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AV #1

Actual Virtual #1 ISSN 1752-5624

Welcome to the launch issue of A/V – the MMU ERI Journal for Deleuzian Studies. Each issue will feature papers by leading academics in the field of Deleuzian Studies and artwork inspired by Deleuze’s writing. In this issue we feature two papers from the recent conference ‘Re-Mapping Deleuze’ held at Cornerhouse, Manchester, in September 2005: Entrancing Time by Dr Anna Powell (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Diagrammatic Actualism by Dr John Mullarkey (Dundee University). We also feature the film Rhizomtic 1#, directed by Matt Lee, which captures a squatted art and community space organised by the anarchist collective SPOR.

The aim of A/V is twofold. To provide current Deleuzian academic research papers presented as they were meant to be seen… rather than publishing the written word, each paper is filmed by the TMF production company and presented here as streamed movies. To provide a platform for Deleuzian inspired artworks across the international Deleuzian community.

Enjoy…

Anna Powell
Website Director

In Werner Herzog’s Heart of Glass (1977), the actors are literally in a hypnotic trance induced by the director. Herzog had originally intended to extend this to the audience by appearing in a prologue and making hypnotic passes, then re-appearing at the end of the film to bring them back to full consciousness. Even without this device, the film, with its long-held shots of clouds and grainy superimpositions as well as the anomalous motion of the actors, acts to induce a trance-like state and suspend linear time. In film viewing, consensual time and space undergo modification as our customary perception of them becomes fluid. Bergson distinguishes linear time and duration. Deleuze asserts that duration may be accessible in the cinematic process. Non-linear time and spatial distortion can undermine the viewer’s conventional thought patterns. For Deleuze, the ‘time-image’ produced by cinematography is pivotal to cinema’s philosophical resonance. Via framing, lighting and temporal overlay, film can induce a metaphysical experience of time. This paper works with Heart of Glass to open up debates on the nature of cinema, time and human consciousness.

Dr Anna Powell, Manchester Metropolitan University

This paper is on Deleuze’s Diagrammatic Actualism, and discusses two versions of Deleuze that struggle for pre-eminence within Deleuzianism. One is that of the Virtual and the Concept – the other is of the Actual and The Diagram. Naturally, when it comes to Deleuze, such tendencies are always intertwined, but we still need to establish whether the Virtual and the Concept deserve the ontological priority they have hitherto received within Deleuzian scholarship. Perhaps the Actual can be retrieved from its currently derivative status when its ontology is understood diagrammatically. This paper is a first attempt at such a retrieval by looking at the way diagrams work both conceptually and phenomenologically in Deleuze’s work as well as philosophy in general.

Dr John Mullarkey, University of Dundee

Rhizomatic 1# is about a squatted art and community space that took place in Brighton in January 2001. It was organised by an anarchist collective called SPOR, which developed from the original Spiral Tribe founders with a focus of providing active spaces of freedom within local communities, based on the thought that “without somewhere to be free then freedom is nothing more than an abstract idea”. They base their activities on a method of action that draws inspiration from Hakim Bey’s concept of ‘temporary autonomous zones’ and from as Deleuzian notion of the rhizome which they can put into action. They consciously organise a network that does not attempt to maintain a permanent political presence but which rather appears at intermediate intervals, inspired by the mushroom which fruits intermittently on the basis of an ongoing mycelium. Their experiments inspire and spread this network of ideas, people, connections and actions.

Directed by Matt Lee, the film was made by Indifference Productions and Weigh In, Way Out Productions, independent film-makers active in Brighton, UK.