(All sculptures, paintings and photographs by Olivier de Sagazin)
For Genouni …
All pictorial or plastic work is useless: let it then be a monstrosity that frightens servile minds, and not sweetening to decorate the refectories of animals in human costume, illustrating the sad fable of mankind.
Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto 1918
If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double
The body is the Figure, or rather the material of the Figure. Above all the material of the Figure is not to be confused with the material structure in space which is separate from this. The body is a Figure, not structure. Conversely, the Figure being a body, is not a face and does not even have a face. It has a head, because the head is an integral part of the body. It can even be reduced to its head. … There is a big difference between the two. For the face is a structured spatial organization which covers the head, while the head is an adjunct of the body, even though it is its top. It is not that it lacks a spirit, but it is a spirit which is body, corporeal and vital breath, an animal spirit; it is the animal spirit of man: a pig-spirit, a buffalo-spirit, a dog-spirit, a bat-spirit… This means … unmaking the face, rediscovering or pulling up the head beneath the face.
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sensation
Painting and art in general appear to me as an instrument of war, a Trojan horse. Artists are viruses. I want to colonise consciousnesses with images, disturbing and fantastic, to try to re-make the face an enigma. I am a stranger to myself! I am at the service of my interior, cellular milieu (Claude Bernard) and not the opposite. One must scream it, draw it without end. Disfiguration is the art of deregulation, the skewed path, the search for new forms.
Domination seeps deeply into a social fabric. It is in no way the privilege of autocratic and authoritarian States. If States are agents of domination, they are so because they are able to capture, appropriate (and render possible and reinforce) the many, overlapping relations of power that so commonly characterise societies.
Nietzsche and anarchy
I don’t say that my values and desires are the right or true ones. For instance, I don’t say that it is right or true to love anarchy and hate domination. I affirm my values. This affirmation is not like saying “anarchy, you’re right”, but more like saying “anarchy, you’re beautiful, I love you”. A declaration of love is an affirmation that demands no explanation. I also reflect on my values, I test and develop them and try to make them more coherent and powerful. And I put them into action.
I also try to spread anarchic values and desires. Again, not because I call them right or true. But I do think that others, at least some others who are already inclined in this direction, may also find joy and freedom in pursuing anarchy. And also, more selfishly, I want more comrades and allies.
I know that most people would disagree with my values, perhaps think they’re crazy. I don’t think I’m going to convince many people otherwise by a reasoned argument demonstrating the truth of my assertions and the falsity of theirs. I don’t think that’s how desire works. I think desires spread by seduction, by incitement and contagion.
Shahin, Nietzsche and Anarchism
Anarchism, as a movement, has never found its source or justification in any one philosophy. Though not without “principles” (for example, mutual aid, autonomy), when efforts have been to justify them, the inspirations have been many.
What we share below, in what is for Autonomies an exceptionally long essay, is an experiment-exercise of interpretation and justification that endeavours to explicitly bring anarchism together with Nietzsche. And if we do share it, it is with the conviction that the essay is excellent.
What follows then is an essay entitled Nietzsche and Anarchy, authored by Shahin, published in hard copy by Elephant Editions and Active Distribution 2016 and also posted on The Anarchist Library.
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