Architecture

The following thesis paper accompanies the body of artwork that I have been creating throughout the past two years of the Master of Visual Studies program (2012-14). To a large extent, the form and content of this paper are derived directly from the ideas and processes of my artistic work. For this reason, this thesis is written in an aphoristic format that consists of various textual meditations that can be read in any order, with each fragment touching upon key recurring themes of my artwork and working process. The goal of this thesis paper is to propose terrains of thought, reflections and questions that are meant to be considered in dialogue with the exhibited work.
The exhibited body of artwork, appearing in a variety of mediums, is comprised of several overlapping narratives that unfold as a series of artistic revelations in dialogue with a fragmented, poetic manuscript of my late grandfather. Since he passed away when I was nearly fourteen years old, I have been left with a strong sense of loss. His manuscript and diverse artistic work, although insignificant to me at that time, has become increasingly important to me. By telling a story and re-imagining its narratives, I interpret in and through this personal archive. The current body of artwork tries to recreate the possibility of a shared biography through artistic dialogue.

http://idogovrin.net/index.php/fields/vaalbara/

This essay summarizes a recent artistic and philosophical research in the fields of contemporary classical and experimental music. Part of this research includes an album I recorded under the title The Revisit.(1) The album, comprised of five compositions, exhibits various revisits to contemporary classical music works that (in the end) reveal nothing of the original sonic material yet dwell in the world of the original pieces. Nothing was sampled; everything was recorded live and at a later stage processed and edited digitally.2
The revisits were made possible by the original pieces' initial “openness” as well as my personal interest in that which occurs at the liminal moment in time of the artistic revisit act. In philosophy, the revisit theme might most popularly be referenced in Plato's own revisit of Heraclitus, when Plato quotes his famous dictum: “You could not step twice into the same river.”3 This observation is both empirical and metaphysical; through it, I raise further questions concerning the connections between the transcendental characters of this “Platonic-Heraclitian” dictum and found-sound, as well as concerning its approximated potential to execute further artistic creative forces on behalf of the one who artistically revisits.
How does such an artistic revisit act become possible based on metaphysical grounds? Would a repetition simply mean to be able to “repeat” oneself or whether a constant difference, a continuous interval, initially characterize a transcendental and artistic procedure? Moreover, how can one gain access to such an “inter-val”? This essay reflects on these questions and suggests further possible directions concerning the idea of the artistic revisit.

(1) Ido Govrin, The Revisit, Cotton Goods Archives, 2011, CD.
(2) Ido Govrin. “The Revisit.” http://www.idogovrin.net/compositions—releases/the-revisit.
(3) Plato, Cratylus, 402a–a6.

This paper considers the relationship between truth and fiction as it is manifested, through the process of storytelling, within the gallery's aesthetic experience. Storytelling effectively integrates both truth and fiction in order to arouse the imagination in the subject which has a need for fantasy. The meaning of storytelling lays in its establishment of the right to intensity, thus transports man from the aesthetic domain into that of ethics. Storytelling's form of rhetoric, that can adequately propel such movement, departs from the rhetorical work of Aristotle. This hypotheses-based form of rhetoric presents potential truths or things that exist in ambiguousness. Though somewhat illogical, it nonetheless identifies a rational core (the concept of proof) in its structure, with its main purpose to be a (special kind of) persuasion. The kind of potential truth that persists (even with its precarious status of truth-fiction) is aesthetic truth. Aesthetic truth (and therefore knowledge and understanding within art) presents a unique fiction-based process of truth-telling that is a guiding force which transports man towards an imaginary-ethical experience. Thus, within the aesthetic experience, a different kind of knowledge and understanding emerge that include error, precariousness and speculation. This type of knowledge is vital to man's involvement in realm of ethics.

Tears, Fears and Flashes considers the relationship between interpersonal understanding and propagandist rhetorics, and speculates on the ethical implications of this difficult but often present relationship. The essay examines the conditions under which different conscious sonic rhetoric may constitute particular interpersonal modes capable of yielding or destroying mutual understanding of one another, as well as exploring the role of sound, language and spatial voyeurism in this process. Related themes, such as power/control, chronotope, interruption, lingua franca, sovereignty, bicamerality, discontinuity and love are investigated and speculated on.

The paper conceives of (based on the works of Augustine, Paracelsus, Jakob Böhme, and Giorgio Agamben) the concept of signature as a development of an epistemological function. This development, by traversing through different contexts and discourses, reveals new knowledge (of a subject matter). Expanding on this view, the paper inquires whether we can regress (supposedly) to the origin of this development and source of human knowledge - that is, as the story goes, the Garden of Eden and its inhabitants.
What does it mean to be unmarked? What were the consequences, for Adam, in such a situation? What kind of epistemological status does Eden possess in and of itself as well as for Adam? Is a philosophical inquiry (as reasoned and postulated by Agamben) that reaches beyond signatures towards the Non marked (i.e. towards the paradisiacal state and final perfection, according to Paracelsus) possible?

הפילוסוף האיטלקי ג׳ורג׳ו אגמבן הוא אחד מהוגי הדעות הנקראים והמדוברים ביותר כיום, ואף על פי כן חתימת הדברים: על המתודה (2008) הוא ללא ספק ספר יוצא דופן ולפיכך פחות מוכר במכלול עבודתו. ייחודו נובע לא רק מכר הנושאים הפורה שבו הוא דן והתער האינטלקטואלי הנצרף ממנו, אלא מכך שרק לעיתים רחוקות אנו נפגשים עם הבחנותיו של פילוסוף ביחס לסוגיות ספציפיות הנוגעות למתודת המחקר והכתיבה שלו בהווה.

תוך כדי דיאלוג עז עם ולטר בנימין ומישל פוקו, פאראצלזוס ואבּי ורבורג, פרנץ אוברבק ואנצו מלאנדרי, מתמקד אגמבן בספר זה בשלוש פיגורות מושגיות במחשבה על המתודה: 1. הפרדיגמה, המאפשרת לנו לשחזר את הפרק האבוד בהיסטוריה של הלוגיקה המערבית שהוא התיאוריה של הדוּגמה; 2. החתימה, אשר בעקבות חקירות הרנסנס והבארוק מתגלה כסימן הפעולה המכריע בכל תיאוריות הסימנים, מבלשנות לפסיכואנליזה, ממאגיה לתולדות האמנות; 3. היחס בין היסטוריה לארכאולוגיה, יחס המגולם במושג המקור שאינו מבודד בעבר אלא (כמו שורשי השפות ההודו-אירופיות בבלשנות והמפץ הגדול באסטרופיזיקה) ממשיך בפעולתו בהווה על מנת להפכו למובן וידוע.

חתימת הדברים: על המתודה מוגש כאן לראשונה לקורא הישראלי. ספר זה, שתורגם והוער בצורה מרשימה בידי ד״ר עידו גוברין, מציג לפנינו צורת מחשבה ארכיאולוגית שאינה מכסה על הלא-נאמר הייחודי לה אלא חוזרת ומפתחת אותו ללא הרף, ואגב כך היא מראה כיצד ומדוע, לדעת רבים, נחשב כיום אגמבן לדמות מרכזית בפילוסופיה המערבית. ברסלינג ראו אור ספריו הבאים: "מה שנותר מאושוויץ" (2007); "מהו אפרטוס" (2015).

Offering, for the first time, a full historicized accounting of philosophical archaeology, Ido Govrin delineates how this overarching method of historical inquiry has today become associated, to a large extent, with the work of Giorgio Agamben—and how it constitutes Agamben’s philosophy of history in particular. As befits a book situated at an intellectual crossroads that brings together a range of discourses—philosophy, history, aesthetics, theology, and philology—Govrin conceives of philosophical archaeology as a multifaceted concept, on a broad scale. The discussion slides along the length of the multilateral fault line and into the related fields of contemporary art and art history/theory. In doing so, it illuminates the potential for philosophical archaeology, as an artistic modus operandi in the broader context of contemporary art, to expand our conception of history and historiographic research, and for this sense of history to expand our conception of art, in turn. At stake in this consideration is the possibility of a new, materially based philosophy of history.

Les côtes rocheuses de la péninsule médiane du Péloponnèse méridional (qui prolonge le Taygète et se termine au cap Matapan ou Tenare), appelée le Magne, tout comme d'autres régions méditerranéennes, produisaient suffisamment de sel pour satisfaire les besoins locaux. La production de ce sel n'acquit jamais une forme légale et lors des périodes où le sel se trouvait sous un régime de monopole, la collecte en était clandestine.