration[s]: an important distinction, since the ‘Figure’ in this case is, as Gilbert Simondon—formative influence (speaking of forms and formation) on monsieur Gilles Deleuze—put it in his treatise On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, “the [F]igure of a [G]round” as opposed to a figure distinct and distinguished from ground (hence we have here a “distinction” by way of indistinction, or again a “clarification” by blurring) (read more: THE FUNAMBULIST PAPERS 43 /// “AV (Anthropocosmogonic Vastupurushamanism)” by Dan Mellamphy, Nov. 21, 2013)

For this comment, Mellamphy refers to a passage of METO where Simondon discusses how “technical thinking” was the result of the rupture from “the primitive reticular structure of the magical world” (1958, Part III, Chap. I, §iii). This, and what follows, is to some extent reminiscent of one of the central argument made by Marshall McLuhan in his 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy, an argument he borrows from the ethno-psychiatrist J.C. Carothers:

Carothers stresses that until phonetic writing split apart thought and action, there was no alternative but to hold all men responsible for their thoughts as much as their actions. His great contribution has been to point to the breaking apart of the magical world of the ear ad the neutral world of the eye, and to the emergence of the detribalized individual from this split. It follows, of course, that literate man, when we meet him in the Greek world, is a split man, a schizophrenic, as all literate man have been since the invention of the phonetic alphabet. (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1962, p. 22)

Where Simondon underlines the fact that the advent of technological thinking also produces a “deficit”, McLuhan will evoke instead a “technological trauma” (previously). Although the works of Simondon and McLuhan greatly diverges on other points, here one could venture to suggest that McLuhan “split man” is also the result of a separation between figure and ground.

In this regard, part of Simondon’s theory can be understood as an effort the think anew the relationship between figure and ground through a process of individualization that avoids the traditional reduction into clearly distinct unities (figure against ground).

This would be one way to experience Bacon’s painting. His parallelepiped cage does not isolate a recognizable figure from a ground. Nor does it function as a traditional representation. On the contrary, it acts as a pictorial apparatus preventing such operations. In doing so, it allows the entire triptych to work as a field of sensation. In other words, instead of a painting representing Lucian Freud, there is paint, “on its own”, taking place (or presenting itself) as a Figure.

• • •

Previously:

LEFT: Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud at the Royal College of Art, circa 1952; RIGHT: Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud at the Royal College of Art, circa 1952. Photograph: Daniel Farson. © Marlborough Gallery. Image retrieved from Christie’s e-Catalogue, pp. 54, 18.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on November 28, 2013 ― Published in Art, Painting | Tagged: body, Dan Mellamphy, Deleuze, Francis Bacon, Gilbert Simondon, image, isolation, line, McLuhan, representation, violence

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SITE’s King Kong Christmas party, 1976

☛ Canadian Centre for Architecture: James Wines, hand drawing of a King Kong figure atop a Christmas tree. Invitation sent to Gordon Matta-Clark to attend SITE’s Christmas party, 60 Greene Street, New York City, December 28, 1976. 35.4 x 21.6 cm. CCA Collection. PHCON2002:0016:004:085. Gift of Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark © SITE.

There are many more interesting items to discover online at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Collection. The Collection has its own RSS feed and the CCA maintains an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube.

• • •

The Canadian Centre for Architecture provides the following explanation regarding the context in which this drawing was produced:

Inspired by the adaptation of King Kong by Dino Delaurentis, this 1976 Christmas party invitation was designed by James Wines, president of SITE. The King Kong theme ran throughout the party. “Gorilla cookies and fay wray punch will be served,” the invitation reads. SITE co-founders Alison Sky, Michelle Stone and Wines’ daughter Suzan designed a Christmas tree modelled on the Empire State Building and adorned with a King King doll made by Sky. The SITE holiday event that year was a great success and even had coverage in the NY Times, with guests including Andy Warhol, Bob Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Gordon Matta-Clark, among many others from the New York art world. (CCA Collection: “A King Kong Christmas”, December 20, 2013)

The New Times article to which the CCA’s description referred was written by Rita Reif and it was published on December 30, 1976: “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” (there’s a fee to access the full article). The report written by Reif provides a detailed description of the party. It also tells the story of just how the actual King Kong Christmas tree was put together:

They came to the party to see a gorilla grab at airplanes from his perch atop the 12-foot Christmas tree. Or was it the Empire State Building?

They came to eat gorilla cookies and drink Fay Wray punch.

They came to talk about Kong Kong, his taste in architecture, his taste in women and how gingerbread should taste.

In fact, about 50 guests gathered the other night in a lower Manhattan loft for the fantasy-filled party planned by the designers and writers who make up the five-member staff of Site Inc. (Sculpture in the Environment). And many of the invited lingered ―in the appartment that is 33 blocks south of the Empire State Building and 18 blocks north of the World Trade Center― on onto the next morning munching, sipping and mulling such monstrous questions as “What is King Kong made of?”

“Love, mostly,” Alison Sky answered over and over again, invariably with a broad smile and a nod at what was described as the most strokeable simian in SoHo. “It’s also leather and vinyl and synthetic gorilla fur. And it’s stuffed with steel and polyester.”

When Miss Sky began a year ago to hand-sew that ape with the enigmatic smile, it was a private project, she said, a gift for Suzan Wines, the daughter of the artist-writer’s Site colleague James Wines, a sculptor. Miss Sky had no idea then, she recalled the other night, that it would take two months to complete. She also had not reckoned on the amount of labor and the number of people that the effort would involve. […]

King Kong cookie designed by James Wines’s daughter Susan (Age 10). From The New York Times: “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” by Rita Reif, Dec. 30, 1976

[T]he full work force did not become involved until shortly before Christmas. Miss Sky had pondered out loud the problem of how to decorate this years’s tree. And when she proposed doing a King Kong, her colleagues roared their approval and fell to work. Michael McDonough, an architect-trained associate, drew plans for the silvery cardboard-and-wax-paper-framed skyscraper that would surround the tree, on top of which the stuffed gorilla would pause for the Yuletide season.

“We never considered the World Trade Center,” Mr. Wines reported emphatically, adding that several of the invited had called to say that if the tree were based on the current Dino Di Laurentiis [sic] remake of the 1933 monster classic and framed with the towers, they were not coming.

“Our King Kong is a takeoff on the original and the building had to be the original one that the real King Kong fled to,” he said. (The New York Times: “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” by Rita Reif, Dec. 30, 1976).

Group portrait from SITE’s King Kong Christmas party, 1976. From New York Times’s article “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” by Rita Reif, Dec. 30, 1976

I asked @ccawire for additional information about SITE’s King Kong Christmas tree and they kindly pointed me to the book SITE: Identity in Density (Master Architect Series VI) (Images Publishing, 2005; Amazon). In it Michael McDonough, who had drew the original plans for the tree, gives his personal account of the King Kong Christmas party. As it turns out, the party played some role in SITE’s early notoriety:

We were all very young, mostly broke, serious-minded, and determined to change the world. The world, curiously, mostly noticed, I remember when Dino DeLaurentis filmed his campy remake of King Kong in 1976. Most Downtown turned out as unpaid extras in the plaza of the World Trade Center, all of us celluloid witnesses to the great ape’s denouement. SITE celebrated the event with a King Kong Christmas Tree party that year, the centerpiece a cardboard confection of the Empire State building topped by the angel Kong himself. The then still oh-so-dowdy New York Times reported the event, complete with a group portrait. It was like Paris in the 1920s, our Greene Street Mafia, but the style was grunge before there was grunge. (“The Greene Street Mafia: Remembering Site and Soho in the Mid-1970s” by Michael McDonough, in SITE: Identity in Density (Master Architect Series VI), edited by Steve Womersley, Victoria: Images Publishing, 2005, p. 17)

To learn more about SITE philosophy and numerous achievement, visit its official website either at sitenewyork.com or at siteenvirodesign.com. Founder James Wines also teaches architecture at Penn State University: see his profile there.

Among other things, SITE is recognized for designing a showroom for the Best Products company (see SITE profile at MoMA). A four-part documentary regarding this particular project can be watched on YouTube. Part 1 is embedded below (see Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4).

• By Philippe Theophanidis on December 25, 2013 ― Published in Architecture, Art, Design, Movies | Tagged: Christmas, King Kong, New York, party

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Article published: “The Greek crisis and the problem of community”

My essay “We have gone bankrupt. The Greek crisis and the problem of community” has been published in issue 17 of Chronos magazine (September 2014). I learned about Chronos magazine a few months ago when they published the transcript of a public lecture Giorgio Agamben delivered in Athens, on November 16, 2013 (I wrote about it here). I’m grateful for the opportunity they have given me to publish my work in one of their issues. A special thanks to Stefanos Theodoridis for his generous help during the editing process.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief outline of the problem that inspired my article in the first place. In a letter to Christopher Isherwood written on July 1933, E. M. Forster recounts what the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy once told him: “Never forget about the Greeks that we are bankrupt. That is the difference between us and the ancient Greeks, and my dear Forster, between us and yourselves.” In an essay he wrote in the early 1990s, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben argued that since the time of Cavafy’s remark, all the people of the Earth had gone bankrupt. Yet he concluded his essay with this enigmatic suggestion: “As the Alexandrian poet might say today with a smile: ‘Now, at last, we can understand one another, because you too have gone bankrupt.’”

My text offers an interpretation of Agamben’s riddle through the analysis of the current Greek debt crisis, which I understand as a paradigmatic expression of a worldwide coexistential crisis. In doing so, I develop my argument from the perspective of the concept of “community” as it was reexamined, in recent years, by the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.

On the cover of this 2-volume edition of Cavafy’s poems by George Savidis (Athena: Ikaros, 1963), a copperplate etching of the Greek poet made by Jean Kefallinos in 1921.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on September 25, 2014 ― Published in Communication | Tagged: Agamben, article, bankruptcy, community, globalization, Greece, Jean-Luc Nancy

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On Democracy: Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Zizek

“This, then, my friend,” said I, “is the fine and vigorous root from which tyranny grows, in my opinion.” “Vigorous indeed,” he said; “but what next?” “The same malady,” I said, “that, arising in oligarchy, destroyed it, this more widely diffused and more violent as a result of this licence, enslaves democracy. And in truth, any excess is wont to bring about a corresponding reaction to the opposite in the seasons, in plants, in animal bodies, and most especially in political societies.” “Probably,” he said. “And so the probable outcome of too much freedom is only too much slavery in the individual and the state.” “Yes, that is probable.” “Probably, then, tyranny develops out of no other constitution than democracy—from the height of liberty, I take it, the fiercest extreme of servitude.”

☛ Republic by Plato, Book VIII, 563e-564a (from Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969).

In the wake of the recent Canadian elections and in the midst of the unfolding American campaign for the next presidential elections, we are offered with yet another opportunity to think about the democratic process. And by thinking I neither mean to condemn it nor to be apologetic of it. On one hand, to say that democracy as a political regime has failed –as we may hear from time to time– is not really helpful: it doesn’t explain much and it is rather precisely what would require a thorough explanation. On the other hand, the idea that voting is a moral obligation is often presented as a way to close a discussion (rather then allowing it to explore new avenues). In this context, I find important to remind myself that debates about democracy are as old as democracy itself¹.

German philosopher Eduard Zeller wrote back in 1897 about Aristotle’s Politics:

Secondly, we have the principle which constitutes one of the leading thoughts in Aristotle’s Politics, and is not the least of the many proofs of political insight exhibited in the work– namely, that every form of government brings ruin on itself by its own excess, and that moderation in the use of authority, justice to all, good administration and moral capacity are the best means of etaining power. Democracies are ruined by demagogy and by injustice toward prosperous classes; oligarchies, by oppression of the people and by the limitation of political rights to too small a minority; monarchies by arrogance and outrage in the rulers. He who desires the maintenance of any form of government must endeavour above evrything to keep it with the limits of moderation, and prevent it from courting its own destruction by any one-sided insistence on the principle of its constitution; he must endeavour to reconcile conflicting factions; he must counterbalance the preponderance of one by assgning corresponding influence to the other, and so preserve the former from excess. Above all, he most be careful to prevent the public offices from being plundered and oppressed by the other. Here the right course is precisely the opposite of that which is commonly pursued: it is precisely the natural opponents of a constitution that require most consideration, lest by unjust treatment they be transformed inot active enemies of the commonwealth. (Aristotle and the earlier Peripatetics : being a translation from Zeller’s Philosophy of the Greeks, tr. by Benjamin Francis Conn Costelloe and J. H. Muirhead, vol. II, New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., pp. 285-286; originally published as Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung [1844-1852])

Thomas Hobbes:

But it is an easy thing, for men to be deceived, by the specious name of Libertie; and for want of Judgement to distinguish, mistake that for their Private Inheritance, and Birth right, which is the right of the Publique only. And when the same errour is confirmed by the authority of men in reputation for their writings in this subject, it is no wonder if it produce sedition, and change of Government. In these westerne parts of the world, we are made to receive our opinions concerning the Institution, and Rights of Common-wealths, from Aristotle, Cicero, and other men, Greeks and Romanes, that living under Popular States, derived those Rights, not from the Principles of Nature, but transcribed them into their books, out of the Practice of their own Common-wealths, which were Popular; as the Grammarians describe the Rules of Language, out of the Practise of the time; or the Rules of Poetry, out of the Poems of Homer and Virgil. And because the Athenians were taught, (to keep them from desire of changing their Government,) that they were Freemen, and all that lived under Monarchy were slaves; therefore Aristotle puts it down in his Politiques,(lib.6.cap.2) “In democracy, Liberty is to be supposed: for ’tis commonly held, that no man is Free in any other Government.” And as Aristotle; so Cicero, and other Writers have grounded their Civill doctrine, on the opinions of the Romans, who were taught to hate Monarchy, at first, by them that having deposed their Soveraign, shared amongst them the Soveraignty of Rome; and afterwards by their Successors. And by reading of these Greek, and Latine Authors, men from their childhood have gotten a habit (under a false shew of Liberty,) of favouring tumults, and of licentious controlling the actions of their Soveraigns; and again of controlling those controllers, with the effusion of so much blood; as I think I may truly say, there was never any thing so deerly bought, as these Western parts have bought the learning of the Greek and Latine tongues. (Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil by Thomas Hobbes, Chapter XXI “On The Liberty of Subjects”)

Rousseau:

It is not good for him who makes the laws to execute them, or for the body of the people to turn its attention away from a general standpoint and devote it to particular objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests in public affairs, and the abuse of the laws by the government is a less evil than the corruption of the legislator, which is the inevitable sequel to a particular standpoint. In such a case, the State being altered in substance, all reformation becomes impossible, A people that would never misuse governmental powers would never misuse independence; a people that would always govern well would not need to be governed.

If we take the term in the strict sense, there never has been a real democracy, and there never will be. (The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, tr. by G. D. H. Cole, public domain (original publication : Amsterdam, 1792), Book III, chap 4; original French text available online as well)

Tocqueville:

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest—his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not—he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances—what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits. (Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville, originally published in French in 1840, English tr. by Henry Reeve, volume II, Book VI, Chapter VI: “What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear”; original French text available online as well)

Zizek:

“Democracy” is not merely the “power of, by, and for the people,” it is not enough just to claim that, in democracy, the will and the interests (the two in no way automatically coincide) of the large majority determine the state decisions. Democracy – in the way this term is used today – concerns, above all, formal legalism: its minimal definition is the unconditional adherence to a certain set of formal rules which guarantee that antagonisms are fully absorbed into the agonistic game. “Democracy” means that, whatever electoral manipulation took place, every political agent will unconditionally respect the results. In this sense, the US presidential elections of 2000 were effectively “democratic”: in spite of obvious electoral manipulations, and of the patent meaninglessness of the fact that a couple hundred of Florida voices will decide who will be the president, the Democratic candidate accepted his defeat. In the weeks of uncertainty after the elections, Bill Clinton made an appropriate acerbic comment: “The American people have spoken; we just don’t know what they said.” This comment should be taken more seriously than it was meant: even now, we don’t know it – and, maybe, because there was no substantial “message” behind the result at all. This is the sense in which one should render problematic democracy: why should the Left always and unconditionally respect the formal democratic “rules of the game”? Why should it not, in some circumstances, at least, put in question the legitimacy of the outcome of a formal democratic procedure?

Interestingly enough, there is at least one case in which formal democrats themselves (or, at least, a substantial part of them) would tolerate the suspension of democracy: what if the formally free elections are won by an anti-democratic party whose platform promises the abolition of formal democracy? (This did happen, among other places, in Algeria a couple of years ago, and the situation is similar in today’s Pakistan.) In such a case, many a democrat would concede that the people was not yet “mature” enough to be allowed democracy, and that some kind of enlightened despotism whose aim will be to educate the majority into proper democrats is preferable. (“Too Much Democracy?” by Slavoj Zizek, lecture diven at Columbia University on April 14, 2003)

• • •

^1. [UPDATE–September 6, 2012] Many of the authors whose essays are gathered in the book Democracy In What State? (2001; originally published in French as Démocratie, dans quel état?, 2009) made this observation. In his “Introductory note on the Concept of Democracy”, Giorgio Agamben wrote:

The term democracy sounds a false note whenever it crops up in de- bate these days because of a preliminary ambiguity that condemns anyone who uses it to miscommunication. Of what do we speak when we speak of democracy? What is the underlying rationale? (p. 1)

Later in the book, in an interview he did with Eric Hazan, Jacques Rancière explains:

What we are seeing today takes us right back to the time when the word originated. Ever since, the one thing on which all have agreed is that democracy denotes different, opposing things. It starts with Plato, who says that democracy is not a form of government, just the whim of people who want to behave licentiously. It continues with Aristotle, who says that democracy is fine, as long as the democrats are kept from exercising it. And how many times in the modern era have we heard that old chestnut from Churchill about democracy being the worst regime, except for all the others? So I don’t believe there is universal assent to democracy, only universal consensus that it means two different things. (p. 77) ↩︎︎

• By Philippe Theophanidis on June 7, 2011 ― Published in Communication | Tagged: Aristotle, democracy, elections, Hobbes, people, Plato, Politic, power, Rancière, Rousseau, Tocqueville, vote, Žižek

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“Commandments in the Atomic Age” by Günther Anders, 1957

Your second thought after awakening should run: ‘The possibility of the Apocalypse is our work. But we know not what we are doing’. We really don’t know, nor do they who control the Apocalypse: for they too are ‘we’, they too are fundamentally incompetent. That they too are incompetent, is certainly not their fault; rather the consequence of a fact for which neither they nor we can be held responsible: the effect of the daily growing gap between our two faculties; between our actions and our imagination; of the fact, that we are unable to conceive what we can construct; to mentally reproduce what we can produce; to realize the reality which we can bring into being.

☛ “Commandments in the Atomic Age” by Günther Anders, in Burning Conscience New York: Monthly Review Press, [1957] 1961, pp. 11-12. PDF. First published as a separate essay in July 14, 1957 (see below).

[UPDATE–July 29, 2013] Harold Marcuse recently updated the “Publications” section of the Günther Anders Page he has created and still maintains to include a complete PDF copy (53.4MB) of the book Burning Conscience: The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot Claude Eatherly, told in his Letters to Günther Anders (New York/London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961). He has also uploaded a 36-page PDF document (2.9MB) of the letters his grand-father Herbert Marcuse wrote to Günther Anders over the years 1947-1978.

• • •

Compare Günther’s “Commandments” with what Hannah Arendt wrote in the prologue of her book The Human Condition first published in English in 1958:

We do not yet know whether this situation is final. But it could be that we, who are earth-bound creatures and have begun to act as though we were dwellers of the universe, will for- ever be unable to understand, that is, to think and speak about the things which nevertheless we are able to do. In this case, it would be as though our brain, which constitutes the physical, material condition of our thoughts, were unable to follow what we do, so that from now on we would indeed need artificial machines to do our thinking and speaking. If it should turn out to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the help- less slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is tech- nically possible, no matter how murderous it is. (London: University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 3)

Along with the essay “Über die Bombe und die Wurzeln unserer Apokalypse Blindheit” included in Günther Anders’s Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen published one year earlier¹, the “Commandments in the Atomic Age” was part of what Anders qualified as the “first phase of anti-nuclear movements”. In the 1982 introduction he wrote for Hiroshima ist überall² he explained how the events of August 6, 1945 plunged him into a stupor which took him several years to overcome. When he finally managed to write down his thoughts about the meaning of what had happened, it was mainly to come to the conclusion that we had become incapable of a clear understanding of what we were nonetheless technologically capable of producing. Our capacity of production has overwhelmed our capacity of representation³. I don’t believe this introduction has ever been translated into English. Here’s a relevant excerpt in its French translation:

Comme ce que l’on ne maîtrise pas par la langue, on ne peut le comprendre, non: même pas le signifier, non: même pas le percevoir correctement, je tenais le devoir de formulation pour un commandement absolu. Si ma tentative n’est pas restée complètement infructueuse, elle m’a tout de même coûté des années d’efforts. La stupeur dans laquelle m’avait plongé la fameuse nouvelle radiodiffusée du 6 août 1945, je n’ai pas pu, durant de nombreuses années, la surmonter ou m’en défaire par la parole. C’est seulement au début des années 1950, en 1952 ou 1953, longtemps après être rentré de mon exil américain, que j’ai réussi à franchir un premier pas mal assuré. […] Mais ce que j’ai alors rassemblé, certes d’une écriture fluide mais en traçant le moindre caractère avec hésitation, était à peine plus que la confession de mon incapacité, non: de notre incapacité à seulement nous représenter ce que «nous» avions là mis en place ou produit. […] C’est seulement quelques jours plus tard que j’ai entrevu ce qu’il y a de redoutable dans notre situation, à savoir que la possibilité, non: la probabilité d’un recommencement d’Hiroshima et Nagasaki, reposait justement sur ce décalage entre notre capacité de représenter et notre capacité de produire. (emphasis in the original, Hiroshima est partout, “Introduction de 1982” tr. by Denis Trierweiler, Paris: Seuil, 2008, pp. 36-37)

• • •

Günther Anders’s essay “Commandments in the Atomic Age” was first published as “Gebote des Atomzeitalters” in the July 14, 1957 edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung⁴. Although the publication is still activite today, its online archive only goes back to 1994. The original German text can nonetheless be found at Texte und Thesen.

In 1959, Günther Anders’s third wife Charlotte Zelka translated the “Gebote des Atomzeitalters” in English so Anders could send the text to U.S. Army Air Forces pilot Claude Eatherly with whom he had just started a correspondence. This correspondence (including the original German version of the essay “Gebote des Atomzeitalters”) was first published in German in 1961 as Off limits für das Gewissen. Der Briefwechsel zwischen dem Hiroshima-Piloten Claude Eatherly und Günther Anders with a preface by Bertrand Russel and a foreword by Robert Junkt (author of Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists in 1958). The American edition appeared the next year under the title Burning Conscience: The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot Claude Eatherly, told in his Letters to Günther Anders 1961 with an added postscript “to the American readers” by Günther Anders himself.

The entirety of Anders’s correspondence with Eatherly ―including preface and foreword― was later included in Hiroshima ist überall (C. H. Beck, München, 1982; see page 191 of the 1995 German edition). The collection was translated in French as Hiroshima est partout (Seuil, 2008): this is where French readers should look for a French version of Anders’s “Commandments in the Atomic Age”.

• • •

^1. “Über die Bombe und die Wurzeln unserer Apokalypse Blindheit” was translated in the French edition of Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen as “De la bombe et de l’aveuglement face a l’apocalypse”. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen has yet to be fully translated into English. However, a short excerpt of “Über die Bombe…” was translated as “Reflections On The H Bomb” in Dissent vol. 3, no. 2, Spring 1956 (pp. 146-155, PDF). At the time of writing, I believe the best way to stay informed about the availability of English translations for Günther Anders is through Harold Marcuse dedicated website: Günther Anders. That’s where I originally learned about the existence of “Reflections On The H Bomb”. ↩︎︎

^2. At the very beginning of this introduction, Günther Anders mentions a text published in 1959 titled “Thesen zum Atomzeitalter” (in French the title was translated as “Thèses sur l’âge atomique”). Although this text contains ideas similar to the ones expressed in “Commandments in the Atomic Age” (see Zeit.de: “Zorn der Vernunft” May 20, 2011) they are actually two different essays. ↩︎︎

^3. I wrote about this gap before (also quoting Günther Anders): On the threshold of knowledge: Pythagoreans, incommensurability and the experience of modernity.↩︎︎

^4. In Letter 3 of his correspondance with Claude Eatherly, Gunther Anders indicates that his “Commandments in the Atomic Age” were first published on July 14. However, in the “Preface” for the French translation Hiroshima ist überall, Jean-Pierre Dupuy suggests they were published on July 13, which is also the date provided by Text und Thesen.↩︎︎

“A dense column of smoke rises more than 60,000 feet into the air over the Japanese port of Nagasaki, the result of an atomic bomb, the second ever used in warfare, dropped on the industrial center August 8, 1945, from a U.S. B-29 Superfortress.” Document no 208-N-43888, retrieved from Archive.gov

• By Philippe Theophanidis on April 14, 2013 ― Published in Communication, Technology | Tagged: apparatus, atom, atomic, ethic, Günther Anders, imagination, incommensurability, nuclear, representation, responsibility, war

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Étienne Jules-Marey’s Myograph

☛ La machine animale: locomotion terrestre et aérienne by Étienne Jules-Marey, Paris: Germer Baillière, 1873, p. 31 (The original French copy hosted by Google Books is the Elibron Classics Replica Edition, itself an unabridged facsimile of the edition published in 1873) Public Domain.

Best known for his key participation in the development of chronophotography (which in turn helped spring the invention of a variety of cinematographic apparatus), French scientist Étienne Jules-Marey is also credited for perfecting Hermann von Helmholtz’s myograph. A myograph is a device capable of recording the force generated by a contracting muscle (see explanations and diagram over at the University of New Mexico). Here’s how Jules-Marey descibes the above illustration (from the English edition also Public Domain):

In Fig. 3 the frog is represented in the experiment, fixed, by means of pins, on a piece of cork.

The brain and spinal marrow have been previously destroyed, so as to extinguish all voluntary movement and sensibility. Although, to all appearance, the animal is dead, it will nevertheless retain for several hours the circulation of the blood, and the power of motion under the influence of electric discharges. An electric excitator conveys the current from an induction coil to the nerve of the frog.

In order to register these movements and to depict them by curves which express their different phases, they are transmitted to the myograph in the manner already described. The tendon of the muscle is cut, and connected by a wire which is fastened at the other end to the lever of the registering apparatus; the latter moves in a horizontal plane, when the contractile force of the muscle is exerted upon it. As soon as the muscle cease to act, the lever returns, under the pressure of a spring, to its original position. At the free extremity of the lever is a point which traces, on a turning cylinder covered with smoke paper, the motions produced by the alternate contraction and relaxation of the muscle. (pp. 32-33)

The illustration, along with its explicit description, may convey a sense of dread. The placid and calm ways in which Jules-Marey goes on to explain how (part of) a dead animal can be reanimated seem to amplify the apparent monstrosity of the whole experimentation.

And monstrous it is, in a way. The device use to record muscle movements comes many year after the idea to experiment the effect of electricity on dissected animals. This idea was indeed investigated nearly a century before (around 1780-1790) by Luigi Galvani. His experimentations are often cited as a major source of inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (the first edition was published in 1818). They also play an important role in establishing a general but strong relation between life and electricity (take a moment and think about all the characters in all those movies whom are killed by flashy, zigzagging electric arcs).

However, there’s more to the myograph than meets the (horrified) eye. Jules-Marey research is far from being limited to the effect of electricity on dead animals. He was preoccupied by a more general problem, technological as well as epistemological. How is it possible to translate a continuous and dynamic stimuli into discrete, measurable units? The need for such a translation stems from the limit of our five senses: there are phenomena which we are unable to grasp by ourselves. Apparatus and devices are needed in order to understand realities beyond human measure (too fast, too strong, too small, too far away). Such units of measurement represent that which cannot be immediately present to use (be it quantitative or qualitative representation). And therein lies the problem: how to adequately represent something by presenting something else in its place? One could say that this problem is not only a scientific problem (be it biology, physics, semiology or communication) but an artistic one as well. The two examples below illustrate this idea (and close this post on a less morbid note).

First, a photograph by Jeff Wall: “A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai)” (transparency in lightbox, 2290 x 3770 mm, 1993, © Jeff Wall).

Second, a painting by Mark Tansey: “Action Painting II”, oil on canvas, 193cm x 279.4 cm, 1984.

• • •

• By Philippe Theophanidis on November 23, 2010 ― Published in Art, Technology | Tagged: anatomy, animal, author, book, electricity, experimentation, frog, illustration, machine, muscle, myograph, representation, science, vintage

‘Abacus’ by Paul Rand, ca. 1946

☛ The Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum: Textile, designed by Paul Rand, manufactured by L. Anton Maix, Inc., linen, screen printed on plain weave, ca. 1946 . Museum purchase through gift of Mrs. William Goulding. Accession Number: 2003-7-1. Object ID: 18697983. Used with permissions (for more info see Terms of use).

The Art Institute of Chicago has a black & white version of the same design, dated from 1951 (Gift of Mrs. Donald Grauer, 1992.1214). Paul Rand (1914-1996) was an American graphic designer famously known for the identities he created for several major companies such as Enron, IBM, UPS, ABC, etc. (see StockLogos for more examples). His Abacus was featured a few days ago on Object of the Day, the National Design Museum’s blog:

Among the most influential books in the history of American graphic design is Paul Rand’s Thoughts on Design, published in 1947. Covering the jacket of this ground-breaking manifesto of modernist theory and practice is a series of oblong dots arranged in uneven rows, rendered in translucent shades of gray. The image is based on a photogram, made by exposing a wood-and-wire abacus to a sheet of photographic paper. At once abstract and recognizable, the photogram is a direct imprint of a physical object.

Rand used his photogram as the basis of a pattern design as well as for the cover of his famous book. Working with the progressive manufacturer, L. Anton Maix in New York City, he created Abacus around 1946. The play between dark and light, foreground and background, transparency and opacity, endows this simple printed textile with movement and depth, while the pattern’s ordered columns gracefully follow the folds of the fabric.[…]

Abacus and other progressive textiles appeared in MoMA’s 1951 exhibition, Good Design, which celebrated high-quality products in current production. The catalog included retail prices of the products on view—Abacus sold for $6.75 per yard, a cost in line with other textiles in the exhibition, which ranged from around $3 to $20 a yard. (read more: “Abacus” by Ellen Lupton, November 26, 2012)

Below is a reproduction of Rand’s book Thoughts on Design. Used copies are still available online, but they are a bit pricey (usually above $100USD). To learn more about this book, visit Paul-Rand.com which is an interesting site by itself, with plenty of resources about Paul Rand (the site has a nice layout build using Zurb’s Foundation framework).

Cover design fro Paul Rand’s ‘Thoughts on Design’ (Wittenborn & Company, 1947) featuring the ’Abacus‘ pattern.

In his small essay “Design and the Play Instinct”, Paul Rand offers some thoughts on the photogram process:

The idea of the photogram or cameraless photography goes back as far as the 19th century with Fox Talbot’s photogenic drawings. In our time the pioneers of photography without use of a camera were Christian Schad, Man Ray, Moholy Nagy, and Kurt Schwitters. Among the first to apply this technique in advertising was the constructivist El Lissitzky. Later, Picasso experimented with the photogram. In advertising, the photogram has yet to be fully exploited.

Although the effectiveness of the photogram depends chiefly on straight-forward mechanical methods (light on sensitized paper), it offers the designer ample opportunity for aesthetic, manual control. In a sense, it is not a picture of the object but the object itself; and, as in stroboscopic photography, it makes picturization of continuous movement possible as in this photogram of an abacus, by the author. Although some of its effects may be approximated with pen, brush, or scissors, he quality inherent in the subtle light modulations can be achieved, perhaps, only by means of the photogram. (republished in Education of Vision, edited by Gyorgy Kepes, New York: George Braziller, 1965, p. 172; PDF)

Finally, a few words about the Cooper-Hewitt’s blog, Object of the Day, which was launch on October 1st, 2012:

Discover a different object from the Museum’s collection every day of the week! Museum curators, conservators, and educators, as well as design enthusiasts like our teen Design Scholars, docents, and Master’s students, are sharing their favorite objects from Cooper-Hewitt’s incredible collection. Many of these objects will be featured in the expanded collection galleries when Cooper-Hewitt reopens in 2014. Until then, “Object of the Day” is your uniquely-curated corner of the Museum!

One can subscribe to Object of the Day through its RSS feed or, alternatively, monitor notifications for new entries over at Twitter and Facebook. It’s online collection is going through an in-depth overhaul and is currently in “alpha release”. The new design ―which I think is both visually appealing and convenient― is the product of the Digital & Emerging Media department at Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. One can keep track of their innovative project through their blog at Cooper-Hewitt labs. See for example “Getting lost in the collection (alpha)” (October 2, 2012) for a detailed tour of The Cooper–Hewitt eMuseum’s new design.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on December 10, 2012 ― Published in Art, Design | Tagged: archive, book, museum, pattern, Paul Rand, resource, textile

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