Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censors anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, communicate, and enjoy. We should become pitiless censors of ourselves

— Alain Badiou,  2004

9. The only maxim of contemporary art is: Do not be imperial. This also means: Do not be democratic, if democracy implies conformity with the imperial idea of political liberty

— Alain Badiou, Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art

Mongolia, August 2022

Ich glaube, ich habe inzwischen ziemlich mit der Welt als Narration abgeschlossen – der Welt der Romane und Filme und auch der Welt der Musik. Ich interessiere mich jetzt nur noch für die Welt als Aneinanderreihung.

— Houllebecq Karte und Gebiet

Mongolia, August 2022

Compartmentalization is a good point: sometimes it’s simply a psychological necessity to suspend your emotional response and move into a purely functional state, otherwise, you just break down and weep. How much of this “suspended state” is the normal way photography works: Daido Moriyama calls it his “Hunter”-instincts, Stephen Shore escapes into a cold, scientific stare and calls it “Solving Pictures”. When Nakahira says “Photography needs to stop being art. It needs to stop expressing feelings. When it is completely a record, it can be something”, he means “I have to stop feeling”, he wants to turn himself into a photographic machine: and ends up burning all his negatives and drinks himself into a coma… The “Tetsuo”, the “Iron Man” is a very Japanese/photographic way of operating…

And the other way becomes increasingly difficult: the issues of representation, the consciousness about the social contract of photography – all that baggage of being a sentient, social human being can bring photography to a grinding halt and freeze your finger over the shutter, so is it necessary to become a photographic monster (like Diane Arbus most certainly was…) to get anything done at all?!

The Shadow of the fourth leg is slightly off. The Feet of the table resemble legs of little animals, maybe deer; the sunlight on the edge of the windowsill. Why is that a likely response on anything?