From Geophilosophy to Geoaesthetics The Virtual and the Plane of Immanence versus Mirror-Travel and the Spiral Jetty

Abstract

In this chapter I want again to switch the ontological categories for thinking art away from a certain representational register. In particular, I want to explore other ways of thinking the ethical and ‘political’ effectivity of art, and specifically its ‘other worldliness’ (its resistance to the present milieu), away from a horizon of transcendence and a logic of the possible. I propose to do this in a slightly different manner to previous chapters, by adopting a double pronged and somewhat experimental approach. The chapter then involves two philosophical discussions or two philosophical encounters with Deleuze, and at the same time a nonphilosophical encounter with an art practice that mirrors the philosophy, and in some senses ‘grounds’ it. To a certain extent I might be accused of deliberately misreading Deleuze here insofar as I utilise his ideas on philosophy, rather than on sensation and affect, to think these practices. The chapter is then an experiment in taking Deleuze’s philosophical concepts into other milieus (and in allowing the latter to feed back on Deleuze). It is in this sense that the artistic ‘case studies’ are meant not as illustrations but as parallels to, and in some senses deviations from, the conceptual work. They also serve to demonstrate that art is a form of thought in and of itself.