Aesthetic Dispositives for (Aesthetic) Reflection: A short conceptual outline
If you have been reading/watching this book following the order indicated by the page numbers, on the previous pages you found what I call in the context of this project an “aesthetic dispositive for (aesthetic) reflection.” With the use of this formulation, I specify the concept of “constellation” as defined by Dieter Mersch, drawing partially from Agamben’s outline of Foucault’s concept of “apparatus.” In particular, I take as a reference the first two of the three characteristics of an apparatus described by Agamben as a summary of Foucault’s statements in a 1977 interview. According to this description, an apparatus is “a heterogenous set” and “always has a strategic function.” The way I specify these principles differs from the intentions and interests of Foucault/Agamben. To begin with, I understand “heterogeneity” in the framework of my dispositives as diversity of media and practices. Every aesthetic dispositive is realized by activating different media through different practices. In the case of the dispositive I present here, I mobilized the media of photographic image, written language, and linguistic diagram through the practices of photographic recording, exploratory essay writing, and aesthetic-phenomenological diagram. These practices were performed as aurally-informed practices in the process of generating the artifacts that constitute the dispositive conceived for this book. This formulation points to the fact that these practices have been performed on the basis of a predominantly auditive co-constitution of the investigated atmosphere, that is, influenced by the accomplishment of preparatory and therefore in-forming practices of hearing and listening. Accordingly, the multiplicity and intertwinement of media can already be found in the process of carrying out the practices, before it determines the production of the dispositive.
My understanding of the “strategic function” of the apparatuses—one of its constitutive traits according to Agamben/Foucault—is the main reason why I opt for using the term “dispositive” rather than the established English translation of the original French word “dispositif.” The strategic, or better, tactic function of my dispositives for reflection is to induce a reflective disposition. In other words, the agency of the dispositives for reflection I produce is meant to spontaneously motivate an alteration in the way the person exposed to this agency is currently acting so that reflecting becomes the most natural— here, meaning unintentionally adequate, unforced, and viable—variety of action to be performed. With the term “disposition”—in a clear morphological connection to “dispositive”—I mean a certain operative organization of bodily skills. Focused attention, calm sensorimotor activity, conceptual relationally or logical inference, to cite a few examples, can be understood as skills that should
Published in: Alex Arteaga and Nicolaus Gansterer: Contingent Agencies. Inquiring into the Emergence of Atmospheres. Berlin: Hatje Cantz, in press.
This book is the final stage of the artistic research project Continegnt Agencies.
be mobilized and connected to one another in particular ways in order to perform certain varieties of reflection, that is, skills that typically should be connected to one another and activated in order to make the action and, furthermore, some practices of reflection possible. My intention in assembling dispositives for reflection is not to trigger the mobilization of reflection-enabling skills, or not primarily, through a linguistic invitation to reflect and also not by writing and handling a score for reflection, but instead, through the exposition of the reflector-to-be to a constellation of aesthetic artifacts, that is, to an aesthetic dispositive.
The attribution of the qualifier “aesthetic” to the artifacts that constitute these dispositives—and, furthermore, to the dispositives themselves—refers neither to an aesthetic judgement of these artifacts nor to its consideration as being artistic and therefore suitable for examination through aesthetic-philosophical practices. Instead, I consider these artifacts, and thus the dispositives, to be aesthetic primarily because they are produced though aesthetic research practices. This first justification for qualifying these artifacts as aesthetic obviously requires a second, more fundamental one, which also justifies the consideration of the performed practices as being aesthetic. This fundamental justification can be found in the concept of “aesthetic sense-making” that I am in the process of conceptualizing through my artistic research work. I understand this concept as a specification of the enactivist concept of cognition in the field of aesthetic practices and aesthetic research and, in turn, as a contribution to provide a reliable foundation for these fields drawing from the enactive approach to cognition. In a nutshell, my concept of “aesthetic sense-making” is based on considering “action” as a fundamental category. According to the enactive approach, living systems, as embodiments of autonomous forms of organization, are networks of processes structurally intertwined with processes performed by their environments. Living systems are situatedly acting networks. Bodily actions—extending the concept of “body” to all living systems and thus understanding bodily actions as dynamics of embodiment—are in a feedback relation to skills. Actions are enabled by the confluencing mobilization of skills, which in turn are developed through the performance of actions. Accordingly, every variety of action that can be defined implies a certain disposition, that is, a particular operative organization of skills. The concept of aesthetic sense-making that I am developing is based on an understanding of aesthetic as a form of action: aesthetic action. I posit that this variety of action is enabled by an intensification of sensorimotor and emotional skills and a simultaneous
neutralization of our capacities of logical and knowledge-based construction of meaning as well as will-based and target-oriented action. Through the performance of this disposition, the aesthetically acting body alters the way it relates to its environment. The aesthetically acting body does not take a central and dominant position. Instead, it participates in the field of non-hierarchically distributed agencies that it, by acting aesthetically, enables to emerge together with the agents of its environment. This disposition—referring now not only to the bodily skills but furthermore including all the agencies at stake in the system body-environment—leads the aesthetically acting body to observe, to become aware of the actualizations of all these agencies and to act spontaneously, in-tune with the evolution of the whole system.
The way aesthetic action specifies awareness brings this term close to the concept of reflection. Following this line of thought, it is possible to minimally outline a concept of “aesthetic reflection” as a form of giving or bending back—literally re-flecting—that which encounters the aesthetically acting body in its interaction with the environment, that is, a way of providing a reflection—again, literally—mediated, meaning here simultaneously enabled and biased, by the medium and the practices performed by the aesthetic reflector. This concept of aesthetic reflection comes closer to the original optical concept of reflection. According to it, light encounters a new medium and due to its physical characteristics light bends back its trajectory. Light encountering a mirror is the clearest example. In the case of aesthetic reflection, the primary medium that the activity of environmental agencies encounters is a body. The disposition of this body—what I could call “aesthetic disposition”—allows the inherent reflective agency of its matter—in this case, in contrast to the mirror, autonomously organized organic matter—to unfold its reflective agencies and thus give back what touches it. On this basis, and without excluding any other variety of reflection, the aesthetic dispositives I produce might tend to more readily induce aesthetic reflection—a kind of reflection that can only be realized through aesthetic practices.
The function of aesthetic dispositives for (aesthetic) reflection in the research project Contingent Agencies
A fundamental aim of the artistic research project Contingent Agencies was to conceive and practice—actually, to conceive through practicing—artistic or
in my case aesthetic research practices able to inquire efficiently and in a non-reductive way into the object of research defined for this project—in short: the way in which specific agencies condition the emergence of particular atmospheres. While conceiving the project, two categories of practices appeared fundamental: practices of notation and practices of reflection. Subsidiarily, a third category was vaguely defined. It referred to the ways in which the artifacts produced by the first kind of practices, that is, the artifacts of notation or simply the notations, could or even should be handled, presented, exposed, or delivered to potential reflectors for them to perform their practices of reflection in the most suitable way. This third, originally subordinated kind of practice became just as fundamental for me as the other two. The name we finally gave to it was “tactics of showing” although I think that “tactics of sharing” might be a more adequate denomination since, on the one hand, it would point to a more inclusive framework for all kinds of media, especially the non-visual, and on the other hand, would manifest a more horizontal relationship between the implicated agents.
The increasing relevance of the tactics of showing or sharing in my work within this project is rooted in my conviction that the above-mentioned object of research cannot be investigated in the paradigm of representation or, to be more precise, in the realist-representationalist paradigm. The key conceptual foundations of this paradigm, again in a nutshell, are the beliefs that reality exists in itself independently of the actions of those who refer to it, that is, that reality is “mind-independent,” and that the reference to this reality is accomplished through processes or representation, that is, of mental replication of the reality existing beyond the mind. On the basis of these paradigmatic beliefs, one condition for representation is the objective status of the entity to be represented, that is, that the entity to be represented must be an object: a clearly contoured thing and therefore undoubtedly differentiated from its surroundings, something an observer can point to and identify as such, in distinction to all other objects and their backgrounds.
Throughout my research, I found the most enriching and contiguous theoretical and conceptual—and even practical!—framework for my aesthetic research practices in the phenomenological movement and enactive approach to cognition. Researching within this context, I do not share the basic beliefs of the realist-representationalist paradigm. On the contrary, I believe that the reality we, living beings, live through and inquiry into is dependent on our minds—although never exclusively determined by them
—and that the way our minds, which implies our bodies, relate to this reality is not based on representational apprehension, but instead, comprises a co-constitution or enaction of ever-evolving and co-emergent subjectivities and worlds. On this basis, I think that the specific subject-matters addressed in this project—atmospheres, agencies, and their interrelations—are clearly not objects. The perceptual, or better, sensuous presence of these issues are not outlined clearly and in a stable manner, either spatiotemporally or in terms of meaning. Neither atmospheres—dynamic meshworks of sensuous-emotional phenomena—nor agencies—potentialities endowed with transformative power—and obviously also not the ways they relate to one another, are objects and can therefore not be represented.
Throughout my work on Contingent Agencies I tried to conceive and perform—again, meant here is conceive through performing—aesthetic research practices that, assuming the inadequacy and impossibility of representation, allowed my research community and me to inquire into the subject matters at stake. The concept of “contingency” has been key in doing so. Basically, I understand contingency in relation to its etymology—con-, “with” plus -tingency, from tangere, “to touch.” On this basis, I carried out aesthetic practices of notation as a way of entering in touch, of encountering in a sensuous and emotional manner, the investigated atmospheres, agencies, and their relations. Coherently, I did not notate atmospheres, agencies, and their relations. Instead, I notated in contact with atmospheres, agencies, and their relations. The resulting artifacts of these contingent practices of notation—sound recordings, video recordings, photographic recordings, texts, and diagrams—are neither representations of atmospheres, agencies, and their relations nor containers within which representations might be found. Instead, the artifacts of notations I have produced are contingent artifacts, that is, artifacts (hopefully!) endowed with the agency of enabling or at least facilitating contact with the researched atmospheres, agencies, and, mainly, the ways they interrelate.
My aesthetic dispositives for (aesthetic) reflection follow the same line of thought of my practices of notation and the resulting artifacts, and thus aim, first, at organizing—at disposing—the notations I have produced in a way that allows them to unfold their contingent agencies, here, meaning specifically their agencies of facilitating contact with the relationships between agencies and atmospheres with which they have been produced. My idea is that the transformative power of these agencies, that is, the actualization of the agencies-as-potential, allows for inducing a reflective disposition,
or disposition to reflect, as described in the first section of this text. In a second phase, once the reflector is disposed to reflect, the dispositive is meant to become her reflexive environment. In this phase, the contingent agencies of the organized artifacts of notation unfold facilitating the maintenance of the contact between reflector and her object of reflection. The reflector feels moved, so my intention, to inhabit her reflexive environment, to focus iteratively on the different artifacts, to sense and follow the resonances that may emerge between them and then, unfolding the agencies of her reflective disposition, begin to reflect, that is, begin to perform her practices of reflection. In summary: the aesthetic dispositives for (aesthetic) reflection and the artifacts of notation with which I assembled them constitute a variety of practices of sharing as part of an alternative for researching atmospheres, agencies, and their interrelations in a non realist-representationalist but phenomenological-enactivist way through aesthetic research practices.
On the aesthetic dispositive for (aesthetic) reflection in this book
In the case of this dispositive, the medium in and with which the dispositive was to be realized was chosen in advance, in contrast to other processes of conception and assemblage of dispositives. Actually, the selection of this medium was the first decision made. The medium is this book. This decision conditioned the selection of practices of notation. The chosen practices should produce artifacts that could be printed in this book. Within this framework, I made the decision about the practices of notation to be performed and the agency to be researched there, where I notated with a quite stable atmosphere—with certain variations it remained recognizable in the three sessions of notation carried out on three consecutive days—and with the agency of machines—the chosen agency— and, as my main focus, with the way the second conditioned the first.
Once the artifacts of notation were generated, the work began of organizing them on consecutive 22 x 28-cm pages—the dimensions of the pages in this book. The final result, after adjusting my last draft with the help of Marie Artaker—the designer of this book—can be found on pages NNN to ZZZ.
I decided to present the dispositive before providing the reader—and potential reflector!—with its conceptual framework and the following description and “instructions for use.” I did so in order to enable first, an unmediated contact with the dispositive; and second, the possibility to go back to it with additional knowledge.
The general title of this chapter includes both the formulation “aesthetic dispositive for (aesthetic) reflection” and the focus or object of reflection that this dispositive aims to facilitate: “how the agencies of machines condition a particular atmosphere.” When I notated and when I assembled the dispositives, this was the question that I kept present as a background for my awareness. I invite the potential reflectors that decide to use the dispositive to do so as well.
On the first two pages of the dispositive I mobilized the short descriptions written as part of the notation protocols of each session of notation. In most processes of notation, these short descriptions are the most explicit—if not the only—reference to the inquired atmosphere, that is, to one of the terms of the investigated relationship between a specific agency and a particular atmosphere. In order to reflect (on) this relationship, and more specifically, (on) the ways the actualization of an agency conditions an atmosphere, this atmosphere has to be, of course, partially and in a biased way, reenacted by the reflector before they begin to reflect. This reenactment pursues a re-constitution of the inquired atmosphere, that is, its emergence for the reflector. The reflector must be in contact with the inquired atmosphere in a sensuous-phenomenal way in order to be able to perform reflection. To this end, and furthermore, to intensify the vocative agency of these short descriptions, in this case, I modified their inner organization and arranged them in a specific way on the surface of the first two pages. Additionally, I provided the date and place of notation, since this information might have an agency complementary to the descriptions. I suggest that potential reflectors dwell in these descriptions, moving freely from one to another, reading them completely or only partially—reading one element of one description and then another element from another—until a sense of the described atmosphere arises, at least minimally, that is, until the reflector inhabits the reenacted atmosphere, until she has the feeling of being-with or being-within this atmosphere.
The next two pages present a first fragment of the diagram and a first photo. The relationship between the diagrammatic text and the image is neither one of illustration nor one of explanation. Instead, the diagrammatically organized words and the photographically produced image may resonate mutually, silently enabling the incipient emergence of a certain sense. I suggest reading and looking at these pages until this resonance begins to flow. As stated above, the question that should be continuously present in the background, the formulation that can help to focus the process of reflection—rather than having the intention of being answered—remains the same throughout the entire time of exposure to the dispositive: how do the agencies of machines condition this atmosphere?
Printed on the following two pages is another photo, which will potentially resonate with a first selection from the exploratory essay. The ellipses between the paragraphs in the essay indicate that they were not written consecutively.
The following pages combine photographs and fragments of the diagram and the essay in different ways. Please feel free to turn the pages back and forth, to read, to look, to close your eyes, to read again, to take a break, to continue looking... So please, take your time to dwell in this reflexive environment.
Final remarks
For the realization of this dispositive I have not used all of the artifacts of notation I produced in the above mentioned sessions of notation. You can find them on the Contingent Agencies website [add here QR-code?] and in this book. As you will notice, some of the original artifacts have been modified in order to produce this dispositive.
The dispositive produced for this book is the result of the conjunction of two research projects. The first, obviously, is Contingent Agencies. The second is entitled “The Sense of Common Self.” I initiated this artistic research project in April 2023, in the midst of the realization of the book you have in your hands, in the framework of the collective project “How to live together in Sound? Toward Sonic Democracy” funded by the Kone Foundation and hosted by the University of the Arts Helsinki. I am developing the concept of “aurally-informed aesthetic research practices” that I mentioned in the first section of this text in the framework of this new project.
