It seems only right to recognize the role language plays at the beginning of this blog adventure. Whether spoken or written, language is a dominant bridge in human culture on this planet. Language is so deeply integrated into our lives that it is all to easy to avoid questioning its role during our time on earth. The following is an excerpt from my Master’s Thesis, titled ‘The Role of Language’. This excerpt is focussed on the role language plays in respect to my photography series Luminous Visions but also relates to the general role language plays in our daily lives.

The limits of language are reached when it comes to the nonverbal experience of present looking that is essential to Luminous Visions, so it is important to begin by clarifying how the words comprising this paper function. The very nature of looking cannot be fully expressed through language as looking is an experience that “comes before words” (Berger 1987, 8). Relating Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language to visual art, Kate Rennebohm (2020) quoted him as saying “large realms of human understanding exist independently from verbal articulation” (64). This suggests that not only is looking a non-verbal experience but that it is also one that affords new modes of understanding. The absence of language that is foundational to Luminous Visions means that the academic nature of this paper does not and cannot semantically deduce the experience of silent looking (Massumi 1995, 87). Massumi stated that “matter-of- factness dampens intensity,” which is to say grammatical structures are incompatible with the experience of present looking that is graspable by neither words nor intellect (Ibid., 86). The words comprising this paper exist at the peripheries of looking, hovering around the indefinite edges of the state of presence they refer to. Therefore, we must remember the experience of the visual work is ultimately intended to be a silent one, for “approaches to the [visual work] in its relation to language are incomplete if they operate only on the semantic or semiotic level...” (Ibid., 87).

References:

1. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation; Penguin, 1987.
2. Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect.” Cultural Critique, No. 31, The Politics of Systems and Environments, Part II (1995): 83-109.
3. Rennebohm, Kate. “Wittgenstein on Moving-Image Media and the Ethics of Re- viewing.” October 171 (2020): 47-76.