Do not imitate anything, nor anyone. A lion that imitates a lion becomes a monkey. — Victor Hugo
[N’imitez rien ni personne. Un lion qui copie un lion devient un singe.]
REdundancy
t h e u r g e t o r e p r o d u c e
a m o n g s t h u m a n s
The pinpointing of formulas involved in producing trailers (here in French) could be extended to most movies – by Olivier Clairouin from Le Monde.
Without considering what we are furthering, what gets duplicated becomes a form of fetishism and pollution. We love to perform, to present what is primarily acrobatics & technique… overall just ready-made ideas, what one calls in French, “des idées toutes faites.”
Thinking is always a lonely activity, EACH thought singular, all by itself.
Is it possible to think of non-representation as Bartabas, the French horse trainer and circus wizard, aims to do with his early morning sessions with his horses?
Like a meme (“the selfish gene”), sex…
There is a pervasive babble that tries to reassure us all that, as we talk, discuss and have theories. we are on the right side.
After a lifetime of being surrounded by images and words:
– a photographer-father and thousands of photographs (Picasso. Chagall, Chaplin…)
– teaching at major US universities
– the Shoah, that my parents survived but not my grandparents
– a brain hemorrhage, that I survived (but which killed my father)
I cannot but perceive the futility of representations and of the concepts that keep us prisoners of what we know (knowing what we know).
Do we really mean to propagate ourselves to this extent?
This system celebrates itself with its endless references to itself.
Could we circulate outside of paradigms?
Mimetic desire has already been discussed at great length by René Girard – but I come to replication from a different place.