Aggregates

Abstract

The topic of the flyer-set is aggregates: that is how repetition and multiplication, passed a critical threshold, has a formative impact on the whole. As a point of departure, two cases of work are compared: Bjørn Blikstad’s Peacock Cabinet (furniture) and Georgiana Dobre’s work (choreography): We go around in circles at night, and are devoured by fire. The mereological study, in this case, makes a point of how repetition/multiplication yields information about the whole (Simondon). A mobile X-factor that yields readability to the whole.

The study is done under the constraints of the C19 lockdown, and attention to these conditions are given in order to heed the injunction (Donna Haraway) to position and situate the conditions of reception (the works above) and their theorising in the flyer set. In the perspective of Lacan’s sinthome: of living with trauma.

What are the lessons learned for the future: how to secure a stable learning outcome from the pandemic into the new normal? A disciplinary realm is sought between anthropology and anthropometrics as a field of artistic research AND scientific study: anthroponomy.

Iteration in aggregregates are tangiential to studies in mathematics/logic of permutation. This is queried as an approach to the interception of weak signals and background noise in wholes, that are not solved with the tight fit of symbolism, but yield information about the whole (X-factor).

This formal aspect feeds forward to the substantial domain of ritual. And suggests an idea of what rituals do (and symbols don’t). The shift of focus from symbolism to ritual, brings up the topic of the body as a sign, and the larger scope of humanity. And the relation, enfolded and unfolded, between the body and writing (cf, Berber writing Tifinagh).

The flyer series ends up asking the question of whether we may call for a design practice in an expanded field of knowing through making, where the ontological turn in philosophy, the epistemic turn in art (artistic research) and the feminist turn in STS (Science Technology Studies) may be re-bundled. ______

Further questions about Igory Mansotti should be directed to the HULIAS space. Link: https://www.hulias.info/