At a dinner party somebody responds, “Yeah, but however much money, you’d still be looking for a good deal.” The conversation ricocheted and I never grabbed the chance to voice whatever position, but to me it’s obvious, the only interest in economic wealth is in order not to have to bother about money. Rich I couldn’t care less, what matters is economic independence, in short using zero energy on the status of my savings account.
Money, thinking about Heidegger’s tool analysis, is always broken, and can simply not hold itself from reminding us of its toolness. To possess money implies, if not to overcome Heidegger at least to have your money fixed and repaired, hence having the opportunity to take it for granted.
It’s of course possible that “good deal” extended beyond moolah, but even if it did, what sadness to conceive of life as a series of good or best deals? Isn’t that the equivalence to swapping desire for revenue, joy for appreciation, friendship for tolerance? By the way, if good deals were my life-style choice, devoting my short time on earth to dance appears rather ridiculous.
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The Americans feared losing aeroplanes to the other side of the Cold War. The Russians, they argued, and probably correctly, would salvage aircrafts and perform reversed engineering as a means to obtain American technological prowess. One can wonder what Heidegger would have to say about the exchange and what happens to the analysis of tools when taken apart to the tiniest component. Evident, and the stipulation of said practice, in any case, is that there’s analogy between part and whole, that the individual component relates to the entirety through causality, and that value is linear and determined from atom to the complete apparatus.
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At some point, Zaha Hadid questioned why architects for centuries have been obsessing about 90-degree angles. “Why only one angle, when there’re 360 degrees to choose from?” Radical? Not exactly. After all, it’s still just degrees. Anything other than 90 might just be considered trying to be special.
Some say, and Hadid obviously agreed, that the horizon equals the sum of possible perspectives. All perspectives next to each other, one after the other and abracadabra: horizon. Fortunately, the relation between perspective and horizon isn’t part to whole, causal or linear, and the value of horizon isn’t the sum of perspectives. Horizon, which is definite although without article isn’t synonymous with the horizon which is what you look at on the beach, is precisely the absence of the possibility of perspective.
Horizon is one, it cannot be divided and hence it cannot be introduced into any system of value, which without exception is based on divisibility. Stuff that remains one, such as the universe, nothing, magic, or love (at least for some) withdraws from conventional forms of value and is valuable in regard only to itself as itself, its value is self-referential. Or whatever value experienced is supplementary to the thing, situation or phenomenon. Supplementary in the sense that it cannot be extracted or located in a certain part, that there exists no causality between what is mediated and what is experienced.
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Analyses and interpretation are based on identifying and locating, on dividing and extracting and hence on being able to determine value through relations between parts and whole, for example through comparison and measuring. Value moreover, however much it struggles cannot withdraw from hierarchisation and power, reason and rationality, from making good or best deals. Anything that can be introduced to a system of value consolidates that system. Analyses, reason or good deals in other words reinforce representation, knowledge, power and general fuckery as we already know it.
Horizon, on the other hand because it’s self-referential, is one, cannot be subjected to comparison or measure, cannot be captured by reason and most importantly transcends hierarchization and power, which at the same time renders horizon powerless and autonomous.
I like to think that art, no in fact I’m convinced that spending time with art, making or attending art, the experience of art, carries the promise of horizon. Those few but irreversible encounters with art are overwhelming and irreversible exactly because the value of the experience is supplementary to what, so to say, caused it, that there is no causality between the artwork and what the time spent with it generates. Similar to horizon those rare encounters with art refer only to themselves as themselves and are therefore autonomous, but remember, it’s the encounter that’s self-referential, not the artwork. It, whether abstract or not, narrative or not, dance, poetry or installation is irreversibly attached to perspective and value. Perhaps the opposite of good deal, which is synonymous with being in control, is losing one’s shit and being blown away.
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On the back cover of a brand-new novel, I forgot the title, picked up in an oh-so-urban alternative yet corporate bookstore, I read, “a depiction of a utopian micro-society, an attempt to live in mutual tolerance and freedom.” Seriously, I’m starting to develop unhealthy reactions to utopia, especially its use in relation to art and artistic projects.
Utopia, if not just borrowed from sci-fi pulp, isn’t some idyllic meadow where children play and grown-ups practice harmony with nature, each other and everything else. It’s not somewhere inhabited by mindful vegetarians that respect all and everybody including cancel culture, and by the way, does utopia include other species, historical injustices, minimal wages, lithium batteries and one-click buying, or is it maybe just for humans, perhaps only some, the nice ones?
Let me tell you, utopia isn’t a nicer form of liberal democracy where everybody lives according to their individual wishes and dreams. How could it be? It wouldn’t take long before those wishes and dreams crashed into each other and we know what happens then. What does utopia do with people who enjoy conflicts, and me who suffers from conflict trauma?
Of course, we know that utopia is unobtainable and at best a vision but even so, it’s not a political strategy that can be applied to representational democracy. It’s an entirely different political structure, actually, it’s not politics in any respect because, as the French philosopher Jacques Rancière has taught us, politics is the manifestation of dissensus. Politics, not dystopia (whatever that now might be), is the obverse of politics, exactly because conflict, perforce, is non-existent.
The implementation of any political system, any form of governance, is inevitably totalitarian. For example, from now on, democracy for all. There can’t really be any exceptions, and every political system’s first incentive is to preserve its totalitarian capacity or eradicate anything or -body that isn’t included in “for all.” On a positive note, it’s that initial totalitarian implementation which makes politics possible, that offers a ground upon which to disagree, to have wishes and desires, practice difference and diversity, to struggle, suffer or simply live. Utopia is no exception the crux is just that it’s nothing else than totalitarian, all the time and in every respect, 24-7.
For utopia to fulfil its promises of an ideal world the price to pay is the erasure of any form of difference, including desire, wishes, love interests, individuality, personal aptitude, taste in music or preference for food or sexual partners. Utopia can’t have it. In utopia, everybody is 100% identical, every from of difference or differentiation is erased, and that includes everywhere, every day and every moment. Utopia equals the extermination of difference and time, full stop.
But what about a little bit or micro utopia? Sorry, utopia is on or off, it just doesn’t do grey scale. How would that look? A bit nicer, less long days, booze without hangovers, slot machines with repeated jackpots, kids that pick up themselves from kindergarten? Great but somebody still has to clean up, hang the laundry, get fired, endure a long-term prison sentence, charge you for a pack of Marlboros at the alimentation generale or print the money?
Micro utopia? What’s that supposed to be? The little utopia experienced when I pick up the newspaper from my newly ordered Amazon letterbox, the rush when I’m told my show is sold out. Just asking? Utopia has nothing to do with feeling good or awesome, in fact, feelings of any kind are also gone.
An option in order to bypass the micro utopia issue is turning to the adjective form, utopian, but that’s obviously approximately as visionary as Zaha Hadid. It’s utopia from the perspective of liberal democracy, global capitalism, maintained forms of subjectivity and good deals, and has nothing to do with utopia.
It’s fascinating to encounter how people imagine an ideal society. More than too often it seems, at least in the West, to resemble the late 50s, except that the 70% of the workforce that was locked up in factories seems to have the day off and everybody is white, straight and middle-class. It’s never 1783 and pissing rain or Belgrade, never mind Buenos Aires on the 29th of June 1986. Our problem is that imagination is attached and dependent on knowledge, and therefore we can only create visions of utopia in regard to what we already know, from here and now. But utopia has nothing to do with imagination, instead whatever utopia could be is supplementary to imagination and is void of any causality to any world we can envision. In addition, since utopia only can exist through the eradication of difference, space and time, it must necessarily be one, and is therefore self-referential, has value only in respect of itself to itself and is autonomous.
Horizon and utopia, utopia and horizon are one and the same, and the same as one. The aesthetic experience, the encounter with art, is not utopian or like watching the horizon, but it is horizon and utopia. It’s a form of encounter that transcends space and time, that is one, has no value except to itself as itself and because it’s self-referential, and needless to autonomous, can be nothing else than overwhelming.
