Cursory Thoughts on Violence

Violence is a given in any practice of art. Given, as all art is complicit with the idea of representation. There can be no art that is not at some level sensed or experienced. The aim of the artist, then, is to transcend the idea of art as mere objective correlative of that impulse of violence, to “exploit” violence – to do violence unto violence – so that a kind of healing can occur, within the individuals who approach art either from the standpoint of the artist or from that of the audience.

But does such a philosophy imply the definite knowing of the original object being assaulted by these modes of representation? Can one commit violence on what does not fully exist? Does nothingness exist, or does it not? These questions arise out of an engagement with conceptual violence, for violence can be apprehended in two ways: conceptual violence and actual violence. Conceptual is what exists in the mind: it is a storyteller of the purest kind, weaving fiction out of what the mind imagines exists or does not exist. Actual violence, on the other hand, lives outside the body, is experienced as an aspect of the sentient interface between the body and the actuality that defines the world of everyday events. Actual violence manifests as something impossible to negate; it is registered as bodily experience, for it is registered through the body, its senses.

To say two kinds of violence exist does not imply mutual exclusivity, for a definite relation connects them, for a wound to the body is also a wound to the mind: think of “six million” and the bitter smell of almonds stirs within your nose.

-- Yisa