CORRESPONDENCES
PROJECT WEBSITE
In a passage from a letter dated June 5 1977, included in LA CARTE POSTALE, Jacques Derrida states: “What I prefer in the postcard is that one doesn’t know where the front is and where is the back, here or there, near or far, Plato or Socrates, recto or verso. Nor what is the most important, the image or the text, and in the text, the message or the address.“ This excerpt is taken as a reference for the project CORRESPONDÊNCIAS.
Published in 1980 in France, the above mentioned text is part of the criticism operated by Jacques Derrida to Western philosophical tradition and, despite its recognized markedly intertextual and meta-literary character, it configures, however, a political attitude. Without intending to render explicit the so-called thinking of the Difference, we can not fail to mention that this work concerns an operation to disrupt a system, making its logic(s) visible, deconstructing the logocentric, binary, thought, the oppositions of Western culture: good|bad, true|false, right|wrong, nature|culture, soul|body, light|dark, rational|irrational ...
As Derrida correctly stressed, without “logoi” (concepts) no special class of connections is especifically "logic". It becomes imperative to force language, break it, disfigure it, force the concepts to say something else. In this movement against the origin, establishing the conditions of its impossibility, we affiliate the postcard as an open letter, without secret, front or back, without contrast between metaphorical and literal, rhetoric and logic. A figure working on speech.
Departing from this theoretical and critical framework we propose to develop the project CORRESPONDÊNCIAS in two axes, namely: (1) the
Published in 1980 in France, the above mentioned text is part of the criticism operated by Jacques Derrida to Western philosophical tradition and, despite its recognized markedly intertextual and meta-literary character, it configures, however, a political attitude. Without intending to render explicit the so-called thinking of the Difference, we can not fail to mention that this work concerns an operation to disrupt a system, making its logic(s) visible, deconstructing the logocentric, binary, thought, the oppositions of Western culture: good|bad, true|false, right|wrong, nature|culture, soul|body, light|dark, rational|irrational ...
As Derrida correctly stressed, without “logoi” (concepts) no special class of connections is especifically "logic". It becomes imperative to force language, break it, disfigure it, force the concepts to say something else. In this movement against the origin, establishing the conditions of its impossibility, we affiliate the postcard as an open letter, without secret, front or back, without contrast between metaphorical and literal, rhetoric and logic. A figure working on speech.
Departing from this theoretical and critical framework we propose to develop the project CORRESPONDÊNCIAS in two axes, namely: (1) the
programming of seven contemporary art exhibitions with a clear focus on decentralization; (2) the organization of an international conference entitled DESTINATÁRIO DESCONHECIDO [UNKNOWN RECIPIENT].
Taking the statements of Jacques Derrida and the scope of the exhibition projects as our starting point, the postcard is not meant to be interpreted as a simple means of information but as production of subjectivity, process and experience, itself an agencement of CORRESPONDENCE. We propose to explore not just the linguistic, grammatical or rhetorical character of this notion but the use value it can acquire when inscribed in a chain of possible situations. A metaphor of equality, without front or back, here or there, image or text, the postcard is situated in the traffic of mail sent, received, recorded, forwarded, returned, stolen, lost, anonymous, confidential, inviolable; correspondence is also connection, communication, relationship, route, trip, trajectory, complementarity, reciprocity. So many ways, so many uses, such as the "meaning" that dwells in all types of connections, between language elements and our own linguistic interactions with the world. We also consider, in the Derridian way, the uniqueness of the right to secret as political right: communication and its opposite, the Other and the Same, CORRESPONDENCES.
At a time when everything is meant to be clear so that it can be communicable, when secrecy has no place when it is forced to yield to the totalitarianism of public space, to the excess of public confession, the possibility of incommunicability as a resistance tool will be claimed.
Taking the statements of Jacques Derrida and the scope of the exhibition projects as our starting point, the postcard is not meant to be interpreted as a simple means of information but as production of subjectivity, process and experience, itself an agencement of CORRESPONDENCE. We propose to explore not just the linguistic, grammatical or rhetorical character of this notion but the use value it can acquire when inscribed in a chain of possible situations. A metaphor of equality, without front or back, here or there, image or text, the postcard is situated in the traffic of mail sent, received, recorded, forwarded, returned, stolen, lost, anonymous, confidential, inviolable; correspondence is also connection, communication, relationship, route, trip, trajectory, complementarity, reciprocity. So many ways, so many uses, such as the "meaning" that dwells in all types of connections, between language elements and our own linguistic interactions with the world. We also consider, in the Derridian way, the uniqueness of the right to secret as political right: communication and its opposite, the Other and the Same, CORRESPONDENCES.
At a time when everything is meant to be clear so that it can be communicable, when secrecy has no place when it is forced to yield to the totalitarianism of public space, to the excess of public confession, the possibility of incommunicability as a resistance tool will be claimed.