THE LOGIC OF SENSATION

NAOMI BRENNAN3268935

Gilles Deleuze

Painting and Sensation

Sensation is that which is transmitted directly1.

It is experienced within diverse levels and different orders that allow for a truly felt experience upon the fl esh and the nervous system – that of the Figure which Delueze refers to within his essay Painting and Sensation. Deleuze offers a critique on the notion of sensation, guided by the comparative art of Paul Cézanne and Francis Bacon. Whilst Cézanne paints a world of landscapes and still life, Bacon approaches the artefact, portraits and the being, and yet both artists convey a felt sensation through the Figure, as opposed to abstract form which is addressed to the head, the brain.

Sensation is a subjective response felt through the entire Figure, abandoned of its organs and liberated from representation. It is what determines instinct at a particular moment 2. Deleuze continues to explain of the different levels of sensation acting in different orders; that they are not of different hierarchies as such, but exist as different orders of one and the same sensation 3.These levels of sensation are described as arrests or snapshots of motion that continue to recompose the movement 4 that is being felt as another level is introduced. However, it is important to understand that it is not movement that explains the levels of sensation, it is the levels of sensation that explain what remains of movement. 5

This leads to the discussion of invisible forces that are received and translated through an art piece.It is interesting to note that different means of art initiate a different transmittal of sensation, whether it be visual art primarily through the eye or music through the ear. This primary means of experiencing sensation may not only vibrate the experience on different levels, but may further carry the sensation to a secondary sense organ. For example, one who views an artwork will fi rst experience the awareness through the eye which may then be carried to the ear to produce music in response, or the nose that recalls a smell, or a taste, a touch. Deleuze explains that the different levels of sensation may also coexist with one another. They may also share the same primary sensory experience through the eye. A musician may see musical notes on a sheet of paper and read a most beautiful composition which then translates to sing inside their body, whereas a lay person may see the notes purely as shapes, circles and lines on a page as abstract form and disassemble them to create a visual artwork.This coexistence of levels can further be explained through invisible forces such as rhythm which touches the Figure fi rst; the fl esh, the nervous system. It is this invisible force that the artist must capture and offer to the viewer.

1. Gilles Deleuze 2003, The Logic of Sensation, “Painting and Sensation”, London: Continuum, p. 362. Ibid., p. 393. Ibid., p. 374. Ibid., p. 405. Ibid., p. 41

Brian Massumi

Of Microperception and Micropolitics

Affect is described as the felt moment of bodily moving on 1, a felt transition that leaves evidence and composes a memory, whether it be conscious or not. During his interview Of Microperception and Micropolitics, Brian Massumi discusses this notion of affect as an event. It is stressed that affect takes many forms, it is part of a series of repetitions, as the body is continually bound up with the lived past 2.

The event is described as a reactivation of the past in its course toward a changed future, cutting transversally across dimensions of time, the in-between 3. Massumi proposes that we start at this ‘in-between’, the middle of a region of relation (of body capacitation, felt transition, quality of lived experience, memory, repetition, seriation, inclination 4) to determine the potential of the future.

Potential wraps itself around affect, around the event, readily interrupted by shocks.Massumi emphasises that affect is inseparable from the concept of shock, or more specifi cally, the microshocks that populate every moment of our lives 5. These microshocks describe an interruption, a momentary cut, a shift of attention - Massumi’s use of the term microperception, as something unconsciously felt and registered only in its effect. In order for the shock to be consciously recognised, there must be a questioning of the cause of the affect, which in turn individualises and personalises the feeling as your own 6.

It is noted that affect must be complemented with a movement in or of the body. The body carries tendencies reviving the past and already striving toward a future 7. Massumi suggests that this feeling of transition from one power of existence to another can be reactivated in different series/ relations stimulated by memory. He continues to explain that there are different types of memory in relation to the past, present and future, the conscious and the unconscious. Unconscious memory moves from the immediate past to energise the immediate present, a readying of the future 8contributing to activating the event of lived experience. Conscious memory reaches back to reactivate the past. It can also take its path as a Kierkegaard memory whereby the limit point of a tendency contracted in the past is remembered and reactivated. Therefore, although Massumi states that we start the event in the middle, the in-between, if affect is induced by memory do we not unconsciously begin with the past?

1. Brian Massumi, ‘Of Microperception and Micropolitics, in Infl exions, online journal, no. 3, October 2009, p. 32. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., p. 58. Ibid., p. 7

Nigel Thrift

Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect

Affect is understood as a form of thinking1

Nigel Thrift offers a study on the term affect and how it may be defi ned of its process and outcome, in relation to our beings. Our bodies are largely understood as effects of the events to which their body parts respond and which they participate2, of which the fl esh, and in particular the face, is the greatest gesture of affective response.

So affect, defi ned as the property of the outcome of an encounter, takes the form of an increase or decrease in the ability of the body and mind alike to act3. Emotion is the most intense expression of affect; emotion is essentially the effect of affect. It is manifested particularly through facial recognition as the unconscious act of reacting/ responding to an event through expressions of the face speaks much louder than words; its effective translation becomes infectious towards one’s immediate company.

Thrift further comments on the great power of affect, its political awareness that may engineer and ultimately control the mind unconsciously; of sensation over mind. It is in this manner that we must seek for a method to control our affective response, to be aware of its state and its eruption within our bodies. However, Thrift provides an example of controlled affect through military training. Soldiers are trained to control their emotions and the impact of affect before it escapes the fl esh. Similarly, doctors and medical staff carry a sense of containment of an emotional response towards their patients. Is it then merely an issue of habit, of repetition and numerous encounters, to numb our emotive reactions? The media plays a large role in this area of repetition. The constant display of images, fi lm clips, conversation; the tragic event of September 11 for example, as the media constantly fl oods our lives with images and news of the twin towers until our emotional response rests upon a cyclic familiarity, and the pain is lessened. On the other hand, the constant release of affect may also be a dangerous action. When one experiences the ultimate affect of natural euphoria, the possibility of drug abuse may occur as one seeks to regain this experience artifi cially. We must therefore fi nd a middle ground upon which to control our emotions.

It is then questioned as to why affect is not considered within the urban planning of our cities. Thrift comments that context seems to be a vital element in the constitution of affect4; Affect as offering itself a powerful tool to connect with the individual, and form a greater community. A tool that may reach beyond our fl esh and engage with our sensate beings, to compose a city of great spatial affect, comfort and joy.

1. Nigel Thrift, ‘Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect, in Geografi ska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, Volume 86, Issue 1, March 2004, p. 602. Ibid., p.603. Ibid., p.624. Ibid., p.60

Michel Foucault

Of Other Spaces

Michel Foucault offers an explanation of the ‘site’ as defi ned by relations of proximity between points or elements 1. The site and its set of relations, whether it be ‘sites of transportation, of temporary relaxation, of closed or semi-closed rest’, composes the external space in which we live, a heterogeneous space 2.

Foucault speaks of a curiosity of certain sites that have a power of being in relation with all other sites, in that they may suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or refl ect 3. These spaces are categorised under two main types, ‘utopias’ and ‘heterotopias’.Utopias are essentially unreal spaces that represent a ‘perfected form’ of society. However, there also exists a ‘real’ space of enacted utopia Foucault describes as heterotopias; a placeless place, the virtual space 4, hidden or isolated, the recognisable absence, such is the mirror.

Again, Foucault classifi es heterotopias in to two main categories, ‘crisis heterotopias’ and ‘heterotopias of deviation’. Crisis heterotopias are privileged, sacred or forbidden places set aside for individuals in a state of crisis 5, during a state of diffi culty, trouble or danger. As these sites seem to gradually disappear within our society, they are replaced with heterotopias of deviation that house individuals whose behaviours are considered ‘abnormal’ within society. Such sites include rest homes, psychiatric hospitals, retirement homes and prisons.

Foucault continues to defi ne the six principles of heterotopias; as a universal existence, societal infl uence/ manipulation, contradictory sites, accumulating or temporal time, ritual of entry, and to create a space of illusion or as an-other real space.

The principle that interests me is the fourth, of ‘slices in time’. Described as either/ or, Foucault explains that there are heterotopias of indefi nitely accumulating time as opposed to heterotopias of transitory/ temporal time. Such sites include the library and museum in comparison to the festival and fairground, respectively.However, is it not possible for both ‘slices in time’ to exist simultaneously? – for example a heritage site ‘accumulating time’ as a museum of its remains, whilst occupying its present site usage for the ‘temporal time’ of a festival or fairground. The two heterotopias of time coinciding, acting in simultaneity. And to follow, the question of the affect that this twofold heterotopia has upon us and of which ritual of entry our senses then respond to fi rst, the past or the present, the accumulating or the transitory.

1. Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’ in Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, Spring, 1986, p. 23.2. Ibid., p. 233. Ibid., p. 244. Ibid., p. 245. Ibid., p. 24

enter

applause!

“Please remember when you get inside the gates you are part of the show” (Haris 1978: 144)

Tony Bennett

The Exhibitionary Complex

Please remember when you get inside the gates you are part of the show1

At the turn of the nineteenth century the public nature of the prison saw a shift towards a confi ned institution behind closed doors and its fortress-like walls, from the heart of the city to the suburban outskirts, while the exhibitionary complex of the museum contrasted this shift by transferring its objects and bodies from a private domain towards the greater public, locating its institutions at the centre of the city. This shift allowed a break down of its hierarchical positioning by allowing all classes of society to congregate under a single institution, a middle ground, responding to the problem of order by celebrating the nature of culture.

Bennett continues to note a shift in social regulation also. The public becomes visible to itself through self observation, borrowing Foucault’s idea of panopticism. However, within the exhibitionary complex the central position of the penitentiary’s watch tower is available to the public at all times2, combining the functions of spectacle and surveillance. Bennett describes this as a site of sight accessible to all; a society watching over itself. The Melbourne Open House is a contemporary example of this site as an event provided for the public surveillance of the city’s popular buildings and sites. The MOH allows the general public to observe the city’s architecture, accessing areas of buildings that are usually not permitted, understanding the operation and product of these buildings and the ability to ask any questions in regard to the building and its activity. This event illustrates the power of surveillance whereby the public is offered a sense of control over the city for the weekend, over-populating buildings that are usually restricted or private, surveying the city as the city surveys the public’s movement and attendance in return; to see and be seen, to survey yet always be under surveillance, the object of an unknown but controlling look3.

1 Tony Bennett, ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, London: Routledge, 1995, excerpt, p. 68

2 Ibid., p.69

3 Ibid., p.69

Michel Foucault

The Birth of the Prison

The gaze is alert everywhere1. From the end of the seventeenth century plague-stricken town towards the Panopticon establishment of the nineteenth century, Michel Foucault offers the important differences that mark the transformations of the disciplinary programme.

The plague was seen to give rise to disciplinary events of surveillance and control. In contrast to the great Confi nement of the individualised leper, separated and exiled from a ‘pure community’, the plague sticken-town introduced an arrest of a disciplined society through segmentations and ‘correct-training’ by controlling relations. It played upon hierarchy, observation and recording, as a town immobilised by the functioning of an extensive power2 that assumes above all individual bodies.

The mechanisms of power were again displayed in the Panopticon composition introduced by Bentham. Whilst the plague-stricken-town makes itself everywhere present and visible3, separating, arresting and immobilising the town, the Panopticon provides as a visibility trap; a dyad of seeing and being seen; he is seen but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication4. A ring of individual cells organised about a central watch tower, the Panopticon, described by Foucault as a ‘disciplinary machine’, is applicable to varying establishments; it is a type of location of bodies in space, of distribution of individuals in relation to one another, of hierarchical organisation, of disposition of centres and channels of power5 (of which can be implemented in hospitals, workshops, schools and prisons). The Panopticon plays upon an automatic functioning of power that places a constant pressure on the inmate through a state of conscious and permanent visibility; the power of the mind. It displays the power of observation and surveillance, offering itself as a ‘museum of human nature’. Here we see the relationship between the ideals of panopticism and the role of surveillance in Tony Bennett’s “The Exhibtionary Complex” (1995). Bennett speaks of a society watching over itself, constantly surveyed, self-watching, self regulating…self observation6. Foucault similarly makes note of a self-surveying institution of the Panopticon whereby there is a constant hierarchical observation; the guard over the prisoner, the director over the guards, the inspector (and society) over the director/ establishment.

It is argued that the simple economic geometry of the Panopticon can then replace the heaviness of the fortress-like architecture of tradition penitentiaries; that the Panopticon offers a lighter architecture based upon the effi ciency of power. But does this not then affect the penitentiary’s projection beyond its walls towards the ‘civilised’ public? Is not the heaviness, the darkness, the discomfort and negativity of the traditional prison an intimidating reminder to the public of societal offense and wrong-doing?

1. Michel Foucault, ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin, 1991, p. 1952. Ibid., p. 1983. Ibid., p. 2054. Ibid., p. 2005. Ibid., p. 2056. Tony Bennett, ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, London: Routledge, 1995, p. 69

Jan Verwoert

Exhaustion and Exuberance

zzz z

We have entered a culture where we no longer just work, we perform1.

Society has placed itself within a collective norm of constant performance, to say “Yes”, to act upon the “I Can”, to drive each individual to a point of exhaustion until the “I Can’t” can no longer be ignored. It is this pressure to perform that we are able to see that our state of exhaustion is a collective experience; the one thing we share –exhaustion – makes us an inoperative community, an exhausted community, or a community of the exhausted2. But why is it that our collective experience must happen at a point of exhaustion? Is there not a happier/ greater state of being that we are able to unite upon? A question of ethics is raised as to whether this performance is benefi tting ourselves or whether we are in fact so heavily caught up within this performance that we do not realise we are serving only another.

The “I Can’t” is seen by society as a weakness, an incapability, when in fact it is the “I Can’t” that demonstrates a strength and power to resist the mass. We must learn to act upon the resistance of the “I Can’t”, as this can often lead to a positive outcome elsewhere, not simply as a refusal of action to remove one from the event entirely, but a resistance in order to benefi t, encourage and effect another. The “I Can’t” allows us to perform without expectations, without the pressure of society, and to allow for personal development to take its course naturally. It is in this manner that we must realise that caring for the self is indeed caring for society. If our performance is seen as our most valuable asset within society, then is it not of great importance to prioritise our health and happiness in order to give back to society our best performance? However Verwoert notes that to reserve a part of your life for taking care of yourself has indeed become a radical thing to do because it effectively means you are taking yourself out of circulation3.

We need to choose to choose, to realise that we have an option and that we no longer need to perform under a disciplined society. We must learn to embrace the “I Can’t” in the key of the “I Can”4.

1. Jan Verwoert, ‘Exhaustion an Exuberance’ in Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, Sternberg Press, 2010, p. 132. Ibid., p. 70

3. Ibid., p. 584. Ibid., p. 28

Gilles Deleuze

Postscripts of Control Societies

Control societies are taking over from disciplinary societies1.

Since the eighteenth and nineteenth century, it seems we have found ourselves in the transition from disciplinary societies to control societies, as stated by Deleuze. Disciplinary societies describe the linear process of confi nement, from one enclosure/ institution to the other, from the home to school, to university, to work, and possibly the hospital and prison. Control societies offer a multiplicity, a diversity of individual choice that allows one to diverge off the disciplinary line, repeat processes or undergo new paths. Deleuze notes in ‘Postscript on Control Societies’, in disciplinary societies you were always starting all over again…, while in control societies you never fi nish anything2 (179)

Our current digital age composed of codes and passwords describe the efforts of a controlled society, in comparison to the individual’s signature and numbering/ placement within a mass of a disciplined society. We have entered into a consumerist society, of which Jan Verwoert highlights, to be founded on the principle of limitless choice. Our modern technologies such as the internet has become an everyday necessity that promises unlimited, built-in choice options for the individual. However, the irony found here exposes the underlying disciplinary work of the computer’s binary system, operating entirely on zeros and ones. In other words it is a system based on the constant repetition of either/or choices3 (verwoert 18) This highlights the computer’s false premise and the realisation that you are only able to select predefi ned options from the computer menu. Similar to our changing society, we may be in the midst of a controlled society, but there will continually be an underlying discipline that ultimately shapes the way we live.

1. Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on Societies of Control’ inNegotiations: 1972-1990, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. p. 1782. Ibid., p. 1793. Jan Verwoert, ‘Exhaustion an Exuberance’ in Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, Sternberg Press, 2010. p.18

Reinhold Martin

The Organisational Compex

Martin offers an explanation of an organistion as a pattern; a design, model or system used in repetition as an archetype. These organisations are infi nite within our universe and within the individual. Our bodies are composed entirely of patterns that require an output and input of our surroundings, and thereby act as a communicative system; a transmittable message of our personal identity1. These patterns are connected to social and technological networks, responding in feedback loops that encourage a system of self-regulation; a self-regulation that is characteristic of our present-day control society. The organisational complex also describes an architectural modularity that seems to provide “individual” choices; a system designed to offer variety by providing interchangeable elements in standardised formats. However if one looks closely at this system it reveals a façade of limitless selection essentially composed of prefabricated options, a capped fl exibility, of patterns within patterns, systems within systems, and networks of networks.

Our greatest development of the organisational complex is the Internet - a global system of interconnected computer networks. It is with this technological development that we have allowed our personal signatures to be replaced (although not entirely) by numbered codes and passwords to access our identities amongst numerous networks. Emailing accounts, membership accounts, institutional accounts, and the ever-popular Facebook account, whereby our identites are ‘protected’ by a simple coding system; a system that may experience corruption and fraud. Protection is then required amongst the system rather than the individual, amongst society and its network of networks. The machine therefore becomes what Martin terms as a communicative organism, regulating social relations ‘by supplementing human intelligence’. And comparative to the linearity of disciplined societies as discussed by Deleuze, these machines create connections that permit, regulate and respond to informational fl ows in all directions; a fl exibility distinctive of a control society.

1 Reinhold Martin, The Organisational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space, Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003.

Michel Foucault/ Susan Stewart

The Order of Things/ The Miniature

Why must we constantly feel the need to place an order upon things? It seems human beings fi nd comfort in the ordering system as a means by which to make sense of the universe we live in. A structure, a grid, an organisation, an institution; our understanding of order and reasoning is infl uenced by the varying institutions we partake in, whether it be the university, the workplace, the hospital, family, friendship, marriage, etc.

The human sciences is a signifi cant example of placing an ordering system on the universe, to defi ne life through a microscopic lens only to discover further orders within orders. A constant infi nity of epistemology. Through the analytic microscope, we fi nd a miniature network of organisms that represent our universe at large. Within Susan Stewart’s chapter of The Miniature1 we fi nd again a means by which to make sense of our world through representation. Stewart provides us with examples of models, the miniature book, the toy, the miniature adult/ the child, the dollhouse; all these modes of representation places the viewer in exteriority, causing one to refl ect upon the subject familiar to us and once again seek to make sense of the universe we live in.

No direct answer is given and/ or can be given, as suggested by Foucault in The Order of Things2. The ordering of things is constantly shifting from one period to another; an underlying episteme that seems to guide scientifi c discourse. We then seek to rearrange this order, to escape the habitual and the routine, to step outside of the grid and look at the subject from a different perspective. But we can only step outside this grid if there is certainty of a grid to begin with, and to acknowledge you are exterior to the grid only confi rms your existence within the grid prior. To rearrange order brings us back to Deleuze’s ‘Control Societies’; the ability to implement a power and logic upon the familiar and unfamiliar.

However we should not try to fi nd an origin of the human sciences, a single point or treatment at the same level, but acknowledge its complexity and approach it with different methods and at different levels; to investigate the ordering system and how/ why it is implemented within our every day.

1 Susan Stewart, ‘Part 2: The Miniature’, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993.2 Michel Foucault, ‘Preface’, in The Order of Things, London: Routledge, 1970.

Gilles Deleuze 2003, The Logic of Sensation, “Painting and Sensation”, London: Continuum

Brian Massumi, ‘Of Microperception and Micropolitics, in Infl exions, online journal, no. 3, October 2009

Georges Teyssot, ‘The Mutant Body of Architecture’ in Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofi dio, Flesh: Architectural Probes, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994.

Nigel Thrift, ‘Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect, in Geografi ska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, Volume 86, Issue 1, March 2004

Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’ in Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1, Spring, 1986

Tony Bennett, ‘The Exhibitionary Complex’, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, London: Routledge, 1995

Michel Foucault, ‘Panopticism’ in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin, 1991

Jan Verwoert, ‘Exhaustion an Exuberance’ in Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, Sternberg Press, 2010

Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on Societies of Control’ inNegotiations: 1972-1990, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995

Reinhold Martin, The Organisational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space, Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003

Susan Stewart, ‘Part 2: The Miniature’, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993.

Michel Foucault, ‘Preface’, in The Order of Things, London: Routledge, 1970.

Gregory Seijworth and Melissa Gregg ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’ in Gregory Seij-worth and Melissa Gregg eds. The Affect Theory Reader, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010.

Bibliography