New Spirits – Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness exists only in connection with other consciousness
Posts on art, images, music, film, perception, and aesthetic experience beyond mere representation.
First Encounters with Ragas As a teenager, I listened to ragas for hours. I knew nothing about them. I looked up a little: microtonality, meditation, sequence of tones. I understood no more than that. But they were the deepest musical experiences — a meditation to music. To this day, ragas lead me inward or into deep states of insight that are not rational. Rather, they are a way of being in the world. Music as Shared Space and Pure Energy…
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Contemporary art is obsessed with the “next step”: the avant-garde, the unprecedented, the new and unique. But in the hunt for the new, we lose sight of something essential: artistic practice itself. Artistic practice is not only about crossing boundaries. It belongs to those who use art for self-exploration, spiritual practice, healing, therapy, or craft. Yet in today’s culture, especially in the West, we act as though progress were the only thing that counts. At its core, however, art is…
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Form is empty. It has a shape, but no substance; it is neither matter nor energy. Form is consciousness — to see something as something brings form forth. Yet form is also functional: substance, matter, and energy interact according to laws. As part of consciousness, they interact in form. Form is emptiness. Form is consciousness. Consciousness interacts with consciousness. From form arises matter — not the other way around. Matter does not bring form forth. The flow of energy and…
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Art Before Theory (short summary) Christoph Kluetsch This lecture is the final one in my winter series. I have given six lectures so far, and I have been challenging myself throughout. Today, I am taking on my biggest challenge yet. I have been exploring topics that interest me—topics that represent a collision between Western art history, Indian spirituality, and postmodern thinking. I find this intersection to be a fascinating space to operate in. In my previous lectures, I have examined…
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Retinal Art and the Ruins of Representation: Revisiting Plato’s Cave and the Notion of Rasa in the Natyashastra Christoph Kluetsch “Something in the world forces us to think. This something is not an object of recognition, but a fundamental encounter.” Gilles Deleuze – Difference and repetition p. 139 “Minds exist only in relation to other minds.” (Mihai Nadin) “even those elements designated as “basic” or “proto-elements” are not primitive but are, on the contrary, of a complex nature.” (Kandinsky, point……
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My morning meditation is becoming something of a routine, though after a handful of sessions one can probably hardly say that yet. It is more a stretch of road, a path, or an exploration. Like hiking in the mountains: with the summit in view, hiking along paths, on ridges, through valleys and rivers, past rock faces, through scree and stone, meadows and forests, and beyond the vegetation line onto glaciers in the snow, the mountains become a metaphor for the…
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When I read a book, watch a film, immerse myself in a painting, or take part in a performance, what exactly is happening? It is, after all, the case that I experience something; images, feelings, and experiences are awakened within me. Imagine a film, a book, a play, or a painting about human relationships, action, history, or fairy tales. So you are sitting somewhere and looking at something that tells a kind of story. Now, what is the difference between…
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(this is an old text of mine, found in the archives. It is strange to read it again, as it shows to me how desperately I tried to get out of the trap of representation and the urge to embrace a philosophy of immanence. I went through so many ideas, looked at so many artists – I never did anything with the text, as my self-critical voice didn’t consider it to be any good. I have to say I like…
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