Outlook
Bibliography
This research can be taken throughout many strains. Surely the green ray is what is at stake, but this particular phenomenon serves as the reflexive basis for many other concerns, as we have seen. The fact that it is narrated historically exclusively by Europeans, lacking references from the rest of the world; that it is, from one side, astronomic/scientific, from the other side it was claimed by fiction literature as a myth, which further got integrated in scientific papers; that it is simultaneously, partially a mirage and discrete, partially an astonishing green ray and opponent, partially real, but depending on optics to get perceived; concluding that chance or contingency is the only possible opportunity open to its viewer. We also have seen that the approach to a green ray, only by its imminent dimension is an utter basis of reflection about geo-cultural tensions such as distance, smoothness, habit and the non-event (which folds Kairos, Chronos and Aion into a unity-in-plurality) from a western or eastern perspective. The pertinence of such approach is what makes me regard at the green ray as a promotor of contemporaneous reflections, even without its actual occurrence.
Putting it into a more categorical sentence, let’s synthesize that either by the fragmentary of its scientific definition, either by science fiction in literature, film and visual arts, what we can retain from the green ray is the amount of qualities that may be applied in other unknown or intangible contents. What is in play is the effect-affect interplay in such situations and how to preserve it or re-activate it for an inquiry about our cultures and times.
We have seen that it is the specificity of Art - which contains in itself indiscernible ways of communication and of acquiring knowledge - that can lead to the benefits of constant inquiry, as an utter challenge of perception, either sensorial, either intellectual. Even though the process of making art seeks for the openness of idea, form and methodology[1], it is part of this research to regard at western consuetudes, mostly since the postmodernism period, that regardless its constant experimentations in the use of new mediums and practices, reveals an inevitable tendency to set a linearity in action.
This linearity is mostly arranged by ideals and models that displace art from the sphere of presentation, to the aura of simulation, lacking the awareness of the present. Jean Baudrillard is one of the main criticisers of this western tendency: "The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—that engenders the territory"[2].
The post-modern aesthetics are then inevitably influenced by an over-conceptualization toward metanarratives, which tend to almost exclusively express itself through the idea, as a model for contemporary art[3]. I argue that Art practices should move between the idea (which links directly past and future) and the presence (the immediate) inquiring its own position in pace with the times, that is, integrating the ideal with the non-intended, the unpredictable.
To avoid this western tendency of materializing ideas as simulacrums, my concern during the research was to ascribe a practice or setting up situations that forced me to uninhabited confrontations, demanding from me, new ways of adaptation, and a stronger relation with the present. By doing so, I hope to get closer to the reactivation of a certain knowledge, which would not precede a demonstration/simulation of definitions.
This certain knowledge may resonate (as so many times along this research) with François Jullien definition of connivance, as a detachment of knowledge as a rapport covered (opaquely) by reason.
“Si le contraire de la connaisance est l’ignorance, comme on sait, sont contradictoire est la connivence s’instaurant à parité avec elle en même temps qu’elles se tournent le dos.
Connivere, dit le latin: s’entendre “en clignant des yeux”.”[4]
To get to know the green ray better relates to this way of understanding by blinking eyes. By allowing some parts in the darkness, to be seen, to rest in between, as a fragmented reality.
Therefore, to preserve such green ray qualities, only reached throughout inter-tensions between visual effects and affections such as torpor, that can’t surely be measured, neither settled throughout instructions, we may conclude the artistic means are the ones which better supply an open approach to preserve and re-activate such qualities.
My interest regarding intangible matters is not relying on its invisible qualities, rather it is the situation which allows me to better reflect the transmissible matter - how may that presence be reactivated and preserve its disrupted vibration.
This preservation is crucial for a quest about the times and cultural enclosures, that we may not perceive, for a lack of habit for such demanding. The green ray as an utter reflexive support requires the effort of taking our questions further to accept and react to factors like contingency and the impossibility of actions.
[1] Adams, Laurie Schneider. The Methodologies of Art. Routledge, New York, 2018.
[2] Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994.
[3] Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge. Manchester University Press, p.18
[4] Notes: The word “connaissance” (Knowledge in French), derives from the prefix co-naissance, as comprehended in birth and in the cartesian notion of “origin”.
Jullien, F. (2014). Vivre du paysage ou l’impensé de la Raison. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, p. 213
[2] Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994.
[3] Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge. Manchester University Press, p.18
[4] Notes: The word “connaissance” (Knowledge in French), derives from the prefix co-naissance, as comprehended in birth and in the cartesian notion of “origin”.
Jullien, F. (2014). Vivre du paysage ou l’impensé de la Raison. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, p. 213