Paul Virilio

The Aesthetics of Disappearance

With this book Paul Virilio inaugurated the new science whose object of study is the "dromocratic" revolution. Speed and Politics (first published in France in 1977) is the matrix of Virilio's entire work. Building on the works of Morand, Marinetti, and McLuhan, Virilio presents a vision more radically political than that of any of his French contemporaries: speed as the engine of destruction. Speed and Politics presents a topological account of the entire history of humanity, honing in on the technological advances made possible through the militarization of society. Paralleling Heidegger's account of technology, Virilio's vision sees speed—not class or wealth—as the primary force shaping civilization. In this "technical vitalism," multiple projectiles—inert fortresses and bunkers, the "metabolic bodies" of soldiers, transport vessels, and now information and computer technology—are launched in a permanent assault on the world and on human nature. Written at a lightning-fast pace, Virilio's landmark book is a split-second, overwhelming look at how humanity's motivity has shaped the way we function today, and what might come of it.

Speed and Politics, new edition

Virilio's exploration of the relationship between technology, speed, war and information technology weaves together a breathtaking worldview of horror, exhilaration and hope.

The Information Bomb

"One day the day will come when the day will not come." Bleak in its analysis of the social destruction wrought by modern technologies of communication and surveillance, but passionately political, Open Sky is Paul Virilio's most far-reaching and radical book for many years. Deepening and extending his earlier work on speed perception and political control, and applying it now to the global 'real time' of the information superhighways, he explores the growing danger of what he calls a "generalized accident," provoked by the breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement. But this is not merely a lucid and disturbing lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy or democracy. Open Sky is also a call for revolt—against the insidious and accelerating manipulation of perception by the electronic media and repressive political power, against the tyranny of "real time," and against the infantilism of cyberhype. Paul Virillo makes a powerful case for a new ethics of perception, and a new ecology, one which will not only strive to protect the natural world from pollution and destruction, but will also combat the devastation of urban communities by proliferating technologies of control and virtuality.

Open Sky

" --ChoiceSurveying art history as well as the technologies of war and urban planning, one of France's leading intellectuals provides an introduction to a new "logistics of the image."

The Vision Machine

Bertrand Richard

We are living under the administration of fear: fear has become an environment, an everyday landscape. There was a time when wars, famines, and epidemics were localized and limited by a certain timeframe. Today, it is the world itself that is limited, saturated, and manipulated, the world itself that seizes us and confines us with a stressful claustrophobia. Stock-market crises, undifferentiated terrorism, lightning pandemics, "professional" suicides.... Fear has become the world we live in. The administration of fear also means that states are tempted to create policies for the orchestration and management of fear. Globalization has progressively eaten away at the traditional prerogatives of states (most notably of the welfare state), and states have to convince citizens that they can ensure their physical safety. In this new and lengthy interview, Paul Virilio shows us how the "propaganda of progress," the illuminism of new technologies, provide unexpected vectors for fear in the way that they manufacture frenzy and stupor. For Virilio, the economic catastrophe of 2007 was not the death knell of capitalism, as some have claimed, but just further evidence that capitalism has accelerated into turbo-capitalism, and is accelerating still. With every natural disaster, health scare, and malicious rumor now comes the inevitable "information bomb"--live feeds take over real space, and technology connects life to the immediacy of terror, the ultimate expression of speed. With the nuclear dissuasion of the Cold War behind us, we are faced with a new form of civil dissuasion: a state of fear that allows for the suspension of controversial social situations.

The Administration of Fear

“One day the day will come when the day will not come.” Bleak, but passionately political in its analysis of the social destruction wrought by modern technologies of communication and surveillance, Open Sky is Paul Virilio’s most far-reaching and radical book. Deepening and extending his earlier work, he explores the growing danger of what he calls a “generalized accident,” provoked by the breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement in the context of global electronic media. But this is not merely a lucid and disturbing lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy or democracy. Open Sky is also a call for revolt—against the insidious and accelerating manipulation of perception by the electronic media and repressive political power, against the tyranny of “real time,” and against the infantilism of cyberhype. Virilio makes a powerful case for a new ethics of perception, and a new ecology, one which will not only strive to protect the natural world from pollution and destruction, but will also combat the devastation of urban communities by proliferating technologies of control and virtuality.

Looking at how the technologies of cinema and warfare have developed a fatal interdependence, this book explores these conjunctions from a range of perspectives. It gives a detailed technical history of weaponry, photography and cinematography, with accounts of films and military campaigns.

The Logistics of Perception

War and Cinema

Michael Cavaliere

Sylvére Lotringer

Politics of the Very Worst (Foreign Agents)

السرعة والسياسة

Sylvere Lotringer

The "genetic bomb" marks a turn in the history of humanity. The accident is a new form of warfare. It is replacing revolution and war. Sarajevo triggered the First World War. New York is what Sarajevo was. September 11th opened Pandora's box. The first war of globalization will be the global accident, the total accident, including the accident of science. And it is on the way. In 1968, Virilio abandoned his work in oblique architecture, believing that time had replaced space as the most important point of reflection because of the dominance of speed. We were basically on the verge of converting space time into space speed... Speed facilitates the decoding of the human genome, and the possibility of another humanity: a humanity which is no longer extra-territorial, but extra-human. Crespuscular Dawn expands Virilio's vision of the implosion of physical time and space, onto the micro-level of bioengineering and biotechnology. In this cat-and-mouse dialogue between Sylvere Lotringer and Paul Virilio, Lotringer pushes Virilio to uncover the historical foundations of his biotech theories. Citing various medical experiments conducted during World War II, Lotringer asks whether biotechnology isn't the heir to eugenics and the "science for racial improvement" that the Nazis enthusiastically embraced. Will the endocolonizataion of the body come to replace the colonization of one's own population by the military? Both biographical and thematic, the book explores the development of Virilio's investigation of space (architecture, urbanism) and time (speed and simultanaeity) that would ultimately lay the foundation for his theories on biotechnology and his startling declaration that after the colonization of space begins the colonization of the body.

Crepuscular Dawn

In The Aesthetics of Disappearance, Paul Virilio traces out the relationship of biological optics to the technological "production of appearance." In the perceptual gaps demanding illusions of continuity, Virilio posits a hyper-opportunity for the production of art in speed. Jumping from Old Testament parable to the history of contemporary cinema, to the history of philosophy and contemporary technology, Virilio teleports among an irregular constellation of high-speed artifice where love is a motion faster than light and the paradoxes of empiricism mire science in "motion without mobility."

It presents a topological account of the history of humanity, honeing in on the technological advances amde possible through the militarisation of society. Parallel to Heidegger's vision of technology, Virilo sees speed, not class or wealth, as the primary motor behind civilization.

Speed and Politics

Traces the twin development of art and science over the twentieth century. In the author's provocative and challenging vision, art and science vie with each other for the destruction of the human form as we know it. It is aimed at those wondering where art has gone and where science is taking us.

Art and Fear

Strategy of Deception (Radical Thinkers)

Speed & Politics

Virilio and Lotringer revisit their prescient book on the invisible war waged by technology against humanity since World War II. In June 2007, Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer met in La Rochelle, France to reconsider the premises they developed twenty-five years before in their frighteningly prescient classic, Pure War. Pure War described the invisible war waged by technology against humanity, and the lack of any real distinction since World War II between war and peace. Speaking with Lotringer in 1982, Virilio noted the “accidents” that inevitably arise with every technological development: from car crashes to nuclear spillage, to the extermination of space and the derealization of time wrought by instant communication. In this new and updated edition, Virilio and Lotringer consider how the omnipresent threat of the “accident”—both military and economic—has escalated. With the fall of the Soviet bloc, the balance of power between East and West based on nuclear deterrence has given way to a more diffuse multi-polar nuclear threat. Moreover, as the speed of communication has increased exponentially, “local” accidents—like the collapse of the Asian markets in the late 1980s—escalate, with the speed of contagion, into global events instantaneously. “Globalization,” Virilio argues, is the planet's ultimate accident.Paul Virilio was born in Paris in 1932 to an immigrant Italian family. Trained as an urban planner, he became the director of the École Speciale d'Architecture in the wake of the 1968 rebellion. He has published twenty-five books, including Pure War (1988) (his first in English) and The Accident of Art (2005), both with Sylvère Lotringer and published by Semiotext(e). Sylvère Lotringer, general editor of Semiotext(e), lives in New York and Baja California. He is the author of Overexposed: Perverting Perversions (Semiotext(e), 2007) and other books.

Pure War, new edition

Reveals the convergence of perception and destruction in the parallel technologies of warfare and cinema.

Paul Virilio

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