The Physical Order of Power
A collective editing by Sara Gebran, Marie-Louise Stentebjerg, Ida-Elisabeth Larsen &
Paula Caspao
Discovering Power: “king, domestic, electricity?”
Distribution of Light: a research proposal for the study of power
The Discursive Room: inviting the audience to share their experience of light
Reflection Days: reflecting on how light causes reflection
Bringing back the moth: …bzz…
Discovering Power
“king, domestic, electricity?”
I think of globalization like a light which shines brighter and brighter on a few people and
the rest are in darkness, wiped out. They simply can t be seen. Once you get used to not
seeing something, then, slowly, it s no longer possible to see it
Arundhati Roy.
Our process during the KUV-period was amongst many things inspired by some readings of Rob Nixon’s book Slow Violence (2011). Here he explores potential activist methods that are capable of making a kind of violence perceivable for an uninvolved audience, a violence that unfolds over decades, passing through several generations. A violence which transforms over time and produces different symptoms, since their origin
gets forgotten as the obvious links fall apart; when exposed generations perish and
younger ones try to solve the immediate challenges surrounding them. How time is perceived in this sense becomes a kind of blindfold, going into the current of linear spreading fixation, only a very restricted part of the otherwise complex body of timeliness. On
the surface, tendencies thus appear unrelated, like disconnected ‘problems’, but when
lined up historically one might again recognise a chain of causalities. For instance:
From an advantage of power, to a political clearing of nuclear testing in unprioritised
areas; from deform bodies and cancer, infected natural habitats to hunger and dependency on imported aid; from poverty and frustration to crime and corruption and so forth.
Rob Nixon separates two modes of relating to such disastrous landscapes, which according to his vocabulary are both interestingly linked to a sense of ‘vision’. One is the
witness, the local who struggles with the symptoms of slow violence on a daily basis.
The other being the seeing, the privileged place of someone who has the power to make
such circumstances visible to many, regardless of their geographical position. A discrepancy between two positions of gazing.
From this proposal, a certain scepticism or irritation grew among us. We asked, what do
we see, what is exposed to us, by whom and at what times? What is simultaneously put
in the shadows when our gaze turns in a certain direction? Is it possible to destabilise
the sense that something is present when it is in front of our eyes and, at the same, that
something else disappears when it is put behind us, out of sight? Instead of placing
ourselves in the murderous void between opposed entities, we became solely interested
in levels and modes of lighting, exposure as a means of power. Oxymorons like ‘blinding transparency’ or ideas of ‘casting light to the point of causing shadow’ seemed to
mock a certain mode of thinking. Eventually we found that if there is seeing there must
be some sort of light and with this some sort of distributor, whether human or mechanical, operating according to certain circumstances. At the same time we considered also
the effects of light in terms of spill, in other words reflection of light. By looking at both
distribution of- and alleged reactions by- and to light, we wondered how much we could
perhaps unfold the seemingly limited concept that light sustains truth, or advocates
some kind of justice. It all translated into a concrete interest in how the presence of light
is experienced in bodies, how it might move us emotionally, physically as well as on the
level of ideas.
Distribution of Light
a research proposal for the study of power
In August 2014, as a response to our research, we presented two differently lit spaces.
The experimentation took on yet another level of considerations with the introduction of
the ideas concerning the Line of disappearance towards a ‘black whole’ meaning, the destruction of things. What would it mean to encounter a ‘white whole’, or a super-exposed
space? Would things appear? Does exposure and whiteness reveal things? What is hidden?
The first space proposed an intense light on a 1.2 m² square on the floor, covered by
foil. The light bounced back into the space, exposing everything. A sort of blindness
occurred due to the total exposure of the space and the softness of the lit black surfaces. Somehow the eye stopped perceiving the ‘excess’ of shapes revealed. The attention
dispersed. Is everything exposed? What do you see? What is not exposed or revealed?
Looking straight into the foil blinds you totally. Do you see only what you want to see?
There is an ambiguity between wanting enlightenment, to see, and the disappearance of
elements in a space that is fully exposed. A space with shades of exposure. Here light
reflection could be about self-desired blindness, reflection in order not to see, to look
again for what has disappeared. As when we don’t see the eyes of the other due to the
reflection of the glasses, we can’t see through
back.
instead our own image is bounced
In the second space, the square was situated in the same place and the light source was
the same, but the light was now reflected on a
white surface, in a room full of smoke. Due to the
smoke, the light spread all over the space through
the white particles of the smoke, dissolving or mediating the reflection, or slowing it down, so we
see things as if from a far distance. The smoke
changed the perception of things. The whiteness
somehow tricked your perception and the brightness of the space made you think that you were
seeing, but the smoke blurred the contours and
the ends of the space. Thus creating an illusion of
a tangible endlessness that constantly changed
according to your path in the space. In this space
you could say that the focus was on light and clarity, on clarity and the capacity to grasp and think,
but also on the capacity to get lost. Light and being enlightened as two related subjects. There is a
sense of doubleness, a folding, a coming back to itself, to oneself, re-addressing things,
but also enabling one to find other directions, different ideas. It allows for several levels
and movements of reflection, and for the relations between reflections and power to
come to the fore.
The Discursive Room
inviting the audience to share their experiene of light
This room was created for all
the participants to reflect on
the experience of light. Here
we displayed the common
notion of light and enlightenment as knowledge. We
displayed a room for a modest open brainstorm so we all
re-thought what things were,
could become, their potentialities, a space for a common
doubt, as a subfield of research, to put ourselves in
the position of the ignorant. We put ourselves in a round table discussion, in a situation
that turned into a performance as much as the performative space itself, which also depended on the thought- and physical movements of everyone present.
It became an exposure of collective knowledge production, through sharing our experiences about what we saw or imagined seeing or missed to see, thus transforming the
seen through a collective re-thinking, through a common doubt and re-composition.
So what does such reflection mean? What becomes visible through the reflection on
light? What becomes invisible? Does an excess of light, of visibility, erase certain elements? Are there colours or shades or nuances that can’t be seen in an overexposed
space? What’s erasure and what’s emphasis? Is the ultimate exposure when you see
what you want to see? Is the ultimate exposure when what’s exposed is what you want
to see exposed?
Quoting Jacques Ranci re’s The Emancipated Spectator (2009 [2008]):
“The artist who imagines that the truth he possesses may be transmitted directly to the passive
viewer is like the schoolmaster who imagines that he has knowledge which he can convey to
the pupil without any mediation – even mediation from the pupil herself… There is no particular
reason why the spectator should change her mind and come to share the vision of the artist.”
(p. 85)
“What has to be pursued is a theatre where spectators will no longer be spectators, where they
will learn things instead of being captured by images and become active participants in a collective performance instead of being passive viewers.” (ibidem)
Reflection Days
reflecting on how light causes reflection
The days of reflection were an event set for us as participants in the KUV-structure. Having no real criteria or conditions to take into account ahead of this second gathering, we
felt a kind of confusion towards exterior expectations. We started from a discussion on
what ‘reflection’ might mean altogether and quickly came to the recognition that the notion in itself had been very much present during our presentation days earlier in the
year, even in a very practical manner. Recognising that pointing a light to a certain place
brings an expectation of enlightenment and some kind of clarity, which should (supposedly) take shape in some sort of well-formulated questions.
Again the idea of ‘light reflecting’ was brought into question and an issue of power at its
core became apparent. Manipulation seemed too easy: Does reflection necessarily
cause enlightenment and a renewed sense of clarity, or can it be desirable that it produces a renewed sense of complexity or even obscurity?
And since the beginning of this research period was very much a time to let myriads of
questions wash over us, we can also say that the body and the mind see with a broad
range of senses, and thus an impact of light must have a bigger consequence than initially assumed
if we don t limit the effects of light to the sense of sight, but extend it to
the ways in which it may affect many other senses (not only the usual five senses, but
also a sense of movement, a sense of warmth, a sense of justice, a sense of place, a
sense of difference, a sense of time, a sense of relatedness
).
Too strong light, too strong reflection produces blindness. Like new discovered knowledge, if
taken as a dogma, produces obscurantism… Knowledge doesn’t stop, but continuously produces (or re-produces?) itself. In relation to knowledge we need to keep space for not knowing, for
un-knowing, for exploring how to get to know otherwise. Maybe. To be explored
. Could we ex-
tend this idea to blindness? Purposely making oneself blind in the creation process in order to
arrive to new places?
In the movement from power to light reflection, it seems, all of a sudden, as if the subject of study
was performing us, guiding us into a series of questions, on how light is reflected, what it reflects; on how the room of collective reflection influences, transforms our own perception and
understanding of the work and how our continuous post-reflections lead us into a constant
changing set of questions, of ongoing non-circular research.
Our perception is definitely an apparatus that produces fictionally, and compositionally.
Within the issue of power, we could start talking about the senses. How do we exactly perceive
through different forms of organizing our senses (drawing from Ranci re) in different situations;
isn t it a matter of how different bodies distribute (and are distributed, identified, classified) by
different perceptions at different moments? Of which bodies are supposed to possess the capacities to see, feel, or speak in a certain way in a certain context?
For instance, how does our perception change in an assembly? How do we react, behave, and
accommodate ourselves within a shifting amount of people throughout the process?
And how does individual interpretation of ‘collective’ opinions, of ‘collective’ thoughts and reflections, of misspellings, and other kinds of possible misunderstandings, change the overall reflection? Are these changes just nuances or do they, over time, change the overall reflection and
thus its outcome?
Ranci re writes: “…venture into the forest of things and signs, to say what they have seen and
what they think of what they have seen, to verify it and have it verified. This way of learning involves a kind of interpretative act instead of an act of learning as such. (Ibid: 11).
Judith Butler in Precarious Life (2004), remarks:
To produce what can constitute the public [...] it is necessary to control the way in which people
see, how they hear, what they see. The constraints are not only on content — certain images of
dead bodies in Iraq for instance are considered unacceptable for public visual consumption —
but on what “can” be heard, read, felt, seen, and known. The public sphere is constituted in part
by what can appear, and the regulation of the sphere of appearance is one way to establish what
will count as reality, and what will not. It is also a way of establishing whose lives can be marked
as lives, and whose deaths will count as deaths. Our capacity to feel and to apprehend hangs in
the balance.
(xx–xxi; emphasis added)
In the research of The Physical Order of Power, who is supposed to throw light on what? Enlighten whom? For what reason? Where do we put light?
While we are reflecting on the reflection of light, we return to the central question: what is reflection? It’s not a reflection on the object of research but on the whole apparatus of reflection. It
becomes a virus, it contaminates. The very moment we perceive something (body or mind), a
certain kind of reflection is immediately produced. That is why there is no such thing as pure
sensation: there is a constant communication between all parts of my body (and my mind is a
part of my body, connected in many ways to many other body parts, according to different moments), so any part of my body is mental as well. This means that there is interpretation
sorts of affective implications that produce a supplementary level of fictionalisation
and all
in the tini-
est sensation. At all levels of the body and throughout the most bodily (the supposedly only
physical) parts of our body, we hold and digest information, that immediately composes with the
rawest of our perceptions.
PLUS [read this aloud now, with a very assertive tone]:
According to several studies in the field of neurobiology and physiology of perception and action
(Berthoz, 1997, 2003, 2009; Damásio, 1999, 2003; Edelman, 2000, 2004; Noë, 2004, 2009), there is
no perception, action or behaviour whatsoever that can be considered as affectively neutral. In
fact, the index of affectivity implicated in any perception/action abounds already at the homeostatic level that regulates life, i.e. at the edge of perceptibility. Homeostasis appears then as an
affectively compromised “mise en relation” through which life gets informed about the vital state
of all its components. As Catherine Malabou has recently emphasised, “homeostasis is an affective economy”; “the brain affects itself as it regulates life”, i.e. it affects itself at the most elementary of its activities. This is in fact where the whole “intrigue” starts, for any single bit of sensorial information is already a relational one, and therefore coloured, evaluated, selected, modulated,
affected at its very source (Les Nouveaux Blessés: De Freud à la neurologie, penser les traumatismes contemporains, Paris: Bayard, 2007, p. 77). About the feeling modes that emerge within all
our very vital processes – and thus with all our behaviours with no exception – see Susan K.
Langer (Mind: An essay on human feeling (1967), vol. 1, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1972), as well as Daniel Stern (The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Development Psychology (1985), New York: Basic Books, 2000).
This process of basic affection , if we may say so, that takes place at the very homeostatic level
of bodies, is probably where reflection starts
as a mode of doubling and multiplying anything
that happens with some sort of proliferation of its other probable (and many times also improbable) dimensions. A mode of complicating then, rather than a mode of enlightening, despite what
the word reflection seems to promise (historically and in current common sense).
These various modes of conceiving of, and of producing reflections, allow for a dimension where
the research reaches its utmost criticality potentials, opening up to unforeseen scenarios, questions, situations, imaginations and new experiences. Research then, is a space of criticality rather than a space of assertive knowing and enlightening; a space to multiply questions. More
than finding answers, research is concerned with exploring several ways of raising questions
and building the appropriate tools to approach them, make them speak as such: interrogations
that trigger more thought, more feeling, more thought, more feeling, more thought, more equivoques. In his book Material Thinking (2004) Paul Carter writes “Invention, after all, depends on
equivocation – the possibility that something might mean something else” (p. 10)
EQUIVOCATION then, is very important in any research process. We have been listening to it
very attentively.
For we are dealing with multiple voices, the people we quote, the assumptions we do, the talking
between us, with the audiences…
You were wondering whether we might be aiming at accomplished theories?
Hmm, not really. (although they may well arrive at a certain point) For now – HERE – we are rather following and nurturing a discursive movement that doesn’t go straight. As you’ve probably
noticed, it forms a “pattern made of holes” that “doesn’t come to the point”. These expressions
are from Paul Carter’s book on the theory and practice of creative research, under the inspiring
title, quoted above: Material Thinking.
What kind of REFLECTION do we create in this condition of AMBIGUITY?
What does it mean to include holes in the process of knowledge production?
By the way: what kind of AFFECTIVE EXPERIENCE is a REFLECTION PROCESS?
Methods are discovered by doing
as we meet others
We don’t have ready-made solutions. We make ourselves available for all sorts of encounters (be it with books, people, architectures, perceptions
). We have to take in
consideration the new constellations of people, the common questions and interests
that arise at each step of the process.
So looking back it seems that there is a method based on constant new encounters between people and ideas. Therefore, several reflections upon these encounters have taken shape during this initial research phase.
How does power operate?
What does it produce?
How does it affect people and things?
Power is also just how we organize ourselves. Power is produced in many situations
even when we don’t think we are producing it, even our gestures in conversations are
also related to power. Power not in absolute terms, but as the power of cultures, the
power of the consensus that composes things, the consensus between people in certain
communities and at certain moments, which serve as regulators and/or almost as dominators.
How to think of the future from the past?
An apparent new subject, but still quite interconnected with the previous ones (namely
with the issue of the relation between power and the way perception is predominantly
organized in linear ways from one point to the next, with the future appearing as open
and the past appearing as dead) departs from this quote: Looking forward to our own
past and looking past into the future in a seeing so intense that it falls out of sight. (Brian Massumi, 2002:194) One of the ideas at stake in this quote is that what happened in
the past is not dead, it’s not closed, not solved; rather, the past not only calls to be reimagined and rearranged, but it still affects the present. So this quote brings into question the problematics of time as it is usually conceived as a linear line that only moves
into the future, always further, never (effectively) backwards. The problem is that this
view usually stops us from solving things past
from re-accessing and re-arranging
and actively integrating them in our relations to the present and future. In a word: letting
present and future re-compose the past, and the past(s) touch our present(s) and future(s). We need to recompose and reconstitute the past in order to live with it. Reciprocally, if the past is not as dead as we tend to think, the future is not as open; we actually
can think of it as much more given or preconditioned than we usually imagine.
Which questions do you have for us?
What are your expectations towards what we
do?
What do you think reflection is made of and
with?
How do you research?
How do you document a research process?
How do you document a reflection process?
DRAFT:
(in the hope that we have been looking forward into the past of this research and reflection, in a way that
allowed us to re-imagine what happened and draw some lines of
intriguing!!!!!!
action for the next steps
of this still ongoing research)
How to talk changing position, moving through the space; talking as a way to displace
the when and the what of what we can act, think, feel, move?
What kinds of relations are there between talking and thinking?
How can we talk in a way that prevents us from falling into the habits of knowing?
Could we define, comment, and draw at the same time?
Is reflection supposed to generate more questions, getting us lost, find more
(im)possibilities, or produce answers?
Is there a way to deal with answers that doesn t attribute them any sort of authority?
Could there be an interesting co-existence between different sorts of (situated) questions, forms of (situated) not knowing , and (situated) answers? Answers can also be
interesting, right?
(How to reflect upon a reflection I haven’t taken part in? Is my reflection a re-edit of the
elements in the reflection that I remember? A re-edit based on interpretation?)
I guess reflecting upon the document of a reflection and re-editing it
part of it
even if you haven t been
makes sense (literally: you are making it): the very absence from the event itself
gives you the possibility to approach both the reflection and the document from another vantage point, i.e. assumedly including the holes in the process of (re)thinking, (re)writing together. (Re)composing with the memories from the phase of the research process you have taken
part in
looking past into the future
becoming non linear, non actual, detached from any form
of anxiety to produce evidence of what (supposedly) was
Here you are: in the zone where
the present can touch the past, and the past touch you in unsuspected ways
feeling the
sticky fingers of the past , as Rebecca Schneider wrote at some point in Performing Remains
(2011)
And who knows if re-editing, like re-flection
as a twice behaved flexion, a bending movement,
an articulation proper, a doubling or self-affecting of the brain and other parts of our body
whenever they think/move/feel
tions
already happens at very basic levels of our homeostatic func-
Va savoir, which parts of our bodies are more prone to re-editing anything they live, do, or
sniff
Ah the POWERS of re-editing
(to be explored?)
Who/what exactly is participating in this
re-editing? (little moth
are you there? bzzzzz?)