Alain Badiou: Fifteen theses on contemporary art

Below are the 15 points by Alain Badiou to which Jean referred during her lecture in the first week of the kit theory course. The question Badiou started his talk with is the following: How can contemporary art avoid being formalist romantic? By form he possibly means organization, anything you need to make art with, in the general sense of the word. It is not form as opposed to content. By romantic he means for example when one considers our reality to be bad, when one strives a better reality, when nihilism is the dominant mode of thinking.

1. Art is not the sublime descent of the infinite into the finite abjection of the body and sexuality. On the contrary, it is the production of an infinite subjective series, through the finite means of a material subtraction.

2. Art cannot merely be the expression of a particularity (be it ethnic or personal). Art is the impersonal production of a truth that is addressed to everyone.

3. Art is the process of a truth, and this truth is always the truth of the sensible or sensual, the sensible qua sensible. This means†: the transformation of the sensible into an happening of the Idea.

4. There is necessarily a plurality of arts, and however we may imagine the ways in which the arts might intersect there is no imaginable way of totalising this plurality.

5. Every art develops from an impure form, and the progressive purification of this impurity shapes the history both of a particular artistic truth and of its exhaustion.

6. The subjects of an artistic truth are the works which compose it.

7. This composition is an infinite configuration, which in our own contemporary artistic context is a generic totality.

8. The real of art is ideal [Èelle] impurity conceived through the immanent process of its purification. In other words, the raw material of art is determined by the contingent inception of a form. Art is the secondary formalisation of the advent of a hitherto formless form.

9. The only maxim of contemporary art is: do not be imperial. This also means: do not be democratic, if democracy implies conformity with the imperial idea of political liberty.

10. Non-imperial art is necessarily abstract art, in this sense: it abstracts itself from all particularity, and formalises this gesture of abstraction.

11. The abstraction of non-imperial art is not concerned with any particular public or audience. Non-imperial art is related to a kind of aristocratic-proletarian ethic: it does what it says, without distinguishing between kinds of people.

12. Non-imperial art must be as rigorous as a mathematical demonstration, as surprising as an ambush in the night, and as elevated as a star.

13. Today art can only be made from the starting point of that which, as far as Empire is concerned, doesn't exist. Through its abstraction, art renders this in-existence visible. This is what governs the formal principle of every art: the effort to render visible to everyone that which, for Empire (and so by extension for everyone, though from a different point of view), doesn't exist.

14. Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves.

15. It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of rendering visible that which Empire already recognises as existent.

alain badiou

Thèses sur l’art contemporain

1. L’art n’est pas la descente sublime de l’infini dans l’abjection finie du corps et du sexe. Il est au contraire la production, par le moyen fini d’une soustraction matérielle, d’une série subjective infinie.

2. L’art ne saurait être expression de la particularité, qu’elle soit ethnique ou moïque. Il est la production impersonnelle d’une vérité qui s’adresse à tous.

3. La vérité dont l’art est le processus est toujours vérité du sensible, en tant que sensible. Ce qui veut dire : transformation du sensible en événement de l’Idée.

4. Il y a nécessairement pluralité des arts, et quelles que soient les intersections imaginables, aucune totalisation de cette pluralité n’est, elle, imaginable.

5. Tout art est venue d’une forme impure, et la purification de cette impureté compose l’histoire, et de la vérité artistique, et de son exténuation.

6. Les sujets d’une vérité artistique sont les œuvres qui la composent.

7. Cette composition est une configuration infinie, qui, dans le contexte artistique du moment, est une totalité générique.

8. Le réel de l’art est l’impureté idéelle comme processus immanent de sa purification. Autrement dit : l’art a pour matériau premier la contingence événementielle d’une forme. L’art est formalisation seconde de la venue d’une forme comme informe.

9. La seule maxime de l’art contemporain est de n’être pas impérial. Ce qui veut dire aussi qu’il ne doit pas être démocratique, si démocratique signifie : conforme à l’idée impériale de la liberté politique.

10. Un art non impérial est forcément un art abstrait, au sens suivant : Il s’abstrait de toute particularité, et formalise ce geste d’abstraction.

11. L’abstraction de l’art non impérial ne considère aucun public particulier. L’art non impérial est lié à un aristocratisme prolétaire : il fait ce qu’il dit, sans acception des personnes.

12. L’art non impérial doit être aussi solidement lié qu’une démonstration, aussi surprenant qu’une attaque de nuit, et aussi élevé qu’une étoile.

13. L’art se fait aujourd’hui à partir seulement de ce qui, pour l’Empire, n’existe pas. L’art construit abstraitement la visibilité de cette inexistence. C’est ce qui commande, dans tous les arts, le principe formel : la capacité à rendre pour tous visible ce qui, pour l’Empire, et donc aussi pour tous, mais d’un autre point de vue, n’existe pas.

14. Convaincu de contrôler l’étendue entière du visible et de l’audible par les lois commerciales de la circulation et les lois démocratiques de la communication, l’Empire ne censure plus rien. S’abandonner à cette autorisation de jouir est ruine de tout art, comme de toute pensée. Nous devons être, impitoyablement, nos propres censeurs.

15. Mieux vaut ne rien faire que de travailler formellement à la visibilité de ce qui, pour l’Empire, existe.

Claire Denis about Intrusions

In May 2005 the german film critic Annett Busch made an interview with Claire Denis. It is originally published on http://missingimage.com and refers to the talk Claire Denis gave at the Vienna film museum. The video recording of this talk is available at V2V http://v2v.cc or syndicated here on this site: http://kit.kein.org/node/31

Thinking about specifics of your films the term »openness« came in my mind as a crucial and controversial idea - concerning your concept of narration, aesthetics and characters. Comparing »Beau Travail« and »L'Intrus« with your earlier films like »Nenette et Boni« or »J'ai pas sommeil« you skipped the multiple parallel strands in favor to follow more a kind of idea, colors, faces ... My impression is you're going vers l'abstraction. What kind of decision is behind that?

CLAIRE DENIS: Both films, »Beau Travail« and »L'Intrus« were produced by Arte for television, and I don't know why, because the project was with a small budget, both projects were supposed to be done with a television budget, I imagine immediately a project that could only be made with a lot of money. Like going far and I knew, because I understood if I wanted to be very honest today, if I decide to do a film like »Beau Travail« with the real money it needs for cinema, this will take me 10 years and maybe it will never happen, now, to speak about »L'Intrus« - never -. But because the budget is small what happen is, the ellipse cuts and the style of »Beau Travail« and maybe »L'Intrus« came also from the small budget - you know what I mean? - when you write a script, you know exactly what kind of money you need and you can pretend if someone do the budget, that you don't realize that it was too expensive, but this is not true. While writing you know what it costs, you know exactly that if you write »snowy landscape« in a place where is no snow it will cost a lot of money, so, then you have to choose what you will save in a narration and in »Beau Travail« and »L'Intrus« I saved everything I wanted to shoot and I dropped everything I didn't want to shoot. I knew, with a small budget, if I want to have enough money to travel I could not manage to have flashbacks oder things like that. And then I take it for granted because I did »Beau Travail« with a little voice over, this film I decided: no voice over. But not because I wanted abstraction, it was in the narration - if you go from »a« to »z« and you want everything, but you know, this part is in France, this part in Switzerland, this part in South Korea, this part in Polynesia - you know exactly that you ... So I'm going only - let's say, not to »z« but I go to »m« - so it costs less money, you know - but what is this? Ok, I said, I save the trip, I save this movement and the narration become a little bit elliptic - and I think - only Pierre Chevalier in Arte actually could produce him like that ...

So, the aesthetic decision is linked quite closely to the economic precondition.

CLAIRE DENIS: I'm not complaining about that, a small budget is very great, because then you don't feel guilty, you feel strong. I really like it, but to make a film with a cinema budget you see how much it will cost - and then the crew will ask for assistance, for more this, more that and then a better hotel and the actors will be paid more - things like that. But I like very much to work like that, it's completely free. You know, when I was a child I said free jazz, this is free cinema ...

What do you mean?

CLAIRE DENIS: You have to be real jazz man, you have know a lot of music but maybe on the set and can try something you never did before and see if - only because it's not recording in a studio which costs a lot of money but because you are on the set surrounded by friends and say, ok, I'll try - thats the way I did »Beau Travail«. Normally I should not do this film with that little amount of money, but I told the crew and the actors: are you ready? So let's try - but the film was very well constructed in the script, so the script was not abstract, very detailed - only four weeks of shooting - it creates something different.

After watching »L'Intrus/The Intruder« I finally read the essay by Jean Luc Nancy, »L'Intrus«, which gave you the idea for your film. What I'm really not sure about is the link between his heart transplantation and and his excursus about the foreigner/the intruder. The semantical link might be quite obvious, but the metaphor seems too strong and I don't understand what for.

CLAIRE DENIS: I think himself was not sure about it. He was asked many times to write about his heart transplant and he always refused. Honestly he never told me why but I figured out that his heart transplant - it was thirteen years ago - was a great success, saved his life, but not a complete success, because his body is rejecting the new heart. The doctor always told him the first four years reject is normal, but after - so he understood in fact the transplant will never work as a heart, he needs chemo therapy all the time. So he was not happy to write about all this - all the pills all the time - and he had a cancer, a blood cancer because of the heart - and he refused. But then he was asked to write about immigration because Derrida had been participating to a big movement in 1997, we signed petitions for immigration, and Derrida wrote a beautiful text called »Hospitality« and he asked Nancy to be part, to write also something, and he starts the book it was to be called »L'etranger« - and suddenly he decided »L'etranger« is not the right word, it's like foreigner, like fading away, and he choses »l'Intrus«, the Intruder, because it's hard. He had never read a Faulkner novel, he didn't know it exists (»Intruder in the Dust«) and he starts writing »L'Intrus« to speak about immigration and suddenly, maybe after one hour, he realizes it was about him and that he was writing about his heart, so he completely mixed the project ...

... also in your film, beginning at the border, people crossing the border, it's such a strong image and then, well, I just keep asking why ...

CLAIRE DENIS: ... but there is no why. It's just like a map, if you life by the border you might work in the custom, you might see people running through the border - I really took the book as a proposal for a sort inside voyage, like this old man was dreaming the last possible trip he would make if he could, have a new life, you know. I don't know, I think the film was really build around the idea of intrusion - the only character in the film that is protected is Beatrice Dalle with her dogs and nobody can intrude her life, she is protected, nobody can touch her - all the other people they are fragile, they are hurt.

It's bizarre but I was rejecting something, physically ...

CLAIRE DENIS: Aaahh, that's good. But maybe you should take it as a song - or something that doesn't need ... because if you take it for granted, it's like a ... I'm always saying it's like a ballade from Johnny Cash, »I'm the king of an empire of dirt and I will let you down and it will hurt and if I could I would go a million miles away, I would keep myself I would find a way« -- and I thought the film would be like the song you don't need to understand ... these are the emotions ...

Preparing the interview while sitting in a train, moving and thinking about your films I started to mix them up - and suddenly I saw a connection between »Trouble Every Day« and »L'Intrus«. The strange virus is intruding the body of Beatrice Dalle and Vincent Gallo - it's taking over. Like the foreign heart of Michel Subor. It's like you're shifting towards biological questions, in your films before you concentrated more on bodies in their social contexts ...

CLAIRE DENIS: Actually - now that you mention it I could see some connection. But it's strange to start a new project, to start writing, first you have to start by a sort of - the first thing about a film, before writing a script some ideas take a sort of shape that it could be a film - then while writing a script it's very difficult because at some moment the project is very clear and after one hour work - you know - and every day - so while preparing a project or writing the script there is absolutely no time to think of connections with other films - you have to project yourself into something unknown, so when it's finished, sometimes - ah yes - but otherwise no, never, it's impossible, it's frightening ...

Sure ...

CLAIRE DENIS: But you're right, I just mean in terms of work it's the best to forget everything I have done or would have done and to try to be like for the first film - open.

Speaking about openness and Agnes Godards cinematographic style - it seems to get closer and closer.

CLAIRE DENIS: What happened for Agnes and me is that -- when I did my first film, »Chocolat«, she was at the camera but she was not doing light - because I was afraid, the production company was not very nice and I didn't want her to be too afraid, because, light in Cameron was really difficult ... and I don't want my producer to scream at her because she was too slow, because Agnes is kind of slow - you know what it is in film, even if you're slow you have to pretend you're fast - so I didn't want her to suffer from that. And as I was working with her on framing - we had prepared the film in advance - I realized that for me the distance between us and the character was to consider in term of intimacy which is, if the camera is on sticks or tracking, I need a certain distance, because it's solely, it's like a camera sometimes it's moving and I always think for an actor or an actress he needs a space for him so I could never put a camera very close of any of the characters in »Chocolat«.

Then I made a documentary »Man no Run«, without Agnes, because of the documentary we were in small hotel rooms, so of course the intimacy - we were intruding their intimacy - which is sometimes the case when you do documentary ... When I did »S'en fout la mort« I spoke with Agnes and I said it's funny, because when I did »Man no Run« I was trying not to intrude too much but I was obliged to intrude into the room, on stage sometimes, so I told her we can not pretend doing documentary in a fiction, it's not fair, but can we be inside the territory of the characters without being intruders, without being like documentary filmmaking or filming animals, so I told her: we are both shy, we are going to do something, we are going to do the complete film on the shoulder, but the complete film ... We took a very old camera because it was lighter than the other one, because we shot 35mm not 16mm, and I told Agnes don't worry about the light, the light I will do with someone else, so you're only holding the camera, because I knew 8 hours with a camera on the shoulder is hard .... So I realized - if Agnes and me are entering very close to the actors holding the camera like that, tiny women, after a while Isaach de Bankolé and Alex Descas - we were not intruding any more, we were there all the time ... so we came very close and sometimes when we were walking, we walk with them and sometimes Alex was dancing and we were dancing with him - and things like that. The crew couldn't stand that because I said to the crew to be out - and I really experienced through that film I could be intimate with the character without being intruding into certain conditions, which was not to be like a voyeur - to be at a certain distance and getting closer - so that there was no ... and this gave me a sort of ... Since »S'en fout la mort« I know I'm not working like in »S'en fout la mort« - but because we did that, I'm not afraid anymore of being close, of being there with them ... I know they will accept it, actors ... When I did »Friday Night« inside the car both actors were afraid and said, »ah no location, you should be in a studio, it's too difficult« and I said no no no ... and they forget about us.

In a way »Vendredi Soir« is also about an intrusion.

CLAIRE DENIS: Yeah, »Friday night« it's about an Intruder, an Intrusion, yes of course ... But you know, I don't want to be a philosopher when I read Jean Luc Nancy's book I said: Intrusion actually it's about life, that's why I made it father and son, children are also intruding into life - love is also an intrusion, meet someone is an intrusion in your emotional ... I don't see one moment important in life that has not the shape of intrusion, even in biology, in chemistry - nothing can really mix naturally it always has to ...

... fight?

CLAIRE DENIS: ... fight I don't think but there is always the moment where one of the two parts is intruding the other. Maybe it's not dangerous maybe it won't last long but at a certain time fifty percent is intruding the other fifty percent - otherwise the thing is dead and still and finished. Like germs ... if you catch the flew or ...

Vienna, 06/05/05

Claire Denis: Vienna Conversation

In May 2005, the Film Museum in Vienna has presented the work of French filmmaker Claire Denis – arguably the most important woman working in cinema today. The video contains the full recording of a 1.5 hours long conversation between Claire Denis and the Austrian film critics Michael Omasta and Isabella Reicher on Saturday, May 7th, 2005

Claire Denis has dedicated herself to an uncompromising aesthetic in which sensory experiences, physicality and "musical images" are given priority over conventional narrative schemes. At the same time, her work revolves around key issues of the present: blurred gender distinctions; transgressions of social and cultural boundaries; the dissolution of national identities in the postcolonial era; and finally, the essential topic of sexuality and (filmic) desire.

KEIN.TV / kein.org
English / 01:35:12 / 231 MB / Ogg Theora

Help with watching the video

Ethics of Psychoanalysis

There is a short summary online of "Le séminaire, Livre VII: L'éthique de la psychanalyse" by Jacques Lacan: http://www.lacan.com/seminars1b.htm

Jean-Luc Nancy: L'intrus

I just found the beginning of the text "L'intrus" by Jean-Luc Nancy available online for download as a PDF: This text triggered the film by Claire Denis which we have been watching during the first session http://kit.kein.org/session1

"There must be something of the intrus in the stranger; otherwise, the stranger would lose its strangeness: if he already has the right to enter and remain, if he is awaited and received without any part of him being unexpected or unwelcome, he is no longer the intrus, nor is he any longer the stranger. It is thus neither logically acceptable, nor ethically admissible, to exclude all intrusion in the coming of the stranger, the foreign."

The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction

This link refers to a text published by Robert Luxemburg for the makeworld paper #4. "The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction" is supposed to "brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, shareholder value and copyright — concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art." http://makeworlds.org/node/113