Poetisches Ent-werfen. Vilém Flussers Bildungsbegriff?
This paper examines Vilém Flusser´s work for its an educational view. The untranslatable German term Bildung will be the point of reference for this paper. Following this approach, the question is how humanity can be humanity, how humanity can conserve or transform the idea of humanity in a culture of digitality. In the first chapter, the terms “critique” and “doubt” are discussed since these serve as a basis for Bildung. In the context of Flusser's thought, critique and doubt even serve as the basis of human beings in general. The ability to criticize one´s society is what constitutes a human. The second chapter then introduces Flusser's ideas of project, a matter of “ent‑werfen” – loosely, “pro-jecting” oneself into society. Flusser is following Heidegger's idea of “ent‑werfen,” which is in turn related to the idea of poesis. Poesis as a project will then be discussed as a means human beings have of changing their society. Poesis means to create the world. The conclusion focuses on the German idea of Bildung with a reference to Flusser. It shows the outstanding relevance of his thinking as well as the special relevance of Flussers works for the concept of Bildung.
Gestural translations from within the (post)digital: a Flusserian analysis of phonic gestures
Bridging the gap between Vilém Flusser’s theorising around language and work on gesture, this paper will examine the collection of gestures that form a constituent ‘vocabulary’ of our mobile phone use. The presented research examines a wide array of gestural taxonomies that take the form of dictionaries and notations which have been used in attempts to define such developing vocabularies. However, the paper is critical of these taxonomies as it argues they reveal a central problematic at the heart of any gestural vocabularies: the reduction of the body into the biomechanical; an assortment of weighted pulleys and levers. As a result of this, these gestural taxonomies are shown to create technical images of the body reducing it further to nothing more than a functionary of an apparatus. In response to these limitations implicit within such taxonomies, the paper reconsiders today’s developing gestural language in terms of the writing of Flusser. It argues that his work allows for gesture to be examined as phenomena, and in viewing these gestures as situated and witnessed phenomena, it becomes possible to perceive of them not simply as symbolic movements of the body, but rather as a form of translation. The paper then argues that what is being translated through these phonic gestures can be understood as a postdigital condition that has emerged following the alleged end of the digital revolution. To evidence these claims, the paper performs a gestural analysis of Luke Collins’s short film, Swiped (2019) that demonstrates an interaction between two individuals attempting to navigate a peculiar (post)digital situation.
Der maskierte Mensch: Vom Subjekt zum Projekt in der Stimmung des Orgasmus
This article starts from the assumption that Heidegger’s notion of Geworfenheit (Thrownness) can be overcome through alternative design or projection of human beings. Designing the body has so far received little attention within the research on Vilém Flusser. The essay begins with a discussion of bodily design moving on to an examination of sexual coitus and orgasm. Human re-invention is depicted in terms of sexual design, by assuming, in accordance with Flusser, a kind of sex, which is entirely independent of procreation or of any other biological consideration and exclusively directed towards orgasm as an intersubjective integration with the other person. This is not so much a form of surrender as an attempt at self-oblivion. The article also deals with the victory over death through orgasm, showing Flusser’s theoretical proximity to Wilhelm Reich’s psychoanalysis. The concept of orgasm will also be discussed in view of techno-imaginary charity as a gesture of love, addressing Flusser’s topos of masquerade, along with the possibilities of its overcoming.
To Save Philosophy in a Universe of Technical Images
Philosophy, origin and apotheosis of the Humanist project, seems to have been surpassed in a world of extreme and ubiquitous automated processes. Automation threatens to truly “taken control”, and subordinate all human activity to the functions inscribed in the machine. The kaleidoscopticon of contemporary culture seems to indicate a return to pre-literate “magical thinking” but it is in fact a product of highly literate scientific, technical literacy. Flusser urges us to encounter the persistent importance of causal, textual thinking at work inside every apparatus to help steer the transformations, which are taking place in ourselves and in our world. Flusser makes this plea alongside a contention that linear, causal, conventional textual practices are no longer adequate to convey our ideas and experience highly in-formed by the new technologies. He exhorts us to use “technical images”. It becomes evident that Flusser’s project is to save philosophy, or restate the importance of philosophical practices, in an age where literacy has gone sub rosa. Using examples from Flusser’s experimental collaborations with artists Louis Bec and Fred Forest, this short essay will attempt to elaborate what Flusser means with philosophical practice, which uses technical images.
Autotelic Digital Play: Flusser and the Gesture of Smoking a Pipe
This essay takes the form of a slide show that juxtaposes selected quotes from various authors and primarily from Vilém Flusser’s essay “The Gesture of Smoking a Pipe.” These excerpts are accompanied by a selection of short video documentaries of interactive installations created by some of my former students. This juxtaposition of quotes and videos, places side-by-side Flusser’s description of ritualistic, impractical everyday gestures, and the playfulness of interactive art experiences. As Ian Bogost argues in his essay “The Cigarette of this Century,” our 21st century smartphone addiction is comparable to the 20th century cigarette addiction. By contrast, could interactive art provide the same kind of magical, autotelic experience, away from our production and communication concerns, as pipe smoking has provided Flusser?
A slide show
Verso una teoria dei gesti
In his work “Gesten. Versuch einer Phänomenologie,” Flusser investigates the concept of gestures. Starting from a first definition of gestures, which explores the “causality” of movements, Flusser then discusses the meaning of the concept “gesture” in the broader context of culture as a symbolic expression. In this essay, we discuss Flusser’s view on gestures by studying them with respect to their function and meaning in communicative processes, both obvious and hidden. From a semiotic point of view, we analyse Flusser’s thoughts on the function and the properties of gestures and provide a definition of “gesture”, which reflects its cultural, symbolic, and significant aspects. Particular emphasis is given to the role of gestures in communicative processes and their imbedding in the cultural environment.
X: The Gesture of Essaying
Drawing upon Flusser’s sketch of “being-in-the-skin”, this essay explores the significance of the dialogical form of chiasmus for Flusser’s conception of gesture, arguing for an understanding of his “gesture of writing”, as a gesture of essaying, wherein a “poetic subject” is manifested – one who is born to understanding, gestated, in the process of conversing in-between, where “meaning” is organised through rhythm. The essay itself sets up this argument through a gesture of essaying, placing Flusser into conversation with a broader discourse on writing and gesture.
Das Strahlen in der Black Box. – Sprechen und Hören in der Medienphilosophie Vilém Flussers
This essay explores the rather rare studies on the subjects of speaking and hearing in the works of Vilém Flusser. It begins by identifying the historical and systematical modes of speaking and hearing in Flusser’s media philosophy. The phenomenology of the body (Leib) plays a central role in the discussion of these particular modes of communication. Significant for Flusser’s interpretation of these modes is the relation they have to a notion of political space. In this regard the essay asks: what is the impact of “the end of politics” on speaking and hearing?
Das handlungsfähige Projekt? oder: Die Frage nach der Subjekthaftigkeit des Projekts in der Menschwerdung. Zwischen Geste, Projektion und Verantwortung
In the thinking of Vilém Flusser, the question of subjectivity is linked to the question of being human (Mensch-Sein) or becoming human (Mensch-Werden). The human subject should be considered as dependent on media’s cultural and anthropological conditions. In this context, changes in media conditions lead to changes of the human subject. Flusser calls this process a media-cultureanthropological evolution. According to this thesis, the human being is no longer defined as a subject in relation to an object but rather as a “project in a (second) incarnation” (Menschwerdung). The human subject is progressively freed from its dependency on an objective world. Therefore, the dichotomy of subject and object disappears and our existential condition of being in the world (In-der-Welt-Sein) change. We give up the idea of a given and still standing world in favor of an inter-subjective construction, in which the “I”, “You,” and “It” turn out to be projections. The question is: are we still able to talk about the ability to act (Handlungsfähigkeit) in the context of a post-historical project? Isn’t acting a genuine gesture/expression of the understanding of the “subject of objects,” and of agency in the “objective world”?
Vampyroteuthis infernalis. Postscriptum
Vampyroteuthis infernalis is perhaps the most important, certainly the most public, result of Bec’s and Flusser’s collaboration that lasted for more than fifteen years. Bec here presents the starting points of the publication and what the different zoosystemic plates included were supposed to signal. Each one of the abysmal creatures invented by Bec is supposed to mirror a different aspect of Flusser’s thinking.