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Notes on “For a theory of destituent power” by Giorgio Agamben, 2013

As a matter of fact, the hypothesis I would like to suggest is that the prevailing governmental paradigm in Europe today is not only non democratic, but that it cannot either be considered as political. I will try therefore to show that the European society today is no more a political society: it is something entirely new, for which we lack a proper terminology and we have therefore to invent a new strategy.

☛ “For a theory of destituent power” by Giorgio Agamben, transcript of a public lecture delivered in Athens, on November 16, 2013. Invitation and organization by Nicos Poulantzas Institute and SYRIZA Youth. Transcript produced and published by the online magazine Chronos.

A slightly different version of this text was translated to French and published in the January 2014 edition of Le Monde Diplomatique (pp. 22-23). The French version has bibliographic references, but it lacks the concluding remarks on Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”.

In February 2014, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space published the translation of a much longer, 6,500-word essay titled “What is a destituent power?” (tr. by Stephanie Wakefield, Vol. 32, Issue 1, pp 65 – 74). Although it is said to be “based on a lecture given in central France in the summer of 2013”, it does also share parts of its argument with the Athens lecture of November 2013 (the one being discussed here).

For example, the sections about Christian Meier’s “politicization” (§3) and the comments on Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” (§7) are common to the lecture and to the translated essay. That being said, both text are clearly different. On one hand, the topics of security and biometric technologies central to the lecture are not mentioned at all in the translated essay, nor is the theme of “indifference”. On the other hand, the essay develops in much more details concepts that are absent, or only only hinted at in the November lecture. More specifically, in the translated essay published in February 2014:

the discussion pertaining to the ancient distinction between polis and oikos, is further developed from the perspective of civil war in ancient Greece (or Stasis). Agamben does so by examining the work of Nicole Loraux (§4);
Agamben develops on the concept of “use” as a middle voice verb, and how it transforms the ontology of the concept “subject” (§5);
more explanations are provided about the concept of “inoperativity” as a model of politics, which is central to Agamben’s thought (and reminiscent in some ways of Jean-Luc Nancy’s work on “désoeuvrement”) (§6);
the theory of “destituent power” get a much more elaborated presentation: to the discussion about Benjamin’s essay “Critique of Violence” is added an important development about Paul’s relation to law (§7);
the equally important term “form-of-life” is explained in light of a “modal ontology”, that is an ontology of the “how” instead of an ontology of substance (§8).

The Athens lecture discussed below represents a very good complement to this more elaborate essay, especially in regard to the treatment it offers on the topics of security and biometric technologies.

• • •

What follows is a rough summary of Agamben’s lecture “For a theory of destituent power” (Nov. 2013), along with a few notes and complementary resources. It is based on the transcript shared by Chronos Magazine.

Agamben’s main argument is about the “depoliticization” of humans societies. For all that, it does not mean that societies have become apolitical. Agamben’s argument is rather that the distinction between what is political and what is not is blurred: it has become a zone of indifference. Political apathy could be said to be one expression of this phenomenon. As we will see, there are others.

In order to understand this transformation, Agamben offers a genealogy of the concept of security in two parts. The first part examines the concept of security in relation with the “state of exception”. Agamben has already examined this topic exhaustively in a previous book, published a little over a decade ago (The State of Exception, tr. by Kevin Attell, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [2003] 2005).

However, Agamben quickly acknowledges that since no state of exception is currently officially declared in modern democratic states, this paradigm is not quite adequate to understand what is happening today. What we have instead is a situation that is juridically vague.

For example, there has been no official cancellation or suspension of the articles of the United States Constitution regarding personal liberties. Yet, after the Boston Marathon bombings, countless private homes were searched without warrants (see previously here). The debates pertaining to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) global surveillance program is in part fuelled by a similar judicial “vagueness”.

Agamben explains that a crisis is etymologically and traditionally associated with a specific moment: the moment of decision. What we are currently experiencing is a paradoxical situation where this particular moment has become generalized: it is not discrete anymore, but continuous.

Thus, for the second part of his genealogy of the concept of security, Agamben sets aside the paradigm of the state of exception and turns his attention to the origin of the concept of security in modern, liberal economy. Following Michel Foucault research, he concentrates on the work of François Quesnais and the Physiocrates. The reference here is obviously Foucault’s Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978, and I believe more specifically the second lecture of January 18, 1978 (tr. Graham Burchell, New York: Picador [2004]2007 pp. 51-71).

Quesnais and the physiocrates promoted a new way of thinking governmentality in light of the category of security (sûreté in French). For them, security had less to do with the control of causes than with the control of effects. The idea was to let the problems happen –such as famines, for example– in order to deal with the actual consequences instead. This principle was summarize in the famous motto “Laissez faire, laissez passer” (which is not from Quesnais: see Security, Territory, Population, Jan. 18, p. 57, note on Vincent de Gournay; The Birth of Biopolitics, Jan. 10, p. 20). Agamben underlines the importance of this shift from causes to effects:

We should not neglect the philosophical implications of this reversal. It means an epoch-making transformation in the very idea of government, which overturns the traditional hyerachical relation between causes and effects. Since governing the causes is difficult and expensive, it is more safe and useful to try to govern the effects. I would suggest that this theorem by Quesnay is the axiom of modern governmentality.

(One wonders how Agamben would take into account another shift in recent times: that of a politic of deterrence (during the Cold War) to a politic of preemption (after 9/11). On this topic, Brian Massumi has written excellent analysis. See for example “Potential Politics and the Primacy of Preemption”, 2007; and “Perception Attack: Brief on War Time”, 2010)

For Agamben, Quesnay’s theorem furthermore allows to understand a dynamic that would otherwise seem incomprehensible: the convergence of a liberal paradigm in economy with a paradigm of increased state control. This double articulation is reminiscent of the way both Deleuze (1987) and Tiqqun (2001) understand the highway as an apparatus where “maximum circulation coincides with maximum control” (previously here).

This dual convergence finds its most worrying expression in the rapid development and diffusion of biometrical security apparatuses. Agamben identifies two major issues to this trend. First, it increasingly mingles the private interests of big technology industries with the public interests of governments.

(Evgeny Morozov discussed a similar issue in a recent lecture he delivered at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. More specifically, he discussed the city as a key site for current debates about democracy. One of those debates, he argues, should focus on the increasing responsibility and importance given to private technology companies who offer to solve various problems associated with urban coexistence: energy consumption, health, crimes, waste, etc.)

The second issue, crucial to Agamben’s main argument, has to do with the ways security technologies fundamentally transform political identities and political relationships:

This transformation is so extreme, that we can legitimately ask not only if the society in which we live is still a democratic one, but also if this society can be still considered as political.

In order to understand this process of “depoliticization”, Agamben first start by going back to the process of “politicization” that took place in Greece in the fifth century B.C. For this, he relies on the work of German historian Christian Meier, who is considered “an authority on both ancient Greek and Roman history, and among the few German classicists to specialize in political thought” (The History of Political and Social Concepts : A Critical Introduction, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 33; see also de.Wikipedia). Among other things, Meier has shown how Greek citizenship emerged as a functional political identity through the participation to public affairs: a unique form of life distinct from the private life of citizens. Agamben uses an excerpt which is well worth quoting at length:

“The result was a specifically greek conception of citizenship, in which the fact that men had to behave as citizens found an institutional form. The belonging to economical or religious communities was removed to a secondary rank. The citizens of a democracy considered themselves as members of the polis, only in so far as they devoted themselves to a political life. Polis and politeia, city and citizenship constituted and defined one another. Citizenship became in that way a form of life, by means of which the polis constituted itself in a domain clearly distinct from the oikos, the house. Politics became therefore a free public space as such opposed to the private space, which was the reign of necessity”

The reference to Christian Meier text is only provided in the French version of Agamben’s text. The quote comes from the article “Der Wandel der politisch-sozialen Begriffswelt im V Jahrhundert v. Chr.”, in Historische Semantik und Begriffsgeschichte, ed. by Reinhart Koselleck, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979. A PDF copy of the original German text is available at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica website (2MB). A modified version of this text exist in an English translation as well. Christian Meier’s article was later included in his book Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1983; Amazon.de). This book was in turn translated to English as The Greek Discovery of Politics (tr. by David McLintock, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990; see especially “Changing Politicosocial Concepts in the Fifth Century B.C.”, pp. 157–185; Amazon.com, Google Books).

Previous to Meier, Werner Jaeger has also examined the crucial distinction between the private sphere (ἴδιον) and the public sphere (κοινόν) in ancient Greece (a difference that is subject to some debate). His argument would be used by Hannah Arendt in her chapter on “The Public and the Private Realm” in The Human Condition (see previously here). She too insists on the difference between the political life of the city and the familial life of the household. She does so specifically to highlight the difference between the ancient world and our modern world:

In the modern world, the social and the political realms are much less distinct. […] In the modern world, the two realms indeed constantly flow into each other like waves in the never-resting stream of the life process itself. The disappearance of the gulf that the ancients had to cross daily to transcend the narrow realm of the household and “rise” into the realm of politics is an essentially modern phenomenon. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, [1958]1998,p. 33)

Agamben, who had previously discussed Arendt’s theories in Home Sacer (1995), uses Meier’s quote in order to define “a process of increasing depoliticization”. This process, argues Agamben, is precisely fuelled by the blurring of such categories as action and inaction, private and public. He goes on to explain the “decisive role” played by the paradigm of security in general, and by biometrical technologies in particular, in this process:

For the first time in the history of humanity, identity is no longer a function of the social personality and its recognition by others, but rather a funtion of biological data, which cannot bear any relation to it, like the arabesques of the fingerprints or the disposition of the genes in the double helix of DNA. The most neutral and private thing becomes the decisive factor of social identity, which loose therefore its public character. If my identity is now determined by biological facts, that in no way depends on my will and over which I have no control, then the construction of something like a political and ethical identity becomes problematic.

While on one hand biometrical technologies “depoliticize” the concept of citizenship, on the other hand they tend to “politicize” the biological body: what Agamben calls “bare life”. Video surveillance illustrates this double process by the way it captures private lives in public, thus transforming the streets into a “zone of indifference between the prison and the forum”. The problematic nature of this transformation finds an expression in the ongoing debates about the “state surveillance” and the right to privacy (February 11, 2014, was dubbed The Day We Fight Back and declared a “worldwide day of activism in opposition to the NSA’s mass spying regime”)

This is hardly the first time Agamben shares those concerns. In 2004, he signed a text titled “Non au tatouage biopolitique” (Le Monde diplomatique, January 10, 2004). A much shorter text was published on December 2005, also in Le Monde diplomatique: “Non à la Biométrie”. Those ideas found their way into the short essay “What Is An Apparatus”, first published in Italian in 2006:

While a new European norm imposes biometric apparatuses on all its citizens by developing and perfecting anthropometric technologies invented in the nineteenth century in order to identify recidivist criminals (from mug shots to fingerprinting), surveillance by means of video cameras transforms the public space of the city into the interior of an immense prison. (tr. by David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella, Stanford: Stanford University Press, [2004]2009, p. 23)

In order not to reduce Agamben’s observations to a series of dull complaints, one has to remember how they are answered throughout his work. Indeed, the “indifferentiation” he identifies as a modern phenomenon finds its counter-part in an critical methodology of indifference. For Agamben, the most acute problem also carries its most promising answer:

And how can one touch the porn star’s body, since there is not an inch on it that is not public? And yet it is from such a zone of indifference in which the actions of human experience are being put on sale–that we ought to start today. (Mean Without End, tr. by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, [1996] 2000, p. 122).

The crucial concept of indifference in the work of Agamben was given the book-lenght analysis it deserves in William Watkin’s Agamben and Indifference. A Critical Overview (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2014).

Returning to Agamben’s lecture, it is not surprising to find a reference about Foucault’s Surveiller et punir. From Middle Age fortresses to urban prisons to widespread video surveillance (i.e. prisons turned inside out), Agamben traces the evolution of different models of modern states up to what Deleuze called “les sociétés de contrôle” or “control societies” (“Postscript On Control Societies” in Negocitations, [1990] 1995, tr. by Martin Joughin, pp. 177-182). At the state level, the process of indifferentiation finds its expression in a “security state” where the function of the police is not clearly delineated: it exists in an undecidable position in-between the judicial power and the executive power.

“Security”, Agamben remarks, comes from the absence of care (securus from sine cura). The modern security state may well be the result of a strong desire “not to worry”. However, lifting the worries also seems to neutralize the capacity to care and, with it, the very possibility for a political life. This was clear at least for Günther Anders who had coinded the motto: “Inquiète ton voisin comme toi-même!” “Worry your neighbor like you worry yourself!” (Austriaca, n°35, 1993, p. 47). Although Agamben doesn’t develop much on this point, it would certainly worth extending his observation in the directions of Heidegger’s sorge and Foucault’s souci. Likewise, it would be interesting to explore the possible relationships between the “security state” and the rise of anxiety disorders and their accompanying drug treatments.

Agamben concludes his lecture by a proposition which is coherent with his demonstration. The problem any form of critique faces today is that of co-optation: how to come with strategies or tactics that won’t be immediately co-opted by that which need instead to be rendered inoperative? In Agamben’s own words:

The Security paradigm implies that each dissension, each more or less violent attempt to overthrow its order, become an opportunity to govern them in a profitable direction. This is evident in the dialectics which binds tightly together terrorism and State in an endless vicious spiral. Starting with French revolution, the political tradition of modernity has conceived of radical changes in the form of a revolutionary process that acts as the pouvoir constituant, the “constituent power” of a new institutional order.

Instead, Agamben relies on Benjamin’s essay “On the critique of violence” (1921; PDF) to propose experimenting with a “purely destituent power” (which ultimately gives its title to his lecture). The general idea is to render inoperative the dialectical coupling of power and counter-power (or transgression) which always has been the foundation of all “lawmaking violence” (I’ve briefly commented this problem before: see Community without power?). The task would involve worrying about new forms of political life, while keeping in mind both the danger of co-optation and the problematic conditions of the actual security state model.

Giorgio Agamben delivering his lecture “For a Theory of Destituent Power”, Athens, November 2013. Image retrieved from Chronos.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on February 11, 2014 ― Published in Communication | Tagged: Agamben, biopolitics, biopower, control, exception, government, indifference, liberalism, police, politics, power, security, state, surveillance

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Bertrand Russel – The Problems of Philosophy / Problèmes de philosophie

IS there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy — for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas.

– RUSSELL, Bertrand (1912). The Problems of Philosophy, chapter 1 «Appearance and Reality» [Online version]

Existe-t-il au monde une connaissance dont la certitude soit telle qu’aucun homme raisonnable ne puisse la mettre en doute? Cette question qui, à première vue, pourrait paraître simple, est en réalité l’une des plus difficiles. Lorsque nous nous serons rendu compte des obstacles qui s’opposent à une réponse spontanée et optimiste, nous serons sur la bonne voie en ce qui concerne l’étude de la philosophie; en effet, la philosophie est simplement une tentative pour répondre à des questions de ce genre, non pas à la légère ou dogmatiquement, comme on le fait pour les choses de la vie ordinaire, et même pour les questions scientifiques, mais en exerçant notre sens critique, après avoir examiné tous les éléments qui rendent de telles questions troublantes et après nous être rendu compte de toute l’incertitude, de toute la confusion que dissimulent nos idées courantes.

– RUSSELL, Bertrand (1912). Problèmes de philosophie, chapitre 1 «Apparence et réalité» [Version en ligne]

• By Philippe Theophanidis on November 19, 2008 ― Published in Excerpt, Philosophie | Tagged: apparence, appearance, Bertrand, certainty, certitude, confusion, critic, critique, idea, idée, Philosophie, philosophy, problèmes, problems, réalité, reality, Russell, vagueness

John Currin’s Paintings

☛ Tate Collection: “Honeymoon Nude” by John Currin, oil on canvas, 1168 x 914 x 33 mm, 1998. [Source of hi-res image].

‘What I do’, Currin has said, ‘is to find a cliché and try to believe in it’. His work rejects the decorous conventions of the female nude by melding art-historical references with the fantasies of advertising and pornography. The woman’s body and pose in Honeymoon Nude recall Renaissance prototypes (especially Botticelli’s Birth of Venus) but she has a recognizably contemporary face. Currin presents the female nude as a commodity, the embodiment of male fantasy. As if emphasizing the narcissistic aspects of desire, he bases the woman’s face on his own self-portrait. (read more about “Honeymoon Nude”)

Here’s a more recent painting by John Currin: “Big Hands”, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 71.1 cm, 2010 [information from artnet.com, source for hi-res image].

From The New York Times:

If you like creepy and sexy, John Currin’s paintings are for you. He pictures voluptuous but strangely proportioned women singly in erotic poses or making love with one or two other women. “Big Hands” is a bust-length portrait of a winsome blonde whose oddly small head is rendered with a feathery touch as if for one of those old Breck Shampoo ads. She has mannish hands and cantaloupe-size breasts wrapped in a white top knotted in front. “The Women of Franklin Street” represents a statuesque, brightly smiling “young lady” in erotic dishabille being caressed from front and back by two other women in a Rococo boudoir. With a lovingly painted, white porcelain tea service on a round black marble table in the foreground, it could be a scene from one of the Marquis de Sade’s milder narratives.

Exactly what Mr. Currin is up to is tantalizingly ambiguous. Do his paintings represent his own prurient fantasies, or is he satirizing “the male gaze”? And what about “Hot Pants,” the large painting of two stereotypically, pre-Stonewall, balding gay men, both in fancy suits with short shorts and knee socks, one a tailor fitting the other in his ridiculous outfit?

Mr. Currin’s painting style is similarly elusive. It resembles the work of a mid-20th-century anti-Modernist illustrator who has steeped himself in museum favorites from Velázquez to Renoir but never learned to draw properly. The way Mr. Currin hides genuine feeling behind coy facades is irritating, but his paintings remain fascinatingly bizarre. (“John Currin: ‘New Paintings’” by Ken Johnson, November18, 2010)

More resource online about John Currin:

From The New Yorker:
- “The Elegant Scavenger. John Currin’s low comedy of high style” by Peter Schjeldahl, February 22, 1999.
- “Irresistible. John Currin at the Whitney” by Peter Schjeldahl, December 15, 2003
- “Lifting the Veil. Old Masters, pornography, and the work of John Currin” by Calvin Tomkins, January 38, 2008. A slide show complements Tomkins’ article.

Slate: “Critics love the painter John Currin. But why?” by Mia Fineman, December 30, 2003. With accompanying slide show. Excerpt:

There are some wildly different ideas about exactly what Currin is up to—New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman sees him as “a latter-day Jeff Koons” trafficking in postmodern irony while Peter Schjeldahl at The New Yorker finds him a blissfully sincere artist tapping into the timeless values of “mystery, sublimity, transcendence.” But everyone is unanimous about one thing: John Currin can paint.
The Gagosian Gallery put together two catalogs of John Currin paintings:
- John Currin, with essays by Norman Bryson, Alison M. Gingeras, Dave Eggers; edited by Kara Vander Weg with Rose Dergan, published by Rizzoli International Publications, 2006. A book preview is available for download (PDF).
- John Currin, texts by Wells Tower, interview between John Currin and Angus Cook, distributed by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., in association with Gagosian Gallery, 2011.

The contemporary art gallery Sadie Coles HQ produced an interesting press release for a John Currin exhibition held in 2008.

Below is a photograph of John Currin by Annie Leibovitz. The photo illustrates an article published in this month edition of Vanity Fair: “V.F. Portrait: John Currin” by A. M. Homes, September 2011.

Portrait of John Currin with his wife, by Annie Leibovitz, 2011

• By Philippe Theophanidis on September 14, 2011 ― Published in Art, Painting | Tagged: body, John Currin, nude, portrait, representation, woman

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French illustrator Jean Giraud a.k.a. Moebius Dies (1938-2012)

☛ Inside Moebius by Jean Giraud Moebius, Tome 1, Stardom Editor, 2006, p. 4. All images from this post are copyrighted to Moebius and associated editors.

One of France’s best-known cartoonist and comic book creators, Jean Giraud, has died aged-73 in Paris after a long-illness. Giraud, also known under the names Moebius and Gir, was the creator of the hugely popular character Lieutenant Blueberry for a Western series of the same name. (RFI: “French comic book illustrator Moebius dies in Paris”, March 10, 2012)

From Le Monde:

Le monde de la bande dessinée vient de perdre l’un de ses géants, sinon “le” dernier des géants d’un certain âge d’or. Jean Giraud, plus connu sous le nom de Moebius, est mort ce samedi 10 mars à l’âge de 73 ans des suites d’une longue maladie.

Dessinateur et scénariste, père entre autres du lieutenant Bluberry, il laisse derrière lui une œuvre monumentale, marquée notamment par un trait d’une prodigieuse aisance et par une inclinaison assumée pour la dualité artistique. Ce n’est pas un hasard si Jean Giraud a mené toute sa carrière en signant avec deux pseudonymes : Gir, avec lequel il a dessiné la série western Blueberry dans une veine réaliste ; et Moebius, versant fantastique de sa personnalité, incarné à travers les personnages d’Arzach, de l’Incal ou encore du Major. La fausse désinvolture de son style a marqué plusieurs générations de dessinateurs qui voyaient en lui la référence ultime. (“Mort du dessinateur Jean Giraud, alias Moebius” March 10, 2012)

Bellow is one of numerous self-portrait Moebius drew of himself. He explains how it came to be:

[This illustration] I drew one night when I was alone in my hotel room on a trip to Europe not long ago [on October 1st, 1985]. It was around 3:00 a.m. and, because of the jet lag, I was still awake. I had been on a diet, so I had lost fifteen pounds and I was struck by my physicial appearance. It was as if somebody else was looking at me from the mirror. (The Art of Moebius, New York: Epic Comics, 1989, p. 78; originally published in Starwatcher, Paris: Aedena, 1986, p.3)

Self-portrait by Moebius published in “Starwatcher”, Paris: Aedena, 1986, p.3

I discovered Moebius when I was a teenager. I started reading Blueberry without knowing anything about its authors. I later dived into the inebriating universe of L’Incal and discovered they were both drew by the same artist: Jean Giraud a.k.a. Moebius. I still have vivid memories of the summer days I spent slowly reading the (mis)adventures of John Difool. Recently, the complete story of L’Incal was edited as a single oversized hardcover volume with slipcase both in English and in French (2011). The first English edition (2010) is sold out but a second printing is due in May 2012.

L’Incal naturally led me to explore other mystifying albums by Moebius: Le Bandard fou (1974), Major Fatal (1979) and especially Starwatcher (1986). I remember I especially loved albums where there were no or minimal narrative: only detailed sketches, color images, no story or a simple story without any words. I still think one can stare for a very long time at a single drawing by Moebius and imagine many different stories. For that reason the Starwatcher album remain mythical in my eyes. The image bellow is famous: it’s the cover illustration for Starwatcher and it also appears on page 85 (Paris: Aedena Editors, 1986).

Starwatcher by Moebius published in “Starwatcher”, Paris: Aedena, 1986, p.85

In The Art of Moebius, the artist explains:

This is truly a magical drawing. It is not perfect ―the legs aren’t quite right― but in this case, it doesn’t mater. The face is wonderfully evocative. I can see how someone could fall in love with a face like this. The question that is always asked when it comes to the Starwatcher series is, is the character male or female? The answer is, I don’t know. Maybe it is a man, strong and masculine, yet sensitive and soft like a woman.

A strange energy seems to emanate from the horizon. It happened quite naturally, almost by accident. When I was drawing this picture, I was trying to achieve a certain kind of feeling, so I just let myself be carried by the flow, and this was the result. I gratefully accepted it, almost like a gift. Things like this don’t always happen in art, but when it does, that’s what makes it worthwhile.

The character is sitting by a monument, waiting for a big vessel to take off. There is the book, which is by Jack Vance. The can is a can of paint. You press a button and all the colors come out. The costume is a blend of western and futuristic. Inside the box is a crystal, and it’s a present form a child who lives on this planet. And there is a message in that cube, which says, “don’t take all this too seriously!”

Moebius had his own, unique technic of drawing. The thing that stroke me the most about it was the sense a volume he was capable of injecting into each panel. Moebius’s illustrations rarely give the impression of being flat or restricted to two dimensions. On the contrary, rocks, bodies, building, vehicles all feel like they have a mass, palpable corners, round edges. The illustration below is one of those drawings that manage to produce such a feeling of volume with minimalist means. While I was in college I used this image to illustrate the cover of the notebooks for my philosophy classes. I felt it was a perfect match. It also comes from Starwatcher (on page 37):

Drawing by Moebius published in “Starwatcher”, Paris: Aedena, 1986, p.37

More information about Moebius can be found online:

Official websites: 1) Moebius.fr 2) Inside Moebius (Flash is required).
Les Humanoïdes Associés: “Adieu Mœbius, merci Mœbius”, March 10, 2012.
In 2007, ARTE produced a one-hour documentary titled Moebius Redux: A Life in Pictures (IMDb). I believe it was later broadcast by the BBC Four under the new title In Search of Moebius: Jean Giraud. At the moment, it’s still available for viewing on Dailymotion (in three parts, French with English subtitles). I’ve embedded the first part at the end of this post.
Moebius was also associated with many iconic movie designs. For a quick roundup on this aspect of his life, see io9: “Legendary French artist Moebius, the man who made The Abyss, Alien, and Tron even weirder, is dead at 73” by Cyriaque Lamar, March 10, 2012.

In addition to providing preliminary designs for such films as Alien, Tron, The Abyss, Masters of the Universe, The Fifth Element, and Willow (which were awesome albeit unused), the artist provided concept art for El Topo director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s never-realized Dune adaptation, which was to star Mick Jagger and boast a soundtrack by Pink Floyd.

• • •

• By Philippe Theophanidis on March 10, 2012 ― Published in Art, Illustration, Movies | Tagged: comic, France, Jean Giraud, Moebius, obituary, science fiction, self-portrait, Starwatcher

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Untitled (Fish Head) by Daido Moriyama (1978)

☛ Tepper Takayama Fine Arts: Untitled (Fish Head) by Daido Moriyama, Tsugaru Straits, gelatin silver print on fibre paper, 11″ x 14″, 1978. Hi-res reproduction retrieved from Foam. © Daido Moriyama

This image is also reproduced in the catalog assembled on behalf of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain: Daido Moriyama, photographs by Daido Moriyama, text by Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama, London: Thames & Hudson 2003, p. 34. The hi-res reproduction shown above was scanned from this book where the head is shown facing down. I did however kept the orientation shown over at the Tepper Takayama Fine Arts website, with the head facing right.

On the website of Galleri Susanne Ottensen, one can read a six parts essay by Daido Moriyama. Here’s the first part where he narrates the time he arrived in Tsugaru Straits (where the above photograph was taken):

In the early morning of May 18, 1978, I boarded a ferry from clear and sunny Aomori. Going straight to the cafeteria, I sat by the window and drank a hot cup of coffee. Idly relaxed in the blinding sunlight shining on the white tablecloth, the time I had spent the night before, frustrated at my inability to fall asleep at a hotel in Aomori, seemed unreal. For now, it was a second of individual happiness.

On the other side of the ultramarine blue sea, seen from a small window over which a pale white salt had crystallized, a band of low mountains stretching across the Shimokita Peninsula continuously flows into the haze. As the peninsula disappeared and the boat entered the Tsugaru Strait, I took my camera up to the deck and released the shutter in the direction of the ocean some ten times, before leaning on the side of the ship, staring intently down at the surface of the water far below, breaking on the hold of the ship, rippling, then the spread of countless white bubbles, their endless flow. In the straight, the wind, clouds, swells and a cold sharp enough to cut the skin gradually grew; the ship continued on its course to Hokkaido, and the enormous clime that had taken root.

From about that time, a sort of ineffable unease began to emerge inside me, in complete contrast to how I felt just moments before. It was the same gloom that haunts me whenever I take photographs. “What exactly am I? What exactly is photography? What is Hokkaido, what exactly are the Japanese islands?” Even having come this far, these pointless, meaningless thoughts still continued to intermingle.

The surface of white bubbles continues to flow, as always. The Tokyo I had left behind was already far from my mind, not just in terms of actual distance, but also strangely, completely receding, fading away, in exchange, Hokkaido’s cities and people slowly began to reveal themselves to me. (“My Documentary Photographs” by Daido Moriyama, undated)

For more about Daido Moriyama see:

For a general introduction see previously here: Daido Moriyama Photographs
The Tepper Takayama Fine Arts gallery where I found the proper information about the “fish head” photograph as 44 more of them.
Artnet has more than 200 photographs by Daido Moriyama. They usually are of medium or small size, but they are accompany by adequate information. Artnet sometimes also provides the actual location of those photographs.
The Museum of Modern Art: 5 photograph by Daido Moriyama.
Gallery Kamel Mennour has 16 photos from an exhibition held in 2008.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on July 13, 2012 ― Published in Art, Photography | Tagged: animal, Daido Moriyama, death, fish, gloom, head, ineffable, Japan, sea, unease

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Burroughs and his Jack-o’-lantern, by Philip Heying

[UPDATE] Oct. 30, 2017–The photography was removed at the request of Philip Heying.

Photographer Philip Heying took this photo on October 31st, 1996. Heying, who knew Burroughs since the 1980s, was interviewed in 2013 by Tom King for Burroughs 100, the official website of Burroughs Centenary. Tom King is a writer and the caretaker at the William Burroughs House. In the interview, Heying tells him the context in which the photo was taken:

I came for an early dinner on Halloween with Bernard and Francoise Heidsieck. There was a traditional spooky face carved on the pumpkin on the other side of the porch, but William’s hatchet job was really horrifying. It was the most intense jack-o-lantern I had ever seen so I asked William to pose beside it. You can tell by how the pockets of his jacket are sagging that he was carrying several weapons. He really was a dangerous guy.

Allen was visiting. He and William had decked out the front room for the trick-or-treaters. Jose Ferez-Kuri [Burroughs’ art dealer] had brought a dozen huge candy skulls from Mexico and William and Allen had set up a display of the skulls, just inside the front door, and all kinds of candy on the table. We had a nice dinner but no trick-or-treaters. At 7pm, past prime kid time, William was pacing. He was depressed that no-one showed up.

Around 7:15, they started coming. About 10 kids rang the bell, greeted by William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. You can see part of Allen in the picture, in the doorway. A couple of kids were dressed like Bob Dole. William spoiled all those kids rotten: showered them with candy, doted on them, posed for pictures… He was the model–if heavily armed–neighbor. Those kids went away with life-sized, mystical candy skulls in their bags, given to them by William S. Burroughs. (“Mystical Dandy Skull: Interview with photographer Philip Heying” by Tom King October 18, 2013).

One can read more about Burrough’s house where the photo was taken in an essay Tom King wrote about it during the Winter of 2014: “The View From Burroughs’ House. A caretaker’s view of the William S. Burroughs centenary in Lawrence, Kansas.”

Philip Heying currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas. He teaches at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, and continues to work on photo projects. Here’s how he tells the story of his relationship with Burroughs:

During his college days in Lawrence, he was introduced to William S. Burroughs and embarked on a friendship which lasted until Burroughsʼs death in 1997. Welcomed into his circle of friends–including such people as Albert Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin and Timothy Leary–he found himself the beneficiary of singular artistic insight and guidance. Burroughs showed him how art could effect real change, how it could influence human perception and cultural patterns. (Bio)

• • •

Previously:

• By Philippe Theophanidis on October 31, 2015 ― Published in Art, Photography | Tagged: Burroughs, Halloween

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Kant’s Critique of Impractical Garters

On this occasion, whilst illustrating Kant’s notions of the animal economy, it may be as well to add one other particular, which is, that for fear of obstructing the circulation of the blood, he never would wear garters; yet, as he found it difficult to keep up his stockings without them, he had invented for himself a most elaborate substitute, which I shall describe. In a little pocket, somewhat smaller than a watch-pocket, but occupying pretty nearly the same situation as a watch-pocket on each thigh, there was placed a small box, something like a watch-case, but smaller; into this box was introduced a watch-spring in a wheel, round about which wheel was wound an elastic cord, for regulating the force of which there was a separate contrivance. To the two ends of this cord were attached hooks, which hooks were carried through a small aperture in the pockets, and so passing down the inner and the outer side of the thigh, caught hold of two loops which were fixed on the off side and the near side of each stocking. As might be expected, so complex an apparatus was liable, like the Ptolemaic system of the heavens, to occasional derangements; however, by good luck, I was able to apply an easy remedy to these disorders which sometimes threatened to disturb the comfort, and even the serenity, of the great man.

☛ Blackwood’s Magazine: “The Last Days of Kant” by Thomas De Quincey, No. 122, Vol. 21, February 1827, p. 139; reprinted in Last Days of Immanuel Kant; and Other Writings, De Quincey’s Work Vol. III, Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, [1871] 1862, p. 119.

As he aknowledges himself, De Quincey’s work is a liberal adaptation of Ehregott Andreas Wasianski’s account of Kant’s life, first published in German, in 1804: Immanuel Kant in seinen letzten lebensjahren. In Blackwood’s Magazine, De Quincey’s essay is subtitled with the mention: “From the German of Wasianski, Jachmann, Borowski, and Others”. In the version printed in 1871, De Quinzey’s introduction ends with this observation: “Now let us begin, premising that for the most part it is Wasianski who speaks.” (p. 105). This observation however is accompanied by a long footnote opening up an interesting discussion about De Quincey’s translation and about the liberties he took while creating his own interpretation of Kant’s life.

In his biography of the German philosopher, Manfred Kuehn provides the following account of the role played by Wasianski in Kant’s late life:

Wasianski was a deacon who had taken care of Kant during his final years. He had studied at the University of Königsberg between 1772 and 1780. Indeed, like Jachmann, he had also been Kant’s amanuensis. He could have said much about Kant’s life during the seventies, but strangely enough he says nothing about these years, restricting himself to an account of Kant’s last year. After Wasianki left the university in 1780, he had no contact with Kant for a decade, meeting him again only in 1790 at the wedding reception. Kant seems to have invited him immediately to his regular dinner parties, and gradually come to rely on him. Over the years he entrusted him with more and more of his personal business. Indeed, Wasianki ultimately earned Kant’s complete trust. Having been chosen by Kant as his personal secretary and helper, as well as the executor of his will, he knew the aged Kant’s circumstances very well. (Kant: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 7)

• • •

De Quinzey’s essay was translated by Marcel Schwob into French in 1899 and published in an issue of Vogue (April 4th). The translation was reprinted in 1927, among a collection of other essays Schwob wrote in his youth: Écrits de jeunesse de Marcel Schwob (Paris: François Bernouard). Interestingly enough, when it appears in 1899, the French translation was preceded by a short “preface” where the authenticity and authorship of De Quincey’s essay is further discussed:

Ce journal des derniers moments de Kant est composé au moyen des détails que de Quincey tira des mémoires de Wasianski, de Borowski, et de Jachmann, publiés à Kœnigsberg en 1804, année où Kant mourut ; mais il employa aussi d’autres sources. Tout cela est fictivement groupé dans un seul récit, attribué à Wasianski. En réalité l’œuvre est uniquement, ligne à ligne, l’œuvre de Quincey : par un artifice admirable, et consacré par de Foë [Daniel Defoe] dans son immortel Journal de la Peste de Londres, de Quincey s’est révélé, lui aussi, “faussaire de la nature”, et a scellé son invention du sceau contrefait de la réalité.

In 1927, when Marcel Schwob’s translation was republished, the anecdote regarding Kant’s problem with garters must have been picked up by reviewers in various French newspapers. In its edition of December 29, 1927, The Pittsburgh Press claims to borrow the anecdote from an edition of Le Petit Journal. The very short news dispatch is titled “Kant Invented Garter, Says French Journal”, and it reads as follow:

Paris, Dec, 29. – Immanuel Kant, the great and recondite German philosopher, was the inventor of garters, according to the Paris newspaper, Le Petit Journal.

Kant wore long silk stockings with knee breeches and was not long in discovering that the cord which held them in place was dangerous for the circulation of the blood. So he set to work and, between weighty philosophic tomes, invented the modern garter. (p. 7)

The Pittsburgh Press: “Kant Invented Garter, Says French Journal”, Dec. 29, 1927, p. 7.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on April 5, 2015 ― Published in Technology | Tagged: De Quincey, fashion, invention, Kant, philosophy

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“Once Again, Man Beats Machine!” by Nick Downes (2002)

That’s Robert Mankoff’s way of commenting on the recent Watson’s victory on Jeopardy show. Robert Mankoff is the cartoon editor of The New Yorker. For more laughs on the same topic (man vs. machine), see also this other entry on Robert Mankoff’s blog.

• By Philippe Theophanidis on March 2, 2011 ― Published in Art, Illustration, Technology | Tagged: cartoon, comic, computer, Jeopardy, machine, man, Watson

Posthumanism: Sloterdijk and the problem of political synthesis

☛ La Maison Française, New York University: Robert Silvers, New York City, early 1980s, from the exhibition “Dominique Nabokov: The World of the New York Review of Books”, Friday, November 1st – Friday, December 6th, 2013. Catalogue: PDF. Press release: PDF.

For more details about the photo, see the end of this post.

• • •

Peter Sloterdijk’s essay Regeln für den Menschenpark. Ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über Humanismus was first presented as a speech on June 15, 1997, in Basel, Germany. The occasion was a series on conferences about the actuality of humanism. The same text was presented a second time in July 17, 1999, at an international conference on Heidegger and Levinas, in Schloss Elmau.

The text was first published in written form on September 16, 1999, in Issue 38 of Die Zeit. At the time of writing, this first German edition is still available online at Die Zeit website. The same year, it was published as a book by Suhrkamp Verlag (Frankfurt am Main, 1999). A partial PDF copy of the first Suhrkamp edition is hosted by the wesbite of the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, where Peter Sloterdijk also teaches.

The French edition appeared a couple of months later, in January 2000, under the title Règles pour le parc humain. Une lettre en réponse à la Lettre sur l’humanisme de Heidegger (Paris: Mille et une nuits). It was translated by Olivier Mannoni, who has since translated many other books by Peter Sloterdijk. The French edition was augmented by an afterword where Peter Sloterdijk commented on the significant controversy his book had ignited in Germany (“Postface à l’édition française”). The controversy –which I won’t document here– nonetheless spread to France with equal, if not increased intensity.

It would take a decade for an English translation to be produced. “Rules for the Human Zoo: a response to the Letter on Humanism” appeared in a special issue of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space dedicated to “The Worlds of Peter Sloterdijk” (Volume 27, Issue 1, pp. 12-28). It was translated by Mary Varney Rorty (the “Abstract” of the translation suggests the first Suhrkamp edition is from 2001: this is likely a small typo).

I briefly quoted Sloterdijk’s essay at the end of the research I recently did around the apocryphal quote “O friends, there are no friends”. Along with Derrida’s book The Politics of Friendship (1994) and Giorgio Agamben’s short essay “The Friend” (2004), the excerpt from Sloterdijk briefly mused upon the miracle that allows for thoughts to reach us through centuries of copies and editions, in the form of text documents, like letters sent in the post.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari also discussed the importance of friendship and love in regard to philosophy in their “Introduction” to What is Philosophy (1992). At one point, they observe that Greeks do not introduce friendship alongside the act thinking as a solution, but as a problem:

It is even more difficult to know what friend signifies, even an especially among the Greeks. Does it designate a type of competent intimacy, a sort of material taste and potentiality, like that of the joiner with wood –is the potential of wood latent in the good joiner; is the friend of wood? The question is important because the friend who appears in philosophy no longer stands for an extrinsic persona, an example of empirical circumstance, but rather for a presence that is intrinsic to thought, a condition of possibility of thought itself, a living category, a transcendental lived reality. (tr. by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press, [1991] 1994, p. 3)

I also quoted from Deleuze and Guattari’s “Conclusion” recently to suggest that thinking was a lively practice of creation, one that risks itself outside well paved road, into unexplored territory (see “Poetry, philosophy and communication”). The crucial topic of friendship associated with philosophy is a reminder that such an act of creation is not done alone, and that the risk is shared. In other words, the opening discussed by D.H. Lawrence in the introduction he wrote for Harry Crosby’s Chariot of the Sun may very well be understood as an opening toward coexistence. Thinking the problem of friendship, in this perspective, has already something to do with the creation of forms of coexistence. Reciprocally, as Deleuze and Guattari observe, friendship as a form of coexistence is “a condition of possibility of thought itself”¹. Sloterdijk makes a similar argument in the “Preliminary Note” to the first volume of his Spheres trilogy:

I will only remain on the trail of Platonic references in the sense that I will develop, more obstinately than usual, the hypothesis that love stories are stories of form, and that every act of solidarity is an act of sphere formation, that is to say the creation of an interior. (Bubbles. Spheres Volume I: Microspherology, tr. by Wieland Hoban, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), [1998]2011, p. 12)

In the following excerpt from “Rules for the Human Zoo”, Sloterdijk briefly sketches the rise and decline of the book as a mean not only of friendship – letters circulating among among friends of σοφία– but also of general “political synthesis”. The German philosopher thus present the crisis of humanism as being first and foremost a crisis of media and milieu: in the absence of books as predominant tools of world formation, how are human beings supposed to give form to their life in common? This is certainly one of the crucial task of thinking for the present times.

Books, as the poet Jean Paul once remarked, are thick letters to friends. With this phrase, he aptly articulated the quintessential nature and function of humanism: It is telecommunication in the medium of print to underwrite friendship. That which has been known since the days of Cicero as humanism is in the narrowest and widest senses a consequence of literacy. Ever since philosophy began as a literary genre, it has recruited adherents by writing in an infectious way about love and friendship. Not only is it about love of wisdom: it is also an attempt to move others to this love. […]

Erotically seen, the hypothetical friendship of the writer of books and letters with the recipients of his messages represents a case of love at a distance –and this entirely in the sense of Nietzsche, who knew that writing is the power to transmit love not only to one’s nearest and dearest, but also, through the next person encountered, into the unknown, distant, future life. Writing not only creates a telecommunicative bridge between known friends, who at the time of the transmission live in a geographical proximity to one another; but it sets in motion an unpredictable process. It shoots an arrow in the air, described in the words of old European alchemists as an actio in distans, with the objective of revealing an unknown friend and enticing him into the circle of friends. In fact, the reader who sits down to a thick book can approach it as an invitation to a gathering; and should he be moved by the contents, he thereby enters the circle of the Called, making himself available to receive the message. […]

If this period seems today to have irredeemably vanished, it is not because people have through decadence become unwilling to follow their national literary curriculum. The epoch of nationalistic humanism has come to an end because the art of writing love-inspiring letters to a nation of friends, however professionally it is practised, is no longer sufficient to form a telecommunicative bond between members of a modern mass society. Because of the formation of mass culture through the media –radio in the First World War and television after 1945, and even more through the contemporary web revolution– the coexistence of people in the present societies has been established on new foundations. These are, as it can uncontrovertibly be shown, clearly postliterary, postepistolary, and thus posthumanistic. Anyone who thinks the prefix ‘post’ in this formulation is too dramatic can replace it with the adverb ‘marginal’. Thus our thesis: modern societies can produce their political and cultural synthesis only marginally through literary, letter-writing, humanistic media. Of course, that does not mean that literature has come to an end, but it has split itself off and become a sui generis subculture, and the days of its value as bearer of the national spirit have passed. The social synthesis is no longer –and is no longer seen to be– primarily a matter of books and letters. New means of political-cultural telecommunication have come into prominence, which have restricted the pattern of script-born friendship to a limited number of people. The period when modern humanism was the model for schooling and education has passed, because it is no longer possible to retain the illusion that political and economic structures could be organized on the amiable model of literary societies. (“Rules for the Human Zoo: a response to the Letter on Humanism”, tr. by Mary Varney Rorty Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Volume 27, Issue 1, [1999]2009, pp. 12-14)

• • •

The portrait displayed at the beginning of this post is that of Robert Benjamin Silvers, long-time editor of The New York Review of Books, is part of a photo essay by French photographer Dominique Nabokov, who lives and works in New York. The photo essay was presented to the public in an exhibition hosted by La Maison Française of New York University a month ago (from Nov. 1 to Dec. 6, 2013). From the official catalogue, a statement by Nabokov:

This is a short personal and professional photo essay on The New York Review of Books in the year of its fiftieth anniversary. I have approached the subject as if I were a film director making a documentary. I have tried to reveal the spirit of its founding editors and expose some of its past and present contributors. My list is far from being exhaustive, but I hope my choices have captured the uniqueness and the unmatched excellence for which the Review is known all over the world. (“Dominique Nabokov: The World of the New York Review of Books”, official catalogue, 2013, p. 9)

For a short biography of Dominique Nabokov (in French), see Galerie Patricia Dorfmann. To get a sense of the atmosphere in which Robert Silvers was working at The New York Review of Books in the late 70s, one can read this colorful account by Shelley Wanger who was his assistant from 1975 to 1982: “It Was 1975…” (April 17, 2013). There’s more about the fiftieth anniversary over at the Review’s blog.

• • •

^1. Giorgio Agamben explicitly develops this argument in his short essay “The Friend” (in What Is an Apparatus?, tr. by David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella, Stanford: Stanford University Press, [2004]2009). He also explores it in light of his treatment of the concept of potentiality in the short essay “Form-of-Life”, which is included in Means Without End:

The experience of thought that is here in question is always experience of a common power. Community and power identify one with the other without residues because the inherence of a communitarian principle to any power is a function of the necessarily potential character of any community. (tr. by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, [1996] 2000, pp. 9-10)

Jean-Luc Nancy has already already explored this question in the augmented version of his essay on “The Inoperative Community”, published as a book in 1986. In French, see the essay “De l’être-en-commun” in La Communauté désoeuvrée (Paris: Christian Bourgois, [1986] 2004, pp. 199-234):

Philosophie et communauté apparaissent comme indissociables. Il y aurait, semble-t-il, non seulement une communication, mais une communauté nécessaire de la philosophie et de la communauté. (p. 210)

This essay is not included in the English translation of The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). Instead, it was included in the collection Community at Loose Ends (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, pp. 1-12).

The intimate link between love and philosophy, or more precisely between love and “thought” (la pensée) is explored in further details by Nancy in his later essay “L’amour en éclats” (“Shattered Love” in The Inoperative Community, tr. by Lisa Garbus and Simona Sawhney, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, pp. 82-109; also reproduced in A Finite Thinking, same translation, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, pp. 245-274). Finally, it is worth noting that Nancy’s essay is referenced in another relevant essay by Agamben for the matter at hand here: see “The Passion of Facticity. Heidegger and the problem of love” (in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, tr. by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 211-229).

• By Philippe Theophanidis on February 4, 2014 ― Published in Communication, Photography, Technology | Tagged: Agamben, book, community, Deleuze, friend, friendship, Guattari, Heidegger, humanism, love, media, medium, milieu, philosophy, Sloterdijk

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“Dog Chris, listening to the gramophone, Antarctica” by Herbert Ponting, c. 1911

☛ National Library of New Zealand: “Dog Chris, listening to the gramophone, Antarctica” by Herbert Ponting, b&w original photograph, silver gelatin print, 117 x 93 mm, circa January 1911. Part of Kinsey, Joseph James (Sir), 1852-1936 :Photographs relating to Antarctica and mountaineering / British Antarctic (“Terra Nova”) Expedition (1910-1913) album 2. Large format (3478 x 2700 px) can be retrieved here. DC Rights: not restricted.

The image is reminiscent of Francis Barraud’s famous painting of his dog Nipper listening to a gramophone horn. It has been suggested that the photographs (there are more than one) were taken as part as a voluntary effort to recreate Barraud’s painting (see Erik Østergaard: “The History of Nipper and His Master’s Voice”). It’s possible that it was done to fullfil a sponsorship agreement with the Gramophone Company. Many other commercial sponsors participated in the financing of the Terra Nova Expedition. The dog seen on Ponting’s picture was one of the many sled dogs used by the expedition.

Ponting’s photo was taken during the great Terra Nova Expedition (1910–1913) led by Robert Falcon Scott. Pointing was hired as the expedition official cinematographer and photographer. The following biography is retrieved from the brochure (PDF) accompanying the limited edition portofolio Captain Scott’s Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913. The Photographs of Herbert Ponting published by Salto Ulbeek in association with the Scott Polar Research Institute (University of Cambridge):

Herbert G. Ponting (1870-1935) was one of the most renowned photographers of his day when he was recruited as ‘camera-artist’ to the British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition, 1910-1913.

Born into a wealthy Victorian family from Salisbury, Ponting worked briefly as a banker before moving to California and turning his attention to photography. During the first years of the 20th century, a number of assignments took him to the Far East. In 1904-1905, he photographed the Russo-Japanesse war in Manchuria, before continuing his travels in Japan, Burma, Java, China and India, selling his work to London’s foremost magazines. In 1910, he expanded his photographs of Japan into a book, In Lotus-Land Japan, which was published just before his departure for the Antarctic, and remains much sought after.

As a member of the Terra Nova Expedition, Ponting helped set up the Antarctic winter hut at Cape Evans on Ross Island, and was entitled to a tiny photographic darkroom in which he also slept. Working mostly with glass plate negatives, he set to work photographing all aspects of the expedition and of the environment around Cape Evans. During the winter of 1911, he took many photographs of Scott and the other members of the expedition in their hut, producing images that speak to us both within and beyond their historical context. With the start of the 1911-12 sledging season, Ponting’s field work began to come to an end. As a middle-aged man, he was not able to take part on the inland trek to the South Pole, and after 14 months at Cape Evans he boarded Terra Nova in February 1912.

Ponting returned to London where he set to work shaping a visual narrative of the expedition for Captain Scott to show during his lectures upon his return. This was not to be, however, as Scott and four of his men perished on their return from the Pole.

According to the Scott Polar Research Institute (University Cambridge) there a 10 photos showing the dog Chris listening to the gramophone (including the one shown above). Four of those are available on their website (record P2005/5/1176 through /1179). The other six have not been made available in an electronic format, but their record nonetheless have identifying information as well as a short description (record P2005/5/1715 through /1720). The version I posted above corresponds to record no. P2005/5/1176 in the SPRI’s Picture library catalogue. The three other versions available are displayed below:

“Chris and the Gramophone” by H. Ponting, 1911. Image retrieved from The Scott Polar Research Institute. Record no. P2005/5/1177

“Chris and the Gramophone” by H. Ponting, 1911. Image retrieved from The Scott Polar Research Institute. Record no. P2005/5/1178

“Chris and the Gramophone” by H. Ponting, 1911. Image retrieved from The Scott Polar Research Institute. Record no. P2005/5/1179

To discover more of the photographs taken by Herbert Ponting during the Terra Nova Expedition, consider the following resources:

The Scott Polar Research Institute has a gallery of 2913 photographic items related to the British Antarctic Expedition 1910-13 (the official name for the Terra Nova Expedition). Pictures are presented in a small format and are not downloadable. However, they come with proper identification and a short description, which can be usefull for research purpose.
The National Library of New Zealand has 101 images related to Herbert Ponting. They all come with a full record. Furthermore, personal use is not restricted (only commercial use is) and they can be downloaded in a very large format (sometimes above 3000 px in width).
Wikimedia Commons has 40 images by Herbert Ponting. All those reproductions are in the public domain.
The National Archives UK’s photostream on Flickr has a set of 80 photographs by Herbert Ponting. They all come with a detailed description and a link the The National Archive’s online catalogue. The photos have no “known copyright restriction”.
The Picture Library of the Royal Geographical Society has 813 images by Herbert Ponting. Images are properly identified, but they come in a really small format and are heavily watermarked.
Finally, it’s worthing noting that Ponting released a film in 1924 about his Antartic adventures titled The Great White Silence (IMDb). The film was carefully restored and re-release in 2011 (see Wikipedia: “The Great White Silence”).

• • •

You might also like: Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson (a.k.a. RAX)

• By Philippe Theophanidis on December 23, 2012 ― Published in Art, Photography, Technology | Tagged: Antartic, dog, gramophone, Herbert Ponting, Music, Robert Falcon Scott, Terra Nova Expedition

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