The Deleuze Effect

8/11/2019 The Deleuze Effect

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The Deleuze Effect

Joseph Nechvatal

What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not supposedly fixed terms through which that

which becomes passes.

-Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari,A Thousand Plateaus

Joseph Nechvatal, vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage, 168 x 305 cm, 2002, exhibition view, Noise, collateral event of the the 55th

International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia: Il Palazzo Enciclopedico. Courtesy: Galerie Richard Paris/New York


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Gilles Deleuzes vision of our post-industrial life re-opened the way for the production of subjectivity in art

by affirming the applicability of multiplicity, strangeness and dissension. In recognition of his work, my

computer-robotic assisted paintings, such as vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage, attempt to hypothesize and

demonstrate a high art of latent excess; an idea for art that was specifically inspired by the rhizomatic

thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari. This idea re-establishes an ambiguously private critical

distance for the art viewer: a distance achieved through the connective disparity between pleasure and

frustration. This is my idea for a counter-mannerist art of noise that demands of society an active

visualizing participation in private interpretations - and thus is a legitimate metaphor for contemporary art

as a form of simulation-shattering engagement.

The philosophic rhizomatic theory of Deleuze and Guattari, at a general level, supported my approach

towards theorizing such a noise art, as rhizomatic theory encourages philosophic non-linear and non-

restrictive thinking and imagining. A rhizome literally is a root-like plant stem that forms a large entwined

spherical zone of small roots which criss-cross. In the philosophical writings of Deleuze and Guattari theterm is used as a metaphor for an epistemology (that in philosophy which is concerned with theories of

knowledge) that spreads in all directions simultaneously. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 7) More

specifically, Deleuze and Guattari define the rhizome as that which is "reducible to neither the One or the

multiple. (...) It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which

it overspills. It constitutes linear multiplicities with n dimensions having neither subject nor object... ."

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 21)

With my paintings such as vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage, I want to make a contribution to the enlargement

of self-understanding in the context of our conspicuously excessive society, and took my clues from

Deleuze. According to Deleuze, consciousness is "the passage, or rather the awareness of the passage, from

less potent totalities to more potent ones, and vise versa" (Deleuze, 1984, p. 21), an awareness which

potentially helps remove the subject out of her or his glib indolence and points the subject in the direction

of boundlessness.

It is pertinent that in A Thousand PlateausDeleuze and Guattari describe this shift towards boundlessness

as ones becoming a body without organs (BwO) in terms of our self-shifting representational planes

emerging out of our field of compositional consistency, for the BwO (according to them) is an insubstantial

state of connected being beyond representation which concerns pure becomings and nomadic essences.

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 510)

Deleuze and Guattari go on to say that the BwO "causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them

in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space nor is it in space; it is matter that


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occupies space to a given degree - to the degree corresponding to the intensities produced." (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p. 153)

I believe that my painting vOluptuary drOid dcOlletageshows that a connecting post-pop art is possible

and even indispensable to us now by demonstrating an art of counter-mannerist latent excess. It is an art

that can problematize the pop simulacra and hence enliven us to the privateness - and unique separateness -

of the human condition in lieu of the fabulously constructed social spectacle that engulfs and (supposedly)

controls us. This private separateness offers us a personal critical distance (gap), and thus another

perspective on (and from) the given social simulacra.

Such an art of phantasmagorical latent excess (*) might provide us with two essential aspects relevant to

our lives. First, it can provide a private context in which to suitably understand our simulacra situation.

Secondly (but more importantly) it may then undermine this understanding of the simulacra by

overwhelming our immersion in the customary simulacra along with our own prudent pose as observerand judge. Through the destructive-creative bacchanalia at the root of an art of latent excess, we are

prodded to lose our position of detached observer, As such, vOluptuary drOid dcolletagedemands our

engaged intellectual and perceptual production.

For me, a nomadic post-pop art like vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage, when latently excessive in its own

right, is capable of functioning, paradoxically, by nurturing in us a sense of polysemic uniqueness and of

individuality brought about through a counter-mannerist style of reproducibility (circuitous, excessive and

dcadent). A style that takes us from the state of the social to the state of the secret distinguishable I, by

overloading ideological representation to a point where it becomes almost nonrepresentational.

This takes, I believe, the judicious use of the process of Deleuzian/Guattarian nomadic thinking.

Accordingly, Deleuzian/Guattarian art, such as vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage, would be composed of

variously formed segments, stratas, and lines of flight which involve territorializing as well as

deterritorializing spacio/psychic activities. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 2) It is this nomadic non-

representational counter-mannerist representation which breaks us out of the fascination and complicity

with pop art and the mass media mode of communication. (**)

Deleuze/Guattari's term for experiences of this nature is becoming-animal. For them to "become animal is

to participate in movement, to stake out the path of escape, to cross a threshold, to reach a continuum of

intensities where forms come undone, as do all the significations, signifiers, and signifieds, to the benefit of

an unformed matter of deterritorialised flux, of nonsignifying signs". (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 13)


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So what is vOluptuary drOid dcOlletageabout in terms of an art of becoming-an-animal of latent excess?

It puts forth an aesthetic lan of superabundance that re-conceptualizes art in terms of connectivity so as to

grant the viewer an unbridled zone - free of the good manners of simple simulations. This is the feeling of

becoming-animal-panorama by fashioning a map of intensities. However, this character of de-simulated

openness, which an inception of the rhizomatic art of latent excess assumes, demands that we seek a

liberation from custom, doctrine and influence, and that we grasp again the autonomy and priority of art as

a special type of excessive ideological activity.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, rhizomatic activity is boundless in its branching; thus rhizomatic art

reflections may cross wide chasms of psycho/optic space on one surface as the most disparate elements and

details may be linked. Moreover a psychic rhizome like vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage is continually

dynamic and is ceaselessly actualized by the arousal its dynamism produces. And thus it is never in accord

with some pre-established strategy or imposed configuration. The psychic rhizome around vOluptuary

drOid dcOlletageis regularly swarming itself into being as micro and macro factors attract. One cannotdeclare in advance what its limiting confines are or where it will or will not operate, nor what may become

connected and tangled up in the rhizomes multiple dimensions because the connections do not inevitably

plait common types together.

Rather, a psychic rhizome like vOluptuary drOid dcOlletagehas multiple dimensions that instigate cross-

overs between both the highest synthetic level and the slightest, most minute discrete distinctions. Thus

vOluptuary drOid dcOlletageis a complication of perceptual vicissitudes so intertwined that it gives birth

to different scopes of phenomenological macro-perception.

This acknowledged probing at the outer limits of recognizable art representation, the excited all-over

fullness and fervor of this syncretistic probe, isnt a failing of communications within the excessive terms

of vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage then; it is its subject. Such a copious realization is insinuated through

overloaded/excessive stimulus inasmuch as latent excess can represent every integrated meaning

conceivable. For in the art of excess the focal point is never circumscripted. The fusion of elements within

rhizomatic latent excess are not, by definition, passively received and accepted.

By nature of its conflicting excessive presentation, vOluptuary drOid dcOlletages subject-information is

to some degree psychologically embedded and thus withheld even as it is inexorably displayed all at once

to the limited nature of our human perceptive competence. Thus vOluptuary drOid dcOlletageis a

rhizomatic art of latent excess that takes us away from the habitual focus of the picturesque and potentially

liberates us inwardly from the infringements stemming from the deluge of mass-media images. And so,

stimulates us to assess anew the caliber of any such infringement. Hence it is in the amity felt with the


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excessive and rhizomatic ground that we may feel a sensuous liberation from ideological monotony and

cultural prudery.

My art of rhizomatic excess, as seen in vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage, may stand then in defiance of the

limits of ordinary perception and representational simulacra. Thus it is (or can be) about the opposition

between the daily workday and the transgressive-ecstatic moment. In a sense vOluptuary drOid

dcOlletageattempts to set up a stable form of ecstatic transgression where the viewer can go rhizomaticly

back and forth and in and out at will.

Underlying vOluptuary drOid dcOlletages dissimulation aim is a miasmatic idea which questions linear

and hierarchical structures and seeks to replace them with atmospheric loose structures, keyed to a

penetrable, reciprocal flow of events. And this goal came to me when reading Gilles Deleuzes book

Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. In it, Deleuze pointed me towards a recognition of my desires

productiveness, as he indicated how desires propel us to move towards greater or lesser states of sublimewholeness "depending on whether the thing encountered enters into composition with us, or on the contrary

tends to decompose us... ." (Deleuze, 1984, p. 21)

So, such a rhizomatic reading of vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage, as I have sketched out above using my

2002 painting as example, means a re-positioning of self-identity within an atmospheric and artistic

ontological model of sublime wholeness - because a rhizome is this rich labyrinthine ensemble of relations,

diversities, connections, heterogeneities, breaks and unexpected links which inter-connect. This means that

the visual-intellectual situation of Deleuzian inspired art, like my vOluptuary drOid dcOlletage is one of

magnanimous self-connectivity. And I deeply thank him for it.

***


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(*) This quality of phantasmagorical replacement has formulated a new understanding of phallocratic existence which

Deleuze and Guattari have called schizo id. According to them, being is now inseparable from a technologically

hallucinogenic/schizoid culture. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)

(**) Perhaps it is relevant here to remember that Mannerism (generally the art of the period of Late-Renaissance circa

1530-1600) was an aesthetic movement that valued highly refined gracefulness and elegance; a beautiful maniera

(style) from which Mannerism takes its name. The term usually means an art in which lavish attention is paid to

stylization and to the superficialities of semblance.

References:

Deleuze, G. 1984. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights

Deleuze, G. 1988.Bergsonism. New York: Zone Books

Deleuze, G. 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. London: Athlone

Deleuze, G. 1994.Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1984.Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1987.A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1994. What is Philosophy?.London: Verso Books

Bio Notes:

Joseph Nechvatal's digital paintings conjure up an enigmatic world of almost dreadful depth a depth that signals the dynamic critical

intricacy of a contemporary practice engaged in the fragile wedding of image production and image resistance. His computer-robotic

assisted paintings and animations are made up of an oddly excessive concoction of ambiguous sexual body parts (morphed from both

sexes) and expressions of political ire that address the global influence of the viral form. Nechvatal brings a subversive reading to

computational media by presenting an artistic consciousness that articulates contemporary concerns regarding safety, truth, identity

and objectivity.

Since 1986 Joseph Nechvatal has worked with ubiquitous electronic visual information, computers and computer-robotics. His

computer-robotic assisted paintings and computer software animations are shown regularly in galleries and museums throughout the

world. From 1991-1993 he worked as artist-in-resident at the Louis Pasteur Atelier and the Saline Royale / Ledoux Foundation's

computer lab in Arbois, France on The Computer Virus Project: an experiment with computer viruses as a creative stratagem. In 2002

he extended that artistic research into the field of viral artificial life through his collaboration with the programmer Stphane Sikora.

Nechvatal earned his Ph.D. in the philosophy of art and new technology at The Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts

(CAiiA) University of Wales College, Newport, UK. From 1999 to 2013, Nechvatal taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York

City (SVA). His book of essays Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology

and Virtual Reality (1993-2006)was published by Edgewise Press in 2009. In 2011 his book Immersion Into Noisewas published by

the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office in conjunction with the Open Humanities Press.

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The Deleuze Effect