Decay Modernism
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.
Parallel Transport
Acceleration and
v(t)
v(t + dt)
The Intensive
Velocities
Oblique Gradational Line
Accelerative, Constructible
and Performative
The Extensive
Distribution of Time
Vanishing Point (as what envelopes an asymptotic
o approach to the infinite horizon of velocities / nature)
- Accelerative grasp of Intensities
- Acceleration as the synthetic and
instantaneous capture of different
intensive-extensive articulations of form
Horizon of Intensities / Velocities
Perspective Operator
(modernist epistemological vantage point)
Decay as what ‘obliquely’ unfolds spectra of forms
- Gradational continuity between various intensities
- Counter-intuitive continuity between diffrent
incomensurable forms
(Once approached by way of
through an accelerative approach to the entire planetary and cosmic landscape. )
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Vanishing point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKVfSM0cyU
Horizon
The Intensive
Abstract
Ratio
The Extensive
Reason
Concrete
(gradational)
The Intensive
Velocities
Oblique Gradational Line
Accelerative and Performative
The Extensive
Time distribution
Vanishing Point (as what envelopes an asymptotic
o approach to the infinite horizon of velocities / nature)
- Accelerative grasp of Intensities
- Acceleration as the synthetic and
instantaneous capture of different
intensive-extensive articulations of form
Horizon of Intensities / Velocities
Perspective Operator
(modernist epistemological vantage point)
Decay as what ‘obliquely’ unfolds spectra of forms
- Gradational continuity between various intensities
- Counter-intuitive continuity between diffrent
incomensurable forms