Philosophy on the Catwalk: In Praise of an Exterminating Angel Dressed in Lambskin

Model wearing an Emilio Parka and Ezio Trousers by Loro Piana

loropiana.com [1]

 

It takes a lot of courage to sail gaily, in super-soft shearling, 

right in the teeth of dreary convention. [2]

 

 

Nobody denies that we wear clothes for three very obvious reasons: firstly, to cover up our nakedness; secondly, to protect us from the elements and, thirdly, for purposes of ornamentation. 

 

But these aren't the only reasons and only those with very practical minds who always wear sensible shoes and keep their spending in line with their income, would fail to appreciate that dressing up is "an act of meaning beyond modesty, ornamentation, and protection" [3]. 

 

In other words, wearing clothes is a signifying activity and that's where its importance and real interest lies - particularly when the clothes in question are haute couture, rather than merely mass produced and ready-to-wear [4].

 

For within the world of high-end fashion, the frenzied play of signifiers is taken to the extreme; i.e., to the point of enchantment at which systems of reference begin to break down. In this manner, writes Baudrillard, the very logic of the commodity is abolished and there is "no longer any determinacy internal to the signs of fashion, hence they become free to commute and permutate without limit" [5]. 

 

This rupture of referential reason goes beyond the collapse of all values into the market and the sphere of commodities. When fashion becomes an art, then it transports us into another world entirely; one in which nihilism is consummated and we become (as Nietzsche would say) like the ancient Greeks; i.e., superficial out of profundity and full of the courage to remain at the surface, the fold, the skin; to adore appearance and believe in forms [6].    

 

Those who fail to appreciate this - who don't enjoy the absurdity of fashion; the frivolity and immorality "which at times gives fashion its subversive force (in totalitarian, puritan or archaic contexts)" [7] - will never understand why a young flâneur strolling through Soho in an outrageously expensive outfit made of shearling possesses the beauty an exterminating angel ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Loro Piana is an Italian luxury fashion brand, founded in 1924 by Pietro Loro Piana, and based in Milan. Initially known for its cashmere, vicuña, linen, and merino fabrics, the company has expanded to design knitwear, leather goods, footwear, fragrance and related accessories. Since 2013, the company has been majority-owned by Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the French multinational fashion conglomerate.

      If any wealthy readers fancy sending me the money, I will happily make the outfit pictured here my winter look for 2024/25. The hay-coloured Emilio Parka, crafted from shearling, costs £10,755; whilst the matching Ezio Trousers, in a creamy cashmere colour but also made from finest lambskin, are priced just over £7,000.        

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing a line by D. H. Lawrence, in 'Red Trousers' (1928). See his Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 138.

 

[3] Roland Barthes, 'Fashion and the Social Sciences', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, (Berg, 2006), p. 97.

 

[4] I'm using the term haute couture in a broader contemporary sense, rather than with its strict 19th-century French definition; i.e., to refer to exclusive creations by the world's leading designers, made with high-quality, rare fabrics and crafted with meticulous attention to detail by skilled artisans, but not necessarily made to order by private clients or stamped with the official seal of the Paris Chamber of Commerce.

 

[5] Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, by Iain Hamilton Grant, (SAGE Publications, 2007), p. 87. 

 

[6] Nietzsche, Preface (4) The Gay Science (1887).  

      We might note that Baudrillard is sceptical about this. For whilst he speaks of the charm and fascination of fashion and welcomes the resurrection of forms, he dismisses fashion's revolution as innocuous and rejects the idea that it recovers the superficiality that Nietzsche discovered in the ancient Greeks: "Fashion is only a simulation of the innocence of becoming, the cycle of appearances is just its recycling." Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 89.

      In other words, fashion's passion for artifice and for empty signs and cycles - for making the insignificant signify - may be genuine, but it lacks symbolic radicality and only announces the myth of change. 

 

[7] Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death (2007), p. 94. 

The Vivienne Westwood Story: Will It All End In Tears?

Palace X Vivienne Westwood (Autumn 2024)

Click here and/or here for more details. 

Photo by Shoichi Aoki.

 

 

I. 

 

It's exactly two years ago today that the 81-year-old British fashion designer (and cultural icon, etc., etc.) Vivienne Westwood died, peacefully surrounded by her family, in Clapham, South London [1].

 

But it didn't take 24 months for the (all-too-predictable) falling out between the Vivienne Westwood label in the red corner and, in the blue corner, the Vivienne Foundation, as the former's commercial interests and the latter's values soon came into conflict.

 

 

II. 

 

According to the Foundation - a not-for-profit organisation established to protect the legacy of Dame Westwood and to create a better society [2] - the fashion label based designs for a sell-out collection in collaboration with the uber-trendy skateboard brand, Palace [3], on her extensive archive without any consultation [4].

 

The row, which erupted in October of this year, resulted in Cora Corré - Westwood's granddaughter - resigning her role as campaigns manager at the fashion label, claiming that her grandmother would not be happy with the way the company was being run and calling for the removal of the CEO, Carlo D'Amario, after Westwood's close and trusted friend, British designer Jeff Banks, was forced out of his role as a director of the company in July [5]. 

 

What Cora and her father (Joe Corré) now think of Andreas Kronthaler, Westwood's (third) husband and long-time design partner - a man who supported the ousting of Banks whilst securing his own position as creative director at the fashion brand and personally approving the collaboration with Palace - I don't know (and wouldn't like to speculate).  

 

As to what I think ... 

 

Well, to be honest, I'm almost beyond caring and can't take either the Vivienne Foundation or the Vivienne Westwood fashion label very seriously. Indeed, one is almost tempted to echo Shakespeare's Mercutio and wish a plague on both their houses!

 

For ultimately, I find the manner in which Malcolm McLaren has had his seminal role downplayed in the official Westwood history more of a concern [6].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See my personal recollection of Westwood, published on 30 December 2022, to mark her passing: click here. 

 

[2] How does one create a better society? Well, according to the Vivienne Foundation, one must: halt climate change; stop war; defend human rights; and protest capitalism. 

 

[3] Palace is a London-based skateboard brand established in 2009, founded by Lev Tanju and Gareth Skewis, and very popular within the urban streetwear community. The collaboration with Vivienne Westwood was born, apparently, from the subversive spirit that both brands share and has culture and humour at its heart.

 

[4] Westwood transferred all of her creative design and property rights to the Vivienne Foundation, which she established in collaboration with her sons and granddaughter, in 2019.  

 

[5] In a post published on Instagram (22 Oct 2024), Ms. Corré writes: 

      

"There has been much confusion around my current role within the Vivienne Westwood company. Although, the company bares my grandmother's name, I do not feel at this time that it reflects her values.

      

Vivienne taught me to always stand up for what is right and I want to stay true to that. She created the Foundation in 2019 to pursue her activism outside of the constraints placed on her by the managing director of the company. 

       

Due to a breakdown in relations between the Vivienne Westwood company and the Vivienne Foundation, my role within the company has become untenable.

      

Moving forward, I will focus my energy on honouring my grandmother's legacy through the Vivienne Foundation and continue the work that was so important to her." 

 

[6] McLaren rightly felt that his contributions to fashion history were overlooked or downplayed. 

       One might remind readers, for example, that he was not properly credited for his work on the V&A Westwood retrospective in 2004 and that his name is often removed from archival documentation and photos. Even after taking legal action to correct omissions and inaccuracies, the official V&A catalogue remains an unreliable record of events from the days when he and Westwood were partners. 

      Sadly, the fact is that the fashion industry and media almost entirely buy into the idea that Vivienne was the creative visionary and Malcolm merely an entertaining charlatan of some kind; similarly, there are those within the music business who maintain that Johnny Rotten was the gifted genius behind the Sex Pistols and that McLaren was merely a manager.       

Jean Baudrillard: the Marmite Philosopher

Love Him or Loathe Him ... Here's Jean Baudrillard - 

the Marmite Philosopher 

(SA/2024)

 

 

I. 

 

In response to my Boxing Day post - click here - an anonymous correspondent writes:

 

Even a plate of cold turkey leftovers is more digestible than the turgid (if for a time fashionable) nonsense that Baudrillard passed off as philosophy and which only pretentious idiots - such as yourself - continue to take seriously. 

      Sokal and Bricmont were spot-on to describe Baudrillard and those figures often associated with him - I won't designate them as thinkers - as intellectual imposters whose confusions, fantasies, and postmodern jargon for a time brought philosophy into disrepute and damaged the minds of generations of students. 

      As the above rightly conclude: 'When all is said and done, one wonders what would be left of Baudrillard's thought if the verbal veneer covering it were stripped away.' [1]  

 

If this email is anything to go by, it would seem that the Christmas spirit doesn't last long; one wonders what would remain of my correspondent's argument if the vitriolic veneer were stripped away. 

 

 

II.

 

Of course, the above - aligning himself with the unfunny double act of Sokal & Bricmont - is not the first and won't be the last person to be triggered by Baudrillard, who is, we might concede, something of a Marmite philosopher; i.e., a divisive and polarising figure and thus something of an acquired taste.

 

Indeed, even those thinkers who emerged out of the same philosophical background - and with whom he is often categorised - often found his vision of contemporary culture as cynical and overly pessimistic; i.e., one that offered no critical solutions and seemed to render direct (political) action impossible.

 

He was, they said, merely a bleak fatalist trapped inside his own ideas and, according to Sylvère Lotringer, during the mid-late 1970s Deleuze quietly let it be known around Paris that he considered Baudrillard to be the shame of French intellectual life [2].  

 

Despite this, here we are at the fag end of 2024 and I find that just as I prefer cool memories to cold turkey, so I'd sooner spend time reading Baudrillard than M. Deleuze; a philosopher whom everyone seems to love and have acquired a taste for these days (apart from my Sokal & Bricmont quoting correspondent of course).     

 

Notes

 

[1] My correspondent is referring to the book by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures (Profile Books, 1998). The line quoted is the closing sentence of the chapter specifically written on Baudrillard (chapter 8). The book was first published in French as Impostures Intellectuelles (Editions Odile Jacob, 1997). 

 

[2] See Sylvère Lotringer, 'On Jean Baudrillard', in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 6, Number 2 (July, 2009): click here. 

      Lotringer explains how the publication of Baudrillard's Forget Foucault (1977) not only anatgonised the subject of the essay, but Foucault's close friend Gilles Deleuze and that whilst the work made Baudrillard (in)famous on the one hand, it got him excommunicated from French intellectual circles on the other.

 

Boxing Day with Baudrillard

Cold Turkey with Jean Baudrillard 

(SA/2024)

 

 

Boxing Day or not, if given the choice between a plate of cold turkey and a book of cool memories, I think I prefer the latter. 

 

In other words, better fat-free Baudrillardian fragments and scattered thoughts, each existing perfectly in its own singular and symbolic space, than Christmas day leftovers. 

Note: Click here for a follow up post addressing a criticism of this one ...

Darkness On Christmas Day: Notes on Arthur Koestler (Overrated Novelist, Parapsychologist, Alleged Rapist, etc.)

Arthur Koestler (1905 - 1983)

Photographed by Ida Kar (1959)
National Portrait Gallery

 

Nobody can write guiltlessly ...

I. 

 

There are some books which I have read once and then never felt the need to return to: Darkness at Noon would be one such novel, for example ...

 

Although originally written in German, the first published edition of Koestler's dystopian masterpiece - and, to be honest, pretty much the only novel he is now remembered for - was the poetically titled English translation of 1940 [1]. 

 

In brief - as I imagine most readers will be familiar with the work - Darkness at Noon is the story of an old revolutionary (Rubashov) who is arrested and imprisoned by the Party he served so loyally and tried for treason by the State he helped to build. 

 

Although the novel doesn't say so, it's clearly set in the Soviet Union and Number One is obviously Uncle Joe. For by the end of the 1930s, Koestler, like his good friend George Orwell, was bitterly disillusioned with the communist ideology he had once passionately embraced [2]. 

 

Critically acclaimed at the time - and overranked ever since on lists of great English-language novels of the 20th-century - Darkness at Noon provides a grimly fascinating insight into the revolutionary politics of the period and the authoritarian mindset. But, I still think that - like the more allegorical Animal Farm (1945) - having read it once, there's no real reason to go back and read it again.  

 

I mean, we all get the central idea: it's not much fun living under totalitarian regimes; be they political or theocratic in character. Even D. H. Lawrence - who was certainly a long way from being a liberal - came to this conclusion having arrived at his own dead end in The Plumed Serpent (1926): click here.   

 

II.

 

I have, however, other reasons for not wanting to re-read this novel; reasons that are more to do with my dislike of Koestler the man, rather than disinterest in his fiction ...

For one thing, it was alleged in David Cesarani's 1998 biography [3] that he was a serial rapist [4]. And, for another, Koestler was also something of a crackpot or, if you prefer, a parapsychologist; i.e., the sort of person who believes (without evidence) that there is real evidence for phenomena such as extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, and telepathy; the sort of person who also insists that every coincidence is meaningful (or synchronistic). 

 

Koestler's fascination with the paranormal permeated much of his later writings; see, for example, The Roots of Coincidence (1972), in which he argues that certain (occult) phenomena will never be explained by orthodox science which, in his view, is essentially - and dangerously - reductionist [5]. 

 

After his suicide in 1983 [6], Koestler left the bulk of his estate to the promotion of research into all things spooky (and pseudo-scientific) through the founding of a chair in parapsychology at a British university. 

 

Unfortunately, the trustees of the estate had difficulty finding a university willing to establish such a chair: to their credit, Oxford, Cambridge, King's College London and UCL were all approached and all refused. However, to their shame, the University of Edinburgh decided to grab the money on offer and agreed to set up a chair in accordance with Koestler's request [7]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] Interestingly, the German manuscript was lost for 75 years after having been translated into English. Thus, all versions of the work prior to 2015 - including the 1944 German edition produced by Koestler himself - were based on the English translation published by Macmillan.

      As for the title, Darkness at Noon, this was chosen by the British sculptor Daphne Hardy - Koestler's girlfriend (and translator) at the time - after the publishers rejected his original title, 'The Vicious Circle'. The phrase is adapted from the Book of Job: "They meet with darkness in the day time, and grope in the noonday as in the night." (KJV 5:14)

 

[2] Just to be clear on the extent of Koestler's committment to Marxist-Leninist ideology, in the early 1930s he left Germany and moved to the USSR, living for a time in Ukraine, which was then enduring what is known as the Holodomor (1932-33); a man-made famine - most likely engineered at Stalin's behest for political reasons - that killed millions of people. 

      Despite witnessing terrible scenes, Koestler endorsed the official Soviet version of events and claimed that the starving were workshy enemies of the people. He only resigned his membership of the Communist Party in 1938.   

 

[3] David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (William Heinemann Ltd., 1998). 

 

[4] To be fair, this has been challenged by later authors, including Michael Scammell in his 2009 biography, although even he concedes that Koestler could be sexually aggressive towards women and held firmly to the troubling view that 'without an element of initial rape there is no delight' in sexual relations (a remark made by Koestler in a letter to the woman who was to become his second wife). 

      See Michael Scammell, Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual (Faber and Faber, 2010); first published in the US under the title Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic (Random House, 2009).

      But see also David Cesarani's review of Scammell's biography in Prospect Magazine (24 Feb 2010), in which he continues to insist that Koestler was a voracious sexual predator with a penchant for using physical force to get his way: click here.

 

[5] That said, Koestler also argues that there are direct links between ancient forms of mysticism and modern physics - if only the physicists would open their eyes and look (and if only they would listen to what Jung has to say).  

 

[6] I've no issue with Koestler having the courage to top himself aged 77 in 1983; he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1976 and then, three years later, with terminal leukaemia. However, some worry that he may have unduly coerced his healthy and considerably younger wife, Cynthia, into killing herself so that he'd not have to face the end alone (and she'd not have to live without him). As the writer Julian Barnes says, even if Koestler didn't talk her into it, neither did he try to talk her out of it. This is another controversial topic amongst scholars who choose to study Koestler.      

 

[7] The Koestler Parapsychology Unit was established in 1985 at the University of Edinburgh. It aims to teach and conduct research concerning various aspects of parapsychology. The Chair is currently held by Professor Caroline Watt.

 

The Revenge of the Mirror People

Elissar Kanso: The Revenge of the Mirror People 

(Homage to Jean Baudrillard) [1]

 

'Behind every reflection, every resemblance, every representation, 

a defeated enemy lies concealed ...'

 

I. 

 

Christmas or not, I'm still thinking about mirror life rather than mince pies and mulled wine; i.e., that hypothetical form of life assembled from molecular building materials found on the left-hand path [2].

 

Whilst this alternative life form has not yet been synthesised, efforts to create mirror-image organisms are doubtless underway in secret labs around the world, despite grave concerns expressed recently by a broad coalition of scientists [3].

 

Recent advances in microbiology, make it almost inevitable that, sooner or later, someone somewhere will announce that they have used enantiomers (i.e., chiral reflections of the molecules necessary for life) to fully synthesise a cell. 

 

 

II. 

 

And, who knows, eventually they may even create a little mirror-image creature. For hypothetically, it may be possible to create a whole ecosystem - even an entire world populated with mirror people (what fans of Superman and Jerry Seinfeld would no doubt gleefully term Bizarro World).   

 

These mirror people would appear similar to us - but be opposite in every sense and every cell of their bodies. And so the question arises of how we'd regard our chiral twins: as beings upon whom to further experiment? As dangerous aliens or anti-kin to be confined on some distant planet? 

 

And if we did treat them poorly - just as we treat embryos and animals and those deemed racially inferior - would the time come when, one day, we witnessed the revenge of the mirror people ...? [4]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Elissar Kanso is a Lebanese-born artist and curator based in France. She is interested in ideas to do with distance and displacement.

      The Revenge of the Mirror People is a series of works consisting of recontextualised media images that are manipulated with digital technology in a manner that deprives them of their perfection, thus giving them back a degree of authenticity. Each image is then transferred from the computer screeen on to Plexiglass. It was submitted to the 'Deserting Reality' exhibition in Milan (2015): click here.

 

[2] As any occultists reading this will know, the left-hand path is Mme. Blavatsky's translation of the Sanskrit term vāmacāra and refers to a spiritual direction leading to a more dangerous form of knowledge than the right-hand path that leads to true enlightenment and moral perfection. 

      Those who follow the left-hand path are often prepared to transgress the codes of conduct and ethical practice that the majority subscribe to and do not accept that scientific research, for example, should always coincide with the interests of humanity or safeguard life on earth in its present form. 

[3] See the post on Torpedo the Ark entitled 'Homochirality: Reflections on Mirror Life' (21 Dec 2024): click here.

 

[4] According to Borges, writing in The Book of Imaginary Beings (1969), there was once a time when this world and the world reflected in mirrors were not, as now, cut off from each other and you could pass from one to the other quite freely. 

      But then the mirror people invaded this world, only to be defeated and imprisoned in their mirror world and obliged from that day on to only reflect the actions of those in this world, stripped of all freedom and autonomy. However, it is said that the day will come when the mirror people awaken once more, refuse their servitude, rise up, and burst through the looking-glass.

      Baudrillard calls this 'the revenge of the mirror people' and by which he refers to the return of otherness; i.e., of all forms "which, subtly or violently deprived of their singularity, henceforth pose an insoluble problem for the social order, and also for the political and biological orders". See Jean Baudrillard, The Perfect Crime, trans. Chris Turner (Verso, 1996), pp. 148-149.    

 

 

This post is for Elissar Kanso.

 

Homochirality: Reflections on Mirror Life

Above: Harry Worth demonstrating the comic potential of a mirror image in 1962 

Below: an illustration by N. Burgess showing the chemical structure of a naturally occurring 

amino acid with its mirror image, in Science vol. 386, issue 6728 (2024)

 

 

I. 

 

As if we didn't have enough to worry about, a concerned group of senior scientists are now warning of the unprecedented risk to life presented by research into so-called mirror life - i.e., the production of bacteria constructed from mirror images of molecules [1].

II. 

 

Apparently - and this is the first I've head of it [2] - all known life is homochiral and the molecules necessary for life "can exist in two distinct forms, each the mirror image of the other" [3]. 

 

Thus, whilst dexterous DNA is made from nucleotides on the one hand, sinister proteins are made from amino acids on the other. If you artificially reverse this process, you'll still produce life, Jim, but not as we know it [4].

 

 

III. 

 

Unfortunately, it seems that such experimental work could, potentially, put humans, animals, and plants at risk of deadly new infections, spread by synthetic organisms against which there would be no natural immunity. 

 

What's more, beyond causing lethal diseases, "researchers doubt the microbes could be safely contained or kept in check by natural competitors and predators" [5]. And don't think for one moment that present-day antibiotics will come to the rescue ...

 

 

IV.

 

Still, don't let any of this spoil your Christmas. 

 

Try to remember the old nihilist adage that, in the long term - whether mankind chooses to play fatal games with mirror matter, dark matter, or antimatter - nothing matters. The essential truth of the universe is ... extinction [6].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Concerns are raised in a 299-page report that is discussed in the journal Science, Vol. 386, Issue 6728 (Dec 2024), pp. 1351-1353. Click here to read online. Those who wish to plough through the full report will find it in the digital repository at Stanford: click here.   

 

[2] Despite my never having heard of mirror life until a few days ago, it seems that the possibility of such was already being discussed by Louis Pasteur back in the mid-19th century.

 

[3] Ian Sample, '"Unprecedented risk" to life on Earth: Scientists call for halt on "mirror life" microbe research', in The Guardian (12 December, 2024): click here. 

      

[4] It is unknown whether homochirality emerged before or after life; whether life must have this particular chirality; or indeed whether life needs to be homochiral at all. 

 

[5] Ian Sample ... The Guardian (12 Dec 2024).  

[6] As Nietzsche reminds us, even human knowledge and intelligence is only a passing phenomenon that arose by chance on a planet revolving around an average-sized star in a remote corner of the universe. Eventually, the star will die and so will the clever animal Man. In other words, even mind won't matter in the long run. 

      See Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', essay in Philosophy and Truth, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, (Humanities press, International, 1990), p. 79. 

 

 

For a further reflection on mirror life - with reference to the revenge of the mirror people - please click here.

Philematology: On Kissing and Cannibalism

Daniel Silver: Kissing (2024) [1]

Statuario Altissimo marble and bronze,

with a stainless steel baseplate

 

I. 

 

It wasn't until I saw Daniel Silver's sculpture of bronze lovers "'stuck together like two jujube lozenges'" [2] that I realised the full horror of an oft-quoted remark made by Georges Bataille: 

 

A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism ...

 

 

II. 

 

What this means is that there's an accursed link between eating and eroticism. 

 

For consumption, like sex, is a way in which separate beings not only communicate, but fatally come into touch, enabling the self and non-self to bridge their discontinuous existence as individuals [3].  

 

Or, to put it another way, sexual desire that drives us to press lips together and insert tongues in mouths (and other bodily orifices) and the voracious desire to devour the other, are as closely connected as Eros and Thanatos in a general economy in which non-productive expenditure (via acts that often violently transgress social norms) is key.    

Herman Hupfeld may insist that "a kiss is just a kiss" [4], but, as a matter of fact, nothing is ever so innocent or free from context (i.e., a whole network of meaning and significance). 

 

 

III.

 

Apparently, anthropologists disagree on whether kissing is instinctual or an example of learned behaviour. 

 

Those who favour the former point to the fact that other animals appear to kiss (whilst ignoring that not all humans engage in the activity) [5]. 

 

Those who favour the latter, argue that kissing in its modern (romantic) form has evolved from activities such as suckling or premastication in early human cultures [6] and there is certainly evidence to support the claim that cataglottism [7] has developed from mouth-to-mouth regurgitation of food - or kiss-feeding - either from parent to offspring, or between lovers.

 

 

IV.

 

It might be noted in closing, that man's will to merger or primal unity - be it via the sexual penetration of a lover's body or the consumption of their flesh - is what some describe as a death instinct, seeing as it conflicts with the "central law of all organic life"; namely, that each organism is "intrinsically isolate and single" [8].  

 

The problem, of course, is that another vital law is that we need and desire one another; that each organism only thrives via intimate contact with others.  

 

Fortunately, coition is only ever a coming-close-to-death; a meeting but not a mixing of separate blood-streams. There is no real union during sexual intercourse and, once the crisis is over, the sovereign individuality of each party remains intact. 

 

However, that's not the case in cannibalism, or what might be called a hard-vore scenario, wherein at least one party is going to be semi-digested and certainly won't be able to enjoy a cigarette afterwards as a singular being.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Daniel Silver's Kissing (2024) - in part inspired by Constantin Brâncuși's famous sculpture, The Kiss (1907-08) - features in his Uncanny Valley exhibition currently showing at the Frith Street Gallery (Golden Square, London), until 18 January 2025. The photo is by Ben Westoby, courtesy of the artist and gallery. For more details visit: frithstreetgallery.com

 

[2] This humorous remark is made by Rawdon Lilly in D. H. Lawrence's novel Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 91.

 

[3] See Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Vol. I, trans Robert Hurley, (Zone Books, 1988). Readers interested in Bataille's interesting (somewhat idiosyncratic) take on death and sensuality might also like to see his work entitled Erotism, trans. Mary Dalwood (City Light Books, 1986). It is also available as a Penguin edition entitled Eroticism (2001).

[4] Herman Hupfeld (1894-1951) was an American songwriter, whose most notable composition was 'As Time Goes By' (1931), which featured in the 1942 film Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz), performed by Dooley Wilson as Sam. The line quoted here is taken from the song. 

 

[5] I'm pretty sure that Heideggerians would protest that although many other animals exchange what appear to be kisses of affection, they are not kisses in the full sense (that kissing is something that only human beings can fully experience due to our ontologically unique status). 

[6] Another theory suggests that kissing originated during the paleolithic era, when cavemen would taste the saliva of females in order to determine whether they would make a healthy mate (or perhaps a hearty meal).

 

[7] Cataglottism - more commonly known as French kissing - involves extensive tongue activity in order to induce sexual arousal and not merely the pressing together of lips. 

      As Freud rightly says, it is strictly speaking a type of kinky deviation from normal sexual activity, even if no one acknowledges or rejects it as such. See his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1920), in which he writes: "Even a kiss can claim to be described as a perverse act, since it consists in the bringing together of two oral erotogenic zones instead of the two genitals."

      Later, Freud comments on how strange it is that the lips have such erotic value amongst lovers - including the most sophisticated ones - in spite of the fact that (technically) they are not sexual organs, but constitute the entrance to the digestive tract. 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Edgar Allan Poe', Studies in Classic American Literature, Final Version (1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 67.

        

 

Further reading: those who are interested in this topic might like to see Ursula de Leeuw's essay 'A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism: Julia Ducournau's Raw and Bataillean Horror', in Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, Volume 7, Issue 2, (2020), pp. 215-228. Click here for an online pdf. 

 

 

Free the Probe-Heads! Once More into the Uncanny Valley with Daniel Silver

Daniel Silver: Angel Dew (2024)

Statuario Altissimo marble and bronze (172 x 66 x 104 cm)  

frithstreetgallery.com

 

Beyond the face lies an altogether different inhumanity - free the probe-heads!

 

 

I. 

 

One of the things I like about Daniel Silver's Uncanny Valley exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery, is that it has given me a new appreciation for the astonishing beauty of that metamorphic rock formed from limestone or dolomite (and composed of calcite crystals) that the ancient Greeks called mármaros, with reference to its gleaming character, and that we know today as marble. 

 

Previously, I've expressed concerns with this material long-favoured by sculptors keen to work within a Classical tradition; concerns mostly of a political nature to do with marble's high-ranking status within what Barthes terms a hierarchy of substances [a].  

 

But, after seeing Silver's new works up close, it becomes impossible not to admire the grandeur of the marble sourced from an old Italian stone yard - particularly as Silver essentially leaves the rock as quarried, only lightly treating the surface or making sculptural marks upon it. 

 

Even without the bronze heads that sit atop them, one could spend many hours happily contemplating these rocks and their geo-aesthetic qualities.

 

But, talking of the metal alloy heads ...

 

 

II.

I'm pleased that Silver seems to privilege the head over the face; that he leaves the latter inscrutable and unsmiling. Because, like Deleuze and Guattari, I have problems with the face which has long held a privileged and determining place within Western art and Western metaphysics in general [b].

 

We like to think our face is individual and unique. But it isn't: it's essentially a type of social machine that overcodes not just the head, but the entire body, like a monstrous hood, ensuring that any asignifying or non-subjective forces and flows arising from the libidinal chaos of the latter are neutralized in advance. 

 

The smile and all our other familiar facial expressions are merely types of conformity with the dominant reality. If men and women still have a destiny, it is to escape the face, becoming imperceptible. 

 

And how do we do that? 

 

Not by returning to animality, nor even returning to the head prior to facialisation. We find a way, rather, to release what Deleuze and Guattari term têtes chercheuses ...

 

 

III.

 

The primitive head is beautiful but faceless: the modern face is produced "only when the head ceases to be part of the body ..." and is overcoded, as we say above, by the face as social machine in a process "worthy of Doctor Moreau: horrible and magnificent" [c].  

 

But we can't go back: neo-primitivism is not the answer. As Deleuze and Guattari note, renegade westerners will "always be failures at playing African or Indian [...] and no voyage to the South Seas, however arduous, will allow us to [...] lose our face" [188].

 

But perhaps art can help us here: not as an end in itself existing for its own sake, but "as a tool for blazing life lines, in other words, all of those real becomings that are produced only in art, and all those [...] positive deterritorializations that never reterritorialize on art, but instead sweep it away with them toward the realms of the asignifying, asubjective, and faceless" [187].

 

In other words, perhaps art can liberate probe-heads that "dismantle the strata in their wake, break through the walls of significance, pour out of the holes of subjectivity" [190] and steer inhuman forces and flows along lines of creative flight. 

 

 

IV.

 

To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that Daniel Silver is on board with this project; he's a self-confessed Freudian after all and what we're proposing here is very much anti-Oedipus. Ultimately, I fear there's something a little Allzumenschliches about his vision. 

 

But, you never know: he clearly finds heads fascinating and there's definitely the promise of something vital in his work; something that "exists between the human and non-human, intertwining rocks with bodies, minerals with flesh, embodying multiple temporalities" [d].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the post dated 1 December 2012 - Why I Love Mauro Perucchetti's Jelly Baby Family - click here. And see Roland Barthes, 'Plastic', in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (Paladin, 1973), pp. 104-106, where the phrase 'hierarchy of substances' is used.  

[b] See the post dated 13 September 2013 - The Politics of the Face - click here.

[c] Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1996), p. 170. Future page references to this text will be given directly in the post. 

[d] Paula Zambrano, Curator of Programmes at the Contemporary Art Society, writing in a short piece posted on 6 December 2024: click here. 

Readers might be interested in an earlier post published on Daniel Silver's Uncanny Valley exhibition  - From Victory to Stone (17 Dec 2024): click here. 

 

This post is for Poppy Sebire (Director of the Frith Street Gallery) for kindly sharing her insights into Daniel Silver's artwork. 

From Victory to Stone: Into the Uncanny Valley with Daniel Silver

Daniel Silver: Uncanny Valley (29 November 2024 - 18 January 2025)

Frith Street Gallery (Golden Square, London) 

Photo by Ben Westoby / frithstreetgallery.com 

 

I. 

 

Firstly - and I hope this doesn't seem too pedantic - but the concept of the uncanny valley does not refer to an underworld in which one finds oneself lost, as the press release for the new exhibition of work by British sculptor Daniel Silver at the Frith Street Gallery claims [1]. 

The uncanny valley - as I'm sure many torpedophiles will know - is a psychophysiological phenomenon (rather than a mythogeographical location, such as Hades) that refers to the unease and revulsion experienced by people when challenged by certain ambiguities, inconsistencies, and/or discrepancies (in voice, movement, or appearance) of the almost but not quite human [2].  

 

 

II.

 

Daniel Silver was born in London, in 1972, and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and The Royal College of Art.  

 

He describes his sculptural work as an attempt to combine ancient and modern elements whilst, simultaneously, communicating something of the timeless (and universal) character of humanity - not a project that I approve of, obviously.

 

For such idealism invariably means a retreat from external reality and the positing of a fantasy of inner life and essential being that ultimately serves to domesticate and contain mankind within some kind of crypto-theological or, in this case, a psychoanalytic narrative (Silver is a reader of Freud, so not surprising that he should think about the family ties between his pieces).  

 

Having said that, Silver does remain committed to celebrating the substantial nature of his figures, in bronze and large, heavy pieces of raw marble excavated from an old Italian stone yard, and it's this that most excites about the ten pieces in this exhibition (certainly more than the oedipal elements that he attempts to overcode the work with). 

 

Indeed, if I were a sculptor, I would be exclusively concerned with materiality and the fact that human biology is founded upon and born of geology, not Geist - i.e., that organic life evolved from inorganic rocks and minerals in a chemical process known as abiogenesis (now there's a title and a theme for a new exhibition) [3].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Click here to go to the Frith Street Gallery website where full details of Daniel Silver's Uncanny Valley exhibition (29 Nov 2024 - 18 Jan 2025) can be found and a copy of the press release downoaded.

 

[2] This term, uncanny valley, is an English translation (by the art critic Jasia Reichardt) of a phrase coined in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori - bukimi no tani. In order to avoid association with the earlier psychoanalytic concept of das Unheimliche (which Freud developed from the work of Ernst Jentsch), the phrase is sometimes alternatively translated in English as valley of eeriness (which is unfortunately not quite as catchy, even if arguably more accurate).

      According to Mark Fisher, the eerie is a distinct mode of strangeness that troubles the notion of agency and makes us question our own existence or uniqueness, making us feel anxious or apprehensive. It has very little to do with Freud's concept and should not be equated to the latter.    

      See Mark Fisher, the Weird and the Eerie (Repeater Books, 2016). And see my two-part post on this work published 10 October 2023: click here.   

 

[3] Paula Zambrano, Curator of Programmes at the Contemporary Art Society, anticipates what I'm suggesting here in her short piece posted on 6 December 2024 on the CAS website, writing that Silver's work "exists between the human and non-human, intertwining rocks with bodies, minerals with flesh, embodying multiple temporalities". That's spot on, I think. 

      Unfortunately, however, she ends her piece mistakenly claiming that the uncanny valley is "shaped by memories and desires" and "is the realm of the underworld as a metaphor for the unconscious", thereby falling into the Freudian trap that Mark Fisher warned against (see note 2 above).

      To read Zambrano's article in full, click here.    

 

 

Musical bonus 1: The title of Silver's exhibition - 'Uncanny Valley' - comes from a track by the singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn working in collaboration with author Robert MacFarlane, that was released as a single from the studio album The Moon Also Rises (Transgressive Records, 2023): click here.

 

Musical bonus 2: The title of this post - 'From Victory to Stone' -  comes from a track by the Scottish punk rock band the Skids, released as the second single from their debut album Scared to Dance (Virgin Records, 1979). Written by Richard Jobson and Stuart Adamson, it reached number 10 in the UK Singles Chart: click here.  

 

Click here for another post written on Daniel Silver's Uncanny Valley exhibition at the Frith Street Gallery (29 Nov 2024 - 18 Jan 2025).