TRUMP’S EAR, MAGIC TRICKS AND THE MYTH OF INFALLIBILITY All the powers, all the institutions speak of themselves through denial, in order to attempt, by simulating death, to escape their real death throes. Power can stage its own murder to rediscover a glimmer of existence and legitimacy. Such was the case with some American presidents: […]
“It seems to me that the arguments which have led up to the theory (Relativity), and the whole state of mind of most physicists with regard to it, may some day become one of the puzzles of history.” Professor P W Bridgeman (1936) ∆ Tesla was effectively sidelined by 1905, and at that moment a […]
THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD “The tactic of the terrorist model is to provoke a surplus of reality and to make the whole system collapse under it.” Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism (2002). ∆ Jesse Hughes: I knew right then and there it was gonna be bad, and I knew that these kids had no idea what […]
THE MURDEROUS CAPACITY OF IMAGES In 1981 Baudrillard was announcing, not predicting, the ‘death of the real’. In Simulacra and Simulation, he ironically reveres Disneyland, which he says ‘is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer […]
Magritte, La Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images), 1929 Let’s try an analysis. I’ll take a subject close to home. Just up the street, in fact. Regard this beautiful woman. She is standing by the entrance to an entertainment plaza in a certain South-East Asian capital of some ten million souls. Or ten million […]