Reflections on Technique in "A Cut-Conversation on Techno-Aesthetics"

ABSTRACT The observation, or invitation, from Gilbert Simondon’s (unsent) letter to Jacques Derrida, that “[c]ertain aesthetic objects call for a technical analysis,” encapsulates not only the ambitions of A Cut-Conversation on Techno-Aesthetics by Catarina Patrício & João Alves, but also those of the scholars it places in conversation, and indeed what we attempt to sketch in the following review. We turn to the audiovisual essay as both a technical and aesthetic object, parsing its approach and form through the lens of both the avant-garde style and Simondon’s concern with the operational. In doing so, we aim to offer some initial provocations for how Walter Benjamin, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and Simondon could enrich thinking on contemporary techno-aesthetic questions through the kinds of “cut-up” conversations wherein, by making a “cut into the present, the future bleeds out” (Burroughs in Quedear, 2011).