10.13135/2036-542X/8128



The article addresses a problem of mediation through the lens of imagination. An idea of “intermedial imagination” — a critical faculty that bears witness to the world’s out–of–jointness” — proposed by Pietro Montani is analysed and brought in the context of Bernard Stiegler’, Gilles Deleuze’s and Jacques Derrida’s thinking. In this way, imagination is associated with various functions of montage, rather than synthesis, as well as revealed as the power of overcoming clichéd forms and fetishes through its shape–shifting and unprecedented transformations. The article also offers an analysis of exhibitions by Raimundas Malašauskas (Photo Finish in Vilnius, and the Lithuania/Cyprus “oO/Oo” Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale) and the avant–garde performances of Romeo Castellucci.



application/pdf
2036-542X
8128
2
it
Kristupas Sabolius
Trópos
Incommensurability
Imagination and Mediation: 
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
9
Saggi
2016-06-12
2023-08-20
2016-06-12
2023-08-20
117-137
1
Kristupas Sabolius
2016/06/12
10.13135/2036-542X/8128
117
Università di Vilnius
2036-542X
2
Incommensurability
137
Imagination and Mediation: 
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/8128/6837
9
                                                             trópos • anno IX • numero 1 • 2016 – ISBN 978-88-548-xxxx-x
                                                            DOI 10.4399/97888548xxxxx8 – pag. 117-137 (dicembre 2016)




                                                 Imagination and Mediation
                                                     Is There a Unity Beyond Synthesis?

                                                                               K S∗




   : The article addresses a problem of mediation through the lens of imagina-
      tion. An idea of “intermedial imagination” — a critical faculty that bears witness
      to the world’s out–of–jointness” — proposed by Pietro Montani is analysed
      and brought in the context of Bernard Stiegler’, Gilles Deleuze’s and Jacques
      Derrida’s thinking. In this way, imagination is associated with various functions
      of montage, rather than synthesis, as well as revealed as the power of overcom-
      ing clichéd forms and fetishes through its shape–shifting and unprecedented
      transformations. The article also offers an analyses of exhibitions by Raimundas
      Malašauskas (Photo Finish in Vilnius, and the Lithuania/Cyprus “oO/Oo”
      Pavilion at the th Venice Biennale) and the avant–garde performances of
      Romeo Castellucci.

   : Imagination, Mediation, Intermedial Imagination, Montage, Incommen-
      surability.




. Introduction

The mediating power of imagination was very well–known before the con-
cept of media became a hot topic of philosophy. References might be made
not only to Plato but also to Aristotle, or to Stoic φανταςı́α καταληπτική or
to Hume and especially to Kant, for whom imagination was a mediating
agent as long as it provided the synthesis of sensory manifold. According
to Kant, the schematism of perception was supposed to be the function
of imagination. Einbildungskraft actualizes the function of transcendental
schematism, i.e., accumulates the multitude of varying experiences into
sketches of meaning creating the initial models for perception. It is namely
because one imagines, one manages to orientate through mediation; or —
to be more precise — mediation and imagination coincide.
   ∗
       Professor of Philosophy at Vilnius University, Lithuania (kristupas.sabolius@fsf.vu.lt).


                                                                                                                   
    Kristupas Sabolius


    One can remember that Bernard Stiegler, in his Technics and Time, de-
scribes the “human” through the technical, marking a fatal inversion of
our evolution. Our origin is neither biological, nor transcendental, but
fundamentally prosthetical. It is not a human being that creates tools, but
the archi–technical exteriority that constitutes humanity — evolution is
inscribed in humanity as a self–revelation of being technical. And just as
the technological precedes the organic, imagination also runs prior to per-
ception. To conceive a tool as a tool means to open oneself up towards
imaginary possibilities. In the famous scene of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey ,
in which an ape weaponizes a bone to kill a fellow ape, the bone turns
into a weapon not just physically, but virtually as well as through an actual
gesture — i.e. the way it is being used and quickly becomes a meme used
by others. That is why “consciousness has never been self–consciousness
other than in being projected outside itself ”. (Stiegler : )
    As Stiegler points out, the explosion of technically reproducible images
and virtual realities is not a matter of some monstrous evolution. Mass media
images, being recurrent, ubiquitous and repetitive, synchronize different
consciousnesses into a common flux of images as well as expose what always
has been present at the core of the human — its technogenetical nature.
However, in this era of information industries, and especially of the analogic
and numeric technologies, this exteriorized and materialized consciousness
has become a function of the manipulations of the flux of consciousness
and of mass projections (Stiegler : –).
    In this epoch of technology, imaginary eventually merges into “real”,
as popular culture of visual and social media becomes the screen orga-
nizing our everyday life, displaying the desired patterns for auto–craving
consciousness. By virtualizing a standard of the imaginary, much more than
a reproduction of reality is created — a measure for our world is delineated
in which artificially generated ideals induce the mechanisms of control and
reshape the order of desires.
    According to Stiegler, human consciousness, therefore, is profoundly cine-
matic — interiority is produced by virtual exteriority of the technologies that
install imaginary patterns into our development: “Lived reality is always a con-
struct of imagination and thus perceived only on condition of being fictional,
irreducibly haunted by phantasms” and this why we are “forced to conclude
that perception is subordinated to — is in a transductive relationship with —
the imagination; that is, there would be no perception outside imagination,
and vice versa, perception then being the imagination’s projection screen. The
relationship between the two would be constituted of previously nonexistent
terms, and this in turn would mean that life is always cinema and that is why
“when one loves life one goes to cinema”, as though we go to the cinema in
order to find life again — to be somehow resuscitated by it”. (Stiegler : )
                                                  Imagination and Mediation   


    It is important to note that the concept of imagination should undergo
crucial corrections in the context of passive technological receptivity. By
“staying tuned” we are induced into a condition of a flitting attention span
and lose the capacity to maintain extended memories, unless we keep on
connected to the information and socialization machines. Technologies
prosthesize our capacity to remember and create social media as “temporal
objects” that can have both distanciating and unifying power. They can
steal our time, but they can intensify the synchronization of our minds and
bodies. It might be considered as a well–known meaning of pharmakon —
cure and poison at the same time.
    The paradox is that the process of developing this intense identification,
succumbing to a bombardment of a multiplicity of images, coincides with
the distanciation of any unity. Human mind becomes porous to the vir-
tual, losing its connection to the world, that presumably remains unaware
of any technological impact. However, the natural, organic, biological,
subconscious and alien is not supposed to be rediscovered outside of the
technological, but namely through it, by intensifying the disrupting power
of machineries, by provoking the virtual fields to reshape their preconceived
order, or by intermediating the media itself. The interruption of flux always
presents itself as a call for the undetermined, unexpected and unforeseen.


. What is Intermedial Imagination?

Is synthesis still the right word to describe the impulse of free imagination
in the epoch of technologically reproduced mediality? Technologies that
offer temporal objects are the illusions of this kind of unity, they are the
prostheses of a controlled and uniform world. The technologically produced
sensation of unity must both compensate for the fragmented and chaotic
reality, and retain the logic of cognitive dissonance.
    By way of answering this question I would like to invoke the notion
of ‘intermedial imagination’ (immaginazione intermediale) offered by Pietro
Montani. For him, intermedial imagination experiences not only a creative
calling of consciousness; it is also key in understanding the specificity of a
process of mediation. It can be understood as a ‘technique of technique’ —
i.e., the technique of consciousness, which addresses our technological fate
by trying to shift the balance of pharmakon towards the side of a cure.
    This relationship between datum and fictum which is best revealed by the
theme of the transcendental schematic, turns into a craving for the lost da-
tum. Technologically deputised synthesis can anticipate the imagination only
because imagination itself is already medial and technological. If imagina-
tion offers a scene of this transfiguration, and if it actually is this dimension
       Kristupas Sabolius


upon which, according to Stiegler, technology is grounded, if it is the source
of technogenesis, then it is necessary to turn towards its dual potential. It
means finding the technological basis of imagination not by suspending the
technological, but rather by utilising it to the limit, until the technique of
consciousness senses its emancipatory direction. According to Montani,

      [a] thorough investigation of mediated images implies cutting through them, open-
      ing the passageways, seizing the areas of intersection, building the structures of
      intermediation; in a word, using imagination not as a force that unifies the multi-
      plicity of senses, but as something that is utilised, something that is used as a certain
      technique which distributes, divides and confronts. Such an imagination might be
      called critical if we take into account the etymology of this term—krinein means to
      decompose and separate. (Montani : XI)


    Critical imagination does not imply an intellectual relation — a reflective
dissociation or perspective from which we reflect on the content that stretches
in front of us. Intermedial imagination is critical inasmuch as it is unable to
create a unified and finalised picture of that which it wants to portray, but does
not abandon its creative intention nonetheless. On the contrary, it becomes
critical precisely because of this failure, as it substitutes synthesis with the
relation of difference. In other words, instead of a harmonising reproducibility
the givenness of which is accepted, processed, and recreated, instead of the
primacy of a unified image or representation, intermediation starts from
this very discontent and failure which Kant identified in the analytics of
the sublime. Furthermore, this inability to represent retains the orientation
towards reality expressed through Montani’s notion of trace:

      Being both creative and receptive ability, imagination is able to ensure a constant
      relation with the real world thus enabling the established relations between sensual-
      ity and intellect, between what is seen and what is not seen, between that which is
      sensed and that which acquires ‘meaning.’ However, if this relation is interrupted
      [...], it can be restored only by a spectral supplement, which implies a more complex
      and persistent intermediation. Therefore it is not enough for an imagination to act
      according to its free creativity, it is necessary that it would take into consideration
      the reality of trace (even when it remains in an archive as something rejected or
      removed). (Montani : XII)


   In this sense, the trace implies not only the famous Derridean notion
which, through its marginality, uncovers the undeconstructible realm, but
also Roland Barthes’ remainder of the real, the undeniable and even techno-
logically traceable givenness of the world. According to Barthes, the great
paradox of photography lies not in an adequate representation but in the
witnessing of past events:
                                                         Imagination and Mediation          


   The photograph’s immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion be-
   tween two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real,
   the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because that delusion
   which makes us attribute to Reality an absolutely superior, somehow eternal value;
   but by shifting this reality to the past (“this–has–been”), the photograph suggests
   that it is already dead. (Barthes : )

    A photographed object leaves the trace of its realness not because of
its ‘objective realness’ but because of its temporality: in order for a certain
gesture of technological reproduction to occur there must be an event of
capturing — an object must be witnessed by someone, it must manifest
itself in front of a technological lens. Here we could reconsider an old
truism, that instead of capturing objects photography records moments —
i.e., temporal concentrates. It means that photography’s unique property
is the fact that someone has encountered a referent (even if we are talking
about objects) sensually or personally (Barthes : ). A picture leaves a
signal that something/someone has participated in a photographic event of
commensurable synchronisation.
    It is only because we see time technologically — and this is the great
power that comes with the function of imagination—that we can register
the latter’s worldly character. The form of such intermedial imagination
calls for both an event and a dimension that, in a temporal sense, befalls no
longer as a synthesis but as a temporal bifurcation. The trace is a temporal
debt “because even though imagination is capable of many things, it is able
to investigate only the real things — traces in the memory archive — that
maintain the quality of debt”. (Montani : XII)
    This past is not a simple recollection of a secondary retention (as phe-
nomenology would put it), or a neutral return of past experience, which
I call back into the present. The factor of trace or debt is the kind of past
that could not have even existed in our experience—indeed, we are talking
about a technological inscription. Any involvement of imagination changes
the present such that an actual awakening of experiences strikes us as a bifur-
cation, discrepancy, or temporal interruption. In a temporal sense, debt —
even though Montani does not claim that — is a bifurcation of the present.
    Deleuze stresses a similar point when he discusses a specific type of cin-
ematographic imagery. In his view, image–crystal (i.e., the specific type of
cinematographic imagery which displays several temporal phases simultane-
ously (for example, mirror reflections)) reveals the realms of contradictory
existence, not those of fiction:

   What constitutes the crystal–image is the most fundamental operation of time:
   since the past is constituted not after the present that it was but at the same time,
   time has to split itself in two at each moment as present and past, which differ
      Kristupas Sabolius


      from each other in nature, or, what amounts to the same thing, it has to split the
      present in two heterogeneous directions, one of which is launched towards the
      future while the other falls into the past. (Deleuze : )


    Here we have an impossible case whereby the past coincides with the
present instead of preceding it. According to Deleuze, a mirror has then
quality of a crystal because it allows us to see the past and the present at
the same time. There is no difference between that which exists this very
moment and that which has already passed — an object dissipates into a
spectral mode of existence, therefore Deleuze’s crystal unifies the real and
the imaginary, present and past, actuality and virtuality. Moreover, this is not
merely an intramental imagery, but a public spectacle. Such coexistence is
“the objective characteristic of certain existing images which are by nature
double”. (Deleuze : )
    Thus a crystal–image implies an impossible spatial distribution of time
— after all, space is always supposed to be in the present. Crystal–images
legitimise the contradiction according to which temporal oppositions re-
main inseparably related despite the competition between them. We might
say that a crystal performs a spectral breakdown, which refers not only to a
ghostly ‘spectre’ but also to a physical phenomenon. White light is always a
mixture of several colours, the different intensities of which suppress each
other without full cancellation. Spectral breakdown — such as in the case
of a rainbow or a crystal prism — presents us with a spatial involute of
coexistence. During this process of extraction the intensity of light gets
distributed according to frequency — differences secede from the sameness
and space becomes an arena of time. Temporal ramification constitutes the
collision of past and present in the same dimension, which occurs not as a
harmonious relationship but more like a conflictual ramification whereby
the same image is found to exist both in the present and in the past.
    Incidentally, Derrida also agrees that spectral occurrence has a temporal
meaning. Hamlet’s famous speech at the end of the first act includes the
phrase “The time is out of joint” (Shakespeare : ) referring to the
current times in the play, which are full of horrific events. Here, Hamlet de-
fines the very condition of spectral occurrence: time is no longer a unifying
synthesis, it gets disjointed from its usual trajectory as if it had several par-
allel flows. Derrida emphasises that time is interrupted not by a delay and
postponement but by coercion “here–now” which occurs without presence
— time becomes disarticulated, removed, displaced from its natural ground.
Dans l’incoercible différance déferle l’ici–maintenant (Derrida : ) — here
and now it breaks through an uncontrollable différance.
    This is the true meaning of différance. It signifies an absolute singularity,
a moment of event where time is coerced — and it is not a lag, or an ever
                                                   Imagination and Mediation   


prevailing present, but a singularity that is exclusive through its difference
(singulière parce que différante); it is inevitably related to that which befalls —
i.e., the future that arrives in that unmistakable moment (Derrida : ).
The time is out of joint means not a cyclic repetition but a convergence of all
phases, which is otherwise impossible in a normal flow — it is a vertical
time which, for a brief moment, expands itself into a horizontal involute of
spectrum.
    Without a doubt, positions of Deleuze and Derrida draw our attention to
various possibilities of temporal bifurcation. However, that which remains
important in both cases is the great theme of différance as a theme of
temporal challenge where virtuality and reality coexist in the very gesture
of temporal bifurcation. It is a diagnosis that identifies specific cases when
time continues in the present by transforming the present moment through
its relation with the phases of past and future. Perhaps, we could also say
that Deleuze’s reflection on crystal time is one of the variations of temporal
spectrality, one of the possible configurations of interruption which brings
us back to the time as out of joint — that which breaks away from the
traditional mode is explained through a phantasmic dimension of opening.
Derrida’s ‘spectre’ establishes a possibility for the genesis of a crystal–image.
    Moreover, there are material conditions of space where time reveals its
contradiction–friendly power. A hologram is the main exhibit in Raimundas
Malašauskas’ show “Photo Finish” (, Contemporary Art Centre, Vil-
nius); it is formed by shooting an object from different points of view. Here
lies the paradox: the camera moves in order to reveal a static image, as if
paraphrasing the famous story of Honoré de Balzac’s fear of photography
mentioned by Sontag in her book on photography. The famous writer
refused to be photographed as he feared that each operation of an image
capturing device would strip him of one of his bodily layers. However, the
hologram is based on a different principle — here phases of existence are
preserved by overlapping the existing material layers with the new ones. A
time–consuming process of hologram production reveals several temporal
moments at the same time in the three–dimensional space.
    One of the exhibits show depicts Malašauskas himself. He is holding a
mirror, which reflects the movement of a holographic camera. Six or seven
seconds are seen simultaneously. Another exhibit depicts the holographic
space as static, causing an almost a religious paradox: two persons (the Pras-
paliauskas twins) are combined into one figure. All of this is supplemented
with reconstructed scenes from the Vilnius Youth Theatre’s “Photo Finish”
(), a theatre performance based on Peter Ustinov’s play of the same title.
An eighty–year–old character of the play meets his sixty–year–old, forty–
year–old and twenty–year–old selves. Four different actors show up on the
stage simultaneously, as if one person was comprised of his four versions.
       Kristupas Sabolius


The figure of Malašauskas holding a mirror is situated in the hologram
among the four actors.
    This project questions three key principles of Western philosophy —
namely, those of non–contradiction, individuation and causality. In the holo-
gram, ‘before’ and ‘after’ overlap and differences coexist by allowing an
object to be both as it was in the past and the way it is in the present. The
passage of time contracts the range of variations into one state of matter,
thus the past becomes a form of presence. At the same time it becomes clear
that static space — something that we often take for granted — is merely a
physiognomy of time, which manifests as a difference within the sameness.
The exhibits of “Photo Finish” can be grasped as a whole only when the out
of joint bifurcation is being played out in the imaginary. These holograms are
media that visualise interruption as an impossibility. However, it is impos-
sible to articulate this sight without reduction, which enables the paradox
to be transferred into a virtual state. The margin of error at the very core
of existence demands a technological fiction — i.e., the alienation of the
imaginary, which exposes something that is unreachable to empirical sight.
    Intermedial imagination can be comprehended as an opening in the
situation of out of joint. Even though Montani does not mention time, the
theme of disjointness in relation to the ordinary mode remains important
when we talk about an event which is to be expected in the technologised
world — i.e., to find a systemic flaw in the whole unity of a system, a trace
which raises the theme of radical Alterity even if it remains inaccessible
to representation. Here we are talking about Alterity which cannot be
detected when we return to the originary unmediated state, but when the
emancipatory elements are strengthened in the very logic of mediation:

      On the one hand, contrary to an idea about an immediate reception of an image
      (an idea that looses its value in the face of a fact that today mediation in the world
      is that of a high or even the highest level); on the other hand, also contrary to the
      postmodern thesis that the real world risks being substituted with its simulation,
      this audiovisual paradigm that I have in mind is based on the assumption that only
      by drawing on an active confrontation between the various technological formats of
      image (for example, optic or digital) and its various discursive forms (for example,
      fictional or documental) it is possible to start a right relation between the irreducible
      alterity of the real world and the attestations of mediatory and non–mediatory facts.
      (Montani : XIII)


   Even though intermedial imagination retains the orientation towards
reality (whatever is meant by this name), it changes its tactics: instead of
grasping the relationship between the world and an image, it seeks to
grasp the “relation between various devices of the technological imaginary.”
In the case of Deleuze’s temporal crystal, it is precisely technology that
                                                  Imagination and Mediation   


demonstrates the regime where the unreachable temporal dimension is dis-
covered — in Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game the crystal time is created
through the illuminated greenhouses; in Orson Welles’ Lady from Shanghai
the narrative is shattered into pieces in the mirror hall. This way technology
locates the spatial registers through which temporality is expressed in a way
that remains inaccessible to an immediate perception. Crystal–images are
not representations but rather situations where the technological divide be-
tween organicity and artificiality simply vanishes. By analogy, in Montani’s
case, by exploiting the technologized confrontation (or by understanding
technology as confrontation) we find “a link to an irreducible alterity of the
real world”. (Montani : XIV)
    Therefore, the intermedial imagination is “a technique of clarifying,
refiguring (rifigurazione), and witnessing the real world” (Montani :
XIV). Refiguring or reforming, which both start with the prefix ‘re–’ are
not only the morphological signals of a secondary action. They also refer to
the tactics of being, which is inevitably technologized and longing for an
escape. Primary figuration is something that has always already occurred
— we are already mediated even before the creation of the first medium.
However, if imagination is the first technology which turns an individual
consciousness into a technological one prior to the discovery of a tool, then
only the realisation of this technology of imagination together with the
‘hipertechnologisation of technology’ can help us to establish a dialogue
with the mediated states.
    While describing “intermedial imagination as a certain technology (in-
stead of seeing it as ‘art’ in an aesthetic sense), it is necessary to understand
that imagination not only employs one or another technique, but — or,
perhaps, most importantly — imagination itself is already a certain technol-
ogy and its origin lies not merely in subjects manoeuvring ability, but also
in the whole lot of artificial techniques responsible for the effects of sub-
jectivation” (Montani : XV). Intermedial imagination does not simply
enter the passive interplay between various audiovisual formats, it adopts
them by critically rearranging and suspending them and, by the same token,
establishing the space for a creative response. By grasping the trace as a debt
and by experiencing a constant failure of representation, such imagination
must experience the necessity to reactivate itself anew; it must look for its
creative response that has not been already integrated into the mode of
industrial schematism. In a certain sense, it is a process of disintegration
and reintegration with regards to the established schemes of understanding.
Intermedial imagination must see the disagreement, incongruity, visual
competition and Heraclitean “war” as a “father of all” — a notion of a
critical force in today’s epoch of images.
    For Montani, as far as the realm of an intermedial imagination is con-
       Kristupas Sabolius


cerned, the spheres of interiority and exteriority intertwine similarly to the
way it happens in the realm of language. Just like words belong both to
language and to the consciousness that uses them, images also have their
dimension of commensurability where technologically mediated visions
both acquire external forms, and are able to return to the subject:

      If imagination, similarly to languages, feeds on ready–made images, if it, similarly
      to certain technology, moves along this specific life form created via the recollected
      imagery, then it might be possible to claim that such an exteriorised behaviour is
      “intermedial” in such cases when, in the interplay of various differing technological
      formats, it is able to grasp a special space of critical practices or “indebted” creativity
      (creatività debitoria). (Montani : XVI)

    Individual consciousness is constantly enveloped in this universal world
of visual language, which means that the existence of an absolutely unique
and independent imagination is impossible. We discover ourselves in a cer-
tain visual tradition, we depend on it and we utilise it constantly. Therefore,
the freedom of imagination is antinomous — even though it seems that we
are free to imagine ‘whatever we please,’ we are nonetheless subjected to a
particular medial context. And even if we are able to escape it, we always
start by acknowledging it.
    Reflection on an intermedial imagination reactualises Kant’s discussion
on the negative function of imagination. According to Kant, “For the beauti-
ful in nature we must seek a basis outside ourselves, but for the sublime a
basis merely within ourselves and in the way of thinking that introduces
sublimity into our presentation of nature”. (Kant : ) Thus the notion
of the sublime reveals not only its subjective side, but also its negative side
because the universality of the sublime is based in its incomparability. There-
fore, the sublime cannot be extrapolated into the level of a commensurable
communication because the sphere of communication implies universal
codes, as well as conventional and recognisable registers which would fix-
ate on the idea that ‘something exists as something.’ In other words, the
experience of beauty leads us towards the discourse of identity. Beauty
can also become a tool of tertiary retentions as it captures our conscious
attention and accumulates common desires, fears, and beliefs. Meanwhile,
the sublime opens up the dimensions of difference and alterity.
    According to Kant, “We call sublime what is absolutely [schlechthin] large,”
i.e., that which needs no comparison because it is “large beyond all compari-
son”. (Kant : ) It is also important to note that even if the notion of the
sublime breaks out from a comparative relationship, the transgression starts
precisely with an unsuccessful attempt of comparison because it opens up
a realm of the incommensurable. Only through comparison can we reach
the limit that separates the incomparable.
                                                  Imagination and Mediation   


    Just as irrational numbers cannot be expressed as a relation between two
integers, the sublime arises as a failed linkage. We will return to this relation
of the incomparability later. However, the mathematical extremity of the
sublime signals that Kant’s argument implies a transgressive gesture that
discovers the realm of the impossible. Transgression is possible precisely
because the systems of consciousness and the world fail to coincide with
each other.
    Instead of a play of imagination, as in the case of the perception of
beauty, transgression causes a series of vicissitudes between satisfaction
and dissatisfaction and thus turns into a ‘serious work of imagination.’ By
imagining the sublime, consciousness needs to stay active, and during the
aesthetic experience of beauty, consciousness is passive (in our context we
might even say ‘inter–passive’). Therefore, the sublime implies a shattering
shakeup which, according to Kant, is experienced as a vicissitudinous shift
between repulsion and attraction towards the same object.
    Imagination can start functioning in a negative mode. As if it ‘knew’
that grasping the infinite through the senses is impossible, it nevertheless
experiences intensification. Kant says that “Sublime is what even to be able to
think proves that the mind has a power surpassing any standard of sense” (Kant
: ); through this difference the sublime leads us to the realm of
tautology: it is “a magnitude that is equal only to itself ”. (Kant : )
An absolute inadequacy of the structure of consciousness turns out to be a
necessary condition for the gesture of overcoming.
    Exploiting imagination’s inability to give shape to the things that are
shapeless or absolutely abstract, the sublime can be understood as a case
of resistance to the communication of the beautiful (or, in today’s terms,
the ‘beauty industry’); while the “beautiful in nature concerns the form of
the object, which consists in [the object’s] being bounded”, “the sublime
can also be found in a formless object”. (Kant : ) In the solution of
the beautiful, imagination is submissive, it seeks to implement the usual
subordination, while in a free play it seeks to find an intellectual notion
that would represent beauty. And despite the fact that this cannot be fully
achieved, the directionality of expedience and purpose maintains the imag-
ination in a complaisant and submissive disposition. Its freedom is only
an illusion: imagination feels free because it encounters beauty — i.e., it is
something that an intellect is unable to do. However, imagination is imme-
diately forced to take the intellectual stance — i.e., it seeks to apply a law
and find a universal rule for the beautiful, consequently turning beauty into
an idea, paradigm, universal measure, etc.
    However, a sublime relation also reveals the rebellious nature of imagina-
tion. While experiencing the fiasco of representation and adequacy, and, by
acknowledging the supremacy of pure reason, imagination plunges into cre-
   Kristupas Sabolius


ativity even more fervently and thus expands its influence beyond its formal
bounds. Of course, this creativity is no longer a production of images. It is
rather a condensation of experience as well as a supra–sensual sensitisation
of a situation when the product of creation is both formless and incomplete.
It is a negative or, rather, Apophatic creativity according to which limitation
is turned into transgression. Moreover, this experience is inevitably linked
with violence — just like the collapse of any system, the sublime cannot
be too soft as it “may indeed appear, in its form, contrapurposive for our
power of judgment, incommensurate with our power of exhibition, and as
it were violent to our imagination, and yet we judge it all the more sublime
for that”. (Kant : )
    At the very heart of Montani’s idea of intermedial imagination we find
the same conflict which, by causing a short circuit in this highly–strung
system, leads to temporal bifurcations and intertwinements. Intermedial
imagination does not try to run away from the system of media, but rather
seeks to change it from within through the techniques of distortion and
negation, which open up the new realms of non–objective creativity. Resis-
tance — a failure of Kantian style — is the first step. However, this form of
resistance implies that anti–mediation is also a remediation which redoubles
media formats and forms of representation. Illusion can be overcome only
by way of another illusion.
    Montani accentuates the mode of “referential indifference” which is based
on the strategy of elimination of differences — a widely discussed topic of
theoretical discourse (Montani : ). Through mediating the Alterity
as their property, technological media create an anesthetic effect which
envelops us in the most horrific illusion of all — the illusion of indifference
and passivity. Perhaps, we still believe that the pain transmitted through the
screen is real, it nonetheless gets robbed of its key element — the power of
différance that Derrida is talking about. It is the kind of power, which would
make us feel indebted and related to that which is seen on the screen.
    Aestheticised anesthesia turns any kind of alterity into a digitally uni-
fied equivalent, which operates in a unified technological system — this
is precisely how the tension of difference is lost. As soon as the media
start reproducing it, alterity ‘runs out of steam’ and turns into mastered
and controlled information. When reality turns into messages, pixels, and
forms, any dimension of authenticity is suspended. Therefore, according
to Montani, the authentification of imagery should first of all address the
consequences of “anesthetic derealisation” (Montani : ), which means
that any difference between the world and an image is lost in the process of
an endless iconographic adaptation.
    Therefore, in the era of new technologies the Kantian analysis of beauty
as a function that harmonises intellect and imagination, turns into a form of
                                                  Imagination and Mediation   


anesthesia. Thanks to technologies we become accustomed to the torrents
of appealing imagery, which enters individual consciousness and, by re-
maining attached to it, desensitises the critical power of imagination, which
is the power of discontent, iconoclasm and resistance. Thanks to creative
industries, aesthetic turned into the main engine of commercial exchange,
and its stimulations are no longer stimulating. Contemplative admiration
of pretty forms is blocked by a disillusioned and weakened consciousness
which no longer believes that beyond all this imagery there is something
other than yet another image.


. Synthesis vs. Montage

In emphasizing the character of unifying synthesis of the manifold, the me-
diating function of imagination is absorbed into integrity of technological
universe which functions by exercising its totalizing power. Saying that our
reality is unified and integrated through imagination simply means that the
whole interrelation of persons and world is an act of synthesis of identity
which is always more than the sum of its parts. It is namely this super-
structure of the imaginary installs us into the programme of orientation, as
well as provides the symbolic access to the openness of any realm of the
so–called real, granting its harmonizing unity. Being a surplus of reality, it
constitutes and endorses the very connectivity to the world, as if installing a
compatible software to the system of orientation.
    But what if ‘the real’ of the imaginary needs a disintegration rather than
unification? This extreme intermediation, proposed by Montani, seems to
be a call to establish a disruptive interaction within a mediating network,
although not providing a representable uniformity. Subverting technology
against itself, it offers a provocation of tension within the system of patterns
and formats, templates of understanding and models of perception which
all tend to degrade into clichés of stereotyped thinking. However, the short
circuit of synthesis doesn’t mean the end of interaction. It is rather the
beginning of a disharmonious search for alterity, which still maintains an
alternative type of relation beyond commensurable properties. It is an act of
disjointing the temporal linearity which proposes an impossible unity of
what remains incompatible: the coexistence of present and past, the parallel
bifurcation of possible sequences of events or even the debt to the Other
that has never been the part of my experiences.
    Thus synthesis should be substituted with a concept that introduces
an interaction of non–homogeneous realms: montage as a fundamental
operation of alternative mode of imagination. Stiegler described the pro-
cedure of montage as a fundamental operation of imagination, which was
   Kristupas Sabolius


best revealed in a classical experiment by Lev Kuleshov. In the s, Soviet
filmmaker intercut a shot of an expressionless actor with various objects: a
bowl of soup, a dead child and a woman on a couch. He argued that because
the spectator saw emotions in the actor’s face (which varied depending on
the image of the intercut) this had to be a result of editing rather than of
the actor’s performance alone.
    Basically, by introducing a cinematic concept into the functioning of con-
sciousness, Stiegler traces the outset of cinema before the actual discovery
of cinematic practices. (Stiegler : –) We are homo cinematicus, since
the imagination constantly offers a screen for the surplus of reality, obeying
the classical dialectical formula of montage: +>. Eisenstein’s theory of
dialectical montage exactly clings to that model, suggesting that a third
idea can emerge from the presentation of two conflicting shots. Defining
film in terms of the actions of the human mind, Eisenstein conceived this
tension as a “shock to thought” which emerges out of the conflict between
two shots and which forces us to think its synthesis. (Eisenstein : )
However, despite the demand to think on the screen that a filmmaker poses
on the viewer, this concept of montage is still based on Hegelian (and Marx-
ist) understanding of dialectics. It sets a clear goal, a telos, that regulates
the conflict and elevates it into foreseeable synthesis. The director knows
what he wants to transmit, he controls the effect of surplus of imagination
and, consequently, the role of this synthesis. By indicating this element of
cinematic dialectics, Deleuze juxtaposed classical paradigm by Eisenstein
with modern paradigm by Godard. In this sense, Godard’s take on montage
no longer seeks to subsume the parts to whole according to teleological
hierarchy, but rather performs the tension of open heterogeneity (Deleuze
: –).
    In this context, by coining a term of “intermedial montage”, Montani
brings it beyond the field of cinema sensu stricto. This cinematographically
oriented notion does not seek to relate sensuality and intellect — the realms
that, traditionally, imagination is supposed to be responsible for; it rather
practices forms that intensify disintegration and interruption. At the same
time this is where the illusions begin to be demystified. The intermedial
montage that imagination seeks not only to restructure the audio–visual
relations, but to trigger the gestures of visual authentication aimed primarily
at the suppressed debt of the real.
    Among the many examples offered by Montani we might mention Lars
von Trier’s The Five Obstructions () where, according to Montani, a
gradual process of de–aesthetisation is inspired by an ardour to testify the
real (azzardo testimoniale). In this film we see a unique experiment: Jørgen
Leth, the director of The Perfect Human — a film with a paradigmatic title and
subtle imagery — follows Lars von Trier’s orders and remakes his own film
                                                   Imagination and Mediation   


five times, each time with a different obstruction, in different circumstances,
in controversial locations, only in order to reveal what Montani calls an
“ethics of intermedial spaces” (etica degli spazi intermedi) (Montani : ).
    Here the controversial tension between aesthetics and ethics raises the
question of how valid the responsibility towards the represented other is. Or,
on the contrary — towards that which is forgotten, beyond the screen and
unrepresentable. In other words, the process of de–aesthetisation cannot
fully implement its task to represent something beyond aesthetics. However,
by stripping off the aesthetic forms and by dissipating the harmonising
unity, this process nonetheless brings forward the mode of an intended
recollection — an embarrassing recollection about old and unpaid debts.
This is how, by way of imposing an iconoclastic gesture on itself, an aesthetic
imagination opens up the dimension of an ethical imagination.
    In order to better comprehend imagination’s specific mode of disjoint-
ing functioning, which gradually emerges in the context of technology,
we might also recall Jacques Rancière’s concept of dialectic and symbolic
montage proposed in The Future of the Image. Here the french philosopher
distinguishes a specific state of images which he calls “sentence–image” (la
phrase–image). This combination marks a transitive and correlative state of
both images and texts. It is obvious that images are related to texts through
a constant interaction, which also affects the imaginary. Each act is a conse-
quence of an interaction between that which is said (dicible) and that which
is seen (visible). When the verbal side prevails, we encounter representa-
tional imagery. When visual expression directs the text by providing it with
a form, then the aesthetic dimension becomes more prominent. However,
in a sentence–image its sentence can be equated neither to that which is
represented, nor to what is visualised aesthetically. Sentence–image is both
an articulation and a visualisation, but at the same time it is neither of those;
a sentence–image is rather a relation between these two elements — a
specific situation that creates all the additional levels the variety of which is
impossible to locate via the usual sum of images.
    Here, text is not an offscreen ‘narrator’s voice’ just like an image is not an
aesthetic form of an articulated idea; rather they both act interchangeably.
In other words, in a sentence–image, that which is visible liberates itself
from a defined individual form and various functions are dissipated through
other visual functions. By fusing into a sentence, the image turns into an
open structure which can be located in literary sentences, theatrical stagings,
cinematographic episodes or photographic pictures.
    Thus in a sentence–image we witness a tension of nonexistence, which
cannot come into being without existence. Therefore, in reality the sentence–
image turns out to be a performative gesture of enactment: an interaction
between the elements produces an excess that does not correspond with
    Kristupas Sabolius


the comprising segments (visual or textual) but corrects and expands these
segments even if it remains dependent on them. It means there is both
support for the current system and its distortion — something that Rancière
calls la grande parataxe.
    “The new common term of measurement, thus contrasted with the old
one, is rhythm, the vital element of each material unbound atom which
causes the image to pass into the world, the world into the brush–stroke,
the brush–stroke into the vibration of light or motion”. (Rancière : )
This transitory moment that highlights the paratactic order does not create
a commensurable system, it rather brings forward a special moment of
presence, a deepened mode of “profound today” (profond aujourd’hui) —
i.e., a certain temporal coexistence that changes presence as a subordinating
syntax into a ‘great parataxis’ without a governing element at the centre of a
sentence such as the pairing of subject and predicate that would ground the
common criteria or coordination system. However, a paratactic phrase is
able to change the presence through a certain conjunction of the comprising
elements into a single row, chain, or field. “It is the common factor of
dis–measure or chaos that now gives art its power”. (Rancière : )
    Thus, it is not a commonality of an articulated and clear meaning, nor is
it an inclusive torrent of continuum; it is rather a disturbing rupture that can
occur via a rhythmic change — i.e., as a transformation in an intensifying
consonance, in a “schizophrenic explosion, where the sentence sinks into
the scream and meaning into the rhythm of bodily states”. (Rancière :
) In a sentence–image we encounter a specific mode of consensus where
the force of disruption and chaotisation explodes. The origin of this paratac-
tic force is, after all, cinematic — only here it acts according to the principle
of a montage beyond the screen. Here montage is seen as a measure of what
is measureless or as a disciplining of chaos (Rancière : ).
    Rancière recalls various artistic practices — from Rimbaud and Baude-
laire to Godard — where such a form of disciplined chaos is possible. We
can also mention the work of the contemporary theatre director Romeo
Castellucci, whose theatre can be seen as a production of sentence–images
— i.e., as a certain convergence of content into a paratactic whole when the
chaoticising powers of disruption reach the level of a sensory impact. The
action on stage can be regarded not as an object to be observed or a staging
of narrative, but as a gesture that is liberated from the syntax of a narrative.
    For example, in the series of performances “Tragedia endogonidia,” the
situations and occurrences are invented without any kind of comment or
explanation, thus the viewer’s involvement in the paratactic sequences is
an implicit part of theatrical practice, which carries out an actualisation
of heterogeneous experience—the final montage of difference. During
Castellucci’s performance the very act of looking at the stage is anything
                                                Imagination and Mediation   


but sterile, it creates the perfect conditions for the attacks of dichotomous
kinetics. Such theatre of shock and penetration acts as a schizophrenic
explosion where the beginning of perception starts with a mismatch.
    The imagery that is extracted arranges itself into phrases that, as Ran-
cière would say, create sequences but escape homogenisation (Rancière
: ); rather the opposite — the exposure of heterogeneity is a real ex-
pression of the force behind these sequences; and the effect of commonality
is created by the shock of otherness, Alterity, the unknown, the unarticu-
lated. Obviously, Castellucci is interested in the kind of Alterity that would
essentially reveal itself in its uncontrolled and unreduced form. Perhaps,
this is the reason why disabled persons and animals are turned into main
characters along with naked and tormented bodies and all the technical
mechanisms. They create the shock of heterogeneity, which provides us
with the common measure. It is precisely the shock — i.e., the situation
of dissociation — that gives connectedness a true dimension of common-
ality. “It is the clash of heterogeneous elements that provides a common
measure”. (Rancière : )
    Therefore the process of fragmentation is as important as convergence.
However, a montage — the beginning of a “schizophrenia or consensus”
— is based on the very gesture of disruption that incites the situations of
decomposition and dismemberment. Rancière distinguishes two forms of
montage that are able to unravel this potential — namely, dialectical and
symbolic. As we already mentioned, both cases imply the cinematographic
techniques that surpass cinematography — the principle of montage is
operative in cinema, theatre, literature, and contemporary art. Montage is
the organisation of a situation, which is, strictly speaking, not an internal
or external event, but rather a process where different realms overlap and
transgress each other. Here, this relation could be understood as an expo-
sure of the imaginary in the broadest sense — it is a situation where, by
way of appearing in certain constellations, the realms of subjectivity and
objectivity create resonating intensities. Instead of being a transmission
of a message or information, it is rather a kind of liberation that Rancière
describes in rhythmic terms. Parataxis acts only when the interconnectivity
of the imaginary is played out; when the relations of heterogeneity are
established and turned into an event of the unknown.
    According to Rancière, dialectical montage inspires a chaoticising power
through the creation of “little machineries of the heterogeneous.” By way
of fragmenting the continuums, by bringing different segments together,
by relating that which is unrelated, dialectical montage not only creates a
shock but also creates new dimensions for that which is beyond measure
(Rancière : ). This encounter between the incompatible elements
creates alternative dimensions, parallel harmonies, cohabitations and clashes
   Kristupas Sabolius


of alterities, thus exiting an absolute reality of desires and dreams (Rancière
: ). This is precisely the character of Castellucci’s theatre — its incon-
sistent harmony is the condition of the viewer’s oneiric vision where the
dream does not belong to either the director or an individual consciousness.
Here, the dream refers to the orders of parallel dimensions that can only
be uncovered by the violence of conflict (Rancière : ). This means
that violence is necessary in order to start dreaming for real, in order for
the illusion to be unveiled for the sake of a ‘real’ vision — a vision, which is
an act of an ingression of Alterity. It is a dream that is no longer imposed; it
is rather an act of radical transgression; a nauseating dream, which distorts,
burns, overheats. Here, seeing, imagining and dreaming means that one’s
safe world of fantasies is abandoned, one’s compensatory illusions are shat-
tered, one’s cosy dreams are turned into nightmares. This is the imagination
of a dialectical montage — it is a conflicting and violent act during which
the orders of comprehension set by an individual consciousness are recon-
figured by the orders of heterogeneous imagery. It is as if the initiative of
understanding would no longer belong to an ego–logical consciousness and
all the visions on stage would constantly initiate the uncontrolled visions
inside the individual consciousness.
    Symbolic montage does not utilise the violence of experience — it is
devoid of conflict but it still exploits the harmony of alien and unrelated
elements. An indirect kinship is established between the elements that are
seemingly unrelated. This is a gesture of an accidental analogy, which reveals
the previously unnoticed dependence on a common ground. Dialectical
montage seeks to shock, while symbolic montage reveals the realm of a
mystery (mystère) — instead of relating it to a mystical or enigmatic realm,
Rancière attributes it to an aesthetic category (Rancière : ), which is
common to both Mallarmé’s poetry and Godard’s films. “The machine of
mystery is a machine of making something common, not to contrast worlds,
but to present, in the most unexpected ways, a co–belonging” (Rancière
: ).
    The functioning of the mystery machine could also be seen in the
Lithuanian pavilion at the th Venice Biennale (curated by Raimundas
Malašauskas). The sports palace Palasport Arsenale in Castello, Venice be-
came a presupposition for the sentence–image. Two countries that seem-
ingly have nothing in common — Lithuania and Cyprus — contributed to
the exhibition entitled “oO” or “Oo.” The comprising elements—mobile
walls from various European museums brought by Gabriel Lester; short
stories by Vytautė Žilinskaitė; series of images with gymnastic exercises by
Algirdas Šeškus; Myriam Lefkowitz’s blind tours around Venice where the
artist blindfolds and leads each participant by hand to guide them around
the city; the painting Last Shot by Kazys Varnelis; live sculptures by Maria
                                                  Imagination and Mediation   


Hassabi; Lia Haraki’s performances of repetitive actions; as well as many
other artistic gestures — incorporated the trajectories of artistic actions that
generated rhythms of interdependences and demonstrated that a common
measure can be established not only for homogeneous content. On the con-
trary — the incommensurability is a resonating condition of the mystery
when that which cannot survive in a single system supporting one register
of meanings, incorporates itself across multiple spatiotemporal relations.
    The practice of Malašauskas, which could not have been articulated
in an artistic statement, presupposed a weird paratactic order that was
based on the gradually intensifying vibrations that came from the counter–
intensification of the artistic actions. Parallels are necessary in order to
catalyse and transpose each other onto a different level of commensurabil-
ity, which does not coincide with the meeting between the identical but
can instead be compared to a resonating eurhythmics of duration. Rancière
would say that this commonality provides a measure for the incommensu-
rable (Rancière : ). The introduction in the “Oo” booklet reads: “the
leaps between the two national pavilions and their lines of flight define the
rhythm of oO. A double–sided line crossing time, a body, a life, a country
or two. It is a mental expedition to one’s own atomic space full of history
and future”. In other words, leaps ‘between’ reveals the crossing line — a
measure of commensurability that acts according to the alternative imagi-
nation: the performance of a nonexisting existence creates an equal spread
of existence. “The power of the sentence–image is thus extended between
these two poles, dialectical and symbolic; between the clash that effects a
division of systems of measurement and the analogy which gives shape to
the great community; between the image that separates and the sentence
which strives for continuous phrasing”. (Rancière : )
    Incidentally, the forces of commonality on which rationality is grounded
reached us from the ancient Greeks and their insights into the mathematical
problem of irrational numbers. One of the most prominent researchers
in this field, Gaetano Chiurazzi, claims that the geometrical thought of
Pythagoreans feature the oxymoronic notion of ‘diagonal rationality’ (ra-
tionalité diagonale), which signifies a transformation of the concept of logos.
Diagonal rationality takes into account the principle of irrationality that
lies at the very heart of rationality and therefore grounds it (Chiurazzi
: –). In the texts of Plato and Aristotle this theme is played out by
taking into account the possibility to determine the relationship between
the elements that are different but comparable and measurable. According
to Chiurazzi, the complex elaborations around the question “is there a
common measure of all things?” signals that incommensurability becomes a
central topic for later Plato (Chiurazzi ). For example, in Theaetetus we
find a critique of a certain kind of rationality. The incomparable quantities
    Kristupas Sabolius


(irrational numbers) cannot be measured directly,pbut only according to
the Chiurazzi’s idea — i.e., diagonally. Akin to the  or π, they reveal the
mysterious or analogous aspect of reality itself, the existence of which can
be verified only via detachment and refusal — i.e., by acknowledging that
the positivist view is not sufficient. The intermediary number that comes
between  and  is of different origin to either  or , and it is rather a
mediating diagonal dimension which is of different rational origin.
    By the same token, a visual situation that falls within the range of the
spectrum of an intermedial imagination — both cases provoke a collision of
the same kind of diagonality. This is the strategy of visual conjunction that
seeks to exterminate representationalism and extract the diagonal relation
between the incommensurable. By refusing itself simple representation,
the shocked imagination of dialectic and symbolic montage is forced to
expose itself into incommensurability. Here, it remains impossible to preserve
any lasting principle that would guarantee a relational and encompassing
unity. In this alternative dialectics, imagination functions as a systemic
engine which modifies the inner structure of the whole system. Imagination
enables the most radical exteriorization — not only a convergence into the
general flow of teleaction, but also a true egression beyond oneself towards
the undefined X. Only this way one is able to understand that the system
as such never constitutes a final reality. Even if imagination is unable to be
completely free, it is the only thing that allows one to realise the impulse
of freedom — by enabling the volatility of all the variations, it tests the
established structures and reveals that which can be called a disruptive force,
which not only enables but also forces to refuse any apparent certainty.


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                                                             Imagination and Mediation        


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