The idiot is neither the one who does what seems rational nor the one who does what seems pleasurable, according to Deleuze. Referring to Dostoyevsky, for him the idiot is
the one who knows that ‘beyond consciousness and passion’110 there is a question, there
is a question, there is a question—but what is it? Maybe research is idiotic, when it is searching for questions rather than answers. To answer this question, one would have to start with the results and then ask, by looking at the work, whether there is (or there will have been) a question. The result is, in short, a thesis that is a production of a mode of writing and, in the case of a mixed mode thesis, also a production of other modes of researching. If there appears knowledge then it has been hardly produced; rather, it has been having—not in the sense of possessing, rather as habituating—and using
knowledge (or ways of knowing) by means of the work of art.
This writing has found a mode that at times seems authorless; theoretically, however, it cannot afford this absence entirely. The artist writing a thesis confronts the non-art of writing a thesis with the writing of a thesis as art. The encounter between the conventions of research and the ethos of art takes place, however, as art, with nothing at its place. This writing builds its ‘logic’ and ‘integrity’ in an original sequence of ‘quotes’ and ‘glosses’, as Benjamin suggests in his Program for Literary Criticism, which draws a critical sketch of original knowledge by saying nothing new, as it were. Glorious or not,
110 Thinking of the differentiation Spivak makes between ‘desire’ and ‘interest’ here Deleuze’s
distinction, which seems to assign ‘passion’ to the unconscious or irrational, appears as banal. Using a term Latour borrows from Gabriel Tarde we might discern rational interests from ‘passionate interests’, on the one side, and disinterested desire, on the other. The difficulty of imagining a person doing something that is absolutely disconnected from this person’s interests provides the justification of calling this person an ‘idiot’. But it is also the precise opposite of the world Voltaire was fighting in Candide ou l’Optimisme, where all events are concatenated in ‘the best of possible worlds’ (‘Tous les événements sont enchainnés dans le meilleure des mondes possibles’. (Voltaire 2007, 149)), at times recalling the ‘smoothness’ of our own. ‘That’s well said’, answers Candide and, by turning to a work that is being demanded from him and that will give him joy, adds: ‘mais il faut cultiver notre jardin’. (150)
189 my hope is that disinterested desire shines through—communes passionately—shedding a light (on things) that may not be new but unknown.
Equally, the mode of taking care of knowledge by other means than writing draws the conventions of research into the ethos of art. In this draft, the visual non-art character of research practice and documentation touches the work of art, its practice. In the beginning, as described in the introduction, art practice literally took the writing of a thesis as if it were its own practice and filmed it, inevitably realising that any form of documentation generates its own gestures forming another practice and therefore never represents what is being documented other than the act of documenting as such.
One could also, conveniently, distinguish between discourse and spatial practice. At least since Foucault’s discourse on language we know that discourse is a spatial practice. However, consequently, does he not also show us inversely, at least unconsciously, that spatial practice is discursive? When building a (research) wall parallel to an already existing wall as its inverted model then this entire setup—the walls, the gap between them, and the territories that are both supporting them and being separated by them—enter in a relation with various sociocultural and spatial
discourses.111 Through an original sequence of spatial ‘quotes’ and ‘glosses’ the wall
draws a line that is a critical sketch of original knowledge, with its own ‘logic’ and integrity’, by constructing nothing new, as it were. Equally to writing, in spatial practice
disinterested desire may shine through shedding lights hitherto unknown.
Such work of art, inverted by (gravitational) forces, constitutes a model that may contribute to a new understanding of architecture, less as consumed, but rather as consuming itself, or understanding architecture as being and having a habitual
condition. It may also contribute to a formulation of art practice that spends itself in a voiding and thus becomes a critical life-form vis-à-vis the dominant ideologies. By looking at what has been done, a seemingly idiotic question for the work of art shows at the root of this work: How to receive the political by Ph.D.?
This question shows its idiocy by means of showing. It politicises a deeply rooted private use, which is idiotic. It reveals the question ‘What is the question?’ as its
foundation. To reveal idiocy is idiotic. But the question ‘What is the question?’ is the most fundamentally critical, as the revelation of idiocy is pure political act. What remains to be done, in conclusion, is to keep the distance and to stay in touch and to continue—go to the crossroads!
190 Paris is the starting point to join two perspectives in a project: on the one side,
the spatio-discursive exploration of the acquaintance and potential friendship between Bataille and Benjamin as an incommunicable instance of getting ready to overturn things; on the other side, the spatio-discursive cinematographic exploration of the current use of the prehistoric cave of Lascaux in the South of France.