Vertical Divider
|
“From Agamben to Saville's bellies. Transgression into the animal condition in post-humanity, primitive humanity and contemporary art”, Dialogue & Universalism, vol. XXIV, no 1/2014, p. 121-129. ISSN 1234-5792
Reprinted in: The Animals in Us - We in Animals, Szymon Wróbel (ed.), Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2014, p. 163-172. ISBN 978-3-631-65039-4 The reflection presented in this article in three distinct “steps of inspiration” (Agamben, ethnology and art) interrelate apparently distant spheres of problems and cultural phenomena. The starting point is given by Agamben’s idea of the apocatastatic “opening of the community,” overcoming the human condition defined by exclusion. The second move will explore an ethnological inspiration. We will reflect upon the archaic search of transcendence through the animal and in the animal, corresponding to the stage of man before the “invention of monotheism” which introduced the concept of divinity defined by reduction and abstraction. As a working hypothesis, it is assumed that the monotheistic concept of God radically driven away from any biological analogy precedes and shapes the concept of humanity defined by exclusion from the universality of biological life. We will also bring about some examples from the domain of the contemporary art which can be interpreted as an incentive to reopen the possibility of “transgression into animality,” overcoming the frontiers of the human condition in the direction of other forms of being.
"Ergonomika kultury. O zasięgu idei metadesignu” ["Ergonomics of culture. On the idea of metadesign"], Zeszyty Artystyczne, nr 22/2012, p. 13-20. ISSN 1232-6682
The idea of metadesign, inspired by the scientific research concerning emergence of complexity in nature and originally proposed by Andries Van Onck, is basically a reflection concentrated on dynamic interactions. The functionality is conceived as a primal form of interaction between man and inanimate object; it thus accentuates, f. ex., the affective dimension of the designed object. The aim of metadesign is to project dynamic systems that could develop and self-organize during the process of interaction with the users, instead of static, final-form products. The theoretical discussion is concentrated on such problems as co-creation and co-evolution understood as the process of adaptation of man to human artefacts. Thus, the problems of metadesign can be easily inscribed into a larger context of transhumanism, understood not as “designing a new humanity”, but as thinking about diverse forms of human socialization. The reflection of an anthropodesigner goes beyond the totalizing pretension, characteristic of modernity, and involves exploration of the potential of diversity and multiplicity, reducing the risks induced by erroneous solutions. The idea of creating self-developing, dynamic systems implies a determined conceptualization of the place of man in the world. It implies a return to a pre-modern stage of anthropocentric optimism, and at the same time it accentuates the proximity of art and science as complementary ways of exploring the reality. The visual returns as a cognitive modus operandi, at a high level of abstraction. The relation between the artist (metadesigner) and his cultural context is also redefined, opening a perspective of “designing a culture” as a self-optimizing system.
|