audioaspects; last updated: November 2, 2004 		 
 


Virtual interfaces and an aesthetics of degree zero

Virtual
Following the actual political operations we can assert that many procedures of extraterritorial logics are often treated as test cases, which are performed, probed, executed parallel on real and virtual levels, in reality and computer simulation, unilateral and in the UN assembly, hidden in extraterritories on aircraft carriers and public in Guantanamo, unveiled in Abu Graib. Virtual actions means "virtual" not because it operates within a "virtual" that is technologically mediated, disembodying, less-than-real context. Virtualisation is not a de-realization (the transformation of reality into a collection of possibles) but a change of identity, a displacement of the centre. Rather than being defined principally through one solution, such an action is rather virtual in the sense that, it ask the question of: where does power (puissance) come from? And how should power, defined as the expression of a collective will from below, be expressed as a political/cultural practice?


Degree zero
The aesthetics of the degree zero of politics, means the rejection of the "spectacular" (the spectacle) and the "representative" politics, the level of representation is dissolved , and a return to a level of "degree zero". Degree zero does not imply a ground, that is an origin, but a full potentiality, that needs to be active actualised, to find its expression. The procedures of the virtual are not based on a universal code, it is a field of permanent change of procedures, articulations, tactics and expressions, which all interfere in a process of crossing. It is a field of social transcodings between political, legal, machinic and cultural codes. The processes of transcodings serve as a model for an knowledge exchange, which enables us to read, oppose and change hegemonic strategies.