part four
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june, 196o - or "intensive looking" "i don’t know what i am- i’d have to investigate and experiment with so many things in a non-narcissistic, non-oedipal way" 72 standing in front of the painting. who is in front of the painting (we’ve asked this before). what i am. my body. a body. what is a body?

"we do not define it by saying that it is a field of forces, a nutrient medium fought over by a plurality of forces. for in fact there is no "medium", no field of forces or battle. there is no quantity of reality, all reality is already a quantity of force. there are nothing but quantities of force in mutual relations of tension" 73 "every relationship of forces constitutes a body-whether it is chemical, biological, social or political." "any two forces being unequal, constitute a body as soon as they enter into a relationship. this is why the body is always the fruit of chance..." 74 "the birth of a living body is therefore not surprising since every body is living, being the ‘arbitrary’ product of forces of which it is comprised" 75 unequal forces give rise to flows of energy potential difference "all things reflect a state of forces…" 76 these flows are what give rise to a body flows immersed in a changing state of things… "take as an example the case of thomas hardy: his characters are not people or subjects, they are collections of intensive sensations, each is such a collection, a packet, a bloc of variable sensations. there is a strange respect for the individual, an extraordinary respect…because he saw himself and saw others as so many ‘unique chances’- the unique chance from which one combination or another had been drawn. individuation without a subject. and these packets of sensations in the raw, these collections or combinations, run along the lines of chance, or mischance..." 77 "individuals, packets of sensations, run over the heath like a line of flight or a line of deterritorialization of the earth" 78 our ‘psychophysiogical body’, as dorothea olkowski terms it, 79 as a collections of intensive sensations, stood in front of a turner rhythms between milieus a rhythmic character biological, chemical, the psychophysiogical body immersed in the state of things bodies as a relation of forces the body as music these forces as a melodic landscape "nature as music" 8o vibrations between milieus not intensities that peak blocs of intensities no middle, no end the past as an intensity events having an intensity that can be re-accessed a needle placed back to the beginning of the record a song that can be heard over and over again stand in front of the painting over and over again over and over again intensities that can be plugged into, experimented with…

june, 196o - or "paintings and bodies" "every relationship of forces constitutes a body-whether it is chemical, biological, social or political." 81 a painting as a relation of forces a painting as a body a painting as a chemical body

paint is undergoing continual chemical mutations but also oil paint slips and slides canvas warps paint cracks: crazy pavings, concentric circles and spirals but also paint reflects light light is refracted through paint colours as wavelengths of light things are at work… all kinds of things already working away, amongst themselves prior to becoming part of another assemblage that contains ‘the viewer’ prior to becoming part of another assemblage that contains what i am "the birth of a living body is therefore not surprising since every body is living, being the ‘arbitrary’ product of forces of which it is comprised" 82 what other milieus are in vibration? what about the double capture of a becoming? an ‘aparallel evolution’ could we think of chemical milieus in vibration? carbon dioxide and methane altering the chemical make up of the paint, speeding up certain processes, halting others what i am is already immersed in the state of things what i am is as part of an external ‘machinic assemblage’ "a book/ (a painting) is a little cog in a much more complicated external machinery" 83 a painting as part of an external machinery immersed in the ever changing state of things submerged in a stream "writing/ (painting) as one flow among others, with no special place in relation to the others, that comes into the relations of current, counter-current, and eddy with other flows-flows of shit, sperm, words, action, eroticism, money, politics, and so on." 84 "this intensive way of reading/ (looking), in contact with what’s outside the book (the painting), as a flow of meeting other flows, one machine among others, as a series of experiments for each reader in the midst of events that have nothing to do with books, as tearing the book/ (the painting) into pieces, getting it to interact with other things, absolutely anything…is reading with love" 85 when we look at the painting we are in the midst of all manner of events i looked over the surface smears, scratches, islands of paint colours a sea of colours maybe there is a chain of signifyers the odd shapes and like a little girl i can tell you that this shape is a mans arm and this shape is a ships sail they might lead me down a certain thought path but that’s ok, it’s not of any importance i looked at the cracks the spirals and the crazy pavings over the frame i studied the dust particles over the painted wall over hairs left by the brush over the frame to the next canvas there are sounds and smells all kinds of sounds there are memories thoughts other flows i lose my margin the painting disappears the painting is lost at sea… we can’t fix thoughts we can’t fix an idea, preserve it and take it away we plug into the painting the painting as ‘machinic assemblage’ this requires a jump into the void for us to embrace chaos for us to depersonalise ourselves for us to discover our zones…

june, 196o - or "how was it for you?" let us think painting as deleuze thinks the book; the book is seen as a non-signifying machine, "there’s nothing to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret…" 86 the only question is ‘does it work?’

we all know that some paintings, music or books mean nothing until you find them at the right moment sometimes by chance sometimes we are introduced sometimes they have been lying in wait a particular differential of forces come into play at a particular moment thoughts, memories, light, temperature, chemical, biological… the state of things comes together in such a way that something works something spontaneously emerges from ‘interplay of intensity differences’ 87 what i am becomes part of a machinic assemblage a machinic assemblage that works there is a flow of forces a flow of energy what i am as a temporary coagulation of these flows what we have is a ‘plane of consistency’ "a ‘plane of consistency’ knows only relations of movement and rest, of speed and slowness, between unformed, or relatively unformed, elements, molecules or particles borne away by fluxes. it knows nothing of subjects, but rather what are called ‘haecceities’" 88 events individuations without subject or object painting-becomings we plunge ahead into what de landa might term a ‘posthumanist future’, in which the world has been enriched by a multiplicity of nonhuman agencies 89 organic and inorganic milieus in vibration rhythms between milieus what i am and the painting why is it that what i am can ‘plug into’ these late turner's to form a working machine? why do they become ‘sites of intensity’? why do they produce affects? surely any object in our posthuman world, not just an ‘art object’, could said to be part of a ‘machinic assemblage’, could spontaneously emerge from the ‘interplay of intensity differences’, could produce a working machine? be it the bell on a bus or fungus on a tree stump any object could produce affects become part of a multiplicity fungus as a site of intensity… but these tend to be events that catch us by surprise, unexpectedly; a stick and a leaf at the bus stop, the sound of a bell and the look in her eyes, actionman arms, eggshells and a hangover the sight of mi granddad's silver ring in a small black jewellery box… a chance differential of forces, never to be repeated… why then can i return to the turner's, to these ‘monuments’ over and over again? how can they become a site of intensity that can be revisited? how can they become a site of intensity that can be reactivated? maybe they are always at work maybe they have been at work since turner first manipulated the paint, quietly working away all by themselves… in what is philosophy? deleuze and guattari suggest that a painting can work in the ‘absence of man’ "the artist creates blocs of percepts and affects, but the only law of creation is that the compound must stand up on its own" 9o the artwork has become a particular object that has been put together in such a way as to ‘stand up on its own’. it has become a ‘being of sensation’ sometimes artists/creators put things together that work, sometimes they don’t we could say artworks put together ought to work we could say artworks put together ought to ‘produce speed’ artworks that ought to live and breathe… turner’s paintings, living and breathing… beings of sensation that are in some way capable of being ‘alive’ and will always be alive: solid, durable and self-preserving… 91 "the young man will smile on the canvas for as long as the canvas lasts" 92 a work of art as a ‘bloc of sensation’-that is a compound of percepts and affects… art as a ‘being of sensation’ that can ‘stand up on its own’ in the ‘absence of man’… 93 "beings whose validity lies in themselves and exceeds any lived…" 94 always possible of being a site to return to where intensities are can be reactivated a painting a ‘monument’ that can be revisited plugged into like an electric circuit these late turner's as monuments we might think of turner as one of deleuze’s ‘great alive’? what is it to be one of the ‘great alive’? 95 deleuze says of the great alive; "in them everything is departure, becoming, passage, leap, relationship with the outside. they create a new earth…" 96 he uses the phrase in respect to writing, i also see the parallel with painting and the painter… "why does one write? it may be that the writer has delicate health, a weak constitution. he is none the less opposite of the neurotic: a sort of great alive (in the manner of spinoza, nietzsche or lawrence) in so far he is only too weak for the life that runs in him or for the affects that pass in him. to write has no other function: to be a flux which combines with other fluxes- all the minority-becomings of the world. a flux is something intensive, instantaneous and mutant- between a creation and a destruction. it is only when a flux is deterritorialized that it succeeds in making its conjunction with other fluxes, which deterritorialize it in their turn, and vice versa" 97 "a system of relay and mutations through the middle" 98 "writing carries out the conjunction, the transmutation of fluxes, through which life escapes the from the resentment of persons, societies and reigns" 99 "the heath-phrase, the heath-line of thomas hardy: it is not that the heath is the subject or the content of the novel, but that a flux of modern writing combines with a flux of immemorial heath" 1oo "a sober line…a pure line traced by an unsupported hand" 1o1 so here we are talking about the artists themselves in some kind of initial act of deteritorialisation in the case of hardy a ‘heath-becoming’ or a portland stone-becoming turner combining a flux of painting with that of a flux of immemorial sea or an emotional sea, an emotional cosmos the act of painting creating a bloc of sensations painting as a becoming an ‘aparallel development’ between certain emotional states and the colours or pigments as rhythms between milieus becoming-world a canvas as plane of immanence a canvas as plane of consistency intensities captured in the event intensities that can be reactivated i’m thinking as turner as one of the ‘great alive’ in the sense that his paintings are living bodies sites of intensity that can be reactivated events that can be re-staged maybe with different out comes each time but maybe as the iteration of a fractal we get the self-symmetry of experience but in ever more complex ways a turner-becoming

june, 196o - or "melodic landscapes of thought" "and without doubt this is the most important point of nietzsche’s philosophy: the radical transformation of thought that we create for ourselves." 1o2

"it is a thought movement, not merely in the sense that nietzsche wants to reconcile thought and concrete movement, but in the sense that thought itself must produce new movements, bursts of extraordinary speed and slowness." 1o3 a painting as a bloc of sensations a painting as a creation which directly expresses thought as experience and movement a melodic landscape of thoughts a melodic landscape of intensities a cosmos of chaotic thoughts is momentarily given a home as i stand there in front of the painting but then this painting of turners was already a whirring machine snoring in the afternoon "but the difficulty of nietzsche depends less on the conceptual analysis than on the practical evaluations which evoke a whole atmosphere, all kinds of emotional dispositions in the reader." 1o4 an atmosphere a gas cloud something that exists turners paintings evoke an atmosphere turners painting as catalysts producing gas clouds transmitting intensities not in a poetic sense in a practical sense a gas cloud of sensations a gas cloud of thoughts living gas clouds that we can become part of part of a machinic assemblage we can foster connections connections expand the dimensions of the multiplicity increase a painting-becoming we live with the painting and breathe in its atmosphere the painting is at work we hear the whirr of machines thought patterns begin to manifest a melodic landscape of thought a calm and stable centre in the heart of chaos… "he had observed before that when she was planning an outing a particular note would come into her voice during the proceeding hours: a dove’s roundness of sound" 1o5 in an interview deleuze discusses the notion ‘roundness’ as a hursserlian ‘vague essence’; "in the ideas text, he says something to this effect: the circle is a ‘formal essence’. a plate or the sun, or a wheel are ‘sensible formed things’, be they natural or artificial. what would a vague essence be that is neither one nor the other? the vague essence is roundness…" 1o6 "roundness is …inseparable from events, it is inseparable from affects. what is the affect of roundness? it is neither straight nor pointed. it is not negative, it is something which already implies the operation of the hand, and constant correction. constant correction or rather circulation" 1o7 "you have a sort of strolling couple, affect-event." 1o8 the roundness of sound… the roundness of thought the roundness of sensation of intensity of melodic landscape absolute speed, almost to the point of immobility: immanence… as jocelyn remarks on the voice of avice: "she would say a few syllables in one note, and end her sentence in a soft modulation upwards, then downwards, then into her own note again. the curve of sound was as artistic as any line of beauty that had ever struck by his pencil" 1o9 a curve of sound, a melodic curve "the subject of her discourse he cared nothing about- it was no more his interest than his concern. he took special pains that in catching her voice he might not comprehend her words. to the tones he had a right, none to the articulations. by degrees he could not exist long without this sound." 11o i want to look at turner's painting like jocelyn listens to the voice of avice a turner-becoming not looking in a ‘striated’ space not following chains of signifiers but in the ‘smooth’ space of music "is it by chance that music only knows lines and not points? it is not possible to produce a point in music. it’s nothing but becomings without future or past. music is an anti-memory. it is full of becomings: animal-becoming, child-becoming, molecular-becoming" 111 jocelyn wasn’t interested in the meaning of the words music-becoming anti-memory absolute speed in these tones the ‘soul and heart resounded’ the landscape of intensity a melodic curve but the words weave in and out meaning appears and disappears the buildings and bridges and people in the late turner paintings that come in and out of focus i’m not looking for anything to read, to understand, to interpret, to explain… this is beyond language this is asignyfying… painting as an act of thought… "to think is to create: this is nietzsche’s greatest lesson. to think, to cast the dice…" 112

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