*Identity, site specific installation, lifesize,
for honoursprogram GRA/UvA at Ellen De Bruijne PROJECTS
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He said yes, but his body tightened.

I thought: you are like me, and suggested we’d switch place.

If two people were to get shipwrecked on a desert island, miles apart from each other, what then could best be done in order to find one another? This problem cannot be solved without introducing something new into the story. This new thing will then be an exemplar of the sensuous medium I am proposing to use.

If the shipwrecked want to find each other, it is not enough for them to rely on reason only. For instance, they might think it a good idea to write wait for me here in the sand. A fairly reasonable thought, it seems. However, because it is, the other person is most likely to make the same plan and make his own sign. Having two meeting signs is very unreasonable.

Their shared thoughts are of no use if not applied to some shared thing. So really they ought to turn their attention to their environment. What will most likely catch their eye?

The thing that is most noticeable.

The island might consist of: lots of sand, palms and a mountain. Of course then the mountain is the most noticeable thing. For instance in being the only one, or the only one shaped like an eagle, or printed in bold.

As the mountain is so very noticeable, it is reasonable for one to assume it will manipulate the other’s senses likewise. Thus making the mountain the most perfect thing to which they can assign their shared thoughts, and make it their meeting place. This most noticeable thing now, exemplifies the sensuous medium I am proposing to use:

Things.

Things. are of such a kind that they open up possibilities for communication, without actually saying anything. The only demand is that they are noticeable, so that they will be part of people’s environment. In making them noticeable, we can use tried methods, like for instance: authenticity, uselessness, or simply charm.
And because we have discovered things to be so perfectly adaptable to any situation, and as such able to survive any specific meaning, I have found that they indeed offer us the most suitable interdisciplinary glue.

Het donker is hier heel dichtbij. Zo dichtbij dat het mijn ogen lijkt te raken, misschien. Ik denk: het donker is op mijn ogen misschien. Ik denk: kan ik nog wel zien. Steeds weet ik het opnieuw niet. Daarom controleer ik, vroeger vaak, nu soms, en fijn weet ik dan: ik kan nog zien. Ik breng langzaam mijn hand naar mijn oog. Eerst blijft het donker. Daar schrok ik vroeger van, ik dacht: ik weet: ik kan niet meer zien. Nu weet ik: ik moet geduld hebben. En dan zie ik in het donker een iets minder donker, heel mooi. Ik weet: dit is mijn hand, die langzaam beweegt vlak voor mijn oog, heel mooi. Blij van het zien laat ik dan mijn hand zakken. Ik weet: het donker.

Ik weet: ik kan zien, fijn. Ik denk: wat zie ik. Straalt mijn hand van heel dichtbij een iets minder donker in het donker en zien mijn ogen mijn hand stralen of stralen mijn ogen en zien mijn ogen van heel dichtbij een iets minder donker in het donker stralen op mijn hand. Ik weet: ik.

De muren zijn veel verder van elkaar vandaan dan ik ze tegelijkertijd zou kunnen raken. Ik denk: hoe ver dan. Vroeger wist ik: een spel. De muur loslaten, dan een aanloop, dan een sprong. Door het donker tot ik wist: pijn. Steeds dacht ik: wanneer zal ik weten: pijn. Vaak snel, al bij de aanloop. Soms tijdens de sprong. Heel soms pas na heel veel sprongen. Ik dach: dat is het beste. Het einde wist ik altijd: een muur. Ik dacht: een nieuwe plek, hier blijf ik fijn. Ik zat daar dan en aaide lief mijn wond. Ik wist: de pijn gaat weg. Ik wist: niet dood, fijn. Ik weet: het was een mooi spel.

Ik weet: hoe het gaat. Ik sta tegen een muur. Ik weet: nog een muur, daarvoor twee kanten om op te gaan. Ik denk: ik zal gaan, er is hier niets. Ik laat de muur los en schuifel door het donker. Ik denk: ik weet nu zonder plek bij de muur niet welke kant welke is. Ik denk: ik mis mijn oude plek. Ik schuifel tot ik weet: pijn, maar niet erg. Ik denk: ben ik weer blij op mijn oude plek of is het mooi een nieuwe. Ik denk: is het nog ver tot waar ik begon en is het van daar tot hier vooruit of terug. Ik weet: ik weet mij niet fijn vooruit. Ik weet: ik weet mij niet fijn terug. Ik weet hoe het gaat. Ik weet: ik ben moe.

Ik denk: waar woon ik. Ik weet: twee muren, daarvoor twee kanten om op te gaan. Tot ik weet: pijn. Dan weet ik: niet dood, fijn. Maar ik denk: ik ben moe en ik woon niet. Ik weet: ik woon niet. Maar ik denk ook: ik zal straks weer controleren zodat ik blij weet: een mooi iets minder donker in het donker. Ik denk: mooi. Ik weet: hoe het gaat. Ik weet: ik ben moe. Ik weet: ik woon niet. Maar ik kan denken: er zijn meer muren. Blij: misschien een kamer. Ik denk: nergens kan niet en kan niet is dood. Ik weet: ik denk niet dood. Ik denk: fijn, en aai mij lief.

There never seems to be only one person tripping over a bottle accidentally. There is never only one surprise meeting with an old friend. There is never only one someone just drifting about. There is never just just drifting about. Ect.

Every specific thing seems to drown by multiplication, into one steady stream of everything. That is: citylife.

One could even end up feeling lost in this multiplication, as if NOWHERE. That is of course an oxymoron, existing only theoretically. But then: the city itself is an oxymoron, only existing theoretically.

That this is actually so, is proven by the fact that we verbalize our needs in questions such as:’WHO am I?’

Such a supposed need for identity however, is only first established, and kept alive by exactly the thing that inspired the need for it in the first place: the city. And by supplying ourselves the answers, we just multiply citywise.

So you see, the city is a purely theoretical thing.

THE COUNTRY

I like the country. My preferred question is ‘where?’, not ‘who’. This question can’t possibly be answered theoretically. (I feel your knee in my stomach). By asking ‘where?’, you will find yourself contingently placed back into some landscape, which is: a specific landscape, no matter WHAT.

So please bend all who into where and live contingently.

Rather conventionally, the artificial limb was still installed in its proper place.

However, the conventionality of such a ‘proper place’ came soon to be questioned by artists, philosophers, and the sexually confused. For one can think of a great many ways to install an arm, in no way less functional than on the right side of the chest. It could just as well have an interesting roll to play at the other side of the room, and probably even more so, in someone else’s.

So now, in 2017, I can feel it, when you touch your mouse.

But we must admit, it has been far from easy to accept our distant-body-parts as our own. Embarrassingly, it still seemed more natural to accept the experience of distant-touch as some Dionysian intoxication, as a religious experience, rather than as something we could control.

So in the beginning, we could only undergo the stimulations passively.

That is, if we found someone to touch our distant-body-parts at all. Because that was the second problem: in order to get touched, we had to make ourselves desirable.

So we now had two problems to solve:

1. How to understand ourselves as a unity
2. How to make others want us

Looking back, we see that the 2007 bionic girl, learned to operate her arm very quickly. How did she do that? It was not so difficult for her, because her arm was placed where an arm conventionally would be found.
How exactly does one remember the proper place of a dismembered arm? What is this convention of where what should be? In other words, what is the Operating System that made it possible for her to understand the new arm as her own?

It was her sense-of-self.

This sense-of-self was given to her by the others around her: they gave her words, images, and expectations. By looking right back at her, they offered her a mirror.

And so we discovered what was needed in order to unite our distant-body-parts, and do so in such a way that it would be a presentable unity for others to desire. This operating system is known as: identity.
Identity is the software that can do for the distant-body-parts technique, what Microsoft/Apple, did for the computer in the 1980’s: to give the hardware a language.

However, this time we did not need to write a new language, for we had unknowingly created it all along. We had been developing it ever since we called ourselves human. Only, we thought we were doing something else.
What we now see as the construction of an Operating System, we had always misunderstood as a philosophical, or spiritual search for the self. We had confused the need to see ourselves as a whole, and the need for others to perceive us so, with presuming the actual identities we happened to think ourselves whole with, as being necessarily those.

While looking all around, we have found nothing necessarily so. But in doing just that, we have developed numerous forms of life. So while we might not have found ourselves some true source, we have created a rich system of contingent forms instead.

A rich system of contingent forms is known as: language.

So, in place of searching sense of self, we developed sense of language. We are not human anymore, nor anything else: we are forever trans-human. We are the language we create.

Wanneer Kant de onwaarheid erkent als mogelijkheidsvoorwaarde voor kennis, situeert hij de waarheid in een domein dat ontoegankelijk is voor de kennis. Het domein van de vrijheid. In dit domein is er geen kennis, enkel act. Elk stellen in dit domein is een positief stellen. Stel je nu voor dat Kant zijn vrijheid in dit domein stelt met zijn theorie van de grondslagen van de kennis. Dan máákt Kant iets. In dit domein is geen passieve, en daarom waarachtige contemplatie van het werkelijke mogelijk. Dit domein nu, zou je je als Nietzsches wereldbeeld kunnen voorstellen, strikt gesproken dus geen wereld-beeld.

Wanneer Nietzsche stelt dat er geen zijn is bedoelt hij dat het stellen van een ding het maken is van een ding, of een subject. De actie komt voor het spoor dat deze actie achterlaat, en waarin deze zich kan denken, als oorsprong van de actie. Zo kan hij zich de actie verbeelden. Deze actie verbeeld Nietzsche voor ons als macht, of andersom.

Nietzsche wil het leven beamen, omdat het leven niets anders is dan positieve actie. Zo verwerpt hij degenen die het leven willen ontvluchten. Hij maakt een onderscheid tussen degenen die weten dat zij willen vluchten en degenen die het zich niet bewust zijn, waaronder vooral heel veel filosofen. Degenen in die laatste groep zijn verwerpelijk en dienen ontmaskerd te worden. Om ze te ontmaskeren heeft Nietzsche zelf geen metaperspectief nodig. Hij ontmaskerd juist vanuit het horizontale perspectief dat zo kenmerkend is voor een wereld voorbij goed en kwaad.

Wat gebeurt er wanneer je een Vorm van Plato horizontaal op de grond tussen de andere dingen plaatst? Dan kan de Vorm niet meer worden betekent als een Betekenis, als een werkelijkheid waar alle dingen naar verwijzen omdat het waar is. De Vorm kan zich hoogstens nog laten betekenen door diegenen van wie zulk een geloof word gewenst, ertoe te dwingen. met die dwang is niets mis. Maar wanneer de Vorm wordt geplaatst in een andere ware wereld, ontkent de betekenaar zijn betekenen, zijn dwingen, en negeert hij het leven.

Degenen daarentegen die zich wel bewust zijn van hun vlucht vliegen. Wanneer een kunstenaar vlucht in de fictie stort hij zich uit een overdaad van wil tot macht, van levenslust, ook nog eens in allerlei niet-bestaande werelden. Zijn vlucht in de fictie beaamt het leven tot voorbij zijn horizon, om dit voorbij ook nog tot het leven te dwingen.

Is Nietzsche zo’n kunstenaar? Nee. Nietzsche voelt nog de belofte van de Metafysica. Hij verwerpt haar uitganspunten, haar vogelperspectief, maar niet de wil van de filosoof zich tot causa prima te stellen. Nietzsche voelt nog de spanning van een onmogelijke vrije ruimte die zich wil stellen wanneer men werkeloos en eenzaam, van de wereld gedistantieerd, bij een kacheltje zit. Hij kan zich niet werkeloos stellen. En toch ervaart hij die onmogelijkheid van de werkeloosheid schijnbaar passief. Dan kan hij zich bewust worden van de wil tot macht die zich in hem roert, en beseft hij dat hij onmogelijk als een ‘ik’ deze wil kan ondergaan, maar dat het de wil tot macht is die zich hier een filosoof creëert.

ILEX = the tree on which the acorns grow

LEGERE = collecting

AQUILEX = he who brings together the waters

LEX = bringing together people

LEX = law

LEGERE = bringing letters together to form a word; reading

In this essay I would like to bring into remembrance a medium that, although never exactly forgotten, seems to have been dismembered from contemporary liberal thought, having thus lost its function as a medium. First I will introduce this special medium. Then I will regard those who one must regard as the most comprehensive political thinkers in relation to our actual situation, for the time being: John Rawls and Martha C. Nussbaum. Finally, by showing what is lacking in the thick and thin lists of the goods and the good, I will propose an addition, that is: the right to make use of the special medium which I will now introduce.

The medium I am referring to is not one necessarily conveying any specific meaning, and as such forwarding understanding. It is a medium laying the groundwork for all possible understanding. That might sound rather universal and abstract, but in fact it is the most sensuous medium, as the following example will hopefully clarify.

Look!

If two people were to get shipwrecked on a desert island, miles apart from each other, what then could best be done in order for them to find one another? This problem cannot be solved without introducing something new into the story. This new thing then, will be an exemplar of the sensuous medium I would like to bring to attention.
If the shipwrecked want to find each other, it is not enough for them to rely on reason only. They might for instance think it a good idea to write right back in the sand. A fairly reasonable thought it seems. However, because it is so reasonable, the other person is most likely to come up with the same plan and make his own sign. Having two meeting signs is very unreasonable. Their shared thoughts are of no use if not applied to some shared thing. So they ought to turn their attention to their environment. What will most likely catch their eyes?

The thing that is most noticeable.

The island might consist of: lots of sand, palms and a mountain. Of course then the mountain is the most noticeable thing. For instance in being the only one, shaped like an eagle, or printed in bold. As the mountain is so very noticeable, it is reasonable for one to assume it will manipulate the other’s senses likewise. Thus making the mountain the most perfect thing to which they can assign their shared thought, and decide on it as their meeting place.

The medium I am bringing back to mind is presented thus far as ‘noticeable thing’. As such a rather vague presentation. And so it must be. It is vague because we are not sure how much it’s being noticeable is subjectively tied to the viewer, depending on the circumstances, or tied to its objective existence. I will not go into the metaphysics. All I can say is that it really takes a most virtuous person to find the right balance between the two.
It might however help to present it to you with a more familiar name. For, what is the concept of ‘most noticeable thing’ when applied to the human being; playing a roll that lies somewhere midway ourselves, the environment, and the others? We name it Identity. This is the vague notion I will use in relation to the human being, in my attempt to show the important role it should play as a medium between the others, the environment, and us.

Shared Identity 1

To show the relevance of this notion of identity, it might be exemplary to regard its appropriation by Hobbes in his Leviathan. If one would replace the mountain in the story of the shipwrecked by some sovereign, we are already a long way ahead in defining the relation between the people and the noticeable thing they are subjugating themselves to.
As it was not enough for the shipwrecked to find one another by reason alone, so is it not enough for Hobbes’ people to bind them to some contract, for instance stating to be nice to each other. Even not if signed by all. For how could one tell whether the other is taking his signing seriously? The other’s intentions can so easily be doubted. And since the other knows he can so easily be doubted, the doubting as such is perfectly reasonable.
So, what is needed is something they can all subjugate themselves to. Just like the shipwrecked choose to let themselves be led by the mountain. If one would know all the others subjugated to the same thing one is subjugated to himself, he would know what would be on their minds. Thus making them safely predictable.
This roll of noticeable thing in Hobbes theory is to be played by the Sovereign. All will subjugate themselves to him by a contract between all others that are to be subjugated as well. The Sovereign’s being noticeable lays in the fact that his being is contingent, not bound by any contract. His doings might be completely arbitrary; he can do as he pleases. Yet it is precisely because of being arbitrary, the whole group is able to function as one actual being, for they are all sharing the same identity: which is their master’s as well as their master.

Liberal Identity

Rawls liberal state has not got some Sovereign’s face, and so its identity is unclear. Thus he devised a method to self-reflect. For clearly, in such a faceless state more is asked for than just taking things for face value.
Although Rawls’ theory is a contract theory, it makes no use of some fiction of a natural state, so as to bring about nice contrasts. Instead he uses what he calls the ‘original position’: a purely hypothetical situation, designed to bring out the basic structure of our society, if it was to be as fair as it possibly could. The original position doesn’t give much direction, as Hobbes’ State of Nature surely would make one run. Instead it offers a means for self-reflection.
The hypothesis of the Original Position shows us what would be the fairest distribution of the elementary goods. The participants are to be imagined veiled, so as to make them completely ignorant of all that would make them actual people inhabiting particular places in society. Thus ignorant of who will be who, and so of whom will get what, they are then to choose the elementary goods, and its distribution. Rawls claims that in this way everything will be done in the fairest way possible. Which does not necessarily mean that everything will be divided equal. Rawls does make room for talented people, deserving for instance more cash. But they only do so if even the poorest souls would benefit from this arrangement, and end up better as when everything would have been left equal.
Because every reasonable person can envisage this hypothesis of the original position, we can rediscover our rules as self-chosen, and consider ourselves voluntarily bound. Thus looking back on the state we devised, we can see that it is good.
However, one could wonder about how to conceive of this state as a blind self-enclosed whole in regard to its surroundings. How is the outside to be regarded? How are our actions abroad to be judged? In being faceless as a whole, the state is not offering any means for communication with the people not sharing this no-face. How could we then ever hope for them to join?

Shared Identity 2

By contrast, my Aristotelian conception is concerned with ends and with the overall shape and content of the human form of life*.

Nussbaum might just give the liberal state its face. Maybe it is a very vague face, but at least it is a face sharing some familiar features with faces across the border, making global communication much more likely.
Nussbaum points us to the fact that we do recognise others as beings of the same species. That means we must at least share some features, even though they might have developed differently, or in different relation to each other, depending on the circumstances. We might best regard these features as family-resemblance. We share some features with some, some others we share with others. We are no singular group, with all of us forced into the same suit, but we are not identities in complete isolation from each other either.
However nice that sounds, there might still be a slight problem with the conception of Nussbaum’s thick vague list, composed of all the features that make us understand ourselves as human. The actual list Nussbaum presents us with might indeed be accepted by most, but the way she came up with them, might be doubted. For how can she ever really know if in assigning importance to some features, and assuming her way of assigning to be shared by most, she is not just projecting her own concepts? Again there seems to be the problem of direction, as was solved earlier on so harshly by Hobbes. The others and Nussbaum are not able to point to some external feature to decide upon.
That is why someone, possibly someone French, might object to Nussbaum, pointing out the likelihood of her only projecting. The possibly-French then forwards his or her own claim: to respect those who are radically other to us in their being so. Nussbaum ofcourse objects to this, claiming we surely share matters of life and death. But even those matters would be regarded by the possibly-French as relative to the conceptual scheme we happen to be bound to. He or she might claim that even in matters of life and death, we should not assist the radical others, for that might ruin their own special ways of doing.
Nussbaum needed not have given her essentialist argument. The possibly-French has already given him- or herself away in the claim that the radical others, possibly Polynesian, should be left alone. He or she might profess this otherness to be of the highest sublime beauty, but really, something so neatly isolated must be regarded kitsch. He or she has completely isolated the radical other. What are we to think of a radical otherness being isolated, not by own choice, with kind regard to the outside, but by the French?
Exactly like Nussbaum, the possibly-French is also neglecting the function of identity as a medium I am wishing to put forward now. If isolated, the radical other is denied existence in the space we share, whatever that space might be. He is denied forming his own identity in and against this vague space we might understand to share. And in being denied such an identity, any hope of being noticed, of communication, understanding, or even misunderstanding, is rendered impossible. We do need for something to be presented.

Identity as medium

Identity is of such a kind that it opens up possibilities for communication, without even necessarily saying something, or of being understood for that matter. The only demand is that it is noticeable, so that it will be part of people’s environment. In making it noticeable, one could use tried methods, like for instance: authenticity, brutal force or simply charm. And because identity is so very adaptable to any situation and as such able to survive any specific meaning, I find that identity indeed offers us the most suitable international glue.
Therefore it is most important to give everyone the right to attempt to make oneself noticeable. That does not imply we should go and look around more carefully. It means we should offer the same goods that are giving us the possibility of being noticed. So we have to connect them to the Internet. All that is presented on it, no matter how uncommunicative, in its being a presentation, it could possibly be noticed as such, and regarded not as some fictitious natural thing we stumbled upon, but as something actually seeming to convey some meaning we need not necessarily understand. But it is there.

The new 100$ computer, with camera and internet-connection will do just fine. If 4.5 billion people would need one for free, there are still individuals to be found in our liberal state who would be able to finance it all by themselves. Imagine! With so cheap a price, it is a great injustice to deny beings their own face, leaving them nothing but the fleshy one, of which the expression travels ever so little in comparison. This is a crime far worse than not sending any bread.

Literature:

• Govert den Hartogh, Conventions Are Like Fires, Typo/Hoorcollege Spel-theory
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, C.U.T.P., 1996: 86-92; 94-102; 117-125
• John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972: 3-22; 60-65
• Martha C. Nussbaum, Human Functioning and Social Justice, Political Theory, 20, 1992: 203-209; 214-22

In the beginning, we used our balloons like that all the time; just to check out the others like us. Now we know it isn’t fitting for us to act so straightforward. We have all the time in the world. We found that how faster we try to move out of our positions of isolation, the more stuck we get. So we don’t bother. From now on, we will be as slow and careful as possible.

But I must admit that I did feel curious about the one who had send the balloon. Could he be close? Maybe he is actually a she. But hey, does it really matter, if love is only this slow and gentle construction? There will always be time to make adjustments, after recovering from the initial disappointment of finding the love not conform the reality. There is so little reality here, it is worth a lot of disappointment.

And so our love is constructed before we have ever even met. But although I can’t really see them, I am sure the others here are constructing it just like me. I can read it in the design of your cities and in your ways of speaking. I can read it in all your inclinations and dispositions. I’m sure they are doing it just as I am, even if they don’t send any balloons anymore.

THAT is only because we found the balloons still to objective to count as a proof for anything like love.

Imagine my loving the invisible more than caring for you and your kind, who are living together in the cities, and are checked by our balloons everyday. You think we send them to your cities all the time just to get an idea of what you would like to get next. And that we then translate this knowledge of your desire into new projects and products. As if they were made especially for you.

You probably think we are wholly there for you. Existing wholly as our image only, right? That we are indeed whole, right? But your world is like a picture to us. Every morning I send the balloons to your cities to see what changes others like me have made for you. And then I offer you my proposals, but only as an answer to them. We have built your world, but it is not really for you we built it. Every change someone like me has made, I can only regard as a sign. And it is likewise I make my signs for them. Meanwhile, I don’t even know what year you live in.

Remember back in 2008? We were still sending bread and cake to the poor, when we finally realized we were denying them something far more important than being taken care of. That is, the right to exist. Only when this right is established first, could any creature ever hope of being something else than a mere slave. If we kept denying them the medium to posit themselves, they could not even ever hope to be misunderstood. And so we added the right to make oneself noticeable to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We gave every human being a 100$ computer with Internet and internal cam, and the quest for global existence began.

You know who attracted most visitors and became your biggest stars; but only because we turned out to be most useful to you. And so here we are, offering you an identity, where there is no other way to redirect the streams of data into a whole. But besides this whole, have you ever wondered about the rest of me? Of course not, it isn’t there. It is in love with someone else.

But it is only to you we can we write, meanwhile hoping that someone unknown will notice the signs we hid in our speech. And so we always end up having to go back to this only medium we have, which is you. How could I then imagine you would believe me for one single second when I state I do not care for you?

Now we cannot but make all books come true.

Niets in de tekst duidt erop dat Sextus Empiricus het woord toeval anders bedoelt dan in deze betekenis van onverwacht.

Het verhaal van Apelles illustreert dit. Apelles zocht naar een schildertechniek die het effect van schuim van een paard tot gevolg zou hebben. Dit lukt hem niet en hij geeft het op. Dan, heel toevallig, bereikt hij het gewilde gevolg alsnog. Maar als gevolg van iets heel anders dan de door hem geanticipeerde oorzaak. Het effect wordt gevonden door niet te zoeken in plaats van bedacht. Apelles ontdekt als bij toeval een verband tussen het botsen van een vuile spons tegen een schilderij en een effect van schuim.
Is Apelles van dan af overgeleverd aan het toeval? Nee, er kan nu een sponstechniek worden ontwikkeld. De zon komt immers achteraf gezien ook niet morgenochtend enkel als bij toeval weer op.