François Laruelle: The Concept of Non-Photography (2011) [English]

Myriads of negatives tell of the world, speaking among themselves, constituting a vast conversation, filling a photosphere that is located nowhere. But one single photo is enough to express the real that all photographers aspire one day to capture, without ever quite succeeding in doing so. Nevertheless, this real cohabits intimately with negatives, with clichés as embedded in our lives as they are imperceptible. Photographs are the thousand flat facets of an ungraspable identity that only shines – and sometimes very faintly – through something else. What more is there to a photo than a curious and prurient glance? And yet it is also a fascinating secret.

The Concept of Non-Photography develops a rigorous new thinking of the photograph in its relation to science, philosophy and art, and introduces the reader to all of the key concepts of Laruelle’s ‘non-philosophy’.

Translated from French by Robin Mackay
Publisher Urbanomic, United Kingdom, and Sequence Press, New York, 2011
ISBN 0983216916, 9780983216919
143 pages

review (Catherine Kron, DisMagazine)

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Peter Galison, Gerald James Holton, Silvan S. Schweber (eds.): Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture (2008)

More than fifty years after his death, Albert Einstein’s vital engagement with the world continues to inspire others, spurring conversations, projects, and research, in the sciences as well as the humanities. Einstein for the 21st Century shows us why he remains a figure of fascination.

In this wide-ranging collection, eminent artists, historians, scientists, and social scientists describe Einstein’s influence on their work, and consider his relevance for the future. Scientists discuss how Einstein’s vision continues to motivate them, whether in their quest for a fundamental description of nature or in their investigations in chaos theory; art scholars and artists explore his ties to modern aesthetics; a music historian probes Einstein’s musical tastes and relates them to his outlook in science; historians explore the interconnections between Einstein’s politics, physics, and philosophy; and other contributors examine his impact on the innovations of our time. Uniquely cross-disciplinary, Einstein for the 21st Century serves as a testament to his legacy and speaks to everyone with an interest in his work.

The contributors are Leon Botstein, Lorraine Daston, E. L. Doctorow, Yehuda Elkana, Yaron Ezrahi, Michael L. Friedman, Jürg Fröhlich, Peter L. Galison, David Gross, Hanoch Gutfreund, Linda D. Henderson, Dudley Herschbach, Gerald Holton, Caroline Jones, Susan Neiman, Lisa Randall, Jürgen Renn, Matthew Ritchie, Silvan S. Schweber, and A. Douglas Stone.

Publisher Princeton University Press, 2008
ISBN 0691135207, 9780691135205
363 pages

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Ed Keller, Nicola Masciandaro, Eugene Thacker (eds.): Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium (2012)

Essays, articles, artworks, and documents taken from and inspired by the symposium on Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, which took place on 11 March 2011 at The New School. Hailed by novelists, philosophers, artists, cinematographers, and designers, Cyclonopedia is a key work in the emerging domains of speculative realism and theory-fiction. The text has attracted a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary audience, provoking vital debate around the relationship between philosophy, geopolitics, geophysics, and art. At once a work of speculative theology, a political samizdat, and a philosophic grimoire, Cyclonopedia is a Deleuzo-Lovecraftian middle-eastern Odyssey populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, and the corpses of ancient gods. Playing out the book’s own theory of creativity – “a confusion in which no straight line can be traced or drawn between creator and created – original inauthenticity” – this multidimensional collection both faithfully interprets the text and realizes it as a loving, perforated host of fresh heresies. The volume includes an incisive contribution from the author explicating a key figure of the novel: the cyclone.

With contributions by Robin Mackay, McKenzie Wark, Benjamin H. Bratton, Alisa Andrasek, Zach Blas, Melanie Doherty, Anthony Sciscione, Kate Marshall, Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker, Nicola Masciandaro, Dan Mellamphy & Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Ben Woodard, Ed Keller, Lionel Maunz, Öykü Tekten, Reza Negarestani

Publisher Punctum Books, Brooklyn, New York, February 2012
ISBN 978-0615600468
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
310 pages

Leper Creativity Symposium videos
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