Jean Dubuffet: Asphyxiating Culture (1968–) [FR, PT, CZ]

“Jean Dubuffet’s only and a particularly significant book, Asphyxiating Culture is a philosophical and political discussion which elucidates his antagonistic stance towards culture and its influence on the public domain of art and the private domain of creativity.

In his anti-culturalism, he posited the realm of culture against that of the individual, and saw culture as equivalent to the state and the police. To him, it represented bureaucracy, propaganda, patriotism, indoctrination, capitalism, the status quo, and illusory coherence. The individual, however, was the keeper of the creative spirit and the domain of the common man. The individual exemplified rebellion, independence, creativity, nature, diversity, and eclecticism.” (source)

French edition
Publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Paris, 1968
Expanded edition published by Les éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1986, 124 pages

MA thesis on Dubuffet (Samantha Krukowski, 1992)
Dubuffet’s sound recordings (UbuWeb)

Asphyxiante culture (French, expanded ed., 1968/1986, added on 2014-2-2)
Cultura asfixiante (Portuguese, trans. Serafim Ferreira, 1971, no OCR)
Asphyxiating Culture and Other Writings (English sample, trans. Carol Volk, 1988, pages 7-12)
Dusivá kultura (Czech, trans. Ladislav Šerý, 1998, no OCR)

Pierre Klossowski: Sade My Neighbor (1947/1991)

Enlightenment ideals of a society rooted in liberationist reason and morality were trampled in the wake of the savagery of the Second World War. That era’s union of cold technology and ancient hatreds gave rise to a dark, alternative reason–an ethic that was value-free and indifferent with regard to virtue and vice, freedom, and slavery. In a world where “”the unthinkable”” had become reality, it is small wonder that theorists would turn to the writings of a man whose eighteenth-century imagination preceded twentieth-century history in its unbridled exploration of viciousness, perversion, and monstrosity: the Marquis de Sade. Klossowski was one of the first philosophers in postwar Europe to ask whether Sade’s reason, although aberrant and perverted to evil passions, could be taken seriously. Klossowski’s seminal work inspired virtually all subsequent study of Sadean thought, including that of de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Derrida, Bataille, Blanchot, Paulhan, and Lacan.

First published in French as Sade mon prochain, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1947
Translated and with an Introduction by Alphonso Lingis
Publisher Northwestern University Press, 1991
Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy series
ISBN 0810109581, 9780810109582
144 pages

google books

PDF

Florian Hecker: Speculative Solution (2011/2012) [EN, FR, JP, FLAC]

Speculative Solution is a CD and book with contributions by Florian Hecker, Elie Ayache, Robin Mackay and Quentin Meillassoux. Originally commissioned by Urbanomic and developed over the year 2010, this collaborative project brings together Hecker’s sonic practice and psychoacoustic experimentation with philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of ‘hyperchaos’ – the absolute contingency of the laws of nature.

In an apparent departure from Hecker’s previous release Acid in the Style of David Tudor (eMEGO 094, 2009), the four titles featured in Speculative Solution contain a series of micro-chronics and sequences of auditory contingencies, ranging from extreme stasis to the most dynamic intensities, crisp dramatisations of what Meillassoux calls in his text ‘extro-science worlds’.

As Mackay states in his contribution to the book, Hecker’s composition “participates in a circuit in which it, the accompanying texts, and diverse other objects, enter into a perpetual catalysis that must annihilate all priority, representation, reference, and even entity.’. Both ‘scripture and prescription’, Speculative Solution invites its users to integrate its sonic and textual components, as they enter into an accelerative cycle, becoming “truly ‘literalist’ marks which have no reason to be as they are, and which could have been – and still could be, at every moment – otherwise”. With Speculative Solution Hecker proposes that the concepts of absolute contingency and hyperchaos offer a rigorous new alternative to the employment of chance and randomness in avant-garde composition.

Japanese version was produced on the occasion of the exhibition Tokyo Art Meeting (III) Art & Music – Search for New Synethesia, October 2012 – February 2013, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

English/French edition
Publisher Mute Song, 2011
Editions Mego 118 / Urbanomic UF13
Edited by Robin Mackay
159 pages

Japanese edition: Speculative Solution and 3 Channel Chronics
Translated by Natsuko Jimbo
ISBN 9780956775030
81 pages

review (Brainwashed)
review (Ian Latta, TinyMixTapes)
review (Adam Strohm, Dusted)

publisher (EN)
publisher (JP)
exhibition in Tokyo (EN)

Download (English/French, removed on 2013-2-7 upon request of the publisher)
PDF (Japanese, no OCR)
Download (full album in FLAC, removed on 2013-2-7 upon request of the publisher)
related: Florian Hecker: Chimerization (2012)