2017
This article is based on a lecture given by the author at the forum held by the China Academy of Art "Century: A Proposal," Strasbourg, France, 2017.12.02
Running late, as usual, I completely forgot to pick a date among the ones that were suggested. After I was called to order, I was told that as I was the last one, the only remaining date was 2001. Let's go for 2001.
As I arrived this morning, I got impressed by the stage device and the set-up of the big black table, on which were carved all the years from 1900 to 2019, and the pulpit disposed in a horseshoe shape assigned to each guest. On my pulpit, I saw long lines of words carved into copper, along with the year 2001. Here is what I read:
- Battle aircraft crash incident between China and USA
- The Founding of Shanghai Cooperation Organization
- China joining the WTO
- September 11 Attack
- First China-French Strategic Dialogue
- Overall strategic partnership between China and France
I immediately got aware of the obvious incongruity of my situation, but it was too late to take a step back. As a matter of fact, when I learned that I was prescribed the date 2001, only one thing came to my mind: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's unforgettable movie. It might not be the kind of outstanding fact that was expected, especially since this movie was released in May 1968, 33 years before 2001 and right before the beginning of what would become, for better or for worse, the events of May 68—the beginning of a new era. But even after spending time on it, the more I thought about, the more convinced I became that such a grand piece of art, with a title engraved upon collective memory, was at least as important, perhaps more important than all the real and historical facts that followed one another in the world of 2001. It might have overturned the course of things as much as, for example, a popular uprising. It might be utopian, but I'd like to believe that it did.
More importantly, it's also a way to claim that, despite everything, 2001 is the number of an artwork more than anything else's. Isn't it possible that a work of art supplants political facts?
Of course, the Manhattan Twin Towers' attack, a kind of Mondo Visione real-time broadcast of “Pearl Harbor,” had tragic consequences since the first impact, consequences that keep affecting us every day since then. That being said, it's impossible not to remember that for millions of people who watched those attacks on their television screen that day, the fascination was the same as the feeling they could have felt watching a science-fiction movie. On the one hand, “a movie” because it's only through those footages that hundreds of millions of people attended the events; and “a science-fiction” one because it was really hard to believe, at least for a while. On the other hand, because of the mischievous plot that those events were the result of, a scenario where all the successive components that could have turned the whole project into a failure were ineffective, where the strings from one event to the other were carefully woven, and where the timing was close to perfect, a scenario that ended in the ultimate collapsing of the targeted Manhattan Twin Towers.
Indeed, this whole tragedy was driven by an implacable scenario that usually only happens in movies. A story that would take place if not in space at least in air, generating images not less intriguing than the ones Stanley Kubrick created. I think that those images, if we consider them separately from the horrible and tangible reality they depict, are deeply connected with the fascination this barbarian act generated in lots of people's minds. But let's come back to 2001: A Space Odyssey for a moment, as the coincidences attached to the date it's named after might make the choice of this movie a more appropriate selection than expected.
We know that Kubrick's movie was also an enigmatic film, addressing hundreds of questions without bringing up any solution. What does the black monolith mean? Some said that it was a symbol for cinema screen and, by extension, art: an attractive interpretation. After he loses all his grounding, the man at the end of the movie reconnects to reality using art as a medium. 2001: A Space Odyssey is full of artistic references and if there is an element that we can't ignore in this space odyssey, being also, of course, a mankind odyssey, it's the role of art in man's capacity to change the world. In a brilliant study that I read about Stanley Kubrick's movie, I encountered this idea that art would be a way to return to the Lieu (with a capital “L”), that art would be a primary form of language to connect with reality. I will end with a quotation from Heidegger related to the etymology of the word “technic,” a term that runs through Kubrick's film idea and is also connected with our meeting today.
Formerly, the word “techne” wasn't only referring to “technic,” it was also describing the unveiling of the truth, the revealing of the truth in the radiance of what appears: Techne was referring to the expression of truth in beauty. “Poiesis” and “fine arts” used to be called techne as well. If we go back to what used to be the Occident in its early beginnings, arts in ancient Greece, was the closest expression of this unveiling of the truth I just mentioned. It was brilliantly reflecting the gods' presence, the dialogue of human and divine destinies, and was, at that time, called techne. It was a multiple though unique process of unveiling.
What if, in the middle of a century where horror vies with destructive madness, where innovative technologies are used to accomplish the worst massacre of human history, a movie or a work of art could open another form of thinking, an easier-to-share form of thinking? Similarly to the goal of this symposium that has been running for more than a century, Kubrick's movie embraces the history of humanity, from its origins to 2001, a date that could have been any other year just as 2510 for example.
I want to finish on a quotation of Stanley Kubrick himself:
“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
This translation was made from French to English, without the intervention of Daniel Buren.
This article is based on a lecture given by the author at the forum held by the China Academy of Art "Century: A Proposal," Strasbourg, France, 2017.12.02
Running late, as usual, I completely forgot to pick a date among the ones that were suggested. After I was called to order, I was told that as I was the last one, the only remaining date was 2001. Let's go for 2001.
As I arrived this morning, I got impressed by the stage device and the set-up of the big black table, on which were carved all the years from 1900 to 2019, and the pulpit disposed in a horseshoe shape assigned to each guest. On my pulpit, I saw long lines of words carved into copper, along with the year 2001. Here is what I read:
- Battle aircraft crash incident between China and USA
- The Founding of Shanghai Cooperation Organization
- China joining the WTO
- September 11 Attack
- First China-French Strategic Dialogue
- Overall strategic partnership between China and France
I immediately got aware of the obvious incongruity of my situation, but it was too late to take a step back. As a matter of fact, when I learned that I was prescribed the date 2001, only one thing came to my mind: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's unforgettable movie. It might not be the kind of outstanding fact that was expected, especially since this movie was released in May 1968, 33 years before 2001 and right before the beginning of what would become, for better or for worse, the events of May 68—the beginning of a new era. But even after spending time on it, the more I thought about, the more convinced I became that such a grand piece of art, with a title engraved upon collective memory, was at least as important, perhaps more important than all the real and historical facts that followed one another in the world of 2001. It might have overturned the course of things as much as, for example, a popular uprising. It might be utopian, but I'd like to believe that it did.
More importantly, it's also a way to claim that, despite everything, 2001 is the number of an artwork more than anything else's. Isn't it possible that a work of art supplants political facts?
Of course, the Manhattan Twin Towers' attack, a kind of Mondo Visione real-time broadcast of “Pearl Harbor,” had tragic consequences since the first impact, consequences that keep affecting us every day since then. That being said, it's impossible not to remember that for millions of people who watched those attacks on their television screen that day, the fascination was the same as the feeling they could have felt watching a science-fiction movie. On the one hand, “a movie” because it's only through those footages that hundreds of millions of people attended the events; and “a science-fiction” one because it was really hard to believe, at least for a while. On the other hand, because of the mischievous plot that those events were the result of, a scenario where all the successive components that could have turned the whole project into a failure were ineffective, where the strings from one event to the other were carefully woven, and where the timing was close to perfect, a scenario that ended in the ultimate collapsing of the targeted Manhattan Twin Towers.
Indeed, this whole tragedy was driven by an implacable scenario that usually only happens in movies. A story that would take place if not in space at least in air, generating images not less intriguing than the ones Stanley Kubrick created. I think that those images, if we consider them separately from the horrible and tangible reality they depict, are deeply connected with the fascination this barbarian act generated in lots of people's minds. But let's come back to 2001: A Space Odyssey for a moment, as the coincidences attached to the date it's named after might make the choice of this movie a more appropriate selection than expected.
We know that Kubrick's movie was also an enigmatic film, addressing hundreds of questions without bringing up any solution. What does the black monolith mean? Some said that it was a symbol for cinema screen and, by extension, art: an attractive interpretation. After he loses all his grounding, the man at the end of the movie reconnects to reality using art as a medium. 2001: A Space Odyssey is full of artistic references and if there is an element that we can't ignore in this space odyssey, being also, of course, a mankind odyssey, it's the role of art in man's capacity to change the world. In a brilliant study that I read about Stanley Kubrick's movie, I encountered this idea that art would be a way to return to the Lieu (with a capital “L”), that art would be a primary form of language to connect with reality. I will end with a quotation from Heidegger related to the etymology of the word “technic,” a term that runs through Kubrick's film idea and is also connected with our meeting today.
Formerly, the word “techne” wasn't only referring to “technic,” it was also describing the unveiling of the truth, the revealing of the truth in the radiance of what appears: Techne was referring to the expression of truth in beauty. “Poiesis” and “fine arts” used to be called techne as well. If we go back to what used to be the Occident in its early beginnings, arts in ancient Greece, was the closest expression of this unveiling of the truth I just mentioned. It was brilliantly reflecting the gods' presence, the dialogue of human and divine destinies, and was, at that time, called techne. It was a multiple though unique process of unveiling.
What if, in the middle of a century where horror vies with destructive madness, where innovative technologies are used to accomplish the worst massacre of human history, a movie or a work of art could open another form of thinking, an easier-to-share form of thinking? Similarly to the goal of this symposium that has been running for more than a century, Kubrick's movie embraces the history of humanity, from its origins to 2001, a date that could have been any other year just as 2510 for example.
I want to finish on a quotation of Stanley Kubrick himself:
“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
This translation was made from French to English, without the intervention of Daniel Buren.
