Média Médiums

Samuel Morse is well-known today as the inventor of Morse code and of the electro-magnetic telegraph that revolutionized human communications in the mid-19th century. But this inventor was first a painter, art theorist, and one of the first American practitioners and proselytes of photography. Together these activities create a unique constellation, centered on problems of information, its nature and how it can be transmitted. Painting, telegraphy and photography all treat the inscription, recording and the conveyance of traces and signs differently. Their juxtaposition within the practice of Morse, as well as their sometimes contradictory relationships with one another, defined a new space that we continue to inhabit today.

Jean-Philippe Antoine teaches aesthetics and the theory of contemporary art at the University of Paris VIII. Recently he published La traversée du XXe siècle. Joseph Beuys, l’image et le souvenir at the Editions du MAMCO/Presses du Réel and participated on The Quilt and the Truck. Nancy Shaver (Publication Studio, 2011). An artist, he works in many formats and media – painting, constructions, installations, and sound-based performance works, notably in collaboration with Leif Elggren. He recently released The Worried Ones (Antoine-Elggren) Live at 64 (2013), Nouvelles musiques anciennes (CD, 2011) and Objet Métal Esprit (EP, 2010) on the Firework Edition Records label.

If the name of Thomas Edison is usually associated with numerous inventions such as the incandescent light bulb, tha alkaline battery or the phonograph, the situation is quite different for his psychic research. While most of his biographers have explored the minutest details of his technical innovations, they remain utterly silent on the experiments Edison led during the final decade of his life, where he attempted to enter into communication with the dead. What exactly was his "spirit phonograph"? What did he manage to hear?

Edison's research into the domains of sound reproduction and psychic science are symptomatic, in the history of these two disciplines, of a common interest in voice phenomena and electric doubles. In what manner does the phonographic machine reveal with precision the occult dimensions of reproductive technologies? In light of the different spirit practices developped in the wake Edison's work and their popular culture representations in genre films, we will briefly attempt to retrace an "archeology" of talking machines and their implications in the field of pyschic phenomena, at the same time revisiting the history of these inventions and their ghostly avatars.

Philippe Baudouin is broadcast director at France Culture and the author of features for Arte Radio. He has a master's degree in the philosopy of art and is the author of Au microphone - Dr. Walter Benjamin (Inathèque Prize 2009), MSH editions (collection Philia). He is currently preparing a collection of unpublished radio pieces by Walter Benjamin, as well as a book on the archeology of the radio, which will be published by Allia and the Presses Universitaires de France respectively.

I will introduce my current research on hypnosis, which came about through various readings and meetings with practitioners of hypnosis. I will attempt to situate the questions raised by this research, and the different types of situations elicited - control, influence, empathy, and emancipation. Secondly, I will present the specific case of the use of hypnosis in the artistic practice of Matt Mullican who has been experimenting with it since 1978. It was attending one of his performances that led me to reflect upon the role hypnosis played in Mullican's creative process and upon the nature of “That Person”, the figure that has emerged from his work with hypnotic transe states."

Vanessa Desclaux graduated from Sciences Po, Paris and has a Master's degree in exhibition curating from Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she is currently pursuing her PhD in Art. Her research is centered on artistic practices which developped at the end of the 1970s and which articulate complex relationships between visual phenomena on the one hand and language and discursive practices on the other. In particular, she has worked on the artists David Lamelas, Guy de Cointet and Matt Mullican, developping her critical project through exhibitions, programs and performances and the publication of texts. Her recent projects include monographic and group exhibitions including - In a sentimental mood at the Galerie des galeries and Anna Barham, Agnès Geoffray, Nathania Rubin at Jousse Entreprise, in the framework of the festival Nouvelles vagues at the Palais de Tokyo.

A Constructed World began Explaining contemporary art to live eels in 2003, inviting art experts from across the world to explain their research to eels temporarily inhabiting museums and art centres. The live eels (Anguilla anguilla) have now, due to their dastardly decline, been exchanged for a speaking, robotic eel. Did we at some point, decide the image has duly replaced the-thing-itself? Has the image replaced logic in the same way logic exceeded and displaced rhetoric before it, if so what use are intellectuals? What is to be examined when everyone knows how to read the image in a lively often disingenuous way? In this performance of absence, where is speech coming from. What difference does it make who is speaking? Who really spoke? Bruno Latour says something like there may be a space that we could deal with as empirical but we would first need to understand what part is human. 'We put ourselves in a position to realize that it is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know'. When talking to others, objects and other species are always near. Ready-to-hand. Richard Rorty opines that that getting authority over oneself means hearing 'your own statements as part of shared practice.'

This part of the seminar will take place over two days the first will be a lecture about how speech aggregates and ACW’s work and experience talking to eels, the second will be a group workshop to consider, what that group proposes, the voice of the eel might be and how an actual voice might be produced.

A Constructed World work with actions and methodologies that bring attention to diverse modes of artistic practice. They are well known fortheir lengthy performances which include up to twenty performers presenting speech, conversation, philosophic al texts, music and singing, incorporating high levels of specialisation and not-knowing as a shared space. In their ongoing project, Explaining contemporary art to live eels, they invite art specialists to speak to live eels that are later released back into the water. These projects accumulate a research concerned with transmission and reception, satisfaction-without-delay.