Anne Collier

Anne Collier Developing Tray #2 2009

Ryan Gander - I took my hands off your eyes too soon

Ryan Gander - I took my hands off your eyes too soon, 2007

'Kiev MC Arsat PCS 4.5/55 mm Shift Lens, Focal Length: 55mm, Aperture scale: 4.5 to 22, Focusing Scale: 0.3 m (0.98 ft) to infinity, Minimum Focusing distance: 1.2 feet (0.5 Meters), Field of view" 69 degrees (with shift) 84 degrees (with shift), Number of Elements: Nine elements in seven groups, Filter size: 72 mm, Weight: 2 lbs, Serial Number 0051, Douglas M. Parker Studio, Glendale, California, January 27, 2007.'

Michel Foucault - The Four Similitudes

Michel Foucault, The Four Similitudes

Excerpt from The Order of Things 

Chapter 2: The Prose of The World

Foucault's essay examines the role that resemblances of different kinds played in the foundations of enlightenment science.

Full text here: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/foucault-order_of_things-text.html 

Chapter 2, Part 1: The Four Similitudes

Up to the end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture. It was resemblance that largely guided exegesis and the interpretation of texts; it was resemblance that organized the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible, and controlled the art of representing them. The universe was folded in upon itself: the earth echoing the sky, faces seeing them­selves reflected in the stars, and plants holding within their stems the secrets that were of use to man. Painting imitated space. And representa­tion - whether in the service of pleasure or of knowledge - was posited as a form of repetition: the theatre of life or the mirror of nature, that was the claim made by all language, its manner of declaring its existence and of formulating its right of speech.

We must pause here for a while, at this moment in time when resem­blance was about to relinquish its relation with knowledge and disappear, in part at least, from the sphere of cognition. How, at the end of the sixteenth century, and even in the early seventeenth century, was simili­tude conceived? How did it organize the figures of knowledge? And if the things that resembled one another were indeed infinite in number, can one, at least, establish the forms according to which they might resemble one another?

The semantic web of resemblance in the sixteenth century is extremely rich: Amicitia, Aequalitas (contractus, consensus, matrimonium, societas, pax, et similia), Consonantia, Concertus, Continuum, Pantos, Proportio, Similitudo, Conjunctio, Copula[1]. And there are a great many other notions that intersect, overlap, reinforce, or limit one another on the surface of thought. It is enough for the moment to indicate the principal figures that deter­mine the knowledge of resemblance with their articulations. There are four of these that are, beyond doubt, essential.