“The crimes of extreme civilization are certainly more atrocious than those of extreme barbarity because of their refinement, the corruption they presuppose, and their superior degree of intellectuality.”
— Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques (1874), translated from the original french text.
— Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques (1874), translated from the original french text.
"Analysis again. But where? How? Well, everywhere possible. Where unskirtable contradictions come to the surface. Where disturbing breaches of meaning trip us up amidst daily banalities, impossible yet perfectly viable loves, all kinds of constructivist passions that mine the edifices of morbid rationality... It can be individual, for those who tend to lead their lives as if it were a work of art; dual in all possible ways, including, why not, a psychoanalytic couch, as long as it has been dusted off; multiple, trough group, network, institutional, and collective practices; and finally, micropolitical by virtue of other social practices, other forms of auto valorizations and militant actions, leading, through a systematic decentering of social desire, to soft subversions and imperceptible revolutions that will eventually change the face of the world, making it happier. Let's face it: it is long overdue."
(Guattari, "Entering the Post Media Era," p.306)
(Guattari, "Entering the Post Media Era," p.306)
"Dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs."
— Charles Baudelaire.
— Charles Baudelaire.
“A certain emperor always bore the fleeting nature of all things in his mind, in order not to value them too seriously, and to be able to live quietly in their midst. Conversely, everything seems to me much too important for it to be so fleeting; I seek an eternity for everything: ought one to pour the most precious salves and wines into the sea? My consolation is that everything that is true is eternal: the sea will wash it up again.”
Conatus
Blood Axis – Electricity
We three
When all these things are done
And the stream of blood
Has veiled the murky air
With paws of crimson
Which the sun sucks upwards
Then we shall dance
All thy blood
Around thy tomb
And over the piled corpses
I will lift my limbs
High with each step
And all the folk who’ll see me there
Yea, all who from afar only my shadow see will say
For a great king
All his flesh and blood
Hold high festival and solemn revel
And blessed is he
That hath children
Who will dance around his holy tomb
Such royal dances of victory
When all these things are done
And the stream of blood
Has veiled the murky air
With paws of crimson
Which the sun sucks upwards
Then we shall dance
All thy blood
Around thy tomb
And over the piled corpses
I will lift my limbs
High with each step
And all the folk who’ll see me there
Yea, all who from afar only my shadow see will say
For a great king
All his flesh and blood
Hold high festival and solemn revel
And blessed is he
That hath children
Who will dance around his holy tomb
Such royal dances of victory
إن تضخيم مجد الثقافات العُليا عالميًا في أوجها هو التزامٌ بدين يُستوفى سدادُه عند انحدارها. ففي ساعة الانحلال، تُلتقط حتى نُفاياتها، وتُروَّج، ويُقلَّد ما فيها، فتزول القدرة على الانتقاء، كما في كائنٍ فقد تمييزه بين ما يغذيّه وما يضرّه.
some aphoristic letter i wrote to my friend on AI and which i find fitting to publish here:
The AI is the new literary critic, liberating the indolent from the burdens, or, for some, the peculiar pleasures, of revision, of the ceaseless polishing of their own texts. Once, a man alone bore this labor, or he entrusted it to his fellow creatures, pitiable custodians of texts, who patrolled the city of literature like anxious sentinels, guarding it against corruption and desecration.
Great cultures of bygone centuries have been declared dead with relief, freed from the obligation to climb to new glories they could no longer reach; they trailed on until the last spark of life drained from their veins. And so it is with the endless parade of other deaths: the death of God, the death of man, the death of nature, the death of time itself. Our existence stretches like a colossal funeral procession dissolving into oblivion.
We, the new gravediggers, await the joyous hour when the death of all things may be proclaimed, be it the death of cinema or the death of the Internet. now after we have become versed to the edge of dizziness in the metaphysics and poetry of death, we can say that a thing exists only by virtue of an eye that witnesses it, and a consciousness that knows it might die.
The AI is the new literary critic, liberating the indolent from the burdens, or, for some, the peculiar pleasures, of revision, of the ceaseless polishing of their own texts. Once, a man alone bore this labor, or he entrusted it to his fellow creatures, pitiable custodians of texts, who patrolled the city of literature like anxious sentinels, guarding it against corruption and desecration.
Great cultures of bygone centuries have been declared dead with relief, freed from the obligation to climb to new glories they could no longer reach; they trailed on until the last spark of life drained from their veins. And so it is with the endless parade of other deaths: the death of God, the death of man, the death of nature, the death of time itself. Our existence stretches like a colossal funeral procession dissolving into oblivion.
We, the new gravediggers, await the joyous hour when the death of all things may be proclaimed, be it the death of cinema or the death of the Internet. now after we have become versed to the edge of dizziness in the metaphysics and poetry of death, we can say that a thing exists only by virtue of an eye that witnesses it, and a consciousness that knows it might die.
الطبيعة، وهي متلفِّعة بلعبٍ لا نهائيّ من الأشكال والألوان، تُحسن غواية الوهم، كممثّلٍ يتقن القناع ويتزيّا بالسحر وخفّة الحيلة؛ ومن هنا نفهم لِمَ قرنتها الأساطير القديمة بالإله «بان». نحن نُدرك الخدعة، ومع ذلك نُسلِّم لها، ونُصفّق للسحر. وهكذا تظلّ راقصةً خارج قبضة الفهم: فهنا تتلألأ أعمالها جمالًا ورقّة، وهناك تنحدر إلى الخراب والاختلال، وفي مواضع أخرى تبدو عاريةً وبسيطة، كأنّها خُلِقت على عجل، أو تُركت لشأنها، بلا صقلٍ ولا تهذيب. هنا هبوط الجميل إلى القبيح، وهناك ارتقاء القبيح إلى الجميل، يا له من حلمٍ جامحٍ تتزاحم فيه الصور! لا خيطَ واحدًا يلمّ شتات رداءها المتناثر. تفلت من كل شبكة فكرٍ نلقيها، وتراوغ كل محاولةٍ للحصر والتعريف. وهكذا، في جموح تصميمها وتيهها الخلّاق، تمنح الروح لمحةً نادرة عن القدرة اللامحدودة للفنّ.