In 1983, the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard got involved in the preparations of an exhibition that opened at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris under the title Les Immatériaux in March 1985. A few weeks later, during a seminar organised on the occasion of this exhibition and dealing with the notion of matter [matière] in contemporary philosophies, Lyotard made a comment whose re-reading forms the topic of this contribution.
Towards the end of his talk entitled “Matter and Time”, Lyotard spoke about how the new technologies signalled a new blow to “human narcissism”, after the displacements of anthropocentrism associated with the names of Copernicus (cosmos), Darwin (life), and Freud (sense). The “techno-sciences”, Lyotard said, teach the contemporary human that the complexification of mind is not a genuinely human domain, but it is a quality of matter itself; the human is neither origin nor result of this technical complexification, but its mere “transformer” (Lyotard), understood in the sense of a quasi-technical interface. “This view can cause joy or despair. [...] Perhaps [this view of the human as transformer] is enough, in all sobriety, to give us reason for thinking and writing, and a love of matter. Matter in our effort makes its anamnesis.” (“... La matière en notre effort fait son anamnèse.” in L’Inhumain, 1988, 55)
This is an astonishing claim about the epistemological status of the things presented in the exhibition which is here refered to as “our effort”. Coinciding with the early days of what would become Actor-Network-Theory, this short sentence encourages us to consider matter itself, including the things inside and outside the galleries, as bringing about the meaning of the experience and experiment that the exhibition Les Immatériaux constituted.
The proposed paper will offer two contextualisations of Lyotard’s claim: first by refering to some of the artistic, scientific and technological exhibits which exemplified such an auto-anamnesis of matter; and secondly by discussing this hypothesis on the relation of mind and matter in view of the neo-materialist and posthumanist conceptions which today characterise contemporary discourses in philosophy and art.
Keywords: matter, art, anamnesis, posthuman, Jean-François Lyotard, Les Immatériaux
PD Dr. Andreas Broeckmann, Researcher, Leuphana University Lüneburg
Dr. Andreas Broeckmann is an art historian and curator who lives in Berlin. He is engaged in the DFG-funded research and documentation project Les Immateriaux Research at Leuphana University Lüneburg (2021-2024). He teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig (HGB – Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst) where he holds an Honorary Professorship, and was Visiting Professor for Art History and Media Theory (2017-2020). Visiting Professor for Art and Media Studies at Oldenburg University (2016-2017). He was the Artistic Director of the Leuphana Arts Program (2011-2016), the founding director of Dortmunder U – Centre for Art and Creativity (2009-2011), and has curated exhibitions and festivals in major European venues, incl. transmediale and ISEA2010 RUHR. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of East Anglia, Norwich/UK, and lectures internationally about the history of modern and contemporary art, media theory, and digital culture. He is the author of „Machine Art in the Twentieth Century“ (MIT-Press, 2016). Website: https://abroeck.in-berlin.de – http://les-immateriaux.net/
The French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard was the co-curator of the exhibition “Les Immatériaux,” shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1985. During an accompanying talk, Lyotard remarked that the exhibits were exposing themselves and thus provided a critical self-reflection: “Matter in our effort makes its anamnesis.” (“La matière en notre effort fait son anamnèse.”) This paper offers two contextualisations: first, through some of the artistic, scientific and technological exhibits, which exemplified such an auto-anamnesis of matter; and second, by discussing Lyotard’s hypothesis on the relation of mind and matter in view of contemporary conceptions of neo-materialism and posthumanism.