+++
title = "Decapitated UBU: A Decapitated Reflection"
has_shards = ["appendix.md", "communication-and-meaning.md", "theimaginary.md", "nihilism.md", "sense-countersense.md"]
glassblowers = ["sanjabojanic.md"]
+++

I had in mind Walter Benjamin: I'm back in my library.

> You have all heard of people whose loss of their books has turned them into invalids or of those who, to acquire them, became criminals.

Two dots or questions should be connected:

One is about meaning out of language—referencing Godard (see ![](shard:sense-countersense.md)) — to go back to reality (or conquer reality) (see: ![](shard:experience.md)).

The other is in archives, void of content, and back to the gesture. (see: ![](shard:appendix.md))

Both dots should provide a trajectory for recovering the imaginary. (see: ![](shard:theimaginary.md))

I do not know. I don't know if ![nihilism](shard:nihilism.md) (the time in which we find ourselves, the time in which UbuWeb is no longer active, precisely because UbuWeb is no longer ready to receive and store new material) can trigger all that is given and flip it to an avalanche that restores meaning. Should the sense of that or such meaning be restored? Flipped archives where the archived keep the gates opened and let enter the meaning, any meaning. This is not what has been written:

> Although UbuWeb is publicly accessible, the public has no say about what goes or doesn't go on the site. We don't take unsolicited submissions; we post work erratically and sporadically, never according to a schedule. And the works that we choose are there because we want them to be there, not because they fulfill any curriculums, quotas, or canons. While we want to expose people to wonderful and underappreciated works of art (and, of course, provide new perspectives on tired notions of the avant-garde), everything on the site is there primarily because it’s meaningful to us, for reasons we don't feel the need to explain. And since we don;t take any money, we don't have to answer to anybody regarding the content we host on the site. Is that approach biased? Yes. Is it incomplete? Yes. Is it imperfect? Yes. Is it the way we want to do it? Yes. All the way.” (see: ![](shard:appendix.md))

What tools are used to restore meaning? Language, Motion Picture, Image, Sound, AI, DeepFake, Open Cloud, what else? Presence or Madness? (see: ![](shard:communication-and-meaning.md)) Whose concept of reality is absolutely legitimate? Me, using language for the purposes of escaping madness, Artaud’s of keeping it going, which keeps this leak of meaning escape into reality. Collective presence or collective madness?

And for the purpose of the reflection: Out of Language?

I heard on the radio today (May 3, 2024) [Julia Kristeva](https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/avec-philosophie/qu-est-ce-qu-une-epoque-theorique-1205000):

> I think the Western world and its sovereignty should be preserved by preserving the book.” By the book, Kristeva means the analytical apparatus of the theory inherited from the twentieth century, the French Tel Quel avant-garde, which, above all, enjoyed Lettres (jouissance to read and write, write and read, jouissance of the theory or so-called French Theory, very much in the language or exactly where Godard didn’t find reality). Kristeva is complaining about the Global South, the colonial forces of the Global South that encapsulate Tel Quel avant-garde within the concept, which Dick Higgins designed as masculine: “avant-garde… as advance troops coming before the main body”., white and homogeneous (![](bib:fb3043f9-791a-4069-9c07-4e5f05162983), p. 10). Kristeva remained in the 20th century. As much as the jouissance of Lettres is cathartic, it always shelters masculinity, the phantasm of purity and candidness. (see: [Catharsis](https://antigones.gr/glossary/catharsis/)) Naivety and purity go hand in hand with not knowing the end, sensuality, tension, irony, and Tyche. (see: ![](shard:artformula.md))

But within the Motion Picture?

Godard jumped directly to the 22nd century with the *2 or 3 Things…* (see: ![](shard:sense-countersense.md)) his film—essay and a machine that morphs the colliding meanings of words and objects with overpowering speed. With his capacity to generate an amazing array of metaphors, paradoxes, and digressions, Godard is alone and, as alone, succeeds in the humble occupation of our times to collide with the hegemony of senselessness. When I think of an interactive relationship (what one needs to enter UbuWeb Archives?), it is obvious that this interactivity should provide me with bonds between ideas and actions, words and images, sounds and pictures, interiors and exteriors, all in this form of the outre-tombe, present in the past and ready to deactivate the meaning in the future. Rothko and Godard, with their understanding of ending (see: ![](shard:artformula.md)), belong together as much as UbuWeb, which is not active but there, with knowledge of the end, sensuality, tension, and irony.

Between Image and Image?

There are two regimes: fear of the image and image of fear, which are the same conceptions of power founded on appropriating the sensible. Palestine: fear of the image. Palestine: the image of fear. (see: ![](shard:sense-countersense.md)) What should bring us to our senses? Whose sensibility? Whose loses? This governance by images organizes the visible, which provokes adherence through the submission of the gaze. There is an eruption of distorted meaning.

With this daily and constantly renewed cult of visibilities, we are addicted to the visible for eyes that have become blind to the invisible. (see: ![](shard:communication-and-meaning.md))
