Some parts: Work, practice, event: on the poietic character of the work of art, Miika Luoto
p. 34 – 38
poiesis means both production and poetry
“poetics” classically designates discourses on poetry (and on art in general) from the perspective of its production; towards the end of the eighteenth century the term “poetics” was largely replaced by the term “aesthetics” —> the dominant perspective on art had changed from the production of the work to its reception
work of art is simultaneously something produced and something productive. The work of art stems from human activity, but essentially exceeds that activity – therefore it is called “work” and not “product”. The work is brought forth to allow the coming forth of something else. And yet, this “more”, this “something else”, this “differing” is nowhere other than in the work itself; it is the “working” of the work, its own productivity. In other words, the work differs from itself.
pro-ducere, meaning literally “to lead forth” or “bring forth”
Plato: there is poiesis every time something comes from non-being to being
techne: know-how, skill, technique
we lack the basic Greek distinction between poiesis (production) and praxis (action) and the separation of these two from “work” (labour)
we tend to identify these three activities in an idea of “practice”, which is based on a wholly different experience concerning human free will and natural causality; we conceive of all human doing – including eventually freedom and creativity – as the manifestation of a subjective will that produces concrete effects.
p. 38 – 40
The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt
labour, work, and action constitute the three basic modes of vita activa
- Labour (-> necessary work) corresponds to the condition of animal life: as organic beings, we have to deal with the vital necessities of life.
- Work (-> production of things) corresponds to the condition of existence she calls worldliness: in order to provide human life with a secure place, we have to produce an artificial world of things which is lasting.
- Action (-> sharing of words and deeds) corresponds to the condition of existence she calls plurality: we have to act in order to show ourselves in our own unique individuality in the public space. Defined as a unique capacity of initiative, of beginning, action is an essentially revelatory power. Arendt emphasises that it is the only mode of active life that reveals its agent and, in the same movement, allows things to appear as meaningful in the light of a human world. Action is the source of meaning, not in the sense that it endows subsistent things with significance, but in the sense that it first lets things show themselves in the public space.
p. 41 – 43
Art is explicitly considered in The Human Condition in two different contexts: *with respect to the sphere of work (production) and *with respect to the sphere of action.
wor of art is produced —> durability __ durability not relevat to any use —> artwor moves to a higher order, it is “permanence” through ages —> allows reification of thoughts —> art has the capacity to reveal that which within the realm of things and their instrumental value transcends that realm and points to the space of public appearing
work of art is something rather comparable to an act as its essential function is to reveal
Arendt tries to show that our understanding of active life becomes more and more dominated by the model of production, which eventually gives us all the basic standards with which human doing is interpreted and evaluated
By Arendt production (work) is consided from the perspective of human life, as the human capacity to bring forth a world of artefacts —> a process which culminates in the product
p. 43 – 45
Poiesis in Greek thought
Poiesis —> “cause”. But what is a cause?
the Greek word for cause, aition, means “that to which something else is indebted” or that which is responsible for something else.
example of silver chalice: it is idebted *to the matter of silver *to the form of “chaliceness” *it is present as a sacrificial vessel —> bound and completed by a particular end, telos; is indebted to the end which allows it to be, as it limits it as a sacrificial vessel *the craftsman (-> the starting point from which the appearing of the thing as a silver chalice takes its departure) is the one who carefully considers the three aforementioned causes to which the thing is indebted and, by considering them, gathers them together —> legein and logos, and it has the meaning of “letting appear”.
Heidegger‘s interpretation of poiesis: The thing is not the effect of its causes but something that is indebted to them. The craftsman is not (as the modern way of understanding production easily supposes) the one who shows his will in submitting the disposable material to a form in order to, eventually, achieve a particular goal. Instead, he is the one who gathers together the other causes and so allows the “production” – poiesis, the coming into presence – take place. The causes allow something to show itself and so to be present as something. Such is the event of poiesis.
Aristotle: *ergon (-> work) what becomes actual reality in its own shape, within those limits that allow it to be present *energeia (-> “actuality” or “actual reality” or “being-at-work”) the mode of being of the work *energeia stands in opposition to dynamis (->potentiality, the mode of being of what is merely available and useful for something) *entelecheia (the work possesses itself in its own end)
p. 46
The incompleteness of the work of art: *general openness with respect to various ways of receiving and interpreting it, as well as to various ways of exhibiting or performing it *particular artistic approach: as a work-in-progress made available for the audience during its development *an explicit topic of a “poetics of the open work”
The more the work is reduced to being an object of aesthetic enjoyment (or, say, interpretation), the more its energetic character recedes in favour of mere potentiality. The works are so that they are available at any moment for the spectator’s aesthetic enjoyment. Within the aesthetic dimension, the work has lost its energetic character: instead of being present in the mode of being-at-work (energeia, actuality), it is there in the mode of availability for… (dynamis, potentiality).
p. 48
What does it mean to say that the work of art is the place of poiesis?
we face the problem of how to distinguish the work itself from its context and how to address what is irreducible in it to any external framework
the work itself as the place of the event of poiesis, of the coming-into-presence
Heidegger: the place of the work -> an essential constituent of its mode of being. “Being-at-work” means, then, being the opening of a particular place (which is not the effect of the work, but ??? the primordial articulation of that place through the way in which it is occupied by the work??? —> the taking place of the work is, quite literally, the taking-of place, which designates not so much the occurrence of the work as its mode of being.
p. 50 – 51
Heidegger’s interpretation of poiesis is a move “from the state of concealment into the state of unconcealment” (aus der Verborgenheit in die Unverborgenheit) whih he alls Entbergung. Entbergung certainly refers to revealing, but that it also includes the movement of leaving the shelter and of venturing into unsecurity -> a movement of revealing which is precarious as it includes the loss of shelter or abandonment
Weber suggests translating Entbergung in English as “unsecuring” —> peculiar tension or ambiguity of the word —> the unsettling character of the event of poiesis
p. 52 – 56
Technological and aesthetic production
Walter Benjamin :technical reproducibility calls into question some of the leading aesthetic ideas concerning the integrity of the work of art, its nature as a unified whole. What becomes of art when the work of art cannot any more be defined by what is proper to it, namely by its originality and intrinsic value, or its proper place? What matters in the historical change at issue is the transformation of our experience of time and space, of distance and nearness, of presence and absence – in one word, the coming-into-presence of something.
in our time, poiesis is split into two modes: *aesthetic production defined by originality and *technical-industrial production defined by technical reproduction. When these two modes of production come together, as happens in photography or film, aesthetic concepts prove to be questionable… —> the split of poiesis in two distinct spheres includes the experience of the need to cross the separation
Fountain ,1917, Marcel Duchamp: a creative play with the double status of production governing modernity. As Agamben says, production as poiesis, as coming-into-presence, is brought here to a point of crisis, since nothing comes to presence in the work, except precisely the privation of potentiality that cannot be actualised.
the potentiality of the work is turned inside out, toward nothingness. In this negative sense, then, the object possesses itself in its own end and attains the energetic mode of being of the work
performance practices_divergent temporalities 