Y SIN EMBARGO magazine

La entrevista a Nirvana SQ Y SIN EMBARGO magazine #15, “inter-visto issue”:

That there is something that I’ve never admitted to myself.

Until what extent is the repetitive (in the arts) “image and likeness” of the various cycles of nature? When is it hypnotic, “tribal” or simply stupefying?
I think that ‘the repetitive’ can be seen as our abstractions from the properties of (semi)regular cycles we see in nature; however, I think that this type of cyclic ‘repetitivism’ was more perceptually relevant in previous moments of human culture, where seemingly ‘perfect repetition’ of astronomical cycles for example, would be an ontological differentiation criterion of ‘our’ world from the rest. But cultures have developed all sorts of ways of bringing about repetitivism, and I think that this is rather more stupefying for us than the natural-cycle repetitivism. Enormous amounts of all sorts of repetition come into our perception just from walking in a city, driving on a highway, going to a supermarket, watching TV, working out our weekly schedule, etc. Basically the hypnosis that our current making and perception of repetitivism has at the core a feeling of being overwhelmed of what we do and seem to cannot stop doing.

What is it that does make sense to produce, in terms of culture, in this time?
With such a massive amount of repetitivism, of common-places for interpretation, of epistemic conformism, of recycling previous trends without feeling the mood that initially got them going; with so many pointers to motivate us into thinking ‘globally’ about a tinny and ridiculously over simplified image of the world, so many reasons to label and co-represent any individual approach as part of a pre-understood scheme of types… in such a situation, I think it makes sense to produce by asserting one’s subjectivity without claiming explicitly to do so; it makes sense to create exceptions, counter-arguments, disguised genuine alternatives to the repetition and reiteration that seems to be so comfortable in our times. This hopefully erodes common-placed representation and labeling.
Also, it makes sense to produce analogues for grammars, transformation operators, colored glasses, elastic links, structures, personal jokes, and taxonomies. I think we need links more than anything else, relationships to piece together some culture, and not just its stereotypical bite-size siblings for which we many times end up using that word in recent times.

In which manner, if any, do ‘the possible’ and ‘the impossible’ interact with the ‘actual’ when seeing an image and thinking about it?
‘Seeing’ is obviously a perceptual action, and as such, we know it can many times be deceiving. ‘The impossible’ is in principle non-existent and cannot be instantiated, and so we take it to be not perceivable; yet we can understand it as a theoretical construction. ‘The possible’ can be thought about and sometimes is in fact instantiated, that it when it becomes ‘the actual’ –and these instantiations are what we perceive.
So, I think that the trick here to be able to have these concepts interact while looking at and/or making an image, is to rely on the understanding of the terms of some particular ‘impossible’ while alluding to it with several and particular perceptual stimuli (color, shape, words, light, focus, spatial configuration, whatever really); this conjunction will be an actual perception and that will loop up the experience. We understand that we are being deceived, and allow it joyfully because it allows us to have more than a negative definition of the impossible; in the meantime, the ‘possible’ works in the back of our minds to fill-in the holes and make us wonder if we in fact are being deceived.

What’s your pictosophy ?
I’m not sure really, I can only offer some bits that have come up so far.
Broadly speaking, I think it would be more about asking questions through visual affirmations, than about the affirmation of any particular type of statement. It is rather personal and fluctuating. It can be about mixing particulars with universals: changing the interpretation of general properties (like shapes, sets, definitions, or configurations) by building odd particular instances. Mainly it’s about the instantiation of what we only ‘understand’ and yet don’t (visually) perceive concretely, like the squaring a circle, an irrational number, a theoretical dilemma, an unlikely counterfactual, time or space, a bundle of opposing properties, or a cognitive state of mind.
As an activity, I take it to be like disentangle what seems tangled, to then entangle the strings again in a different context; the action of mixing-up into questions mundane and concrete objects with abstract and fluctuating thoughts. I once told a friend that I take photos of theoretical entities yet, I am an antirealist about them. I think that would sum it up.

In responding to questions posed by 14 anonymous people, and in turn posing one to them, what evidence do you anticipate –or are willing to accept– that this effort has any concrete significance, beyond existing as a cyber-fiction, a delusion, and/or an ephemeral, “virtual” reality?
Concrete significance? I think all ’significance’ is context-dependent, and each part of the context is as important, and yet just as contingent as the rules of any other ’significant’ game. Any significance that may be found will be so basically because this has been fun! So, under this idea, I think that the significance of answering 14 questions from people that I have never seen is the enrichening of the context by which I relate and will relate to these people. Hopefully the context we share will expand in new interesting ways.

Which are the five books that should be mandatory in any occidental High school?
Well, ‘occidental’ is not a precise term. However, I do think that any teenager, in virtue of being such, would get a lot from reading
a book written in a far away past,
a book written by someone very close to the kid’s time and culture,
a book of science fiction.
a book that will outrage her parents and teachers,
a book that she won’t entirely understand at the time she reads it,
a biography of someone they’ve never heard of,
a book about any sort of utopia.

NASA prepares a ship where they want to keep objects, works, or whatever, from different personalities that have reached a degree of excellence. Suppose they have also chosen you… What do you give them?
All those notes I have written out in past moments of caffeine-rush clarity and excitement that I never fully understood again: the tables of contents, outlines, introductions and conclusions for future unwritable books that at some point I thought I would like to write (and never did obviously). Maybe some future person or alien who could and would write them would find them and in fact write these books; or even better, it might think that they are dirty jokes or erotic poems of a lost civilization and be perplexed. My high school essays should be included in the bunch as well, under the label ‘mature writtings’ to help the alien make some sense of all the stuff.

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