Thread by @AimeTim

1/ I am continuing my chapter-by-chapter summary of @BrunoLatourAIME’s new book, où suis-je. Here, we come to the ninth chapter. For previous chapter threads, do scroll down on my feed.

2/ Latour begins by recounting his participation in a piece of performance art designed by architect & urban planner Soheil Hajmirbaba that visualises attachments & dependences in a group by means of a compass diagram drawn on the floor that is traversed. s-o-c.fr/index.php/abou…

3/ This highlights the artificiality & brutality of any art that interrupts movement in order to fix it on a wall. For Latour, this is quintessentially represented by the “white cube” gallery aesthetic characterised by its square shape, white walls & elevated light source.

4/ With their emphasis on colour & light, early 20th century artists from De Stijl & Bauhaus, etc, preferred to exhibit their works against white walls in order to minimise distraction. The white walls were also thought to act as a frame, rather like the borders of a photograph.

5/ In 1976 Brian O’Doherty wrote an essay for Artforum magazine, later turned into a book ("Inside the White Cube"), in which he confronted the modernist obsession with the white cube arguing that every object became almost sacred inside it, making the reading of art problematic.

6/ For Latour, the “white cube” aesthetic is emblematic of the viewpoint of Modernity: the viewing subject fixes the moving panorama before him/ her, freeze-framing its progression, whilst artificially insulating him/ herself from the reality it depicts.

7/ The white cube aesthetic is a motif for the violent & hegemonic imposition of the human gaze upon the free movement of actors; the root of the Anthropocene.

8/ Latour imagines & describes what it would be like to pass through the frame, back to the scenography itself. Rather than a subject facing an image, “la participiante est devenue le vecteur d’une decision à prendre entre ascendants et descendants” (p.113).

9/ To do this is to take on responsibility for the continuation of the scene: “entre les deux, à cette intersection, dans ce creuset, elle sera jugée à sa capacité de décider de la fécondité ou de la stérilité des formes de vie auxquelles son sort est désormais melés”. (p.113).

10/ Here again, we have an intimation of the universal ethic that Latour is now inscribing in his work on Gaia: we are called to an attention, to a care, to a responsibility to enable trajectories & traditions of life to continue. That is the highest demand on humans today.

11/ In short, the solution is to return “behind-the-scenes” or to “revenir en arriere” (p.116), in order to see the dependent beings that are both behind us and in front of us, & for whom we have responsibility.