"The complaint is then no longer that images conceal secrets which are no longer such to anyone, but, on the contrary, that they no longer hide anything. While some start up a prolonged lamentation for the lost image, others reopen their albums to rediscover the pure enchantment of images – that is, the mythical identity between the identity of the that and the alterity of the was, between the pleasure of pure presence and the bite of the absolute Other." (Jacques Rancièr, The Future of the Image)
“The counterpart as the presence of the Other is increasingly disappearing from contemporary perception and communication. More and more, the counterpart degenerates into a mirror which mirrors oneself. All attention is focused on the ego. It is surely the task of art and literature to de-mirror our perception, to open it up to the counterpart, for the Other – as a person or an object. Today’s politics and economy of attention direct this towards the ego; it serves a self-production. It is increasingly withdrawn from the Other and led to the ego. Today, we compete mercilessly for attention. For one another, we are shop windows vying for attention.” (Byung-Chul Han, Expulsion of the Otherness).
“Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern lift - its material plentitude, its sheer crowdedness-conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. […]What is important now is to recover our senses, We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.” (Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation).
