"The post-human in things in general, then, is that which proposes an entity with which only the human could interact as an other, and which--neither a decorated thing nor personifiable mechanism, although we may long for it to be so--is at once a being and nonorganic. The relationship between the outside and the inside of such entities is one between a blank surface and an interior which is not mechanical but is rather an affair of the electrical and the simultaneous and the near-simultaneous, more like a brain than an articulated body, and in a general way Bergsonian in its capacity to make connection through what is already present to a memory. It would in that be the place of two sorts of multiplicity. One, that of pure ratio, is what Deleuze calls the 'multiplicity of exteriority, of simultaneity, of juxtaposition, of order, of quantitative differentiation, of difference in degree...' This, he says, is 'a numerical multiplicity, discontinuous and actual' and distinct from the other, which is 'an internal multiplicity of succession, of fusion, of organization, of heterogeneity, of qualitative discrimination, or of difference in kind; it is a virtual and continuous multiplicity that cannot be reduced to numbers.' Entirely made of number, the technological may also produce a heterogeneity irreducible to them: the two conditions of the sublime, pure ratio and the infinite extension of quantity within simultaneity, limitless extension of qualities incalculable in its heterogeneity."--Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Beauty and Contemporary Sublime (Allworth Press, 1999), pp. 138-139.
(Painting above: Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Step, 2004-5, oil on linen, 70 x 70 inches, Courtesy Gray Kapernekas/www.artcritical.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment