Vilém Flusser nas vizinhanças do niilismo e para além
The question of nihilism implies a return to Nietzsche. In this article this return is briefly made only to the extent that it is possible to find a connecting thread between Nietzsche and Flusser with regard to nihilism. Prepared as a dialogue essay with other interpreters of Flusser, selected based on their contributions to specific themes that are put into discussion, this article aims to highlight the fact that nihilism is, for Flusser, just a starting point with a view to its overcoming. This does not mean to deny that Flusser focused on concepts neighboring nihilism such as doubt and skepticism. However, these neighborhoods do not prevent Flusser from finding foci of hope in the playful power of the human that materializes in the arts, conceived as emancipatory inebriation.
The Camera That Ate Itself
This text starts from Flusser’s description of the camera as an ‘apparatus’. Working with John Hilliard’s series of photographs A Camera Recording Its Own Condition (7 apertures, 10 speeds, 2 mirrors) a number of developments of the idea of the apparatus are made. The text discusses medial will to power, Marxist theories of the machinic, and conceptual art’s exploration of the materiality of informational systems. It draws upon reflexivity in Flusser’s formulation of the apparatus, in cybernetics, and in Foucault’s Nietzschean theories of knowledge.