April 20, 2012
Have you been taking your iron supplements lately?
Here is the press release for the closing event of Yves Metller's installation accompanied with a conversation on geophilosophy and art via video conference:
On April 26th, 8pm, Yves Mettler and Reza Negarestani will have a public conversation via video-conference at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne. The conversation will focus on how our most intimate corporeal and psychological constitutions have vertiginous proximities with the Earth's cosmological history, and how we are bound through backdoor narratives and subtle complicities to the most liveless materials.
In addition, here you can find an excerpt of the text jointly written for the installation. Part a socio-culture satire, part a tabloid psychological thriller and part a geophilosophical self-help 101, the text "Arnex-1: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Asphalt" takes genre experimentations to new levels and reveals subtle webs of transfers and translations between art, the planet and a modern conception of geophilosophy whose topos of thought is a true-to-the-universe earth. The entire text will be available in the near future.
Posted by RN at 05:53 AM
April 03, 2012
Lecture series on the universalist thought of the open II
In continuation of the lecture series on universalism after Peirce and Kant and a modern conception of speculative thought, this Thursday and Saturday via video-conference:
Thursday, April 5 (11.00 - 14.00):
Seminar 6: The Continuous and the Contingent
- The labyrinth of the Universal and geometry of the Absolute (a summary on the synthetic environment of the Universal)
- Systematic navigation and inferring topoi of knowledge
Saturday, April 7:
Seminar 7: Accelerate Out of This World
- Mathesis of acceleration (Aristotle, Ibn al-Haytham, Oresme, Châtelet, Zalamea)
- Perception of acceleration, neurobiological underpinnings (Gould, Berthoz, Longo)
- Acceleration as a full-fledged epistemological program (Magnani)
- Culture of acceleration, an epistemological vanishing point
- Transmodern navigation and global synthesis of intensities
- The universe of "creativity without brake"
Transcription of the whole universalism series will be available at some point.
Address: PERFORMING ARTS FORUM
15, rue haute
02820 St Erme Outre et Ramecourt
France
janritsema@mac.com
Posted by RN at 11:29 AM
February 09, 2012
Announcement: Yves Mettler: Drilling Rig from Arnex, 1929
This is an announcement for the opening of Yves Mettler's installation Drilling Rig from Arnex, 1929 originally made for the festival Les Urbaines and now moved to the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts where it has been meticulously deconstructed by the artist. Mettler's installation dramatizes and magnifies subtle relations between cosmology, geological time and mobilization of capital on the planet. The installation will also be accompanied by a collaboration between Mettler and I that will gradually develop throughout the course of the exhibition:
On April 26th, a performance / lecture will be held by Yves Mettler and Reza Negarestani (via video-conference) as the closing event for their writing collaboration. Written as a serial publication since the beginning of Mettler's installation, the text 'Arnex-1: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Asphalt' unfolds a psychoanalytical dialogue between the analyst Rig and the mysterious Patient O. Over seven psychoanalytical sessions schematizing the seven circles of hell, the dialogue unravels an aetiological examination of the memory of geological time as the twisted sum of traumatic scars left by the cosmological shock and contingent mobilization of capital. Art's meticulous attention to the surface (landscape) parallels psychoanalysis' dedicated focus on superficial phenomena as a means of dramatically bringing into focus transversal dynamics of depths otherwise invisible to the keenest of eyes.
Opening date: Thursday, February 9, 2012, 6:30pm.
Address: Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Palais de Rumine, place de la Riponne 6
Posted by RN at 09:08 AM
February 03, 2012
Decay Modernism
Internet contingencies allowing, I will be giving a short talk via skype on Decay Modernism for SPECTRAL: Festival for Adventurous Music & Related Arts hosted by The Wire (Berlin, February 4, 17:00pm). Anyone who is in Berlin and interested in attending, can download the slides here: http://tinyurl.com/6lhj8pc
In his recent book Passages of Proteus written in 2011, Colombian mathematician Fernando Zalamea identifies the process of decay as an expression of a profound continuity in nature through which "creativity expands without brake". The emphasis of this talk will be on a non-romantic conception of decay as a building process whose chemico-mathematical truth constitutes the very kernel of the dialectic of the abstract and the concrete in art and a formalism based not on obstruction (i.e. various modes of singularity such as the novel, the ideal and the sublime) but on acceleration, or 'creativity without brake'. The underlying logic of decay is presented as a mode of synchronization or modernization of the living with and according to the dead. Far from moderating the tension between the living and the dead by embarking upon a speculative justice program (Meillassoux) or overcoming such tension through a quasi-mystic anti-modernist impulse, Decay Modernism brings about the possibility of thinking the dead outside of the culture of reconciliation and understanding culture as an epistemological vanishing point of different parallel orientations of nature for the modern subject.
Address and reservation information here.
Posted by RN at 03:09 AM
November 16, 2011
Lecture series on the universalist thought of the open
If you are in Stockholm between 17 to 22 November, I will be talking over skype on limits and possibilities of speculative thought within a universalist framework.
Details below:
In this seminar Reza Negarestani will take a systematic approach to the modern landscape of thought where reason and speculation, earth and cosmos, regional and universal resources of thought intermingle and synthesize so as to deliver us – remorselessly – into the open. Beginning with a geocosmic reappropriation of Freud's and Ferenczi's theories of trauma and a universal reinstatement of Darwin's evolutionary thesis characterized by Peirce as a major trajectory of speculative thought, Negarestani outlines a modern landscape of thought fully in accord with the revolutionary imports of Darwin's assault on Aristotelian essentialism and Freud's transcendental evacuation of human conscious experience. By navigating this modern landscape and highlighting its terrains and boundaries via figures such as Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich, Charles Sanders Peirce, Fernando Zalamea, Lorenzo Magnani, Guerino Mazzola and Gabriel Catren, Negarestani develops an asymptotic thought of the open – a universalist mode of thought at last cut loose from the overgrown lineage of planetary myopias.
Dates and Times
17 Nov 10.00 – 13.30
Introduction to seminar and Reza Negarestani by Mårten Spångberg
Reza Negarestani Seminar 1: The Map and the Compass– Outlining the modern landscape of thought (a schema)
– Sketching a speculative philosophy for navigating the modern landscape (a scheme)
– Introducing alternative speculative schemes
18 Nov 10.00 – 12.30
Reza Negarestani Seminar 2: The Pit and the Pendulum– Universal continuum and a modern conception of the Earth
– Toward a geophilosophical realism, or a systematically focused universalist philosophy
19 Nov 10.00 – 12.30
Reza Negarestani Seminar 3: The Universal and the Regional– Universalizing tensions and syntheses of the modern landscape (a geocosmic deepening of trauma)
– A traumatic rehabilitation of the terrestrial horizon of thought
21 Nov 10.00 – 12.30
Reza Negarestani Seminar 4: The Earthman and the Open (150 mins)– Traumatic syntheses and the open
– A non-trivial conception of openness and its revolutionary import
22 Nov 10.00 – 13.00
Reza Negarestani Seminar 5: The Trans-and-Absolutely Modern Man (180 mins)– Logic of alternatives and developing the asymptotic thought of the open
– Modern man, or the enforcer of opennessClosing discussion and final notes with Mårten Spångberg
Location: University of Dance and Circus - DOCH
Brinellvägen 58, T-bana Tekniska Högskolan
Stockholm, Sweden
Contact
Anders Jacobson, course assistant
anders.jacobson@doch.se
Posted by RN at 02:22 AM
July 15, 2011
Category Theory: recommended readings
In order to get familiar with some of the fundamental concepts of category theory and Zalamea's project, I have compiled a short list of recommended readings. While there are many monographs on category theory, I think the following titles are the most helpful for introductory and philosophical purposes:
1. Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories by William Lawvere (Lawvere's book is exceptionally layman-friendly. I haven’t been aware of this title until recently. Thanks to Nick Srnicek for mentioning this book.)
2. Topoi: The Categorial Analysis of Logic by Robert Goldblatt (Goldblatt's book contains some helpful introductory chapters. Thanks to Gabriel Catren for recommending this).
3. Tool and Object: A History and Philosophy of Category Theory by Ralf Krömer (An absolute essential for an in-depth analysis of the development and concepts of category theory.)
4. What is category theory? edited by Giandomenico Sica (A collection of both technical and relatively accessible essays. This title is particularly helpful for becoming familiar with broader perspectives and applications of category theory in physics, philosophy of science, etc.)
***
Also I have updated the last post.
Posted by RN at 05:49 AM
July 14, 2011
Fernando Zalamea: a prologue and a seminar
Versus Laboratory has announced a forthcoming lecture by Colombian mathematician and philosopher Fernando Zalamea to take place at Jan Van Eyck Academie on 29 September, 2011 (details here). While I highly encourage you to attend this seminar, I use this announcement as an opportunity to very briefly introduce Zalamea’s project in the context of a prologue to the future series of introductory posts I intend to write on Zalamea and his universalist project in mathematics and philosophy.
Fernando Zalamea (Bogotá, 1959) belongs to a contemporary and transmodernist renaissance in which science, philosophy, and art enter new synthetic domains. The underlying thesis of Zalamea’s project is simple and can be described – albeit reductively – as follows:
Mathematics is able to map universality and bring the labyrinth of the universal continuum – in its different modalities, global-regional reflexivity, general openness and particular designations – into focus. And it is universality through which (a true-to-the-universe) knowledge can mediate the abyssality or depth of an absolutely open and reflexive universe:
The triadic commutation above systematically reveals the reflexive web of the universe (from the universe to the universe, or universe-for-itself) which can be traversed by trans-modal, trans-regional and synthetic-analytic passages. The web of the universal and open continuum, thus, illuminates the continuous and reflexive passage ‘Universality → Abyssality’ in terms of real alternatives (Universality → … → Abyssality). Here, real or true-to-the-universe alternatives should be understood as free transits, transformations, twists, syntheses and relations to the open which simultaneously factor in particularities of local fields and an unrestricted conception of globality inexhaustible by any collection of multitudes or regional horizons. The logic of (real) alternatives, accordingly, is concerned with free expressions of the Universal in all its global-local horizons and through various relational and modal webs. Reflexivity of the universe, therefore, should be thought in terms of free expressions of the Universal, or more accurately, in terms of alternative passages through which the universe traverses back-and-forth between global and local horizons. In other words, reflexivity is the modally and relationally unbound universe-for-itself.
Following the rich legacy of universalism represented by thinkers such as Ramon Llull, Novalis and Charles Sanders Peirce, Zalamea approaches the logic of real alternatives implicit to the triadic universal commutation by way of combinatorial (Llull), compositional (Novalis) and synthetic (Peirce) environments where fusion of modalities, gluing of local fields of knowledge and plastic interweaving of analytical poles can take place. The logic of real alternatives (or free expressions of the Universal) implicit to the abyssal self-reflexivity of the universe is naturally embedded in a true-to-the-universe synthetic landscape that can be systematically approached. This universally synthetic – which by definition means both analytical and synthetic – landscape, therefore, is the topos of (universal) knowledge that highlights and constitutes the reflexive passage ‘Universality → Abyssality’.[1] Every true-to-the-universe thought – that is, rational, Copernican and speculative – must pass and work through this synthetic environment, its relational and modal webs, its local filters or perspectives for decanting truth and free global-local dialectics that encompass all nature and culture. Without any prior and systematic observation of this universal synthetic environment, philosophy risks either regional myopias (analytical saturation, local rigidification, over-axiomatization …) or a sort of speculative universal incompetency arising from restricted and often whimsically polarized conceptions of universality (all is synthesis, no particularly exists, …).
Maps and compasses which are required for exploring this synthetic environment or universal web of transits (constituted of integration and differentiation, continuities and obstructions, exact and vague distributions of truth) have been available in the Protean realm of contemporary mathematics. Whilst sophisticated tools and constructs in category theory, sheaf logic (where the synthetic-analytic continuity reflects in sheaf-presheaf categories) and post-Grothendieckian mathematics are to some extent compatible with the aforementioned synthetic universal environment, their speculative valence is still concealed behind formalization and certain desiderata imposed by inter-relations between mathematical fields. As easy as it is to be repelled by the level of mathematical knowledge required to engage contemporary fields of mathematics, it is also easy to be lured and mislead by the exotic formalism of certain mathematical concepts and tools in these fields such as category theory. Resisting suturing philosophy to mathematics, Zalamea’s project highlights the speculative scope of contemporary mathematics not by glossing category theory with contemporary philosophy or finding philosophical equivalents of mathematical concepts in subtle ways but by conducting a creative surgery on contemporary mathematics itself: Rather than directly working with category theory, Zalamea immerses category theory and sheaf logic in the Peircean program of universal and creative mathematization by passing the arsenal of category theory through natural and diverse filters inherent to the Peircean universal and open continuum, intermediating intuitionistic logic and classical logic through sheaf logic,[2] loosening Kripke’s discrete modal logic through the modal geometry sketched in Peirce’s existential graphs, asymmetrization of category theory-set theory dialectics through Freyd’s generalizing allegories and Peirce’s universalizing mathematics of modal geometry, broadening various forms of global-local dialectics in terms of trans-modality of the continuum, compossibilization of different analytical poles in the plastic environment provided by the open continuum, reinscription of the universal continuity within and between incommensurable loci of analysis, … . Here there is no suturing, only recombination of mathematical grafts, transplantation of one field into another, partial gluing, systematic generalization, filtering, decanting, magnification, dilution, Peircean trisection and triplasty.
It is the synoptic, panoramic and systematic surveying of this synthetic landscape – or universal transit of the abyss – through various mathematical lenses that characterizes Zalamea’s project and endows an immensely rich dimension to his universalist thesis. It is not controversial then to distinguish Zalamea – whose body of works spans mathematics, philosophy and cultural criticism (art, architecture, literature, …) – as a post-Copernican heir to Llull, a new Peirce for contemporary logic and mathematics, and a transmodernist Lautman for philosophy in the 21st century.
[1] An alternate and absolutist version of this speculative passage is also presented by Gabriel Catren in his fascinating essay The Outland Empire: Prolegomena to Speculative Absolutism: “The speculative movement par excellence is in effect the subsumption of extrinsic transcendental critique within an immanent speculative self-reflection. The reflexive passage from a knowledge-in-itself (i.e. a theoretical procedure that does not reflect in its own transcendental conditions of possibility) to a knowledge-for-itself would thus constitute the immanent dialectic of speculative knowledge itself.” This is something we will return to in future posts.
[2] Colombian mathematician Xavier Caicedo has also admirably worked on this front: see Lógica de los haces de estructuras.
Posted by RN at 01:18 PM
July 07, 2011
New and forthcoming texts
‘Collapse VII: Culinary Materialism’ has been published and is available now.
My contribution to the Venice Biennale 2011, entitled Rainbows and Rationalism, can be read in the main biennale catalogue, ILLUMInations.
The new Thackery T. Lambshead fiction collection exquisitely compiled and edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer is now available. My text in the volume is a short fiction written on a drawing provided by China Miéville. Other contributors include China Miéville, Mike Mignola, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Minister Faust, Jeffrey Ford and Lev Grossman among others.
I have also a short text in the new issue of MACBA's magazine.
On the philosophical front, a couple of new essays on geophilosophical realism and the Copernican thought should be available soon in anthologies including the promising Realismus Jetzt!
If nothing unforeseeable happens, I will start a series of introductory posts on Fernando Zalamea's mathematico-philosophical project on this blog (there will also be interspersed commentaries on Peirce, contemporary rationalism, Gabriel Catren, …). In the meantime, for those who are interested, the new volume of Collapse ‘Culinary Materialism’ contains some brief introductory passages on Zalamea in the editorial introduction. Manabrata Guha's multi-dimensional essay in the volume also builds on Zalamea’s work on Peirce.
Posted by RN at 09:50 AM