The “Equivalents” remain photography’s most radical demonstration of faith in the existence of a reality behind and beyond that offered by the world of appearances. They are intended to function evocatively, like music, and they express a desire to leave behind the physical world, a desire symbolized by the visual absence of horizon and scale clues within the frame. Emotion resides solely in form, they assert, not in the specifics of time and place.

— Andy Grundberg, 1983 on Alfred Stieglitz “Equivalents”

At stake will have always been the murderous power of images, murderers of the real, murderers of their own model, as the Byzantine icons could be those of the divine identity. To this murderous power is opposed that of representations as a dialectical power, the visible and intelligible mediation of the Real. All western faith and good faith became engaged in this wager on representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could be exchanged for meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange – God of course. But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, can be reduced to the signs that constitute faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer itself anything but a gigantic simulacrum – not unreal, but a simulacrum, that is to say never exchanged for the real  but exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.

— Jean Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra

Various start dates for the Anthropocene have been proposed, corresponding with the Holocene calendar and ranging from the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution 12,000–15,000 years ago, to as recent as the 1960s. As of June 2019, the ratification process continues and thus a date remains to be decided definitively, but the Trinity test of 1945 has been more favoured than others. In May 2019, the AWG voted for a starting date in the mid 20th century, but the final decision will not be made before 2021.

Naturally, the popular version of formalism, which was already casually formulated by Nietzsche, is indefensible. For the artist, form is supposed to be the real content of the work. Art plays with form for its own sake. Content only does service as an alibi. This type of formalism, which, incidentally, cannot be eradicated, is, in fact, no more than a kind of bourgeois aestheticism. Ostensibly, art would be about playing, as much as possible, on the aesthetic—literally: the sensory—registers contained in a medium.

— Frank Vande Veire on Dirk Braeckmann

At stake will have always been the murderous power of images, murderers of the real, murderers of their own model, as the Byzantine icons could be those of the divine identity. To this murderous power is opposed that of representations as a dialectical power, the visible and intelligible mediation of the Real. All western faith and good faith became engaged in this wager on representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could be exchanged for meaning and that something could guarantee this exchange – God of course. But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, can be reduced to the signs that constitute faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer itself anything but a gigantic simulacrum – not unreal, but a simulacrum, that is to say never exchanged for the realbut exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.

— Jean Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra

What holds us back from tipping over the brink of fascism: our distrust in enthusiasm. What Elevey had called „the organization of enthusiasm „ seems to dissipate too fast to build any real momentum. (Make Amerika Great again as one important cornerstone in trumps campaign) but we can’t hold our attention long enough to build any kind of lasting enthusiasm… We don’t drift into fascism, but not of a lack of conviction, it’s merely a dwindling attention-span…