The Accident of Art

by Sylvère Lotringer, Paul Virilio, Mike Taormina (Translator)

There is a catastrophe within contemporary art. What I call the "optically correct" is at stake. The vision machine and the motor have triggered it, but the visual arts haven't learned from it. Instead, they've masked this failure with commercial success. This "accident" is provoking a reversal of values. In my view, this is positive: the accident reveals something important we would not otherwise know how to perceive.-- Paul Virilio, The Accident of ArtUrbanist and technological theorist Paul Virilio trained as a painter, studying under Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Bazaine and de Stael. In The Accident of Art, his third extended conversation with Sylv?re Lotringer, Virilio addresses the situation of art within technological society for the first time. This book completes a collaborative trilogy the two began in 1982 with Pure War and continued with Crepuscular Dawn, their 2002 work on architecture and biotechnology.In The Accident of Art, Virilio and Lotringer argue that a direct relation exists between war trauma and art. Why has art failed to reinvent itself in the face of technology, unlike performing art? Why has art simply retreated into painting, or surrendered to digital technology? Accidents, Virilio claims, can free us from speed's inertia. As technological catastrophes, accidents are inventions in their own right.

Genres: Art, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory

120 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Sylvère Lotringer (born in 1938 in Paris, France) is a literary critic and cultural theorist. A younger contemporary of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio and Michel Foucault, he is best known for synthesizing French theory with American literary, cultural and architectural avant-garde movements through his work with Semiotext(e); and for his interpretations of French theory in a 21st-century context. An influential interpreter of Jean Baudrillard's theories, Lotringer invented the concept "extrapolationist" as a means of describing the hyperbolic world-views espoused by Baudrillard and Paul Virilio. Lotringer is a Professor of Foreign Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Reviews

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This conversation between Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer examines what they refer to as the Accident of Art. Virilio posits that all knowledge comes about only through accident. Accidents, he suggests are the negatives which allow positive movement to happen. Without the negative, things remain stationary, they do not move. Even if there is an illusion of movement, there is no anchor which allows new knowledge to form. Using this framework, Virilio suggests that contemporary art is incapable of movement. Art, for Virilio, has lost its ability to be artistic. Instead, art has been subsumed by capital. Even that art which is used to critique capital is engulfed by the capitalistic enterprise – it is incapable of real critique.

In what reminded me of the situationalist Debord's Society of the Spectacle, Virilio discusses the influence of the “talkie” film on contemporary art. With the talkie, there is no longer any room for interpretation, or the building of knowledge. Rather than allowing the art to speak through its silence, (a concept which is explored in the book as well), the talkie informs the audience of what they should think. There is no room for the audience to make a decision, as the decision has already been made for them. This is part of phenomenon of optics. Rather than suggesting that we live in a world of 'image' as Debord may have suggested, Virilio adopts an understanding of Optics. The tele-surveillance of screens which is always watching and informing us about how to act. A new panopticon, which has increased its speeds to the point where there is no movement at all.

This book really had me thinking about my relationship with both art and media in general. It shows, perhaps, why it is difficult for a generation who has grown up on television and the internet to embrace more artistic endeavors. My one question would be to Virilio whether the art he talks about here constitutes all contemporary art, or only major contemporary art. For, I feel like the potential for movement might exist within the minor art – the art of the minority.

[Bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truthfully enjoyed up until religious references in terms of the unibomber

[Mira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a discussion about the speed of technology, its application to the logistics of war and life (scarily connected if not immediately experienced), and the progress of art. Virilio identifies the small accidents of art that can disrupt the current "noise" of technology but points out that the capitalist success of the art industry hides the fact that the "information bomb" is something that art in its old framework cannot keep up with. I think the point is that there's no point in keeping up with something so manaical, and that art has to be smarter than that to carve away at the speed of information (no space or distance [or thought])as we know it. I liked it, even though it hurt my brain.

[Frank D'hanis junior · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's bullshit, and it reeks of obviousness. Try Baudrillard instead.