PHILLIP TRIBE: Thank you. Yes. Tonight, we drink champagne. I’ve added pomegranate seeds at the bottom of each of your glasses. They dye it pink over time. A fabulous way to get drunk. They give it a little crunch, a mysterious flavor. Am I right? Us exiles, like Persephone in Hades. Six in each flute. If this is fate, well – three-cheers. May we never leave the shadows. A toast, then. To the Shade.

This evening we bring together several speakers, all of whom you know. Our topic at hand is the void, and the potential it has to create Truth within Being. I’m talking now of a new conception of Truth, one of unbounded continuity, one that is infinite and unspeakable. Truth, in this model, in the sense of “radical newness,” is one completely opposed to its position in traditional Western metaphysics.

Conventionally, in the West, for the past two thousand years, at least, Truth has been placed at the top of a knowledge pyramid, as the logocentric goal of the philosophical hierarchy. The belief has been: if you pile up enough knowledge, meticulously enough, if it’s logically sound, etcetera, well, then you will be able to climb your way to Truth, like a rickety tower of Babel. Truth, in this sense, for the West, is a God on a throne. This was Plato’s legacy.

In The Republic, Plato establishes one of the West’s most foundational analogies with his allegory of the cave. To briefly summarize: men are chained against the floor of a cavern, their backs toward a fire, only permitted to stare at reflections against a wall. Eventually, one of the men breaks free, sees the reality of the situation, and exits the cave in order to gaze upon things as they truly are. In this story, the “sun” outside of the “cave” is meant to stand in for the transcendental signified, which is to say, Truth. In his allegory, the philosophers are the ones who leave this cave, see the Truth, and then bring its knowledge back to free the prisoners. The philosophers explain to them that such shadows are mere representations of reality, and that only under the light of the sun are things truly real.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Plato saw only sunspots. The wager of his story rests upon the hegemony of light – however, by staying within the logical space of this allegory we can mine for deeper layers of meaning. See, Plato could only imagine two choices: watch representations flicker on the cave wall, or exit the fissure completely and stare blankly at the thing itself, the sun. He was a moth to certainty. This made his shortsighted. He spoke only of light and nothing else. These two options, we now know, are only two-thirds of the story.

What does it mean to turn inwards, to dive deep? What unknowns are contained within this vast network of caves, at which humanity has only sat at the mouth? Us limit-seekers, we condemn the simplicity and safety of the sun, and instead, we turn inside ourselves, create a break with historical narrative, and plunge, unspeakably, into the black belly of the cave itself. That nadir contains Dionysian truth; we dance in its infinite darkness and sing out with the pain it causes us. Into its depths, that endless abyss, we jump with open wings. As only the void is infinite.

So let us speak of endless things. As it is we. We are the speleologists of radical Truth.

PHILLIP TRIBE: Only in the depths, yes. Well put: us, the philosophers of the Shade. The vanguard of a new Shadow-Truth. But that is now. Let us revisit, for a moment, Plato’s allegory. In order to glimpse the implications its narrative has given us.

Returning to the sun – if you follow me – that was the origin of the West’s metaphors for intelligence: enlightened, shed light upon, etc. Plato believed that truth was pure knowledge, ideas, or essences. In Republic he writes of a goodness that is the source of all things, a sun that gives light to the world. This sun is not only a sensible object in the physical world, but rather “the mind’s ascent to the intelligible realm.” This sphere can be thought of as the kingdom of pure forms, essences towards which all representations point. In his own words, the sun is, “the progenitor of light and the source of light, and in the intelligible realm it is the source and provider of truth and knowledge.”

Let us take this metaphor literally. If humans were to truly achieve presence with Truth, if they were to truly exit the cave and be present with this new source of light, then they must look directly at the sun. And anyone who’s been a kid knows, you’re not supposed to look directly at the sun. Why? Because it’s blinding.

JACQUES DERRIDA: Ah yes, the dream of death begins. It seems as if we’re saying, by analogy, that pure presence itself, if such a thing were possible, would be only another name for death. Presence before the sun, that is, as an absolute form of blindness. So, it seems, we need something, some sort of protection, or veil, against the terrifying, blinding, mortal threat of that which presents itself, which thrusts itself into view.

PHILLIP TRIBE: Possibly. Or perhaps that morbid fate is just the destiny we have been given by Plato, by the Western tradition. Is Truth only attainable in death? Let us turn to semiotics and its relationship to psychoanalysis in order to better understand the structural position around which such an idea circulates.

I will begin, briefly, by summarizing the model of negative difference that is the foundational concept of linguistics. Semiotics establishes that terms only exist in differential relationships, in being what others are not. If I may use the example Sebastian used in Minutor Sacer: the notion of “raw” is incomprehensible without its opposition to the term “cooked.” Without one of the two, there is only “meat,” and all distinction dissolves. “Raw” only exists in negative difference to “cooked,” and vice versa. Thus, this foundational gesture of distinction instantly creates a dichotomy of terms – the first moment is two. Everything within language exists this way. Following this rule, the post-modern subject becomes one of extreme separation.

The moment we become conscious, become aware of the visible and the linguistic world, we immediately separate ourselves from it. The world then becomes the object, or the other, in order for us to become the subject. Jacques – this is what you’ve described in your work on the “Mirror Stage,” correct?

JACQUES LACAN: Precisely. At the moment we organize our identity behind an image in the mirror (or the pronoun “I”) we are able to become a coherent whole, as if we, for the first time, are able to see ourselves as the other sees us. This coherent whole is made by means of separation. We apprehend the world in a perception that seems to concern the immanence of the “I see myself seeing myself.” The privilege of the subject seems to be established here from the bipolar reflexive relation by which, as soon as I perceive, my representations belong to me.

In the development of the human being, subjectivity is formed at this moment. This word “imaginary” is used to denote that it is both a fiction and an image. When we, as children, first see ourselves as the other sees us (whether it be figuratively in the gaze, or literally in the mirror), we instantly connect and organize our scattered psychological experiences behind the image we see. Thus, we are led, therefore, to regard the function of the mirror-stage as a particular case of the function of the imago, which is to establish a relation between the organism and its reality – or, as they say, between the inner world and the outer world. We bring the outside in, internalize the gaze of the other, and found our subjectivity upon the coherent image we see.

However, the moment we separate the other from ourselves with this constituting gesture (the negative difference of “I/you” being analogous to the “raw/cooked” binary), a hole is created in the psychological system. The world is thus separated from the subject. This is the foundational gesture of lack.

PHILLIP TRIBE: Lack, yes. If I may recap for a moment – the mirror stage is an allegory of sorts. An infant, so to speak, sees itself in the mirror for the first time. Two things happen. First, it is able to say, “That outline around my body, that is me. I have an image.” And what is contained, it realizes, within that outline is the “I.” This is the formation of identity. But at such great cost. Via negative difference, the moment we have an “I,” there comes a “you.” Suddenly, the moment identity is formed, the entire world of objects and others recedes from the subject into the infinite distance. Which is to say, the individual is only able to organize its coherence around the “I” by severing off everything else as “you.” This separation creates lack, a hole at the center of the psychological subject, a breach that can never be filled during conscious life; this lack can only ever be worked on by, say, desire, or by the drive.

JACQUES LACAN: The lack is the loss of the world. The loss of everything.

PHILLIP TRIBE: Yes, and spiritually, this system establishes a life-denying ethos: the only way to bridge the lack, decisively, is to exit language, to exit the system of difference itself. To leave distance would be to achieve presence. That is the Truth the West has sought. Presence before the sun is also pure presence, the bridging of the lack. And, as we have seen, and Jacques, as you have pointed out, this is only another name for death. For how else can language be lost? Or visual difference? Only in death does the world return to us.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Death is presence, sure. But what of Truth? Especially this, our radical conception of Truth as event. In this system, where does the void play? Perhaps structural linguistics isn’t the only hermeneutic for understanding Truth, since it doesn’t address the void as such? That being the case, let us search for another ontological language, one that isn’t founded upon negative difference.

For the rest of the evening, let us turn our gaze to mathematics.

ALAIN BADIOU: Mathematics is ontology. Strictly speaking, mathematics presents nothing – besides presentation itself. And language most certainly presents things. For instance, Phillip’s raw/cooked binary is specific to meat, a presentation of the world. It speaks to the “what” of the world. When dealing with the “what,” semiotics is necessary. However, mathematics doesn’t deal with the “what,” but rather the “how.”

Human beings understand their surroundings by differentiating objects and organizing them into sets. This shall be our definition of “knowledge.” In the set of meat, our raw/cooked binary constitutes two subsets, two “whats” of meat. Set theory mathematics, on the other hand, presents only the presentation of these sets, only the “how” of sets becoming subsets, regardless of content. Thus, set theory is a meta-presentation. This is what makes it a true ontology.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Set theory, then, provides us with a way of describing terms whose only characteristic is distinction itself. What this means is – language divides Being into sets by selecting elements and forming subsets, by creating distinctions based on nothing other than an arbitrary distinction: words. This is the negativity of semiotics.

However, set theory is a meta-hermeneutic, allowing us to understand how these distinctions are to be navigated while disregarding what they are. This “how” presents a radically new theory of existence. While semiotics needs negative difference to constitute elements, set theory only needs the notion of “belonging.”

In set theory, belonging is the only ontological verb, the only predicate for existence. For instance, consider the set of all galaxies. Any given galaxy within this set is treated the exact same as every other – nothing is defined against anything else. Unity is bestowed upon the multitude of elements that composite any given galaxy not by their own right, or by difference to something else, but simply because it belongs to the set of all galaxies. The multitude (our example galaxy) thus gains unity by belonging to the multiplicity (the universe).

ALAIN BADIOU: To say this in other words – to exist as a multiple is always to belong to a multiplicity. To exist is to be an element of. There is no other possible predicate of existence as such.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: This is a radical notion of collectivity, and a purely positive view of existence. This concept is enormous: belonging. An element only exists by belonging, and this before all else. Difference only becomes a factor when creating subsets. Subsets are made by selecting elements out of a set and placing them in brackets.

Jumping ahead, it becomes clear then, that a set must exist that does not yet contain difference, which is to say, no possible subsets. This is a crucial notion. To not have difference is to not have selectivity. The only way for this to be possible, for something to not have selectivity, so to speak, is for a set to have no members. This set with no members cannot have any subsets, and therefore cannot have any elements selected from it, and thus, by definition, doesn’t contain any form of difference.

Logically, the only un-selected set would be the null set, the empty set, the set with no members, which is to say – the void. This next part is critical to understand: the null set has no members, but it exists.

Let us represent this empty set with a single matheme – the barred sphere, or the circle with a slash through it:

∅

This image should be a familiar one, since it can be seen as a representation of our world, the Earth, as seen from space, with the Shade cutting across it like a tear.

PHILLIP TRIBE: This is incredible. The void exists without difference, a notion that shatters the negativity of semiotics, and one that creates new conceptions of identity through multiplicity.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Only through understanding the void are we able to achieve multiplicity, a positive and life-affirming process of Truth.

ALAIN BADIOU: All of set theory is founded upon the void. It is there alone that it is finally declared that, despite the prodigious variety of mathematical “objects” and “structures,” they can all be designated as pure multiplicities built, in a regulated manner, on the basis of the void set alone.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: I would hazard to say that everything is possible only because the void exists. The void set, because it exists yet has no members, shouldn’t be thought of as empty, but rather should be conceptualized as the “not-yet-selected,” as a multiplicity that has not yet entered into the realm of selectivity. This means that by not selecting anything, there can be no difference within the void – it is empty, but with absolute positivity.

This is why we must consider the void as the foundational not-yet-selected multiplicity; rather than a nothing, it is nothingness, phantom inconsistency, so to speak, the pure form of the unpresentable.

PHILLIP TRIBE: So, by having the void be the foundation of set theory, this leads me to believe that there can be no atom, no smallest point, no indivisible “one” that can be reached by means of division.

SEBASTION HEIM: Right. Our first term is empty – there is no originary “one.” Rather, the void is the multiple of nothing: pure multiplicity without selectivity.

ALAIN BADIOU: This “first” presented-multiplicity-without-concept has to be the multiple of nothing.

SEBASTION HEIM: This “multiple of nothing,” as Alain puts it, is not only the foundational term of set theory, but it is also contained within every subsequent set. Since the void set has no members, it must therefore automatically belong to every set – since there is no distinction with which to differentiate it, nothing can prevent its inclusion.

ALAIN BADIOU: To state this formula mathematically:

(∀β) [∅ ⊂ β]

Which reads, as predicted: of any supposed given multiple β, ∅ is a subset. The void is thus clearly in a position of universal inclusion.

PHILLIP TRIBE: If the foundation of set theory is the void, and if all sets stem from the void and are composed from the void alone, for this to be possible, then the void must be something infinitely positive, some sort of multiplicity with infinite, yet un-selected existence.

This is absolutely beautiful. But is it only poetry? How can such a notion of multiplicity ring true for the subject? Or is the void inconceivable by definition? Is it that we’re too immersed in negative difference to comprehend the infinite? I guess what I’m trying to ask is – how can a subject, a constituted subject formed, as Jacques outlined, by the mirror stage, how can this subject come to understand the status of the void?

JACQUES LACAN: By linking them directly. We can invoke the void in order to mathematically describe the process of identity construction itself. As I said earlier, with the Mirror Stage, before the subject defines himself against the other through negative difference, he first must organize his fractured psychology around an image – the image in the mirror, the “I,” the proper name. We shall call this realm the “Imaginary.”

After this image of unity is created, only then can the subject enter into the regulated system of language, of subjects and of objects – this realm, we shall name, the “Symbolic” – and this is precisely where the negative difference of semiotics begins for the subject, within the Symbolic realm.

However since the “individual” is an inconsistent multiplicity in and of itself, there is never any true unity, just a retroactive imposition of imaginary identity. The subject that organizes behind the “I” is always fractured, both mentally and physically.

PHILLIP TRIBE: For instance – where do we draw the line between “our body” and outside forces that “aren’t our body,” like reading glasses? Are bacteria “our body?” Are water molecules? Is the energy we consume ours? Similarly, where is our psychology “ours” and when is it genetic drive, ideological influence, subconscious representation? Suddenly, this line of  “our identity” becomes one of absolute indistinction.

JACQUES LACAN: That’s a perfect word for it: indistinction. Identity is always volatile. The subject is unstable, never a whole, never a totality. Let me paraphrase set theory by invoking the void with an equation:

∅ + 1

This formula of the “plus one” is the basis of all the theories of numbers. It is this question of the “one more” that is key to the genesis of numbers and instead of this unifying unity that constitutes two in the first case I propose that you consider the real numerical genesis of two.

The class which is characterized by no elements is the first class; you have one at the place of zero and afterward it is easy to understand how the place of one becomes the second place.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: So the subject, we’re numerically demonstrating, is never a whole, never divisible down to a “one” or a unity. One is always already “one more,” just as identity is always a retroactive “this is who I am,” always a work-in-progress.

Addition is not “1 + 1,” but rather “∅ + 1.” The very foundation of the subject, as Jacques stated, is the void, the empty set. But since the void is an unselected multiplicity, an organism attempting to exist in such a state would be psychologically incoherent, fractured, and disorganized – it wouldn’t survive. Thus, the organism constructs identity in order to give unity where there was none before – which has clear evolutionary benefit.

JACQUES LACAN: This is accomplished via repetition. The two does not complete the one to make two, but must repeat the one to permit the one to exist. Which is to say, a “plus one” to the void does not make two, but rather constitutes the one itself.

This procedure is also an erasure. Each subsequent “plus one” must erase its predecessor in order for the new trait to appear as if it were present in the subject all along.

ALAIN BADIOU: Which, in fact, it has been – but within the void as something unselected.

PHILLIP TRIBE: If I understand this correctly, we’re saying that each attribute, each “plus one” retroactively constructs unity where there was previously only the void. This is rendered palpable, for example, when a subject is, say, for instance, creating a resume – those bizarre documents of modern society. All resumes construct past experiences as “meant for this moment.” This creates a narrative – the narrative of identity.

What this means is – once narrativized in a resume, all past jobs instantly become situated as “preparation” for the new position. Whatever previous intention there may have been, it all gets effaced retroactively in regards to the newest “plus one.”

Sebastian – for example, how did you position your training as an astronaut when you were being considered as head of Unified Rail?

SEBASTIAN HEIM: As I’m sure you can expect. Something traditional like that, like the government’s space program, carries imbedded cultural meaning. The board read my time near the ring as a signifier for “resolve” and “loyalty,” especially towards the administration. They also saw it as a connection to the science of the Shade, giving me a unique perspective on the stakes of running the rails. Which is to say, they loved it. They thought it was a perfect background for the job, and eventually even saw it as a necessary attribute for the CEO, as in, “This is the only way to lead this company.” Ironic, now.

PHILLIP TRIBE: This is the reason we always seem “destined” for our identities: every subsequent “plus one” is read as the first term, since the void is never read. That is to say, each unique term, the “plus ones,” retroactively feigns unity where there is, in truth, only a void.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: And that, my friend, is the Truth. Behind all the “plus ones” sits a vast nothingness. There is only the void. There, deep in the caverns of our selves, it waits. It is the womb that we long for, the source of infinite connectedness that we look for in dreams, while on drugs, in the sexual act. In all of those cases, we see a stripping down of identity. Our goal: reach the void at the back of the cave. This is essential.

But how can we get there? Perhaps this process of “plus one” can also be reversed? Jacques, you’ve shown how “unique” identity is constructed by adding “one,” but a psychoanalytically aware thinker, maybe, could also reverse this formula to achieve a new image of thought, one that explodes out of logocentric ideology and spreads outwards in all directions.

See, I have something particular in mind. Gilles, from our conversation last night – please describe your equation for rhizomatic thought.

GILLES DELEUZE: Let me start with a metaphor: the dominant ideology of the modern era, as given to us by Plato, is tree-shaped. It’s a hierarchical system stemming from a central “one.” It is in this manner that Western thought has proposed the logos as its master, and everything else, all of material existence, must spread hierarchically down from it, just as all roots spread out from a single tree. This is the arborescent model, as in “tree-like.” Any source that builds up vertically, any system that has just one head, follows this form. The head is all that matters in the arborescent model. The rest is just roots.

In other words, I’m saying that our dominant ideology, just like identity, is constructed around the fiction of the “plus one” – a process in which the void is effaced in service to the unity of the head.

Okay. Now let’s think the opposite. What is a rhizome?

FELIX GUATTARI: The rhizome is a way to think multipley, a way to stay true to the void. As opposed to the tree, a rhizome is a plant with an underground, horizontal stem that sends up roots from its nodes. The roots and the flowers may die season to season, but the heart of the plant is safely contained and spread out beneath the surface. This notion of a non-hierarchical and de-territorialized root system, without beginning or end, just pure middle, is an elegant way to explain thinking multipley.

GILLES DELEUZE: The multiple must be made, not by always adding a higher dimension, but rather in the simplest of ways, by dint of sobriety, with the number of dimensions one already has available – always:

∅ – 1

We must subtract the unique from the multiplicity in order to construct the rhizome; we must write at “void minus one” dimensions.

A system of this kind could be called a rhizomatic.

PHILLIP TRIBE: Like the miners? Would you describe their system of organization to be rhizomatic?

FELIX GUATTARI: Yes. The miners were our first case study for understanding the rhizome. They exist in a way unheard of to Western thought, or to any human culture in general. They are truly a collective social entity. A natural multiplicity. As collective beings, as the extreme logic of the “minus one,” they are closest to the void. This is because of their absolute rhizomatic structure.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: So, like the miners, a rhizome is a multiple that is made up by un-making the work done by identity, by subtracting the “ones” that constitute unique totality. Achieving this rhizomatic image of thought, then, refutes the dominant ideology precisely because the rhizome is multiple. To be a multiplicity means to be non-hierarchical, to be centerless, headless.

Subtracting the “ones” of identity is a radical process of de-territorialization; it is an outwards movement. Instead of a “falling-into-line” with ideology, the rhizome proposes absolute beginnings and infinite becomings.

GILLES DELEUZE: When we studied the miners we saw them as an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General and without an organizing memory or central automaton, defined solely by a circulation of states. Learning from them shattered everything we knew about how a society organized, and what it could mean to live as a collective.

Living this way, to them – there could be no other way. The separation and difference of identity, to the miners, is a horrifying thought.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: They are like deep-sea currents in the void itself.

PHILLIP TRIBE: I do have to say: this is difficult work. A very thorny path to descend. See, for me, pure rhizome is near incomprehensible to understand, especially in relation to thinking – it is near impossible to even figure out what it is. The miners can exist in this state, sure, but can men and women? What is it about the Shade that has the potential to change Being?

To inform this, we should rather look at what this new image of thought can do for us. As in, perhaps, for our society, changing our identities in order to become a-centered and non-hierarchical could allow us to abolish totalizing (and totalitarian) power. If the logos is uprooted and de-territorialized, then the multitude is empowered as such. This could be an entirely new possibility for thought.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: As a methodology of thought, yes – that is a perfect way of putting it. As a non-signifying system, the rhizome could allow us to un-think negative difference. That’s a massive achievement.

Only here in the Shade are we able to think outwards from all points, multipley. The rhizome stretches out across the earth, all beneath the surface, like the endless Ikaros caves, those deep abysses. By subtracting the “ones” of specific identity, the rhizomatic multitude, like the miners, is able to think in common – of what is universally in common: the void.

PHILLIP TRIBE: Such a rhizomatic outlook is purely positive; it means, literally, thinking the multiplicity. Just like in set theory – where existence is belonging. The rhizome is positive. It is affirmative Being.

FELIX GUATTARI: Here in the Shade, we are all multitude.

GILLES DELEUZE: We are all rhizomatic.

ALAIN BADIOU: Let me add an important note: this notion of the rhizome is not blindly utopian, but rather, and simply, it is mathematical.

PHILLIP TRIBE: Speaking of math, I want to return to our equations for a moment. Gilles, as you said, the rhizome is achieved by a process of “∅ – 1.” When paired with our equation for identity, “∅ + 1,” we can see from their reflective similarity, that a narrative begins to emerge. By subtracting the “plus ones” of identity, the “minus ones” of rhizomatic thinking result in one thing: the void.

In so many words, the multiplicity that we’re hoping to achieve through thinking rhizomatcially is, in fact, the void itself. And as Jacques demonstrated, this void is the starting point of every identity – of all of us.

The question remains, however: is the image of thought presented by these equations enough to grant us access to the void? Is the rhizome even a feasible methodology? Starting from where we are, the subject, is it even possible to subtract identity?

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Without a doubt, but not in such a clear-cut manner. Let’s focus on the fact that the mathematical processes for identity construction and rhizomatic thinking are both founded on the void. The key to grasping this overlap is to understand the operation of the count.

ALAIN BADIOU: Quite simply, the nothing is the operation of the count. But how, you ask? Specifically, how does the void operate? How does this multiple of nothing multiply itself? The best way to understand this is to diagram a sequence of sets. Let’s envision them as whole numbers:

0 = ∅ –> empty
1 = {∅} –> selects the “zero” (1 set)
2 = {∅, {∅}} –> selects the “zero” and the “one” (2 sets)
3 = {∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} –> selects the “zero,” “one,” and “two” (3 sets)
Etc…

Starting at the top, we see that zero, which is our foundation, is nothing; it is empty, as signified by: “0 = ∅.” Then, following that initial emptiness, our “one” is formed by selecting the null set, or rather, by placing the ∅ within a single set of brackets: “1 = {∅}.” “Two” is then formed by selecting the nothing again, and placing it in a set along side the already selected null set (which was our one). Thus, “2 = 0 and 1.” “Three” is done the same way, by forming a set with the previous three: 0, 1, and 2.

Do not get thrown off by the amount of ∅’s on the right hand side of the equation, we are not counting them; rather, we are making a sum of all the previous sets. It is the set that is a unit, not its contents. Sets create “ones,” create unity, out of the nothing by selectivity.

Remember, set theory deals with the “how,” not the “what.” Do not think: ∅ plus ∅ plus ∅ should equal a number. Such an equation would be taking into account the contents of these sets. We are merely examining how combination occurs.

By treating each previous set, whatever it may contain, as “one,” we are able to count. Since we begin with the ∅, it is the set of ∅, the {∅}, that we are counting as “one.” Thus, as I mentioned a minute ago, the void is the operation of the count.

Continuing outwards from here, we can select elements from within the void to form complex sets (like the set of all galaxies), but this fundamental count still remains fact. Such a set of galaxies would still count as one, still composed solely of the void.

PHILLIP TRIBE: So, all sets are composed of the void, and all sets include the void. We’re essentially saying, if I follow correctly, that the void is the foundation of everything. But what is it? What is the void? If set theory allows us to only consider “how” it operates, not “what” is in it, then literally speaking, we can never know what it is at all. To us, the void must always be empty.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Yet, coming from set theory, we know that it is only considered empty (that it is counted as ∅) because it has not yet been selected. In fact, the void is infinitely full of ability-to-select. Everything must, and can, be selected from the void. It is pure positivity, pure potentiality.

To be crude, think of it like an infinite bag of strings – from string theory. The contents of this bag are incomprehensible to us, and therefore, from our understanding, it seems empty. But, as we know from string theory, the bag is actually full with the raw material to make, literally, everything. The void is no different.

And since the void is the not-yet-been-selected (not yet made into a “one,” not yet bracketed into “sets” or built into “things”), then it must also be incomprehensible – but in a radically productive way.

PHILLIP TRIBE: To briefly explain this metaphor, for those unfamiliar with string theory – it is, so to speak, a “theory of everything” in physics – it hopes to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity.

Simply put, string theory states that the smallest quantum of all matter is exactly the same – it all breaks down to vibrating strings. These strings, then, are the “everything” of the cosmos; they are the substance.

ALAIN BADIOU: This is why we must refer to the void as an “inconsistent multiplicity.” Only this phrase properly connotes the vast “everything-ness” of the void, while also maintaining its incomprehensible presentation. That is to say, the void is empty of selected contents (of sets), but full of potentiality, of ability-to-select.

JACQUES LACAN: The void is the wellspring. We might even say that it contains a black hole of jouissance – a whirlpool of unspeakable enjoyment. This “inconsistent multiplicity” is the Real – that which both outside of, and constitutes, symbolic reality.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Therefore, this thing we’re talking about: the void, our inconsistent multiplicity – it is the being of everything; however, it is un-differentiated, un-selected and un-presentable, yet infinitely positive – it is the “substance” in the Spinozian sense; it is the very inconsistent kernel of every consistent structure; it is the truth of Being.

Our goal then, must be to locate Truth (with a capital “T”) within this conception of the void.

ALAIN BADIOU: I think I have a starting point. By looking closely at the math we can identify an intersection. It is here that we must localize where the void touches the situation, which is to say, the moment when Truth ruptures knowledge.

To do this, we must recognize that the void is in every situation, yet it exists as unselected, and therefore cannot count as a “one.” Without being “one-ifiable,” so to speak, the void becomes that which destabilizes the consistency of a situation and ruptures its unity – which is to say, it is only ever present as a tear that keeps the situation from being complete.

The void, then, appears in symbolic reality only as the incomprehensible Real, as Jacques put it, that rupture that threatens Symbolic law even though it provides the very basis for order as such (remember, the void is the very operation of the count).

GILLES DELEUZE: I’m glad you said that. Quite the important distinction to make: multiplicity must not designate a combination of the many and the one, but rather an organization belonging to the many as such, which has no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system. In this sense, multiplicity is the true substantive, substance itself.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Great – this, then, is how we will identify the void as it appears in being. As Alain said, the void, by definition, splits all unity. It can be seen as the Real intruding into the Symbolic. We will find the void, then, presented in a situation only insofar as there is an element of rupture present. The void will be indicated by a break, by a violation in the situation’s natural way of counting subsets.

Let us define as “knowledge” the way in which a situation recognizes and organizes its elements. Knowledge is a list of subsets. These subsets are “encyclopedic,” like a book of definitions. They are everything that “makes sense,” everything that we know.

However, this violation, this rupture of the Symbolic by the Real, this touch of the void, so to speak, is incomprehensible to the situation as such. It is outside of knowledge, and therefore, it is unknowable.

Here, we need to define a new term. We shall name void’s rupture of the situation an “event.”

An “event” cannot be known, since knowledge is a form of unity, and an event, by definition, is a tear in this unity. Thus, the void can never be perceived nor demonstrated; yet nevertheless, its crack in knowledge produces something new, as all revolutions do.

ALAIN BADIOU: Truth is always that which makes a hole in knowledge.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: What we have unfolding before us is a methodology, an ethics. The abstract thought experiment of subtracting the “ones” of identity to form a rhizomatic image of thought is beginning to solidify, to become something tangible.

It goes like this: an “event” appears in the situation of life in the form of a void, which is a rupture in the order of knowledge, a fissure of the Symbolic by the inconsistent Real. The void, being an infinitely positive multiplicity, cannot be totalized by an individual, differentiated by language, or selected to form a subset. But, since it constitutes every situation, this void is always present, however hidden.

ALAIN BADIOU: At the heart of every situation, as the foundation of its being, there is a “situated void,” around which is organized the plentitude (or the stable multiples) of the situation in question.

Being an inconsistent multiplicity, the void can never be “known,” only ever encountered as it ruptures a given situation, as it breaks knowledge.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Such ruptures will always occur since the Symbolic itself is founded upon this inconsistent multiplicity. Which is to say, known reality is always already unstable and bursting at the seams. This renders our knowledge perpetually incomplete. Which is fantastic, since this tear opens a window into Truth.

What we have, then, is the Real occasionally intruding into life and shattering our understanding. The void is thus always the void of a situation, since it is only through the specific rupture of knowledge (the coherent sets of a situation) that newness can emerge. As I said earlier, this eruption of radical newness is called an “event.”

Let me unpack this phrase: “radical newness.” How can something be “radically” new? Well, it can only be “radical” by being absolutely un-presented in the situation, by truly sharing no elements of any sort with symbolic reality. So, if set “B” is the encyclopedic (the normal situation), and the other set, set “A,” is our “radically new” set, then, for the contents of “A” to be absolutely and radically new to “B,” then there must have been no element in common from the outset.

Since the void is present in every set (as we demonstrated earlier, since it has no elements with which to exclude it from belonging), then the only overlap between the normal situation and our “newness” is the void itself:

a ∩ b = ∅

This reads as: The only intersection between set “A,” (our multiplicity-singularity of radical newness), and “B,” (the encyclopedic situation), is the void. It is this very intersection that is the “event,” like a tangential line intersecting a curve only at a single point. Thus, no elements of the event are presented in the situation, but the event, as a set, is presented in the form of a rupture. Therefore, the only intersection of radical newness and the situation is the evental void.

Which is to say, an event is a situated coming-into-contact with the void itself. And only as a violent rupture of knowledge does it have the infinite potentiality to create radical newness.

ALAIN BADIOU: This moment of rupture, if I may add, is a brief flash, almost instantaneous. This is because the event, as a hazardous and unpredictable supplement, vanishes as soon as it appears. The event itself isn’t Truth. But the radical newness that the event gives us a glimpse into, that, comrades, that is something to be true to, something to which a life should be dedicated – the bringing-into-the-world of newness.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Thus, the only way to be part of this process, this merging of the situation with the unknown, is to make a decision – to be true to this newness.

Let me appeal to your empirical experience in order to elucidate this choice, this moment of decision. It starts simply: There we are, living life as if everything makes sense. And then, at some point, something happens. We’ve all felt this inexplicable feeling – something occurs like a blinding flash. We have no words for it. It doesn’t even make sense. But we know in our hearts that something did indeed happen – that we saw something, that we felt something unspeakably new.

At this instant we are given a choice. We can either ignore this unnerving rupture and go back to living life as we did before – the way things made sense and made us feel comfortable. Or, we can make a decision. We can say, “Nothing will ever be the same. My world has shattered around me. In the face of this newness, my old life has become counterfeit and crumbles like a cheap façade. I must now, from this moment on, be true to that feeling – and build a new life around this newness.”

The most common example of this feeling is love. When seized by love, we are presented with a crossroads. Should we ignore its disruption and continue living as separate entities? Or do we see love for the radical break it is, as the absolute rupture of our daily lives, and then, completely re-organize our days around this “making love make sense.”

PHILLIP TRIBE: I felt that way when I first met Vladimir. It hit me like a thousand arrows.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Yes, see – we’ve all felt the event of love, one way or another. That’s because the void is universal.

Another sphere would be the experience of art. Profound art creates a rupture in our symbolic world, and tells us, “You will never see things the same, not ever again.” John – you did this to music fifteen years ago with your performance of “4’33’’.” Art, I’d wager, by definition, is this evental experience. Art is only ever an experience of radical newness – that is why it is both so deeply personal, and so universal.

Politics is also an example, like the break Marx made with capitalism. Our world still hasn’t figured out what to do with this choice. Science is another example, Vladimir – you must have felt this way many times in your life, especially when you developed tear theory, or when you watched Einstein wrestle with relativity.

See, my point is: Truth isn’t a thing. It’s not the top of some hierarchy. It’s rhizomatic. It’s everywhere beneath the surface, all places at once. Truth, then, in our radical re-definition of the word, becomes a process. Truth is the absolute re-alignment of a life with this radical newness, this truth of the void. Truth is no longer an achievement of knowledge, but rather a measure of fidelity.

This very process of being true to newness – is Truth.

ALAIN BADIOU: Indeed, Truth is a process of fidelity. Being true to the evental void means becoming a subject of Truth.

FELIX GUATTARI: Truth is a multiplicity-singularity. It is a thousand outward movements.

JACQUES LACAN: Truth is the subject’s identification with the sinthome, the world’s inconsistency as seen through the fissure of reality.

GILLES DELEUZE: Truth is an infinite becoming. It is perpetual beginning.

JACQUES DERRIDA: Truth is the line of paradoxical indistinction that both renders all meaning unstable, and also constitutes meaning as such.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Truth is fidelity to the evental void. It is the truth of the Shade and the darkness of its caves.

In that case, let us return again, then, to the beginning – to Plato’s cave. The question we began with: What does it mean to turn inward and dive into the abyss? What unknowns can we hope to discover with our third option – descent into the belly of the cave itself?

The answer, both incredibly complex and decisively simple: The Void.

Ours, then, shall be an enlightenment through darkness, a Shadow-Truth. Plato, see, he exited the cave and was blinded by the sun; he saw only death. We, on the other hand; we plunge into the endless depths, and analogically, dive deep into the void within our own chests. Our “enlightenment” is that event, the becoming of light itself. In the blackness of the Shade we need no light – purely, we are light.

If I may be so extravagant in my conclusion, let me draw a final diagram:

This is the cave-structure of life, which represents how the void is at either limit of existence, either extreme of Being. The void, see, is both the largest unit (the Real, the inconsistent multiplicity, the pure potentiality of ability-to-select), and the smallest unit (the operation of the count, the universal inclusion through emptiness, the darkness within our own hearts). The void is thus both the sun outside of the cave (seen here as “death” outside of language), and the blackness inside its belly (the unknown core of our identities at the pit of its abyss). Leaving the cave is to die. But to dive into yourself – that is Truth.

Therefore, we have traced a path from the Truth of Death to an ethics of the void, which is a Living Truth. This is a radical new outlook on Truth. This Truth, we have seen, is the void, the very commonplace foundation of everyone and everything. Death is still an encounter with the void; death is still Truth. But now we also have a Truth that is attainable during life; this Truth is radical newness itself; and this leaves us with a new ethical imperative: “Do not give up on the void. Be faithful to that part of yourself you do not yet know. Bring newness into the world. Shatter knowledge; live Truth.”

ALAIN BADIOU: One final rhetorical question: What does it take to maintain these ethics? What does it require of us, since fidelity is not a matter of knowledge?

My answer: Truth is not the work of an expert: it is the work of a militant.

SEBASTIAN HEIM: Then let us be the revolutionaries of unspeakable newness. Our fidelity will be pointed toward the unfathomable within ourselves, the pure precipice of our becoming. Let our laughter pour into its abyss.

Hölderlin, the poet, once wrote, “From the abyss, namely, we began.”

It seems as if Nietzsche was writing in direct response when he stated, “One must have wings, if one loves the abyss.”

Let us grow wings, then, for we, as beginners, love the abyss. For we, as miners, dive into the belly of the cave; as artists, we use our steady hands to trace flight patterns of newness; as lovers we build evental spaces with the raw material of our flesh; as philosophers we enter into processes of fidelity to Truth; and, as revolutionaries, we stare fearlessly into the violence of the void, standing at the precipice of its terrifying beauty, the sublime, the unspeakable, the nameless, the unknown, the new: The Shade.

The library contained every note, outline, sketch, essay, and book written by Sebastian Heim. Tribe had absolute faith in the visionary direction Heim was leading the world. He was obsessed with the man’s writings. “These texts are the bedrock, the very foundation on which a new world will find its balance. Read carefully. Every page is a passport.”

Tribe and his husband, Vladimir Schwarz of Tear Theory fame, constructed the library primarily in Heim’s honor. Together, the two men created a haven for radical intellectualism. It became a cultural salon, full of new thought, science, art, music, sexual orgy, and political action. Tribe and Schwarz had no trouble keeping close quarters with the greatest minds of their generation, since every single one eventually flocked to the Shade to bask in Sebastian Heim’s halo. Every word of his, they believed, was a monument to passion, ferocity, and radical newness.

Above all, Heim was a champion of the miners. Few understood his position, but then again, few had the courage to enter the Shade and read the following manuscript. As groundbreaking as it is short, this essay outlines the structural relationship between the miners and sovereignty. It states that biopolitics, by definition, is power over transparent life. Heim uses this notion to prove that there is only sovereign law because humanity has separated and opposed himself to the miners, whom he keeps in the Shade, out of necessity, as an inclusive exclusion.

In Tribe’s words, paraphrasing Heim, “At the center of both our library and the Shade rests a Minotaur. Find it. Wake it from its nightmare. And lead it, by its wrathful hand, straight to the door of Heaven.”

Minutor Sacer
Sovereignty and the Miners

1: The Center of the Labyrinth

We know what the miners are. We can trace their genealogy. Their origin is no longer condemned to shadows. Their ancestors were humans. They were men and women, but then they broke the laws of civilized society. They broke the rules. Suddenly, their citizenship was revoked. Not just from their cities, but from the face of civilization, from the human race. The logic went: The rules of men have been broken, so the rights of men shall be stripped. These criminals were excommunicated from society and cast out into the Shade. This punishment was originally conceived as a form of “clean” death penalty. Outcasts were “returned to nature,” so to speak. Civilized men told themselves that they weren’t “killing” other men, but rather sending fallen organisms back to Mother Earth. It was she who swallowed her young. The state of nature was the violent one, they claimed, not the state of man. Who cares what happens to beasts? Not society. And these men had become animals, exceptions from the human race. Such a subtle disavowal, as we will see, leads to enormous implications.

In the days of excommunication the rules were simple. Law was structured exactly like man’s conception of the planet. The Earth was flat and the Shade was seen as its limit. Back then there was an outside to the world. The spheres of life were believed to be concentric circles. Civilization was the bright, warm center of the world. And the Shade was its dark, forgotten outer edge. By breaking the laws of men, one was simply “cast out.” These criminal transgressors, by being sent outside, were conceptually “removed from the Earth.”

But, as history has shown, this solipsistic view of the world could not have been more backwards. Eventually, the Shade was traversed. Men explored the “outer” reaches of the Earth only to come out on the other side. Our planet suddenly became a globe. The two halves of the world were united and the excommunicated outcasts, long thought dead, were rediscovered. They were alive, yes – but changed. Having lived so long in the “state of nature” they had truly returned to nature – they had become animals. Regressive evolution turned them into beasts, their humanity finally stripped from their bodies like so much penance for their crimes.

It is important to note that these creatures were not discovered at the ends of the Earth where they had originally been sent, but rather at its very heart, at the interior. When the two hemispheres joined, the Shade suddenly became the center of the world – the empty center. This is a radical truth. Understanding “a system with an empty center” requires a firm grasp on the paradoxical logic of indistinction. These excommunicated criminals, those creatures that were stripped of their humanity and therefore not quite man, but, who were also unswallowed by Mother Earth and therefore not quite animal, were, in fact, not excluded to the outside, but were rather imprisoned on the inside. Simply put – they were excluded inclusively. This paradox of the “inclusive exclusion” is essential for understanding the nature of power.

There is an ancient myth that tells a similar story of animal-men being imprisoned on the inside. This myth is the story of the Minotaur. It goes like this: To help his rise to power, King Minos gave an oath to the gods that he would sacrifice an animal. In response, the gods produced a magnificent white bull, which rose out of the sea so Minos could complete his rite. Yet, King Minos found the snowy creature too beautiful, so he broke his sacred promise and kept it alive. Such a transgression angered the gods. Out of retribution they cursed his wife, Pasiphaë, to fall madly in love with the animal. Smitten with lust, the queen was beside herself. She knew that somehow she would have to fulfill her desire. So, with the help of Crete’s master craftsman, the queen was given a wooden cow within which she could lie prostrate. It was placed out in the fields and the clever ruse worked. The bull was tricked. It mounted the machine and copulated with Pasiphaë. Nine months later the “Minotaur” was born – a word that simply means, “Bull of Minos.

This creature, being the impossible child of a sacrificial beast and a queen, remained completely outside of definition. It was not quite man. It had a muscular human body, yes, but could never become civilized with such a horrifyingly grotesque face. Nor was it a wild animal. Sure, it had the horns of a bull, but it spoke and cursed and spit with the agony of a man. Thus, it was half of each but also neither. It was everything animalistic about man while also being everything uncannily anthropomorphic about animals. The Minotaur was an inconsistency. It was a contradiction in terms. Most importantly, this paradox was the product of forbidden love with a god disguised as a bull, and therefore constituted the transgression of divine law. It was a curse upon humankind. By revealing the animal in man, the creature revealed itself to be excessively human – as the kernel of animality that lies hidden in all men. In order to hide this monstrosity, Pasiphaë called upon her master craftsman once more. Daedalus, the architect, the artist, was entreated to make a prison fit for such a contradictory creature. So, he constructed a gigantic labyrinth near the royal palace. It was there, at the very center of the maze, that the Minotaur was imprisoned.

The banishment of the creature within the labyrinth is a curious and important gesture in the history of power. There, the Minotaur was positioned in a state of “inclusive exclusion.” To understand this contradiction, the beast must be fully grasped for its paradoxical nature. It was both man and animal. Both sacred and cursed. Both human law and divine transgression. Therefore, at this intersection, the Minotaur was a creature of absolute indistinction. Exile within the center of the labyrinth, therefore, was the only possible solution for such a creature – it had to be both inside and outside simultaneously. This paradoxical logic has a semantic president in Roman etymology.

2: Sacred and Dammned

Sextus Pompeius Festus was a Roman lexicographer and etymologist writing during the second century AD. His only surviving tome was entitled “On the Meaning of Words.” Although it only survives in pieces, it proves to be an essential glossary of Latin definitions. To us, these descriptions can provide a window into the foundational logic of antiquity.

Under the curious heading “homo sacer,” Festus writes:

The sacred man is the one whom the people have judged on account of a crime. It is not permitted to sacrifice this man, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide; in the first tribunitian law, in fact, it is noted that “if someone kills the one who is sacred according to the plebiscite, it will not be considered homicide.” This is why it is customary for a bad or impure man to be called sacred.

At once this logic is paradoxical. What does it mean to allow someone to be killed but not sacrificed? How can a man be condemned to death, but only by chance, never by rite? Could it be that the death of the exile has the capacity to dirty God, but not the hands of men? Who is so unclean that God would have to cast him out of his kingdom? Who first, who last? Yes, perhaps that is the logic – “homo sacer” is the fallen creature. He is the sacred angel without wings who, like Satan himself, could never dream to rise, never back to heaven, but rather, instead, he is condemned to the Earth, and may be killed thousands of times over, his blood eternally reanimating like some filthy phoenix, the whipping boy of humanity, that lie, that first exile, the exception by which God originally constituted moral law. Where could such a man live? Where, exactly, is hell? Is it outside? Or is it inside?

Perhaps it is neither and both. This man, our “homo sacer,” lives at the intersection between worlds, that line of indistinction between good and evil, God and Devil, heaven and hell, and is, therefore, at once entrapped in human law, which we shall call sovereignty, while also remaining outside of divine law, which we shall call death.

Again, let us return to the complex meaning of words as our guide. How exactly does “sacer” translate? Not surprisingly, its translation from Latin is paradoxical. “Sacer” means both “hallowed” and “damned.” It is an adjective that encapsulates both the God-like and the Devil-like. It is at once double-meaning, both itself and its opposite; it is “both” and it is “neither.” It is inside and simultaneously outside. We originally turned to this word for clarification on the law – “what can ‘sacer’ teach us?” we asked, “and where does the distinction between good and evil lie?” A naïve question from the start, because such distinguishability does not exist. The logic of “sacer,” as its history shows, is a divine logic that existed prior to the split between good/evil, either/or, both/neither. Here we cannot depend on binary law. For paradoxical indistinction is the only origin, and it is an origin that is at once a non-origin: the empty center. This contradiction, it turns out, is the very lesson “sacer” proposes to teach. “Sacred is the paradox,” it says, “of the creature imprisoned within the inclusive exclusion.”

This contradictory prison sentence was the exact fate of our Minotaur: to be damned to a hell of binary indistinction. As we saw earlier, the beast was excommunicated to the inside, to the center of the labyrinth. Out of structural necessity, following the paradoxical logic of the law of “sacer,” the beast’s exile had to be an inclusive exclusion. Killed, but not sacrificed. It was nothing less than sovereign power that made this necessary, obligatory precisely because the Minotaur was no-thing, neither a man nor a beast. From the day of its birth it was caught in the logic of the paradox, and only then, from there, could such a contradictory logic keep it at bay. The Minotaur was placed both outside the laws of God and inside the laws of society – able to be killed but not sacrificed, simultaneously hallowed and damned, condemned to be a victim of the world’s violent inconsistency. This horrible fate rings true today. As there is another creature, just like the Minotaur, caught in this realm of indistinction.

For what creature in our world is both no-thing and no-where? What creature is caught in the laws of man but not in the grace of God? What creature litters the Earth like the fallen wings of so many devils? What creature could ever be so unclean? The answer lives between worlds – it is a beast that lies in wait at the empty center: the Shade.

It should come as no surprise that the Latin word for miner is “minutor.” For us, today, it is not “homo sacer” we speak of, but rather “minutor sacer” – the sacred miner. For today, under our laws, it is the miners who are both hallowed and damned. The miners are trapped in the paradoxical logic of sovereign law. The same rules apply now as they did a thousand years ago. And it is more than coincidence that “minutor” is a homonym for “Minotaur.” The miners are our Minotaurs. They are our sacred creature that, just like the mythical beast, is both half-animal and half-man, both naked human life and disavowed animal nature, both, and neither.

And just like the Minotaur, our “minutor sacer” is imprisoned within the labyrinth of the Shade – they are excommunicated to the inside in an inclusive exclusion. The miners are indeed sacred. But let us not speak of religion but of politics. Our laws state that the miners can be killed indiscriminately by the hands of capital. But they cannot be sacrificed by any political movement, which is to say, they can never achieve class consciousness. Our world depends on the miners never acting in their own collective self-interest. This is the wager of modernity. Moving forward we see that the miners, as “sacer,” as the exception to the rule, become the paradoxical figures that, out of necessity, constitute sovereign law. This is the new form of global politics. Not policy over social interaction, but rather power over transparent life itself.

3: The Biopolitics of Sovereignty

“Minutor sacer” stands as the original political relation precisely because it represents the rule that is at once its own exception, i.e.: the sacred creature that can be killed but not sacrificed. When the miners were excommunicated they were stripped of their humanity and cast off into the shadows. When this happened they lost everything. They lost their claims to both the animal kingdom and the world of men – all that was left was their claim to life. They were alive, but just barely. They had become transparent life. And it was there, at the empty center of the Shade, that they were found again. When the miners were rediscovered their face of their prison changed, no longer just a labyrinth, they were now forced into slavery within the maze. The Shade had become a concentration camp. With this gesture humankind drove the miners back into the politics of man (a politics, it should be noted, from which they were still excluded – but, like all things paradoxical, inclusively excluded). Suddenly transparent life had become politicized. Politics became biopolitics, a term that means, quite simply, “the direct application of political power onto naked life.” It was here, with the biopolitics of the miners, that sovereignty finally found its case study.

To fully comprehend sovereignty one must first understand the logic of the exception. Not unlike the paradoxical indistinguishability of “sacer,” the exception also has an origin that is at once a non-origin. In law, just like in language, expressions are only differential. This means that they exist without positive terms. Exceptions do not arise. Nor do rules emerge. Exceptions and rules first appear simultaneously in negative difference. Rather than having positive content, terms are only negatively related to other terms. They are only what others are not. This means: there was never a singular origin. For example, raw meat never existed before cooked meat. There was only just plain “meat.” Applying the word “raw” would be extraneous and incomprehensible. It wouldn’t make sense. But, at the precise moment the meat was cooked, two antagonistic terms simultaneously sprung into existence – raw/cooked. This double origin is the logic of negative difference. Exceptions and rules are no different.

Instead of rules being established in an ideal vacuum from which exceptions can later arise; rather, both terms appear simultaneously, paradoxically constituting each other as valid. In other words, exceptions are not subtracted from rules. Instead, the rule, in a constituting gesture, calls forth its own exception to give itself identity. The rule then keeps the exception nearby so it can always be in relation to it. This proximity is essential, since the rule can only remain legible and comprehensible through the principle of negative difference. For example, one rule states: “Thou shall not kill.” Just like raw meat, this term is only comprehensible when paired with its opposite term: the exception – killing. This may sound overly complex already, but there is one more twist. Just like the lesson we learned from “sacer,” there is a third term, “the law,” which can only be found at the very line of indistinction between the previous two terms.

Sovereign law, therefore, is the logic of negative difference precisely at the line of indistinction between the two terms of rule/exception. This can be proven by returning to our example.

1. Rule: “Thou shall not kill.”
2. Exception: “One man kills another.”
3. Law: “It is illegal to kill, but the law may kill in order to constitute itself as sovereign.”

Therefore, the line of paradoxical indistinction teaches us: Sovereign power is the exception to its own rule.

Thus, sovereignty only exists because of the paradoxical logic of “minutor sacer.” This is the exact reason why the miners are entrapped within biopolitics – the miners, as the exception, have been separated off from the rule of men in a constituting gesture. Out of the necessity of negative difference, the miners are kept in close relation in the inclusive exclusion of the Shade. It is only through this relation that man may have his own identity. We have a political life because the miners are transparent life. The problem is, as we have shown many times over, this binary opposition is unstable and threatens to explode in a brilliant excess of paradoxical inconsistency. Yes – an explosion, a contradiction, a singularity, like the tear in space above our heads. It is here that opposites combine:

• Sacred/Damned –> (Miners)
• Man/Animal –> (Minotaur)
• Inclusion/Exclusion –> (Labyrinth)
• Inside/Outside –> (Shade)
• Life/Politics –> (Biopolitics)
• Rule/Exception –> (Sovereignty)

4: Transparent Life

Sovereign power exists only because man has separated the miners off from himself while simultaneously keeping the creatures in a relation of negative difference via inclusive exclusion. Because of this logic, which is also the paradoxical logic of “sacer,” the Shade has become the most overt sphere of biopolitics in the history of the world. Here, sovereign power confronts the miners unmediated. They are naked before the twisted whips of capital. Here, the miners instantly become “minutor sacer,” hallowed and damned. They are stripped of everything. They stand before us merely as transparent life. Here, the miners are enslaved by humankind. But these binaries don’t line up. Something happens at their intersection. Paradoxes roam free in the shadows – all lines become lines of indistinction and inconsistent multiplicity. In the Shade, all men become miners. In the Shade, all law becomes violence. And in the Shade, all paths become labyrinthine. In the Shade, all thoughts become madness.

When religious men and women, on that fatal day, flew to their deaths it was deemed “The Rapture.” They were able to sacrifice themselves to their God because they were free, clean, sovereign creatures. The miners, however, cannot enjoy a similar fate. Martyrdom is structurally denied to them. There is no death for that which cannot be killed. No sacrifice for that which is fallen. The miners are the dangerous supplements to the world – simultaneously in peripheral excess of man while also lying at the core of his disavowed internal essence. As supplements, the miners live paradox. They produce what they forbid: Ikaros. They make possible the very lives that make them impossible: political life.

So what is to be done? Should the miners be set free and released out into the Sun? No, transparent life cannot exist in the light. Should we take pity on the miners and exterminate them? No, as sacred creatures they deaths mean nothing. Should we awake their class conscience and give them a political life of their own? No, the inclusive exclusion would structurally implode, making all creatures slaves.

Then what is to be done? What are the miners, exactly? Now that we can see their history stretching before us like a roadmap, where do we go? Transparent where we are not, only through them can we see the true face of our humanity: nothing.

“Minutor sacer” lives the paradoxical truth of our own lives – there is no outside. Humans are just man/animals imprisoned in an endless, shifting, jet-black labyrinth. The Shade is now open. Above our heads the void yawns like an eternal abyss. Long is the way, and hard. For there is no way out. There is only up.

Sebastian Heim’s contribution, although brief, made the book an instant controversy. In a series of 30 aphorisms, Heim argued that the mass suicide of 80% of the world’s population, rather than be condemned, should be celebrated as performance art.

Tribe fought for the inclusion, a bold move that crushed his favor in academic circles, forcing him into intellectual obscurity.

Sebastian Heim

1.
god himself fell.

2.
god lost his neutrality when he fell into the world. the rapture marks the end of religion precisely because of this fall. no longer an idea nor an absolute limit, god became mortal. he came to earth on the wings of judgment – to judge man amongst men. the rapture, properly speaking, was the brutal intrusion of justice itself. it was beyond law. it was law-destroying.

3.
the rapture was an act of divine violence. it was a boundless act. it struck out against man. yet, the ultimate victim of this violence was the creator himself. the rapture was god committing suicide. it was destruction as violent creation. it was the demise of the concept of death. god erased himself so a new order could arise. this new order is nothing less than the order of man as a universal being.

4.
the rapture was an event. an event, simply defined, is an encounter with the universal. what happened at the world’s fair was the rise of universality out of the particular. it was a breakthrough, an authentic moment of immortal discovery. god died as a mortal so man could live as immortal.

5.
the rapture, as an event, was not for anyone. it was not caused by anyone. the rapture was truly for-itself. it can only be experienced as an authentic universal gesture.

6.
as such, the rapture was the first truly political act. it rendered the unthinkable thinkable. it changed the field of the possible. it pushed the limits of feasibility and conceivability. nothing will ever be the same.

7.
yet, the rapture was also an act of terrorism. it was political violence directed against the status quo.

8.
one can never attack the capitalist system with direct force, because the system itself dictates the terms; it is the battlefield. one must never challenge an enemy in his own arena. thus, the genius behind the rapture was its shift from force to symbolism. there is nothing the system can do to an enemy who has turned his very death into a weapon. the rapture, therefore, suicided the world.

9.
the result of this suicide was the radicalization of the world – to create a human singularity in the face of the ring’s singularity.

10.
the rapture came as no surprise. it was expected. it was wanted. the rapture was the world’s obscure object of desire.

11.
this desire was for the eradication of mortality along side with morality. the rapture succeeded. there is no more good nor evil. for how can there be in the face of freedom? as such, the rapture was the first true act of universal freedom. it was a pure act of autonomy.

12.
the hypothesis that man, free man, should always choose good over evil, is not freedom at all – it is rather submission to slavery. true freedom is the ability to abuse freedom, to make excessive use of it.

13.
freedom must always be violently excessive.

14.
now, finally, as free men and women, we are alone. we are the daughters of violence. we are the sons of madness. the rapture is our only father.

15.
before the rapture we lived in a world without certainty. the ring was up for debate. heaven? event horizon? ship? in a single day all of that changed. the void is now our only certainty.

16.
what is at stake in this certainty is the symbolic itself. the rapture was an image. it was filmed. it was photographed. it was performed. our visual language has been forever changed.

17.
as a visual gesture, the rapture was performance art.

18.
art, at its best, is evental. art strives to elevate the particular to the level of the universal. art violently strives to leap out of security, out of what is taken for granted, to change the limits of the possible and open into a new world. without the creation of a new world, art is nothing.

19.
the rapture has left us open to this new world. such an opening was previously unthinkable. the rapture was impossible before it happened. humanity is finally in the open.

20.
therefore, the rapture should be celebrated as the greatest work of performance art the cosmos has ever seen.

21.
with its aesthetics of ascent and collective movement, the rapture was visually and conceptually stunning. a thousand years of human history had been mere rehearsal for that moment. all those minds in concert achieved something in that act – a collective gesture – a decision – a yes. such a yes was a yes to chaos.

22.
art is not order from chaos, but rather chaos as such. art enunciates the unselected multiplicity. art is void. chaos is thus the battle cry of the artist. without this possibility, art is nothing.

23.
the rapture, as chaos, as performance art, as event, was thus a mad festival. it was a carnival. all gods died in the rapture except for dionysus. he was too drunk from celebration.

24.
the rapture marked the return of the dionysian.

25.
the victory of art, therefore, belongs to neither god nor the devil. it belongs to madness.

26.
madness is art’s truth. it is the frontier that must be traversed. it is the very limit of the imagination, of man’s capacity for reason. madness is at once sublime and beautiful. it is a becoming. madness is man becoming god to fill the void of his absence. madness is the ultimate goal of the artistic gesture – creation from the void. artists must be faithful to this truth. yes. it is madness to be faithful to an event.

27.
art, then, at its best, is faithful madness. it is the destruction of everything known for the sake of the true. it is an apocalyptic vision. to gaze upon the rapture, as a work of art, is thus madness itself. this is the point.

28.
man can now see. madness is evental vision.

29.
the narrative is thus: god is dead. he committed suicide in a law-destroying act of divine violence. this death opened man to the immortality of the universal. this violent gesture was a truly political act, an act of freedom. it was an event because it changed the face of the possible. it gave man access to truth. as such, the rapture was the greatest act of performance art the cosmos has ever seen. this victory was madness. it was dionysian. everything changed. yet the rapture was merely act one. the potentiality of the void is now open. man finally has vision. and the madness of its truth shall soon rain down upon the heads of men.

30.
there is not enough madness.

And if one is faithful to a truth, how does its process sculpt everything? What is the structure of its fidelity, and what attributes does it possess? And continuing this logic forward – what form does collective subjectivity to a truth process take?

And I’m not talking representationally. I don’t want a piece of art to “look like” this process. Nor do I want it to be an abstraction of its terms. There must be a third pole. It goes like this: it exists.

The Invisible Committee writes, “A truth isn’t something we hold but something that carries us” (The Coming Insurrection, 97).

This process of “being carried by a truth” has a structure, a form, and most importantly, a history. This history, then, has a material existence. It is something. It is books, printed language. It is windows and reflections. It is cloth and it is metal. It is burning. It is color.

On March 17th, two new wall-mounted sculptures were featured in a group show in Venice, CA at the Westminster Space. These new works were contextualized alongside a past, companion piece, Suspended Rebar.

Paul Wallace's "A History of Greece" at the Westminster Space

These two new pieces engaged this process of “being carried by a truth” in two  different ways: one narratively, and one materially.

A History of Greece

A History of Greece compresses truth’s relationship to the Western tradition into a single term: the subject. What is the subject of a truth, on a sincere, psychological level? For me this means – what is my relationship with my tradition?

"A History of Greece" - by Paul Wallace

Not, “how do I break with my tradition,” but rather, “how can I produce truths within the fissures of my tradition?”

The story goes like this: I exist within the mythologies of the West. Its language is my language; its history, mine. Yet there is a lens, at once transparent and reflective, that is suspended above the encyclopedic. This lens is my truth process. Its suspension is my work. Like a magnifying-lens in the sun, this window burns the printed page. Its inferno pries open the fault-lines of the text, loosing the void at the very heart of language.

"A History of Greece" - detail

The true history of Greece, then, is this capacity for obliteration – the capacity to open up newness within the ancient.

"A History of Greece" - detail

A History of Greece is ancient Greek history-book pages wallpapered onto board, measuring 3 feet by 3 feet. 90 degree bent rebar is secured to the four points of the compass. A piece of glass, 1 foot by 1 foot, is suspended above the surface of the pages by four segments of plaster-soaked linen cloth. Beneath the glass, the pages are burnt.

"A History of Greece" - side view

Suspended Rope

Opening up the project begun with Suspended Rebar, this new piece speaks to a collective form. No longer is each color or each rebar isolated. Suspended Rope brings yellow, green and orange together. It presents three ropes, each gripped by each color.

"Suspended Rope" by Paul Wallace

The strength of its form is heightened by its collective sensibility. While rebar remains a structural element, rope is an intersubjective one. It speaks, on a formal level, towards collectivity.

Thus, Suspended Rope addresses the potential of intersubjectivity within materialism – both the power and the strength of collective gesture, made from a standpoint of the pure bodily, the pure of building material.

"Suspended Rope" - side view

Suspended Rope consists of a 30 inches by 30 inches segment of drywall contained within a wood frame pained with white house paint. Three segments of rope are suspended above the drywall by three strips of linen cloth. The cloth is soaked in plaster and colored with stucco house pigment.

Atlas Shrugged is a masterpiece.

I truly believe this, despite its overwhelmingly inequitable characterizations and unfortunate incompatibility with reality. Even more so, many critics overlook Rand’s profoundly powerful worldview because of the book’s proposed, fervent ideological stance towards capitalism. I use the word “proposed” because, as I will outline below, I believe her philosophy stands in stark contrast with many of things it attempts to support. Rand’s critics, therefore, seem unable to look past its sound and fury. They ignore the book’s bold perspectives on achievement, pride, responsibility, value and equity all because of real capitalism’s structural inequalities and exploitative nature.

Leftist thinkers should flock to this book. Her characters are Nietzschean, her belief in man is Kantian, her stance on feminism is Beauvoirian, and her fidelity to the Idea is Badiouian. Yet, thinkers like Zizek claim that Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is the closest thing we have to a “Capitalist Manifesto” (In Defense of Lost Causes, 458). I will argue that Rand is, in fact, more Zizekian that Zizek is himself.

Also, the values proposed in Atlas are actually in conflict with really-existing-capitalism – but that is an argument for another day. Instead, here, I will briefly outline how Rand’s book is actually, wildly post-capitalist.

In fact, Atlas Shrugged is a communist parable.

Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" - a communist parable

In three points, here’s how:

1. The character of Francisco is a Zizekian leftist, par excellence.
2. The narrative circulates around a mass strike against exploitation.
3. The collective utopia created is literally an agrarian commune in the mountains.

Francisco as Zizekian Leftist

In Violence, Zizek addresses the structural contradictions of liberal actions, specifically charity. He writes, “Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation… developed countries “help” the undeveloped with aid, credits, and so on, and thereby avoid the key issue, namely their complicity in and co-responsibility for the miserable situation of the undeveloped” (22).

Zizek calls those who drive Priuses, give to charity and eat organic food the “exemplary figures of evil today” because their actions are doing nothing but postponing capitalism’s final crisis, and thus perpetuating the very system that causes global warming, poverty and food inequality (27).

Thus, a Zizekian, radical leftist would look past this “humanitarian mask” and work to bring the system itself down. We want to give to charity, yes. But the quickest way to end equality, however cold and un-humanist, is to never give, but remove. A Zizekian radical leftist thus drives a Hummer in order to use up all the gas as fast as possible, burns his money to disrupt capitalist exchange, and only eats Doritos and drinks Coke, to become a obese, unproductive body.

Zizek’s proposal is un-realistic and extreme – but it makes its point loud and clear: the problem is the system – bring it down fast.

In Atlas, there is literally a character that does this. Francisco d’Anconia had the potential to become the world’s most productive, wealthy man. Instead, he becomes a useless playboy. He spends all his time wasting his money on parties and bad investments. He squanders his copper mines and drives them into complete unproductivity. The world sees him as a harmless waste of life, because he is a product of their system. But within only 12 years, he has collapsed everything.

After a disastrous mining investment, he says, “Of course, ‘investment’ is a relative term. It depends on what you wish to accomplish. For instance, look at [my failed mining investment]. It cost me fifteen million dollars, but these fifteen million wiped out forty million belonging to Taggart Transcontinental, thirty-five million belonging to stockholders… and hundreds of millions which will be lost in secondary consequences. That’s not a bad return on an investment, is it” (124).

Francisco’s investment is thus the destruction of capital – his project is to speed the collapse of the capitalist system itself. He dedicates his life to bringing that system down from the inside, and does so only by using its own mechanisms.

He is thus a radical liberal, and a true embodiment of Zizek’s ideals.

The Strike

My next point is thematic: Atlas Shrugged is about a strike.

A group of industrialists believe that they are being exploited, so they literally go on strike – physically and intellectually. The point of a strike is to curtail production until the system of exploitation is remedied. This is exactly John Galt’s plan. The great minds of the world simply stop producing anything. Their strike quickly collapses the current capitalist system, a system of exploitation, and a new, revolutionary order is allowed to begin.

Galt is the Marxist character of the book. His global strike is nothing short of a revolution. Marx writes about capitalism’s need to not just produce, but also to simultaneously reproduce the means of its own production. What this means is: capitalism can’t just make stuff, but it has to continually work to keep itself situated as necessary. It has to remain irreplaceable – ideologically, socially, psychologically, etc.

Galt’s strike aims to destroy the system’s very means of reproduction: minds. Galt, Francisco and Ragnar don’t just strike, however. Theirs is a strike/revolution. Galt steals all the men and women of great minds from the world, thus striking. Francisco, as discussed above, brings the system down from the inside. All the while, Ragnar violently revolts against the system, literally becoming a revolutionary. All three thus resist their own production. They consume counter-productively, and all the while, work to reproduce the very means of the revolution.

Marx writes that capitalism “reproduces and perpetuates the conditions under which the worker is exploited” (Capital, 723). And it is thus Galt’s goal to end this system of exploitation by not just striking and ending the system of production, but by actively reproducing the very means of revolution.

Agrarian Commune in the Mountains

This final point makes itself:

Galt establishes an agrarian commune in the mountains.

All the titans of industry, from banking magnates to oil barons, move to the mountains of Colorado and start farming. They grow all their own food, produce all their own electricity, and are completely self-sustainable. The judge becomes a dairy farmer. The banker grows wheat and tobacco. The composer tends an orchard. Every man and woman has a job and a place, each carries his or her own weight, and each uses his or her specific skills to enrich the entire mini-society. And on top of this – they all must farm.

This “Atlantis” is a post-capitalist utopia of classless exchange. Everything is in perfect harmony. All producers meet on equal terms. It’s incredible, but Rand has realized every communist’s wet dream. And she does so on Marx’s terms: the evolution of capitalistic exchange into communist society.

Galt’s endgame, then, is to extend this utopia outwards, and make the world into a commune. This vision, combined with his strike and revolution, aim to establish true communism in the world. A very bold move by Rand.

Conclusion

Atlas Shrugged is the story of a collective strike against exploitation and the subsequent formation of an agrarian commune, all by means of collapsing the capitalist system from within. If that sentence doesn’t sound like the possible plot of a lost Eisenstein film, then take another read. Potemkin Shrugged, indeed.

Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin"

(March 3rd, update: The above essay is reading Atlas against Rand. In psychoanalysis there is a term – “return of the repressed,” which means: the thing you are trying to psychologically repress the most, by repressing it, will actually return in overabundance, and ultimately undermine everything you try to do. The thing you wished to be gone is now coloring everything and everything you touch. For Rand, this is communism. Thus, Atlas is a massive return of Rand’s repressed.) – thanks for this, Liz!

Death is an evental space.

An evental space is a site of Truth, which is to say, an experience of radical newness. By radical, I mean completely outside of language, unknowable, and wholly personal.

What better word do we have for the unspeakably unknown than death? Death is the abyss over which the precipice of life looks. It is the void at life’s very core. What better source could we have for radical newness than the most radical extreme of life itself: death?

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me ask, simply – What would it mean to posit death as an evental space?

Rilke encourages this approach to death in Letters: 1910-1926, “Death is the side of life averted from us, unshone upon by us… We must try to achieve the greatest consciousness of our existence which is at home in both unbounded realms, inexhaustibly nourished from both… The true figure of life extends through both spheres” (373).

As this quote reveals, we are not speaking about the experience of death after life, but rather what it might do for us, in life, to have a nearness to death. Thus, my project here is to draw an analogy between that productive unknown void at our core, that space we call evental, and this notion of death, in all of its obliterating power. For what does death obliterate in life if not the boundaries of identity?

Allow me another analogy: what is the most human attempt at destroying the boundaries between people? Or shall I say, destroying the boundaries between bodies. Sex. The erotic experience.

I will thus attempt to outline these many concepts below: death, creativity, sexuality, the void, Truth, radical newness, God, eroticism and the evental space. My analogy attempts to show that all these elements are saying the same thing: you don’t have to die to do what death does.

This outline will begin by looking at one of the most powerful analogies in western thought: the Sun as Truth, which later becomes linked to God. I will then discuss the best film I’ve ever seen to deal with this problematic: Pascal Laugier’s “Martyrs.” I will then trace the death drive from its source in Freud to its contemporary re-interpretations. I will then introduce the erotic by discussing Bataille’s thesis in Erotism, as well as revealing this analogy at work in the recent film “Black Swan” by Darren Aronofsky.

Derrida Dreams of Death

Plato, in The Republic, establishes one of the West’s most foundational analogies with his allegory of the cave. In this story, the “sun” outside of the “cave” is meant to stand in for the transcendental signified, which is to say, Truth. In his allegory, the philosophers are the ones who leave this cave, go outside and look at the light of the sun. Everyone else just sees shadows.

Thus was the origin of our metaphors for intelligence: enlightened, shed light upon, etc. Ever since Plato, the light of the sun has been an analogy for Truth. Since Christianity, this analogy has added the term “God” to the equation. Thus, today we have: Sun::Truth::God.

Yet, analogizing Truth/God to the sun also does something curious. In Spurs and in Of Grammatology, Derrida “illuminates” this problematic of light metaphors by writing, “The dream of death begins” (Spurs, 89). By this he means, that if humans were to be truly present with God, truly in possession of Truth, by association with this analogy, they would be looking directly at the sun. And anyone who’s been a kid knows, you’re not supposed to look directly at the sun. Why? Because it’s blinding.

Derrida writes, “Pure presence itself, if such a thing were possible, would be only another name for death” (Of Grammatology, 155). He goes on to show how language protects us from that pure, blinding presence of the sun, but we won’t touch upon that here. The point has been made: to access God/Truth means to look directly at the sun, a death by blindness.

But don’t let this deter you! This is not a warning against seeking Truth, but rather the introduction of a new element into our analogical string of terms: Sun::Truth::God::Death.

The introduction of this fourth term is exemplified in the film “Martyrs.”

Martyrs: Death as Access to God

Pascal Laugier introduces his film “Martyrs” by calling it “a response to ‘Funny Games’,” a film by Michael Haneke. He claims that “Funny Games” presents violence for no reason, while “Martyrs” engages violence for the greatest reason known to man. Without addressing the validity of dismissing “Funny Games,” I will go with his second point: the greatest reason.

"Martyrs" - a film by Pascal Laugier

Georges Bataille writes about religious sacrifice in his book Erotism, stating that “In sacrifice… the victim dies and the spectators share in what his death reveals. This is what religious historians call the element of sacredness. This sacredness is the revelation of continuity through the death of a discontinuous being to those who watch it as a solemn rite” (22).

Keep this quote in mind while I briefly outline the film’s second half. Anna, our new protagonist, stumbles across a basement dungeon in the house of her lover’s abusers. At once her lover is vindicated: she was not insane, but was truly abused as a child. Anna’s love is reborn, and she decides to explore the house for evidence. She is horrified to find the dungeon in pristine condition, expensively outfitted and sadistically utilitarian – not the work of amateurs. After rescuing another young woman, Anna is seized by the true owners of this dungeon: a religious cult. The Matriarch of the cult sits Anna down and explains everything to her.

They are an ancient cult made up of wealthy aristocrats. Their aim is simple, yet next to impossible to achieve: to recreate the religious experience of martyrdom. They believe, as the above Bataille quote suggests, that martyrdom leads to a sacred nearness to God. Their goal is to be near to that nearness, to witness this nearness to death::God::Truth. And then they tell her she’s next.

The cult.

Anna is broken down, and eventually martyred in the most horrifying, painful way possible: she is completely skinned alive. Yet, their hypothesis was true. She achieves a presence with God before dying. She gains access to the Truth, and is able to relate it all to the Matriarch. Anna passes away with a holy, cosmic look in her eyes.

What is Laugier analogizing here? He is synthesizing two opposite poles: the most horrible thing a human can experience, and the most beautifully transcendent. Anna achieves what the entire history of western philosophy and religion has sought – access to God/Truth. Yet, she is skinned alive. She can only get it via the most horrible bodily experience possible. Laugier is claiming that these two extremes are linked.

The Mademoiselle hears the Word.

He thus proves Derrida’s thesis, that the only access to God/Truth is death. This is exemplified in the film’s final moments. Immediately following Anna’s divine confession to the Matriarch, a cult-wide conference is held. All of the members are eager to hear her Truth, the word of God.

The Matriarch is in the bathroom, slowly taking off all her makeup, her fake eyelashes, her wig, etc. I read this as her exit from the Symbolic, a re-becoming of body. A cult member knocks on the door calling for her. She asks him, “Can you imagine what happens after death?” He responds, “No.” The Matriarch then puts a gun in her mouth, and before shooting herself, says, “Keep doubting.”

Now, the content of Anna’s confession doesn’t matter here. Does she reveal the glory of Heaven, or the void of nothingness? Is the Matriarch’s suicide a nihilistic gesture, or an eagerness to join God? The structural analogy is intact regardless of its content, since the crux of this thesis rests upon knowing: Truth::God::Death. All who see are blinded by the sun. The only way to live is to doubt.

Reinterpreting the Death Drive

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud defines the death drive in binary opposition with Eros (love, relatedness). He claims that the death drive is “man’s natural aggressive drive, the hostility of each against all… The death drive [is] found beside Eros and which rules the world jointly beside [it]” (58).

Today, even though this term has retained its name ‘death drive,’ it no longer connotes an irrational hostility, but rather the opposite. Contemporary psychoanalytic theory has completely reinterpreted the binary opposition of death drive/Eros, not just inverting it, but rather compressing both elements into a new term. This new term is still designated as the ‘death drive,’ but as Zizek states, it is now understood as “the return of the life force… What re-emerges in the ‘death drive’ is ultimately life itself, and the fact that the ego perceives this return as a death threat precisely confirms its perverted ‘repressive’ character. The ‘death drive’ means that life itself rebels against the ego” (Interrogating the Real, 159).

Allow me to unpack this passage. What Zizek is calling the ‘death drive’ is actually an excessiveness of life drive – this is raw life in the form of pure existence. We will later see Bataille refer to this pure existence as continuity. By linking the death drive to a return of pure existence, these authors are establishing a narrative. It goes like this: pure existence exists. It is then interrupted by the formation of the ego, which is to say – individuals arrive on the scene. Individuals are constituted by language. This entrance into the Symbolic, cuts us off from Things. The ego thus builds its walls of identity, and situates itself into a system of symbolic exchange. We then have the audacity to call living in a perpetual state of lack by the name ‘life.’

Thus, the “return of the life force” interrupts this lack, and in fact restores a sense of authentic continuity – the continuity of pure existence. This is the intrusion of pure life in all its radical potentiality, in all its undifferentiated multiplicity. Zizek states that this intrusion is perceived “as a death threat” by the ego because, quite violently, the ego’s constitutive limits are threatened by existence’s unboundedness. Pure life is called the ‘death drive’ since it breaks down all boundaries. This is an astute re-definition, since another name for pure existence is ‘God.’

The death drive is thus a creative force. Don’t be confused by its name – this is not a suicide-drive. But rather being in a living state of a “nearness to death,” a living with the understanding of what death does. And, as Rilke writes, it means being “at home in both unbounded realms.”

Unbounded Love: Salomé/Rilke

In Flesh of My Flesh, Kaja Silverman writes, “There is no getting outside of the unfathomable totality of which we are a part; not only is it spatially unbounded, but it also extends backward and forward in time. Most of us, though, are mentally estranged from this dimension of Being. We are unable to say ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’ to the existence of other creatures and other things because our ego has either incorporated them or excluded them. This will continue to be the case unless we allow the angel of death to graze us with his wing, because only finitude can teach us how to affirm” (28, emphasis added).

When Silverman writes that we must “allow the angel of death to graze us with his wing,” she is speaking about none other than the death drive. This is the same analogy we’ve been making, the great analogy, we might say – the intertwining of death with life. This passage essentially states that this nearness to death is the thing that allows us to affirm. Saying yes to what death means, means saying yes to everything.

The unboundedness that a nearness to death affirms also allows, via analogy, the sexual relationship to reach its full potential. By this I mean that the evaporation of the death/life boundary is analogous to the evaporation of the masculine/feminine boundary – both breaches allow for a profound identification with the reciprocal term. Unbounding each term thus dissolves their binary relationship, and establishes a new, synthesized term – a sort of multiplicitous totality.

Silverman addresses this potentiality within the sexual relationship by discussing Rilke’s love affair with Salomé. Salomé, a writer and psychoanalyst, had intense relationships with four men during her time: Nietzsche, Freud, Paul Rée, and Rilke. Yet, the only one of these relationships that was sexual was hers with Rilke. The radical reciprocity of this relationship allowed Salomé to come to an understanding of a term she called “identification.” I use the phrase “radical reciprocity” because Salomé was able to dissolve the opposition between the terms in her relationship: Salomé/Rilke, masculine/feminine, death/life. For her, love had to be unbounded.

Silverman writes, “To identify with someone or something in the Saloméan sense of the word is not to transform this other into an image of oneself, but rather to feel one’s togetherness with it in an ‘unfathomable totality.’ This totality is unfathomable because it has no limits, either temporally or spatially, and because it defies explanation. It can be affectively registered, but it cannot be thought” (26).

This “affectively registered but not thought” feeling of unfathomable totality is the evental space. This feeling is the radical potential of love, and the productive unboundedness brought about by a nearness to death.

Silverman concludes by stating, “Rilke came to see that there is ‘neither a here nor a beyond,’ but only one ‘realm whose depth and influence we share, everywhere unboundaried, with the dead and those to come.’ The only song that is commensurate with the world’s ‘longing’ is one that affirms this unity – that says ‘life-AND-death’” (80).

Eroticism as Event

“Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death,” writes Bataille in Erotism (11). With this first line, he is boldly introducing a new term in our analogical series: sex.

Above, we explored how the death drive qua pure existence restores a sense of authentic continuity. Bataille proposes that sex does the same thing. He picks up from psychoanalysis and states that individuals, because of their constitutive identities, are separate from one another. The moment the ego forms the boundaries of its identity, it is forever alone; which means, one being living separately amongst other separate beings. Life, then, is an experience of discontinuity.

The death drive is thus the force that leads us back to our original continuity. The word “force” is actually misleading here. Instead, one might even say: the death drive is the topology towards continuity. The same way in which gravity isn’t a force, but rather the curvature of space itself, so is the death drive the curvature of existence, leading us back to continuity.

As we have seen, a nearness to death wears many masks. Sex, too, is a profound experience of continuity. Physically, the boundaries between bodies break down during sex. Bodies enter one another, transgressing their surfaces. Psychologically, the experience of sex is one of union, of loss of identity to a new whole. Nakedness in itself is a symbolic gesture – the lowering of one’s defenses and the possibility of intimate openness.

Bataille writes, “Bodies open out to a state of continuity through secret channels that give us a feeling of obscenity.” And earlier, “The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives” (17).

Sex and eroticism, just like a nearness to death, aim to dissolve the boundaries between binaries, the boundaries we experience in our “normal lives.” This nakedness, which brings us skin to skin with our lover, has a chiasmic character. It is indeed the “flesh” written about by Merleau-Ponty, which says, “we become others and we become world” (The Visible and the Invisible, 160). We become unbounded, both self/other, both masculine/feminine, both alive/dead.

It comes as no surprise that the French word for “orgasm” is “la petit mort” – which translates as “the little death.” The same experience of continuity produced by sex is present in a nearness to death. The French language, and Bataille are thus making the same analogy: Sex::Death.

And perhaps this brings us to a larger analogy (since death is a form of violence) that sexuality and violence emerge from the same void within ourselves. Bataille writes, “The domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation… The most violent thing of all for us is death which jerks us out of a tenacious obsession with the lastingness of our discontinuous being” (16).

Mind you, I’m not talking about bringing physical violence into the sexual act. That would have the opposite effect we’re looking for. Physical violence would end up reifying the separation between individuals. Abuse, in this sense, isolates the individual within reactionary psychological walls, imprisoning the ego. I’m talking about is the opposite: destroying all walls of the ego. What I am talking about is a conceptualization of the sexual act as violence. A violence that comes from unleashing pure existence in all of its radical potentiality is a violence that is constituted by the unboundedness of authentic continuity.

Sex, in this sense, is an event. Eroticism is the evental space constituted by this nearness to death. Thus: Truth::God::Death::Sex.

Bataille elucidates, “Eroticism opens the way to death. Death opens the way to the denial of our individual lives. Without doing violence to our inner selves, are we able to bear a negation that carries us to the farthest bounds of possibility? (24).

What does Bataille mean by “the farthest bounds of possibility?” This is where art comes in. Death qua eroticism opens up the evental space of creativity. And no other film renders this space better than Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.”

Black Swan: The Evental Space Unbounded

Nina, played by Natalie Portman, is a ballet dancer of near perfect technique. Yet, her frigid personality and passionless control stifle her creativity, making her flawless, yet boring. She makes an ideal white swan, but since she lacks any element of the irrational, sensual passion of the black swan, her ballet director is hesitant to cast her as the lead (which has to play both parts).

The film’s narrative is essentially Nina’s journey to discover all of the “black swan” qualities she lacks. The point I’m making here doesn’t require the specifics of this story, but rather relies on the interconnectedness of all the qualities she releases once the fetters of her self-repression give way.

Natalie Portman as Nina in Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan"

Nina begins by turning her gaze inward, away from practicing technique and toward the unknown within herself. Her journey into her own unknown releases three things: her vibrant creativity, her passionate sexuality, and her insatiable violence. In the end, she succeeds and becomes the black swan. But, the point here has already been made, which is the analogy between these three elements: violence, sexuality and creativity.

Aronofsky’s profound thesis in this film is this analogy. He is incredibly astute to link these three elements to Nina’s unboundedness – because they are all indeed inexorably linked. The journey into the unspeakably unknown, into the void at the center of each of us, unleashes these three because they are all the exact same. Let me elaborate. The radical newness that is produced by access to the evental space is violent, because it destroys all limits of the ego, is erotic, because it produces an unbounded experience of continuity, and is artistic, because it releases the pure possibility of creativity.

The Black Swan emerges.

These three elements are each the same thing because all three do what death does. They are each an experience of Truth, in all of its radical potential and authentic continuity. The life force that streams out of Nina is nothing short of pure life itself, flowing forth without boundaries. It is the creative force.

Nina's unbounded sexuality.

Art, like love, is that which says yes to everything.

Thus, once the shackles restraining her evental space are thrown off, Nina violently explodes with sexuality and creativity. All boundaries in her world dissolve, thrusting her into a fantastic, unbounded world. This world is a work of art.

Truth::God::Death::Sex::Art

In conclusion, we have seen how the films “Martyrs” and “Black Swan” reveal a complex analogy linking the terms Truth, God, sex and art to the term death. Death, in this sense, occupies the ego’s empty center in the form of the death drive. This drive is best understood as a topological slope toward the continuity of pure existence. Read through Plato, Derrida, Freud, Zizek, Silverman, Salomé, Rilke, Neitzsche, Merleau-Ponty and Bataille, this experience of a “nearness to death” during life constitutes a productive evental space – creatively, erotically, and spiritually.

Bataille writes that the evental space allows us to “achieve the power to look death in the face and to perceive in death the pathway into unknowable and incomprehensible continuity – that path is the secret of eroticism” – and, I would add, the unspeakable power of art (24).

Art allows us to wander the precipice of our void and stare into its blinding abyss with wings outstretched. Art is sex, which is Truth, which is God, which is death. All these terms are structurally equivalent insofar as they all do the same thing: produce radical newness. Living a nearness to death thus means living this analogy, and achieving profound unboundedness during our lifetime.

But what constitutes materiality? It is: when things are themselves. It’s not about making something out of drywall, or rebar, but rather presenting each as such. “This is plaster,” it says. “It hardens. Now soak the linen in the plaster. Movement becomes frozen. Now wrap it around rebar. Gravity is defied.”

So what does it mean to posit building material as bodily? That our limbs are like rope? Our flesh, like cloth? Everything becomes colored, dyed, pigmented. The evental space itself fuses these contradictions, making syntheses. Body is building. Bone is plaster. Fragile. Impressive. Each is a monument. Each, sculpture. Not the container of a secret, but the secret itself.

And so our paths of fidelity ossify, our flesh becomes chiasm, and our bodies become the building material of Truth. Because things are exactly what they seem.

“Building Material”

“Building Material” is comprised of new sculptural work by Paul Wallace. The show opened at the 74 Market Street Gallery in Venice, CA on December 16th as part of a group show during the Venice Arts Crawl. The show debuted new work by Paul Wallace, Isabelle Alford-Lago, Bill Dambrova, and Manino Mendez.

Suspended Rebar

What becomes of these bodies, then? These bodies that defy gravity, that produce Truth from their fingertips? Perhaps they extend from walls. Effortlessly. Their iron simply floats. The movement of their linen skin moves while remaining still. They are chaos contained within a space. They are action paintings and minimalist objects. They are the very rules of OSSIFY – Truth emerges from the body. The body is a meaning machine.

Wallace's "Suspended Rebar" in gray, orange, green.

Suspended Rebar consists of three panels, 16x16x8in each. They are made from linen, plaster, stucco pigment, rebar, drywall, wood, and house paint. During the installation the three panels were mounted in a row on the center of the gallery’s loft wall. The sculptures reach out into the space.

"Suspended Rebar" (gray)

"Suspended Rebar" (green)

"Suspended Rebar" - installation view

The rebar, suspended in midair within the gallery, enunciates the synthesis of the bodily within the notion of building material: movement is frozen, mass becomes weightless, chaos is equivalent to symmetry, etc. This is to say, its transcendence is denoted by its very materiality, its immanence. It is the enunciation of Truth.

"Suspended Rebar" (orange)

Ossified Rope (gallows)

Death also ossifies the body, much like Truth. Nearness to death situates the body around its own evental void. Understanding death allows the body to live its truths in life.

"Ossified Rope (gallows)"

Across the room from Suspended Rebar sit four floor-mounted sculptures, Ossified Rope (gallows), which stand 30in off the ground. They are made out of rope, plaster, wire, concrete, and rebar.

"Ossified Rope (gallows)" - side view

Color Field (evental matheme)

The matheme for “evental space” (the rectangle within rectangle structure) is repeated six times within a primary/complementary color field in this set of sculptures. The field is two columns of three, wherein each primary color sits next to its complement panel.

"Color Field (evental matheme)" by Paul Wallace

Each 18x24in panel is made from dyed canvas, plaster, and stucco pigment.

"Color Field (evental matheme)" - yellow

"Color Field (evental matheme) - green

Dark-gray pigmented plaster (the center rectangle of each panel) is applied by hand, adding a tactile quality to the stark minimalism of this piece, which betrays the bodily core of its otherwise mechanically reproduced color field. This synthesis of body within machine reproduces the structure of the evental matheme (which is itself repeated in each panel). The abyss is not empty, but made up of movement. It is not colorless, but rather the un-selected – inconsistent multiplicity. The color field is not a cold abstraction, but rather a living process.

"Color Field (evental matheme) - red

Laurels and Descending Cloth (woman)

A cloth falls toward the floor, marking the end of work. But it does not hit the ground. It remains mid-flight, draping, descending but reaching upward like a stalagmite. It vaguely resembles a shrouded woman, yet is body-less. It is shroud as body. Cloth as material.

Descending Cloth (woman) stands 15in high, 7in across the base. It is linen, plaster, stucco pigment, wood and house paint.

"Descending Cloth (woman)"

Adorning the two open walls on either side of the gallery’s top floor are Laurels, 40x15in each, made from rope, linen, plaster and stucco pigment. They are material as celebration.

"Laurels"

There is no division between materiality and transcendence. They are one, fused. Like bones reaching out from the void within us – paths of fidelity compress the heavens and the earth. We are Truth. Our very bodies are events; that is to say, meaning machines – tracing paths of radical newness.

Performed on November 5th at the Miah Studio in downtown Los Angeles, OSSIFY now stands as a permanent installation in the space. The following is an excerpt from the press release:

“OSSIFY fuses immanence with transcendence. A rope “umbilical cord” connects the animal realm with the heavens. The bodily and the transcendental become inexorably linked, compressed, even, into one. A bone is created, emerging from the void at the center of an animal skin. The athletic performance solidifies the field of Truth within the body. Its connection is ossified.

Continuing Wallace’s mythological narrative of the evental wanderer, OSSIFY works within similar themes of truth as event, trajectories of fidelity out of a void, and bodily extensions of the transcendental. Working loosely within a Butoh aesthetic, this new installation uses athleticism as material, as well as formally engaging rope, plaster, clay and skin.”

OSSIFY – performance

Wearing white pants and a black harness, “The Climber” is covered from head to toe in white kaolin clay. His partner, “The Belayer,” is dressed similarly in black.

Paul Wallace as "The Climber"

A zebra skin rug lies on the floor. The rug is in the shape of Wallace’s matheme for “evental void” – a rectangular hole within a larger rectangle, 3 times the size. Here, the hole is raised from the ground forming a sloped box. A 14 foot woven rope stretches from an I-beam on the ceiling to the box, its slack curled within.

Beside the zebra skin rug are 3 buckets: one with plaster, one with water, and one for mixing.

zebra skin box - matheme for "evental void"

As the performance began, The Climber started mixing plaster.

pouring plaster

mixing plaster

3 buckets

The Climber then attached the mixed-plaster bucket to his harness. Using only upper-body, he ascended the rope. Once at the top, The Belayer locked him off, freeing The Climber to use his arms.

ascending the rope

The Climber then worked the plaster onto the rope as it dried, working from the top down on multiple climbs, slowly ossifying the rope. Excess wet plaster dripped down the rope’s length, collecting in the zebra skin box below.

working the plaster

The Climber ossifying the rope

As The Climber neared the bottom, he began to work the plaster on foot.

Paul Wallace as "The Climber" applying dripping plaster to rope

The performance concluded once the rope was hardened.

OSSIFY – installation

The ossified rope stretched from the zebra skin rug to the I-beam on the ceiling. The box was filled with plaster. The rope was bone. The material remains of the performance, of the work done, was left along side the sculpture. The buckets were in a row; plaster and clay dust made the floor black and white, just like a zebra pattern. The top rope and belay device were left, and the harnesses were arranged on the floor. Together, these constituted the final installation.

OSSIFY - the installation

detail of OSSIFY

OSSIFY – new objects

A new series of sculptures will continue the themes explored in OSSIFY.

Ossified Rope - a new sculpture series

We are attracted to decay.

It has something to do with time. Maybe it’s the death drive – as humans we are too aware of temporality. Living towards death – the living dead, perhaps? There is a human specificity to this stance. At once nostalgic and apocalyptic, we are the never-present.

This is to say, thinking means being related to time. Pure presence is the fleeting fruit tree to our Tantalus mediations – always just out of reach. We think. We reminisce about the past, bathed in the golden glow it casts. We plan for the future, sometimes with hope, sometimes with fear. Being present means seeing ourselves from above, abstracted through the imagined gaze of the other, our camera-framed existence, fantasy.

We are narratives. There is a story to everything. The very objects that surround us. The locations we inhabit. They, too, live. And just like us, they die. Their stories, open wounds. This is what’s specific about decay. They say the beautiful die young. Is this just naïve pop culture rubbish? Or is it not naïve enough? Perhaps beauty is always already death.

And that’s the point – beauty and decay are enigmatically intertwined. For me, personally, I find an almost romantic attraction to decay, to abandoned buildings and systems in decline. When I see pictures like these – my mind races.

Time, literally, inhabits these rooms. When we look at decay, we are looking at the movements of time itself, which is to say, narrativity. There is a story to be found here, in the objects themselves. The site is transformed from space to time. Suddenly there is a cast of characters. There is a beginning, middle and end. But compressed, happening all at once – the very way in which we experience time ourselves. This is what I find beautiful in decay: it’s simultaneously the indexical mark of time, of narrativity, and an idea, an entire story at once, non-temporally. Which means it’s both a story and an object, itself and its opposite. Just like art.

Michael C. McMillen – “Lighthouse”

On show at LA Louver until October 30^th, McMillen’s sculptures exemplify what decay looks like as objects.

We see, arranged in the gallery as art objects, miniatures of decay. A decrepit submarine hugs a wall. An abandoned building sits alone on a pedestal. A broken section of a boat hangs from the ceiling. It is as if a model-ship collector started producing shipwrecks.

There is an important distinction to be made: these aren’t sets, locations or sites – but objects. They are isolated as such and stand solely as objects. McMillen materializes decay. At first I read this as a contradiction, that these miniatures seem like sets, but they are presented as objects.

For instance, the similar work of Juan Munoz creates a completely different effect by the way in which his objects are installed in the museum space. Munoz’s work engages the viewer structurally via the space itself, both enacting and speaking about intersubjectivity.

While McMillian’s world, on the other hand, is subject-less. It’s the world long after the apocalypse, after all people have died. But almost even further than that. It’s almost as if this show presents our post-apocalyptic world as a natural-history museum exhibition. We see these decaying locations not as sites to be engaged, but as relics, objects.

This might sound negative, but let me say – this show is strangely compelling. What do these boats mean? What does their decay mean? Is there a story, or are there only objects?

I’ve never understood model-boat collecting (something my father does). But maybe now, after McMillian’s “Lighthouse,” I do. There is a dialectical materialism at work in miniatures. It subtracts subjects from intersubjectivity. It takes the narrativity out of story. There is a form-centered gaze created by de-narrativizing these objects, and highlighting instead their materiality.

This form, it seems, is the real of time itself.

Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe – “Bright White Underground”

On show at Country Club / Los Angeles until October 30^th, Freeman and Lowe’s enormous, conceptual installation highlights the inherent plot line of decay.

Once on-site, the viewer instantly becomes part of a greater mythology. Something happened here, that much is obvious. But how is the story told? Through everything. Every peeling strip of wallpaper, crack in concrete or hole punched through drywall speaks.

Each box and can, each labeled consistently with the project’s mythos, enunciates the nature of decay. Yes, there is a story. It can either be pieced together experientially through navigating the installation, or directly during the artists’ nearly hour-long presentation.

Freeman and Lowe tell the story of a drug safe-house run by psychonaut Dr. Arthur Cook, inventor of LSD-like drug Marasa. Their rambling and reference-laden talk never failed to entertain, but most importantly, it succeeded in painting a vibrant picture. We were shown a world where psychiatrists cross the line from mystical shamen to stoned socialites to paranoid researchers and back again. We were shown a world where parties cause transcendence. Guests literally levitate. Everyone’s on the run, from one safe-house to the next. Their only escape is to be consumed by these very sites, and in turn, history itself.

The specifics of this narrative, however pleasurable, weren’t the point. The meaning, quite simply, was this: there is a mythology. That’s what was articulated. That there was a story. Every room and every object screamed it – “This is important.”

I have to say, Bright White Underground was one of the best shows I’ve seen in my lifetime. The space was seeped in story. Mythology was their art and destruction their medium.

A wall is just a wall. But what happens when you punch a hole in it? Burn it down? Tear it to shreds? You don’t just have a destroyed wall. You have an object-cause. You have an implied reason. You have meaning.

If Dr. Cook’s drug-fueled goal was spiritual alchemy, coal to gold, then Freeman and Lowe finished this project. They showed us that decay is alchemy.

The Meaning of Decay

McMillen demonstrates a materialist approach to decay – he fetishizes the objects themselves as such, as objects, as ideas of time. On the other hand, Freeman and Lowe revel in the mythology of decay. There are objects and sites left behind, of course, but there is always a reason, a story.

This is why it’s beautiful. Because we, as humans, have found our most meaningful relationship to time in the form of decay, collapse and apocalypse narratives. Why is this? Because decay is alchemy. Decay imbues everything with meaning. With a story, with a narrative. And this does something. It does the exact same thing art does.

Decay is an art-machine.

Who are these abyssal explorers, wandering the boarders of evental sites? Can we trace their paths of fidelity?

Let us say evental space borders the situation from within, and the void is the situated lack of the subject – its hole, the intrusion of the unspeakable Real. Suddenly we find lack itself void. The binary of desire/drive shatters from this force of fidelity, its fissures producing events, exploding outward from all points.

The subject itself becomes newness. The subject’s wandering, space travel.

Let us be astronauts, then; let us ascend newness.

ascent – performance

Wearing a harness and an afghan, covered head to toe with white kaolin clay, I ascended a three-story barn in Ontario, Canada via an industrial hoist.

ascent – installation

After the performance I constructed a site-specific installation. The harness and the afghan are suspended from the hoist, and its chains are arranged into mathemes.

astronaut – performance

This character, the astronaut, was then photographed in four locations across Canada.

astronaut – installation

The astronaut’s helmet is a sheet of glass suspended between the astronaut’s hands via copper wire handles. Clay caked onto the twisted copper. The helmet is hung from a “come-along,” a bicycle chain-like hoist.

Across the room from the helmet is a hemp-rope pulley. Hanging from the pulley hook is a graphite-on-paper drawing mounted between two sheets of glass, bound by copper threading.

buoy – performance

Two more graphite on paper drawings, also mounted between glass via copper wire, were placed inside water-proof sailing pouches. One is a drawing of the void symbol, the other is the matheme for the object petit a. These pouches were connected by hemp rope and tied to an iron ball beneath Lake Superior.

buoy – installation

The drawings were removed from the pouches and hung above the mounted buoy.

ascent – show

The final show consists of the material remains of the ascent performance (white clay on the floor, a painting on birch bark affixed to the iron I-beam) and the installation ascent in the center of the space. intrusions 1 – 3 are three mounds of earth, rock and sand respectively, which lie just in front of ascent.

On the left wall hangs hoist (helmet), mathemes on birch (origin of the count) a series of white charcoal drawings on birch bark, and buoy.

On the right wall hangs hoist (outward movement), mathemes on birch (lack), and mirror, which is a sheet of glass suspended by wire and chain in front of a sheet of aluminum.