In this text I want to define Flusser’s notion of translation. The basis for my essay are his writings on language and translation. Focussing on the power and strength of language I will relate these writings to Ernst Jünger’s book Lob der Vokale which Flusser mentions in the bibliography of Língua e Realidade. In the first part of my text I deal with the aspects of linguistic domination and submission that arise when Flusser uses a specific language. They are two (...) sides of the same medal. In the second part I discuss Flusser’s methods of translation more precisely. At this point I will take up his concept of ‘fragrancy’ which points in the same direction as Walter Benjamin’s ‘way of meaning’. Lastly I argue that Flusser’s translation activities have to be understood within his dialogical concept of freedom as an opening towards the other. (shrink)

In 1865, the Brussels educational reformer Pierre Temples advocated to take drawing as the cornerstone of education. He criticized that education was modelled on conventions and grammatical rules in order to learn to read and write, this way ignoring the potential of drawing to create new concepts. This paper is also concerned with the significance of drawing in the realm of education. However, not to elaborate on its added value for education, but to discuss the mode of thinking that it (...) seeks to disclose. The paper starts with a re-reading of two stories: Pliny the Elder's image of the origin of drawing and Viktor Lowenfeld’s artistic developmental theory. This brings us to an understanding of the significance of drawing not as a pure sensory experience, nor as a cognitive one, but as a new gesture that marks the visual as visual, to make it an object of thought. Unlike Temples, this contribution is not against grammar, but understands the act of drawing as a form of grammatisation in itself: i.e. a particular response to an event, which simultaneously enables us to visualize what confronts us. Hence, an ability to imagine and create new relationships with the world. (shrink)

This paper is an extension of the arguments and examples offered in ‘Materia Prima, Text-as Image’, where the materiality of language was foregrounded, rather than its transparent role in communication. The claims of neutrality to content in The Crystal Goblet, made by Beatrice Warde, alongside ideas from various traditional philosophical sources were contrasted with the work of concrete poets, artist, and designers, whose free-play with materiality in language upsets those relatively uncomplicated notions of transparency to content. The current paper proposes (...) that in the next stage, we might think of the materiality of language as a kind of ‘event’, in which the raw materials of language, are fully mobilized and enacted. This performative stage, which harnesses the dynamic attributes of language, is grounded by reference to Deleuze’s theory of the event, as well as Adorno and Benjamin’s notion of ‘constellation’. Katherine Hayles, Villém Flusser and others, are used to support the contention that we might think materiality and performativity/gesture, in language as a form of content. Lyotard’s Discourse/Figure is invoked as away to describe a different space of interaction between the textual and the figural, where the distinction between them is erased. Examples from art/design/typography are offered to support these points. (shrink)