Abstract

The fundamental basis of the project concentrates upon an interactive manoeuvre involving Modern Continental Philosophy and the Postmodern Visual Arts. The primary components that structure the thesis conduct a Deleuzoguattarian "process” of action to produce a series of mechanisms designed to “open-up" a space in which to manifest a range of interpretations/translations that follow the developmentary trajectory of designated specific areas of art production. The primary aims concern the advance of the action to communicate an innovative/original set of expositions with a view to both “animate" and enhance these designated perspectives. The structural framework of the project tracks through “passages'/lines of flight” that occur/result from the impact of the Deleuzoguattarian mechanisms upon chosen material - "Introduction" sets forth some guiding themes. “Tours of the Black Clock" elaborates the Nietzschean background that informs the philosophical basis of the complete project. “Electrolite”, “Where Angels Play", “Not to Touch the Earth” “Across” are sections designed to trace a number of alternative pathways through the major texts of the Deleuzoguattarian enterprise. “Becoming X" initiates a secondary movement of experimentation. “Animal Nitrate" effects “an encounter" with the work of painter Francis Bacon via the Deleuze text “Logique de la Sensation", “Time and Again" introduces and articulates a number of instances from Deleuzian film-theory “The Fountainhead” is the main section of the project which evolves a detailed process analysing the paintings of American painter David Salle “The Mirror of Enigmas" traces related Deleuzeoguattarian themes through the films of David Lynch, maintaining as a background an examination of Postmodern American culture/society. “Breaking into Heaven" returns to the more specific analysis of the late paintings of David Salle and uses the mechanics elaborated in Deleuze's book “Le Pli”. “Final Cut”/”Last Exit”/”Memorial Beach" is an attempt at a series of concluding remarks within the project divisions are resolved within a comprehensive Deleuzoguattarian structural system - evolving to be primarily defined in terms of two “active" processes/movements which engage theory and explanation, practice and application respectively, being therefore both a philosophical /academic debate while incorporating a high-level of “creative" experimentation. The first sections of the project detail an extensive series of explanatory “pathways/journeys” through the texts of Deleuze and Guattari with a view to indicating measures that can be deployed/utilized in a Deleuzoguattarian process of art/cultural analysis. Constructing the architectural pattern/”anatomy” of a series of interpretative surfaces to reflect the dimensions of the cultural material approached. The sections in the second part of the project enact a number of experimental designs, dispatching Deleuzoguattarian mechanisms in the body of the chosen cultural material. An interpretative surface is never under the influence of a single differentiated flow it constitutes the mutual boundary of numerous adjacent flows. The same interpretative surface is therefore available to be understood in as many different ways as there are adjacent flows along its fractural surface. This project is essentially a speculative enterprise, a philosophical experiment whose aim is to enhance, enlarge and intensify our “knowledge" of the area defined, through a synthesis, here labelled as a “Deleuzoguattarian process of Art analysis”. For Deleuze, thought creates what it thinks, as perception creates what it perceives. The philosophical concept does not refer to the lived, but consists through its own creation, in setting up an event that surveys the whole of the lived no less than every state of affairs Deleuzoguattarian philosophy does not establish a relationship “between” philosophy and other disciplines, other ways of making sure, but eliminates this relationship to the advantage of a type of “greater philosophy” Thought/Philosophy thinks the sufficient reason of the actual in this manner. For Nietzsche, whose enterprise constitutes the base/departure for the Deleuzoguattarian program, “the world" we know lies in our interpretation of it. However, the task of interpretation is not to discover “truth" but to “create" it. According to Nietzsche, there is no “world-in-itself, no unconditioned and stable entities that await our discovery, but a dynamic and turbulent “becoming" in which the forms we perceive are not separate from our interpretations of them Because we are ourselves part of this becoming, there is no vantage point from which it is possible to gain the absolute/unconditioned knowledge that we have imbued with the idea of “truth”. The exercise merely becomes self-reflective. However, despite this skepticism, Nietzsche realizes that the game of truth is unavoidable, so therefore he, and In consequence we, departing/initiating the pathways through this project, have to cast in the role of the philosopher who knows what he invents and invents while he knows. In Postmodern Art no style dominates. Alternatively we experience endless improvisations and variations on themes, parody/playfulness. Postmodern artists are unabashedly eclectic and call attention to it, combining traditions borrowing from rituals and myths. All the world's cultural symbols are now available in the public domain - “SANTA CLAUS IS ON THE CROSS". The Deleuzoguattarian process of art delineated is a play with the game of “truth” and not an explanation of a “whole" a description of the network of the "dynamic”/fluid nature of our transitional relationship to it. It is the flow of energy that encompasses what Deleuze/Nietzsche refer to as “the whole" A flow invokes the dynamic/fluid nature of becoming, while energy/activity implies a potentiality - the inherent capacity and growth actuated by the will to power. The flows of energy are manifested into differentiated flows within flows, “Ad infinitum” and powered by the parameters of state space - a potential i.e field defined by the characteristics of the subject flows associated Nothing exists in isolation Differentiation exists only via relations to other flows in a dynamic/non linear network of resistances.