Aesthesis

The evolution of human cognition has corresponded to the technological expansion of its state-space, increasing its degrees of freedom by tracking invariances and conjunctions in its relations with the world. This process has two aspects. First, the human has progressively broken up the unified whole that was the ‘magical unity’ (Simondon) of our pre-human ancestors into convenient and workable objects of knowledge that can be named, numbered, displaced, and exchanged. This is the abstract process of discretization (Stiegler),  and it has gone step in step with hominization. Discretization corresponds to a process of dividing the world’s continuous fluxes and vague unities into ever smaller, countable parts and pieces. But there is a second, complimentary process: that of synthesis, concrescence, or integration, which has also followed the expansion of the human Umwelt. Humans have extended their criticality not only by breaking the world up into smaller pieces, but by correlating these parts according to principles of symmetry and invariance, sequence and order. It is the organism’s capacity to encapsulate, to envelop an indefinite series or to mark a horizon (Châtelet). This process can be thought of as complimentary to discretization: instead of a breaking-things-apart, it is process of enveloping, or of the constitution of a provisional whole (holon). All ‘extended critical’ systems may be said to produce such integrations corresponding to their stabilization upon a perpetual phase transition, a state of constant renormalization (Bailly and Longo). It is at the root of speculations about the eventual convergence of human knowledge upon an attractor, an omega point, or a singularity, as the ultimate end of a noölogical process. Teilhard de Chardin called this the ‘noösphere’. Beyond his speculative scheme, science and mathematics permit us to speak of a singularity of cognition and life that could also be considered noölogical. But today, the big data environment that tracks our interactions and displacements, that pulverizes the world as an abstract set of indexed variables, has been more appropriately described as an ‘infosphere’. It has been called a ‘fourth revolution’ (Floridi) in human thought, the most recent step in the Copernican displacement of the human from the world stage. Turing is held to follow Freud, Darwin and Copernicus in the infliction of yet another wound to human narcissism. It is as though the prospect of a noösphere has been displaced by that of the infosphere, as though the organism’s process of cognitive synthesis had become obsolete, replaced by the lonely acts of sampling and sequence matching, tireless iteration, measurement and calculation. The present article proposes a different framework for thinking the emergence of the infosphere: it results from human technoevolution having been nefariously overtaken by a runaway process of discretization. We problematize this line of thought from a noötechnical and ‘epistemo-aesthetic’ standpoint, by considering the shared aesthetic evolution of life, cognition and technè.

Ciertamente, he creído necesario abordar el estudio de un trabajo de investigación musicológica, a partir de un enfoque autoetnográfico que, como praxis y ciencia de una vocación artística, interpretativa y pedagógica, confiere a la fruición espiritual un componente estético particular sobre los criterios estilísticos que abundan en la obra del compositor francés Claude Debussy.

Este trabajo problematiza la afectividad del proyecto moderno/colonial surgida a partir de la lógica identidad/diferencia, especialmente en relación con la culpa y su posible descolonización asociada al desmontaje de su dimensión económica encarnada en la deuda. La culpa “moderna” responde a la fetichización de la ley, del valor de cambio y de la canonización estética moderna, pilares centrales de la lógica identidad/diferencia y su tendencia a la trascendencia/instrumentalización de la experiencia corporal subalterna, mientras que su descolonización procedente de un horizonte de sentido basado en la dignidad del cuerpo, la materialidad de la vida, debe ser fundada sobre una perspectiva analéctica en la que lo semejante remite a la materialidad aesthesico/afectiva asociada con la inmanencia de la vida, corporizada en una serie de prácticas vitales, muchas veces ligadas a la experiencia religiosa, que caracterizan las vivencias afectivas del Sur global.

Environmentally-themed conferences are taking place all around the world as I type. More often than not, discussions occur within the confines of soporific seminar rooms, far from the actual environments discussed. As part of the Environmental Justice, “Collapse” and the Question of Evidence Workshop held in Switzerland in September 2015, I proposed a foray through local nature reserves as a way of enriching conversations – both through multisensory engagement and the catalyzing effect of movement, of walking. Multi-sensory perception – or aesthesis – enables us to consider the environment not as an inert background to discussions, but as intrinsic to dynamic and creative thinking. In situ discussions expose the spaces-in-between, reminding us that issues of environmental justice extend beyond Homo sapiens. They also foster opportunity to explore the intersections of wonder and understanding. This photo essay portrays the symbolic significance of fungi in exploring conference themes.

The essay aims at de/clining and at the same time questioning the methodology of de/linking, des/prenderse, dis/connecting from the politics, aesthesis, and geo-psycho-corpo-graphies of modern/imperial powers and epistemologies still at work. The inspirational writings, performances and actions nurturing the critical, poetical, political and ethical perspective I here define "other than TransAtlantic archaeology of coloniality"a Southern archaeology contemplating the 'transmediterranianization' of the Atlantic and of the postcolonial and the decolonial routescome from the encounters with non-nationalistic intellectuals, activists and diasporic talents expressing transgressive visions of the state of things in their po(li)et(h)ical works and epistemologies (ref.: the colonialidad/modernidad school; the philosophy of consciousness filtered through Maria Lugones' gendered decolonial lens; African and Afro-diasporic post-colonial forerunners; Gloria Anzaldúa's elaboration of border thinking/crossing and its development into the decolonial space of conocimiento she calls 'nepantla', 2002). As a component of the activist cultural and aesthetic research project UN/WALLING THE MEDITERRANEAN-S/MURARE IL MEDITERRANEO. Local, national and trans-border ARTivist practices for a poetics and politics of hospitality and mobility (Bari Univ., 2009-today) predicated by decolonial thinking, in this paper I speak from a Southern Mediterranean geo-corpo-graphical peninsular perspective and history in order to develop a Southern border critical thinking delinked from the normativity of geo-political, hetero-normative and 'modern' disciplinary boundaries. Keywords: un/walling geo-political and art boundaries, TransMediterrAtlantic, gnoseological turn, southern decolonizing imagination and imaginaries, imagination and disciplinarity, ARTivism, geocorpographies, conocimiento versus knowledge, border aesthesis, poli(e)t(h)ics, crisis of disciplinarity Je vais aborder la vaste question de la décolonisation des savoirs sous un angle précis, celui de l'imaginaire. Car décoloniser les sciences humaines, l'histoire entre autres, c'est aussi indéniablement, décoloniser l'imaginaire. Claude Bourguignon Rougier, Chaos et colonialité de l'imaginaire

En este trabajo se propone la noción "Estética analéctica" para dar cuenta del énfasis en la referencialidad corporal o realidad material (expresión de "contenido", esto es, afirmación de la vida comunitaria en tanto dimensión "semejante" o "común" con otras culturas y epistemes), que se debiese llevar a cabo en un proceso de descolonización que desmonte el proceso de dominación y nulificación ontológica a la cual fueron sometidos los cuerpos coloniales (indios, negros y mestizos pobres). A partir de este proceso, en el cual se asume la ética material (o enfoque transontológico), como punto de partida de cualquier proceso aesthesico en el continente -coexistiendo junto las "distinciones" propias de cada geografía cultural- se subraya en este trabajo, dentro de una "estética liberación" en el sentido sugerido por Dussel, lo que podría ser precisamente una "aesthesis de la liberación", problematizando las consecuencias políticas que esta perspectiva teórica puede conllevar en el debate latinoamericano actual.

While the phrase “queer aesthesis” suggests a concern for how a game’s queerness resonates sensorially with players, I want to use it here to talk about what can be queer about a video game’s relations to what intermedialist Eric Méchoulan has called the greater intermedial milieu of any given media object (that is, the intertextual and intermedial web an object is always already part of and enmeshed with). For my purposes, then, “queer aesthesis” designates, first and foremost, the affective dimension of a specific readerly or analytical attitude towards all elements of a game and not just its manifest content. By creating a back and forth between a singular object-turned-theoretical tool and its greater intermedial milieu, such an attitude, I argue, necessarily operates by setting up an intertextual and intermedial framework of analysis, on the one hand, and allowing, on the other hand, that reciprocal theoretical moves that occur between the general and the particular can be useful and valid.
Specifically within this paper, then, “queer aesthesis” designates the combination of interdisciplinary and intermedial lenses that I deploy in order to shed light on one particular game’s queer(ing) mechanisms. The game I have chosen for my case study is NYU-based artist, indie game maker and academic Robert Yang’s endurance sex game Marathon, which he developed in just six hours for Nordic Game Jam 2018. As will become clear as the paper unfolds, however, I also take “queer aesthesis” to designate the medial relationships that connect Yang’s video game to other time-based media objects. While this presentation is too short to explore all of these, after outlining the larger video gamic landscape wherein Yang’s game situates itself, I will show how focusing primarily on Marathon’s relation to earlier experimental films that explore interconnected experiences of queer time and pleasure is absolutely crucial to gaining a clear grasp of the game’s mechanisms, and more importantly still, of its contributions, as both an object and a theoretical tool, to the sorts of intermedial relations that video games entertain with prior media texts.

Associadas a uma observável onda de consumo relativa ao tema da cozinha, abordagens estetizadas da culinária e da gastronomia vêm se destacando, sobretudo, na televisão. O contexto pode ser percebido em programas de receitas e na publicidade televisual das indústrias alimentícia, de utensílios e eletrodomésticos de cozinha, que evidenciam uma valorização da artificação e do prazer com a comida ou com o ato de cozinhar. Considerando-se as formas adquiridas pela representação da receita culinária na contemporaneidade e a sugestão de efeitos de prazer com a ambiência televisual, o presente artigo propõe a qualificação de uma estética do prazer alusiva à representação do ato de cozinhar na mídia, e manifestada por seus regimes de visualidade na televisão. As estéticas são interpretadas como especificidades da organização narrativa, dadas por arranjos de forma e conteúdo: são contemplados aspectos da composição audiovisual que conjugam, na televisão, o apelo ao sensível à sensualidade, associados ao ato culinário.

Associated to an observable wave of consumption of the kitchen subject, aestheticized approaches of culinary and gastronomy have been emphasized especially on television. The context can be noticed both on TV cooking shows and televisual advertising of food and kitchen appliances industry, which enhance the artification and the pleasure with food or the act of cooking. Taking into account both the acquired forms of contemporary culinary recipes' representation and the suggestion of pleasure effects set by the televisual ambiance, this paper proposes the qualification of an aesthetics of pleasure – related to the representation of the act of cooking in the media, and evidenced by its visual schemes on television. The aesthetics are interpreted as typical shapes of the narrative organization, given by arrangements of form and content: features of the audiovisual composition are covered by its appeal to sensitivity and sensuality, both associated with the act of cooking on television.

Este artículo problematiza el concepto espacio colonial emplazado sobre la base de un punto de vista, un espacio aesthesico-epistémico, fundado según la idea de interioridad/humanidad naturalizada por el mundo blanco (moderno). El racismo anti-negro reflexionado por Fanon se funda en la reducción aesthesica del mundo colonial en torno a la mera superficialidad o epidermización. Por lo tanto, se propone en este trabajo una resistencia impoética (en términos modernos) o una re-existencia “poética” (en términos decoloniales) metaforizada por un “salto aesthesico” dentro del espacio colonial con el objeto de generar las condiciones de posibilidad de un cambio sensible, material, referencial, ligado con la desalienación y liberación de la subjetividad oprimida de la cultura afroamericana.

Unter dem Begriff Transkulturelle Wissensdistribution soll das Konzept der Wissenskulturen für eine Globalgeschichte der Musik nutzbar gemacht werden. Will man untersuchen, wie Wissen über Musik global vernetzt ist und sich verbreitet, so benötigt man übergreifende Fragestellungen. Das Konzept der Wissenkulturen könnte ein geeigneter Rahmen sein, um diese zu finden. Um das zu exemplifizieren, wird ein möglicher Fragenkatalog zu Diskussion gestellt.

Beispielhaft gehe ich auf eine der entwickelten Fragen anhand meiner Feldforschung in Oberbayern näher ein: Ich arbeite die Unterscheidung zwischen ästhesischem und poietischem Wissen anhand der Verortung von Musik heraus.
Poietisches Wissen ist Produktionswissen. Im Falle der Musik geht es also darum, wie Musiken gemacht sind, welchen Regelsystemen sie zum Beispiel innerhalb bestimmter Stile gehorchen. Poietisches Wissen ist das Wissen, für das Komponistinnen oder Musikerinnen die Experten sind.
Ästhesisches Wissen dagegen ist Rezeptionswissen. Im Falle der Musik ist es zum Beispiel Wissen darüber, welche Elemente von Musik relevant sind, um sie in bestimmte Kategorien einzuteilen. Die Experten für ästhesisches Wissen wären Beispielsweise Musikjournalisten oder Fans.

Die Verortung von Musik scheint vor allem rezeptionsseitig in Form von territorialer Codierung stattzufinden: Bestimmten Elementen der Musik wird von den Rezipient_innen eine sozial erlernte Bedeutung zugeschrieben. Dadurch assoziieren sie das Musikstück mit einem bestimmten Ort oder Stil. Es scheint dabei weniger relevant zu sein, an welchem Ort die produktionsseitigen Regelsysteme entstanden sind, nach denen diese Musik funktioniert.
Ein Beispiel dafür ist das Stück "En Guarare" von "Die CubaBoarischen". Die oberbayerische Band ist – wie der Name schon sagt – dafür bekannt alpenländische und lateinamerikanische Elemente in ihrer Musik zusammenzubringen. Bei meinen qualitativen Interviews mit Fans gaben einige an, "En Guarare" sei ein Hybrid und nannten auch Beispiele wie Instrumentierung mit Percussion für Kuba und mit Blasinstrumenten für Bayern. Vom Komponisten Huber Meixner erfuhr ich aber, dass "En Guarare" größtenteils eine Coverversion eines Songs von Los Corraleros de Majagual ist. Er funktionierte also nach den Produktionsregeln eines columbianischen Cumbia. In diesem Fall stimmen also die rezeptionsseitig wahrgenommene Verortung und die Herkunft der Produktionsregeln nicht überein.