Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin

Life is a serious disorder

I know that we are morose, crypt-faced, inclined to the view that life is a serious disorder which ultimately proves fatal.

Flann O'Brien, The Best of Myles (Picador, 1977) p. 360

Posterity's antiquities

The queer inverted craft of devising posterity's antiquities.

Flann O'Brien, The Best of Myles (Picador, 1977) p. 160

Death is a process

The kernel of the legal impasse appears to be this – that life is not in law the opposite of death, nor is being born the opposite of dying. Death is a process, resulting usually in a serious fatality.

Flann O'Brien, The Best of Myles (Picador, 1977) p. 160

The crisis of homogeneous space

The crisis of dimension thus appears as the crisis of the whole or, in other words, as the crisis of the substantial, homogeneous space, inherited from archaic Greek geometry, to the benefit of an accidental, heterogeneous space where parts and fractions become essential once again. Urban topology has, however, paid the prize for this atomization and disintegration of figures, of visible points of reference which promote transmigrations and transfigurations, much in the same way as landscapes suffered in the face of agricultural mechanization. The sudden breaking up of whole forms and the destruction of the entity caused by industrialization is, however, less perceptible within the space of the city – despite the destructuring of suburbia – than it is in time, in the sequential perception of urban appearances. In fact, for a long time now transparency has replaced appearances. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the depth of field of classical perspective has been renewed by the depth of time of advanced technology.

Paul Virilio, 'The Overexposed City' in Architecture Theory Since 1968 (Columbia Books of Architecture, 1998) p. 549

The technique of construction and the construction of technique

Along with the technique of construction, there is, one must not forget, the construction of technique, the ensemble of spatial and temporal mutations which continually reorganize on an everyday basis the aesthetic representations of contemporary territory. Constructed spaces is thus not simply the result of the concrete and material effect of its structures, its permanence and its architectonic or urbanistic references, but also the result of a sudden proliferation, an incessant multiplying of special effects, which, with consciousness of time and distance, affects perception of the environment.

Paul Virilio, 'The Overexposed City' in Architecture Theory Since 1968 (Columbia Books of Architecture, 1998) p. 547

Arrival supplants departure

With the advent of instantaneous communications (satellite, TV, fiber optics, telematics) arrival supplants departure: everything arrives without necessarily having to depart.

Paul Virilio, 'The Overexposed City' in Architecture Theory Since 1968 (Columbia Books of Architecture, 1998) p. 544

A time that instantaneously exposes itself

Only a short time ago, the opening of the city's gates was determined by the alternating of day and night. Today, however, since we not only open the shutters but also the television, daylight itself has been changed. A false electronic day, whose only calendar is based on "commutations" of information bearing no relationship whatsoever to real time, is now added to the solar day of astronomy, electric light and the dubious "daylight" of candles. Chronological and historical time, which passes, is this succeeded by a time that instantaneously exposes itself. On the terminal's screen, a span of time becomes both the surface and the support of inscription: time literally or, rather, cinematically surfaces.

Paul Virilio, 'The Overexposed City' in Architecture Theory Since 1968 (Columbia Books of Architecture, 1998) p. 544

Amnesia-ridden hills

Everything you now think of as a room—as space, as volume, as creation—will soon just be a suffocation of sand grains packed together in dense, amnesia-ridden hills, landscapes almost laughably quick to forget they once were architecture.

Geoff Manaugh, 'When Hills Hide Arches' on Bldg Blog, http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/when-hills-hide-arches.html (31/03/2014)

Purposefulness is part of our ineradicable basic human structure

You know, the truth is, I think I do know what really disturbs me about this work that you’ve described – and I don’t even know if I can express it, Andre – but somehow, if I’ve understood what you’ve been saying, it somehow seems that the whole point of the work that you did in those workshops, when you get right down to it and ask what it really was all about – the whole point, really, I think, was to enable the people in the workshops, including yourself, to somehow sort of strip away every scrap of purposefulness from certain selected moments. And the point of it was so that you would then be able to experience somehow just pure being… And I think I just simply object to that. I mean, I just don’t think I accept the idea that there should be moments in which you’re not trying to do anything. I think it’s our nature to do things. I think purposefulness is part of our ineradicable basic human structure. And to say that we ought to be able to live without it is like saying that a tree ought to be able to live without branches or roots; but actually, without branches or roots, it wouldn’t be a tree. I mean, it would just be a log.

Wallace Shawn, My Dinner With Andre (Saga Productions Inc., 1981)

We are at the goal constantly

I found through Oriental philosophy, my work with Suzuki, that what we are doing is living, and that we are not moving toward a goal, but are, so to speak, at the goal constantly and changing with it, and that art, if it is going to do anything useful, should open our eyes to this fact.

John Cage, Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage (Hayward Publishing, 2010) p. 72

Free of our activity

By silence, I mean the multiplicity of activity that constantly surrounds us. We call it ”silence” because it is free of our activity. It does not correspond to ideas of order or expressive feeling – they lead to order and expression, but when they do, it ”deafens” us to the sounds themselves.

John Cage, Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage (Hayward Publishing, 2010) p. 71

Direct contact with ephemerality

The nature of listening is the experience of hearing something and then realizing that you’re no longer hearing it and that you’re hearing something else. This is part and parcel of hearing. When you look at a painting, you don’t have the impression that the painting is disappearing. But as you listen to sounds, you have the impression that they’re gone, and that others have taken their place. And you’re brought right by paying attention to events in time. All you need to see is [that] you’re brought into direct contact with ephemerality.

John Cage, Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage (Hayward Publishing, 2010) p. 66

No such thing as empty space or empty time

There is no such thing as empty space or empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make silence, we cannot… Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.

John Cage, Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage (Hayward Publishing, 2010) p. 61

Art is not an escape from life

Formerly, one was accustomed to thinking of art as something better organized than life that could be used as an escape from life. The changes that have taken place in this century, however, are such that art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it.

John Cage, Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage (Hayward Publishing, 2010) p. 56