Hubertus von Amelunxen : “Configurations of the 3rd: Touching Sense."

“I am already dead signifies I am behind.” Derrida
[Creation linked to Genet (beyond reproduction) & Hegel’s family (within reproduction).]

-3rd is always threatening. An intrusion. Appropriation of the 3rd, outsider not recognized by signification. The unnamed 3rd escapes appropriation, cannot be added, allegorical without nomenclature. 3rd emanates as it disappears, perpetual transformation, of translation. It is HERE that Benjamin & Barthes meet-→ technical reproducibility is what Barthes called “punctum”.

Punctum + Reproduction= Photography

Barthes: The gaze enters when revealing otherness. A space of loss; meloncholy. A loss that cannot be named.

Dita Appult, 1979 “The Stain that the Breath Produces on the Mirror”. From Raymond Roussel’s 1928 novel.

“With Roussel language reduced to powder in a systematically randomness tells infinitely the repetition of death and the secret of doubled origins…”. Foucault, 1966.-→ Oulipo: Cortazar, Queaneu, Roussel,

“Impression of Africa” 1928, Roussel.--> attempt to create 3rd meaning: the impression that escapes signification and the alterity between.

Foucault in 1966 “On Raymond Roussel” writes “Roussel had placed in front of our eyes in which the lens would have been gray all signifying structures are brought to a threshold where the mirror anticipates by forwarding the things in reflects through constant topological deviations. What has been there will be perpetual reverberation […] maintains the infinite difference which may be the 3rd sense.”

Roussel birthed what is now called the repetition practiced and found in “digital literature.”

Telescopage→ train accidents.
Effect of mirroring, producing terrifying echo of signifiers spreading all over.

Theory of the Eidetic. Ancient philosophies of perception depending on constitution of soul and environment. Pelicula-film or skin.

Light/Materiality/Air-→ Balzac was convinced that the photograph took away a layer of a person’s aura.

Photography is singular medium that puts an end to becoming, the becoming of the end.
“The anxiety of the signifier…” Foucault.

Breathing on the mirror as an act of momentary presence. The mirror reproduces the stain by doubling singularity of breath before it disappears.

Barthes “point without a line” was a Japanese child taking a photograph with no film inside the camera.

3rd Meaning is “The iconic message without a code”.

Eisenstein’s “Third Meaning” develops the obtuse meaning beyond signification. Outside of quantity and quality. -permanent state of depletion.

Punctum=transubstantiation. The face as constant punctum on video Skype.
The punctum is a technological being as presence and absence though always absent, dimensionaless with a single surface. The screen is the degree zero.

Point=inertia, Line= movement

Benjamin point is zero-movement. The photograph contains various moments of times.

“The point is not without dimensions. It is an element of surface infinitely small, which, as an agent executes the zero movement […] the point is cosmical because it is situated at the intersection of different directions. –Paul Klee

Sense originates and ends within the point. The point encloses gestures of giving. The point is a delayed moment.

-Certain perceptions and sensations are projected and filtered through the trajectory of the punctum thus creating more ruckus around it.

Studium Vs. Punctum: studying it versus experiencing it.

Punctum as the inscription of the past into the infinite future.