Damian sutton, glasgow Art School26102005.
The Event of Photography and the Betrayal of Art
BADIOU, RANCIÈRE AND THE POLITICS OF AESTHETICS
Damian Sutton
Glasgow School of Art
ALL WELCOME
Wednesday 26th October 2006
4.30pm
Design School Seminar Room,
Grnd Floor, Foulis Building
The Glasgow School of Art
Abstract:
The philosophy of Alain Badiou has recently gained much publicity as more of his work is translated into English and many of his ideas resonate with a popular dissatisfaction with both left and right politics (a translation of his Being and Event is out in late-2005). His Ethics (1993) is an often vituperative attack on the lack of faith that left-wing politics has with the major political events of the twentieth century, and on the descent of the left into self-interest. Fidelity must be kept, Badiou suggests, with the truths of art, love, politics and science which puncture all knowledge and opinion.
This paper considers Badiou's attack and its potential for reviewing modernity, modernism, and art's adherence to the destiny of its technologies. Furthermore, the paper uses Badiou's ideas to understand why other scholars of modernism, such as Jacques Rancière, have similarly attacked what they see as the 'legislative reign' of poetics over art. Finally, the paper will examine how the photographic media came to be seen as modernism's Veil of Veronica, and why they can be seen to have squandered the political potential that had garnered photography axiomatic claims to 'democracy', 'truth' and 'the real'.
Biography:
Dr Damian Sutton is Lecturer in Historical and Critical Studies at The Glasgow School of Art. He has recently published on cinema and computer generated imagery, on cinema and theories of memory, and he is a co-editor of The State of the Real, forthcoming from I. B. Tauris. He is currently preparing a book for the University of Minnesota Press on photography, cinema, and time, and 'The Event of Photography' is a paper drawn from this project.
the event of photography and the betrayal of art
badiou, ranciere and t politics of aesthetics
rethink photog and time
rosa parks death - refused togve her seat up for white man - used by civ rights mkvement
t convergent image
vidoc
old and new image
rethink event
manovich
digi image in film
photog rel
technology at arts disposal not as impin velief off poss
change of ideas signif point
struggle of old and new is temporal
first fifty yrs of film, poetic
schema of time
convergence remonds us that photog is idea
event of photog
apparatus and spectatorship
cinema rooted toideals
films purified ideal
phto as mythological
invention of cinema1895when first pubkicly shpwn
first as med observation confirms event
effiiency of seeing
mother temporality
exposure time reduced to kodak moment not technological change but idea of photo as event
the pose
common understanding of event is cause of radical change
naming of event, people must live an actas if it occurred
instit theory, as jolts
internet change away from pose
delete without conscience
print in home reinforce family
but theory of event underpins
industry looking for event to orient itself around it
style columns - is technology diff
process o inteest and surveillance
latour - trapped into it
event as jolt
badiou - ethics - p of t event - devel of theory of event -
digitise everything
connectivity -
me-digital as urban , orange arctic co presence
hp - family mobility
badiou
event as uncovering of event as truth badiou said 911 not event since nth changed
conversion of st paul on road to damascus
revol in france as all events
moment that all see themselves as part of rev
void - in whose name event occurs
photog
art testifies of pasing of idea . all art risks being mere piecework
sep act of making from passing of ideas
art as invention
imagine invent of photog
talbot 1832 no clerer to invent
void
talbot married love and idea came to him
xcamera lucida
sawaerad scene and tracd image
bad at drawing led to creation
invent conceptual
art is thought process
phto rel to sci phto as sci event of art
fidelity to photo badiou is central to ethics
art sci politics love
laziness
sci s body of fodelity, selling sci to state betrays truth
badiou -truth forces knowl gallileon event
event as two destinies - - truth ot other
truth of photo as democratic never true always surveillebce
photogs sci value s truthmaker
style is arts betryal of sci
betrayal f art
acculumation of photo for state
new represn of soc
blackbox
kodak, u push button, well do rest
classif of instit memory
subject thus comes into being
bettion - for recording people idt
me - dna database
criminality diff then
police and physician - photo to assign idt
how can art be culpable
art as regime
political potential of modernism lost
but photog caught in
veronicas veil - christ image on cloth
technicism - poetic over form/
ranciere ethics -whtherartshould be part of good soc
politic and art
singular event dominates
cannot demonstrte fidelity by repeating
fidelity as ethical process
badiou -orthodoxy
badiou and ranc are ambiv about artist
only the work is relevant
role of artist is to lookout for event tat ill make practice obsolete
me - of surveillence, seems to betray sponeneity
strictly poetic
but reflction of politics
not enough to say eth is political
me –role of instit
ranciere - regime of poetic
fidelity nowtostyleof image, rather than repres soc/
academicism clear eg of stgnation
tag 1982year after first electroniccamera
me - rel be institut and surveil, seems away from image
Questions and Answers
gibson sci fi , street fjnds a use
home prining and digi - mundane -
d badiou said events are necesily good
connecivity as central to techl basic q is wheth world changes
irreevant whethr mass response, critical is temporal
badiou - sci truth
true event forcea itself into knowl
becomex truth when confirmed ina partic way
reaches eventful status
event as multiple irreducible intervention
fairground - momentus