Plato placed the sud­den, in a sim­i­lar way to von Hauss­wolff, between eter­nity and time. Time sud­denly emerges out of eter­nity, but the moment itself belongs nei­ther to time nor to eter­nity. Since the sud­den gives rise to oppo­site becom­ings it is a pure start­ing point. Every­thing that begins, or comes into exis­tence, comes sud­denly, and from that fol­lows dif­fer­ent becomings.

[…]

This sud­den­ness must be under­stood as a rela­tion­ship between the viewer and the pic­ture, as the inter­nal rela­tion of an extended pic­ture. To under­stand this rela­tion in each sep­a­rate case would be to under­stand the pic­tures from within, as they would under­stand them­selves. When von Hauss­wolff talked about her works she men­tioned this pres­ence that appears in the sud­den. Because of this unique time in which her images are sit­u­ated, and because that is what they are, they become, as she says in an inter­view, ”pure visu­als”. So in the sud­den, as in the pres­ence of pure visu­als, there is this pecu­liar unity between sight and the seen. Plot­i­nus wrote about moments when you both see the object and your­self look­ing, and you realise that the object and the sub­ject for a moment are one in the vision.34 Much later, Schopen­hauer turned all of that into a phi­los­o­phy of art, and spoke about the absolute iden­tity between the sub­ject and object in the aes­thetic contemplation.

[…]

Deleuze and Guat­tari write that there have always been two ways in which one can under­stand life. Either you under­stand it as a sub­ject (a force or a soul) who acts but is itself noth­ing (but the acts), or as a pas­sive sub­ject who is but does not act.41 In rela­tion to the pic­ture as time, as pres­ence, on a mate­r­ial level, the viewer is with­out a doubt the lat­ter. The viewer con­tributes a pas­sive life. But it is still to con­tribute, since con­tem­pla­tion takes place in pas­siv­ity, that of enter­ing the mate­r­ial, becom­ing absorbed by it, like a child who ”is in the fab­ric”. With­out that con­tem­pla­tion, the two aspects of the pic­ture would not merge, but life­lessly fall apart. How that ”being in the fab­ric” comes into being, how you con­tem­plate and thus cre­ate (a unity in the Pic­ture) by sim­ply keep­ing together the mate­r­ial and the Ersatz–image as a mul­ti­plic­ity, ”that is the mys­tery of pas­sive creation”.42 The exis­tence of the pic­ture, its effec­tive­ness, is com­pletely depen­dent on the viewer being in such a pas­sive state. Then the viewer can con­tem­plate all details as they are, with the insight that things could also be dif­fer­ent, at the very same time as the viewer is con­stantly in the mate­r­ial, ”eter­nally now”.

Post-irony, as I understand Pallasvuo using it, as opposed to sincerity, is a strategy that still steeps itself in irony, uses it as a jumping off point. Therefore, “sincerity” is somehow something completely new and different in the context of art concerned with the Internet and our relationship to it. Pallasvuo suggests that “sincerity” is what will finally slaythe old and cold, bitter and dry net art and what might be the “new casualist” aesthetic in painting.[2] Yet – obviously – nothing is 100% “sincere” / “authentic” and the creation of these categories is problematic. What is sincere is not opposite to what is ironic: many of Pallasvuo’s pieces, like much of today’s net art, leans heavily on a nostalgic affection for early 90′s internet and “folk” aesthetics (the title of his blog being DawsonsCreek.info). To me, constantly referring to a sort of overall objective nostalgia for the early Internet is yet another layer of distance placed between the artist and his intention. As viewers, we get in on the joke, which is a trademark move by ironists.

Some net art uses poetry and emotional content opposed to what I consider to be the predominant ironic, distanced, slick and surface-based aesthetic of the (art of the) “information age.” Perhaps as we continue to suffer from the Internet’s commoditization, alienating and distancing power over us, we are finding the positive parts of it. The parts that allow us to meet other people, and to be honest online about ourselves – or not. There is an extremely varied way of codifying our emotions online, and these artists emphasizing how we can defer our emotions through technologies, or at least face them.

housingworksbookstore:

PARTY TONIGHT, here, for this book! It’s free! There’s going to be music! And poetry, duh.

booksmatter:

The distinguishing feature of this poetry collection is not, in fact, the poems—though they are good—but the book’s genesis. As Tishon and Meissner explain in the introduction: “…we’ve…

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