TICKLING THE WORLD
“Your very being is dying from the present. Dying towards the contour. Towards life.”
Manuel del Cabral, “Los Huespedes Secretos,” 1907
Everything is contours, in Elastogenia. Detours and contours, evolutions and convolutions, astronomical and anatomical labyrinths. With no one-way streets. No immutable centre. No disconnected areas. No fossils. And if walls still persist in the consciousness of those who walk through this melting land, they immediately become mirrors, passageways, mises en abyme in the form of Salvation—with shape memory. “The walls will never fall enough. Such is the MELANCOLY of all landscapes,” wrote Jean-François Lyotard in The Inhuman (1988). Elastogenia: a dreamland that spreads out like the origin of all landscapes, without fixing any of them.
Elastogenia: a wave of shock and charm, a multicoloured and omni-absorbent temporality, the umbilicus of every spectacle, the receptacle of every gift.
This chemical-symphonic substance does not only exist in dreams: it is reality itself. Or rather: it creates it. It is creation itself. Or rather: it melts it and stretches it, kneads it and disperses it, disseminates it and embraces it. It is life itself. Or rather, its organic and mineral intelligence. It is death itself. Or rather, the eternal recasting of possibilities. Lulled by beauty, debauchery and thrills, Charles Baudelaire, like many others, touched on it with his words. In a letter from January 1856, he wrote: “I have been saying for a long time that the poet is sovereignly intelligent, that he is intelligence par excellence,— and that the imagination is the most scientific of all faculties, because it alone understands the universal analogy, or what mystical religion calls the correspondence.” This notion of “correspondence” is key in Elastogenia. It means more than the “deep and tenebrous unity” from the sonnet “Correspondances,” in which “Perfumes, sounds, and colours correspond.” ( The Flowers of Evil, IV). Here, Baudelaire remains a poet of analogy, of the “like”—six occurrences in this sonnet alone. Now, unlike analogical correspondences, elastogenic correspondences cannot be subjected to any comparison. They are more than literary and metaphorical: they are organic and seminal. Wandering cannot reveal them, but only the unique act of contemplation-creation. The dandy’s sophistication and irony cannot encounter them, but only the naked truth of a vibrant entity stripped of its ego. To know oneself as a pure desire in search of an author. To subtract oneself from Performance, the heavy present that plagues memory. Baudelaire experienced these correspondences deeply in his dreams. But on paper, his romanticism compelled him to make the Poet the intermediary between humans and Nature, which distorted his judgement and riveted him to the analogy—the correspondence-equivalence, approximations without true fusion. The sacred experience of Life is affirmed through the correspondences experienced in the most confident states of inebriation and lucidity. This is where we pass from Elastogenia to elastogenesis. From utopia—the land of poets— to the process of bringing the world itself into being. From an aesthetics of resemblance to a factory of wonder, to the Antispleen, to the Subtle Path, to the Great Birth. From Charles Baudelaire to Richard Texier. No need for sweetmeats or artificial paradises to grasp the secret law of this journey: it is enough to feel alive. Your head in the milky dream suckled by those who love each other. Eyes on fire. Wings wide open. Childhood in the swamp. To feel alive, really. To truly feel oneself; and truly alive. Crossed by stars and ecstasies. Overflowing with luminous and fluid offerings to pour into everything that wants to bloom.
LUMINOUS AXIS
“Wonder.” The favourite word of Richard Texier, the impassioned. “An artist must use not what he knows (for what he knows is of little use going forward) but rather the conviction that there is a better state of being, a zone that can be reached, and that art is the Vehicle. That’s what I feel, and perhaps have always felt, without having expressed it to myself, but I can see that it’s what I’m trying to do: the painting that I’m going to make tomorrow, which has not yet been made, is perhaps the one that will make me better. That will unfold me. Open me up—in the sense of dilating, of atomising
myself in the world, of reconnecting with the powers of truth, of light, of wonder... I am in a perpetual quest for wonder. It is the only thing that is worthwhile, in any field.” The artists said these words to me in 2017, when he and I visited a preview of the Gauguin the alchemist exhibition at the Grand Palais, just the two of us, like stowaways. Faced with the clamour of the master of Pont-Aven, transcribed in white letters in the half-light—“Nature is matter, spirit is matrix”—, I told Richard:
“That’s elastogenic!”
“Ah, yes?”
“For you, does the spirit imprint matter? “It spiritualises it, it makes it live, it sensualises it, it elastogenises it, it dreams it, it desires it...”
“Magical thinking?”
“Magical thinking: the mutating spirit! Singularly, for an artist, the spirit which is prolonged by his hand is the shortest path to the mutation of matter. That is the whole history of art! Artists’ intention to bring life to inert matter”.
“And that’s an intention you also share, of course?
“I would like to. I try to. Every artist is just an attempt. But that is my luminous axis!” The spirit spiritualises matter. Wonder is precisely the inner blossoming of this impossible certainty. Philosophically, this is not about Hegel, Plotinus, Spinoza or Leibniz. According to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), a major figure of German idealism, reality consists of an absolute Spirit that manifests itself through a dialectical process of development. But elastogenism opposes this view by emphasising the penetrating, “caramelising” and vivacious intermingling of spirit and matter. According to Plotinus (205-270), a Neo-Platonist philosopher, the ultimate reality is the One, a transcendent spiritual entity that generates the material world. Elastogenism, however, differs by puting a coalescent and fertile force that exerts its influence within the universe without depending on a purely intelligible world. According to Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), the Dutch pantheist philosopher, reality consists of a single substance, “God or Nature.” Elastogenism distinguishes itself by resolving the tensions and compartmentalisation of reality through the intertwining of living multiplicities, and by proposing a holistic vision and an aestheticmagical way of thinking. According to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), a German philosopher and mathematician, reality is made up of “monads,” immaterial and indivisible entities that possess a certain consciousness. Elastogenism, on the other hand, emphasises mutation and carnal imbrication, moving away from the idea of monads to focus on the circulation and infiltration of possibilities. Elastogenic singularity thereby reveals a new aesthetic and philosophical perspective that favours entanglement, fluidity and the infinite adaptability of the cosmos. We are closer to Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and his concept of “duration,” which insists on the continuity of time and the creativity of the “élan vital”; to Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and his philosophy of process, which considers the world as an interconnected network of constantly evolving events; or to Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and Félix Guattari (1930-1992) with their “rhizome,” a metaphor for an acentral, multiple way of thinking that rebels against hierarchisation and rootedness.
But the first pre-elastogenist thinker was undoubtedly Heraclitus of Ephesus, a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher (~ 576-480). He immerses us in a world where everything is becoming, movement and rhythmic flows (“everything flows,” panta rhei). A world governed by the logos, the universal law—a divinity that unveils and propagates itself through “speech,” and welcomes the synthesis of opposites. Opposites marry and balance each other, weaving the fabric of an oscillating and harmonious universe that words alone betray. “You cannot step twice into the same river.” Elastogenism, like the teaching of Heraclitus, insists on plasticity, adaptability and the indestructible links connecting the elements of the cosmos, whose unity was affirmed by Heraclitus: “The waking have one world in common. Sleepers meanwhile turn aside, each into a darkness of his own.” However, elastogenesis goes even further by addressing dimensions that the Greek thinker did not explore, such as the “creolisation” of cultures (Édouard Glissant, Victor Segalen) and the hybridisation of ideas (Homi K.
Bhabha, Stuart Hall, or our conception of the “logobiote”). Elastogenesis overflows perimeters, transcends borders, thereby granting humanity a permanent reopening by which it aerates itself, expands and deepens, crossbreeds and regenerates.
AN OBVIOUS LAW
On a literary level, it can be seen as a synergy of tragedy and lightness, philosophy and frivolity. It sublimates our narrative of our presence in the world by dramatising and dialectising it, that is, by elevating it to the rank of a universal and timeless myth with a minimum of rhetorical artefacts. “The elasticity of Shakespeare is extraordinary,” Kenneth Branagh marvelled. Closer to home, in the realm of popular science fiction, Richard Morgan’s work is elastogenic in more ways than one: an exploration of transidentitary technologies, non-linear narrative structures, social and political themes, and a mix of genres that defy traditional expectations (cyberpunk, thriller, noir, fantasy). The British writer lays down an obvious law in his latest opus ( Thin Air, 2020): “With human beings, using simple solutions is simply impossible.” The reason why elastogenics makes fiction —and particularly noir fiction—effective is that it provides access to greater complexity and depth. Morgan explains, “I think noir is an immensely powerful—and elastic—lens through which to look at narrative and character. It seems to access something dark and true in us that other modes of fiction are often a bit prissy about touching. But the key to making it work as time and culture moves on is to use the elasticity, not just the power.”
The philosophers of elastogenesis are now scanning the blur of the Great Cybermodern Bewitchment in search of new connections, new forms of expression and new wisdoms. Heraclitus’ thinking may have planted the seeds, but it is elastogenesis that makes them bloom into a sumptuous garden of creativity and enchantment. Because by its very nature, elastogenesis invites a quest for the self in the world. An immemorial and fundamentally artistic quest, the antithesis of any renunciation, with freedom in its crosshairs. It is this freedom that dazzles us. “An artist has a duty to be free,” as Richard
Texier often says. Even when he creates with innovative materials—a computer protocol for Elastochain (2018), organic porcelain insulators for Pantheo Vortex (2014), mineral elastomer for Elastoshell (2017)—, the words that made Joan Miró a legend remain a definitive truth for him: “Painting has been decadent since the time of the cave-dwellers.” Let us understand: art always aims to intensify freedom by transmuting our crippling, predatory fears into wonder and operative caresses. The most terrifying period of all, the “time of the cave-dwellers,” therefore made this poetic-tranquilising transmutation work to the highest degree, making cave painting a pinnacle, and the art-that-followed a less nervous copy. For the average person, little inclined to technolatry, technology is the ability to go from success to success without losing one’s pessimism. Art, on the other hand, fills us with optimism inasmuch as it reveals the fractal and silky elastogenesis of the world that vibrates within us. An optimism that is itself elastogenic, in that it is capable of unfolding, dancing and constantly reconfiguring itself, innervating the splendour and intensity of life whilst inviting the spectator to take part in this creative odyssey. Making elastogenesis explode— always full, unctuous and continuous—such is the paradoxical and eternally aborted attempt of art. To make it burst into a thousand notes of a symphonic poem (Claude Debussy, La Mer, 1905), into a thousand gestures of a choreography of yawns and nestling bodies (Sandra Abouav, À bouche que veux-tu, 2017), into a thousand sensual curves of steel and reinforced concrete (Zaha Hadid, Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku, 2012), into a thousand holes of “gelatino-erotic” animals inspired by Romanesque illuminations and capitals (Richard Texier’s sculptural and undulating bestiary), into a thousand lights composing a multi-sensory and immersive video-dream (Pipilotti Rist, Pixel Forest, 2016), into a thousand extraordinary inventions (Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus, 1914), into a thousand ramified attempts at self-distancing (Michel Butor, La Modification, 1957), into a thousand dreamlike and invigorating images (Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations, 1886). “One of the features of Rimbaud’s modernity lies in this magical intensity, this speed of rhythm, which gives the text’s momentum an elastic, open, continuously inventive mobility,” as the Moroccan philosopher Abdelkébir Khatibi has rightly said ( Voeu de silence, 2000). “Rimbaud’s syntax is unique: it revives the spirit and desire for invention in writers. In this sense too, he invented a type of reader in search of a fairy-tale infinity.” More broadly, to make elastogenesis explode, to make it incontournable— although it is only contours— means making people desire it. Making it the subject of discourse is to make it the object of wonder with a capital “W.” Making elastogenesis explode is to make it “dazzling”; to make it the Gospel, to spread the “good news.”
ALL LIFE STRETCHES
“Embracing the world.” The favourite expression of Richard Texier, the islander. Brought up on the Ile de Ré, a closed world conscious of the fact that its survival depends on the outside, he defines himself as “a man of the coast”: “There is no continental logic in me, this logic of power.” Elastogenesis is not “the elasticity of the imagination,” as it might be too quickly summarised. It is rather the elasticity of the coastline, between the shovel and the oar, the sedentary lifestyle and the nomadic escape. The elasticity of life that spreads, prolongs itself and bushes outwards. The concept of “autopoiesis,” which was coined by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1972) and given pride of place in Erich Jantsch’s “biocosmology” (1980), illustrates the idea of a living system that continually regenerates, self-organises, adapts to its environment and, in so doing, models it. Despite their differing approaches, elastogenesis and autopoiesis stem from a vision of life as a malleable and resilient force. Autopoiesis: the inner dance of life, a ballet of self- organisations and selfregulations weaving its own web of existence. Elastogenesis: a cosmic extensibility, an alchemical cauldron, a crucible of new pulsations and metamorphoses. Two complementary movements, with autopoiesis
exploring internal harmony and elastogenesis secreting new horizons.
In The Dehumanisation of Art (1925), the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset described this process of rhythmic expansion: “Life is of small account if it is not instinct with a formidable eagerness to extend its frontiers. One lives in proportion as one yearns to live more. The obstinate desire to remain within our habitual horizon points to a decadence of vital energies. The horizon is a biological line, a living organ of our being; while we enjoy plenitude the horizon stretches, expands, undulates elastically almost in time with our breathing. On the other hand, when the horizon becomes immovable it is a sign of the hardening of the arteries and the entry into old age.” Old age as the lack of freshness is not so much a question of age as of loss of elasticity—that of the voice, the skin, the eyes and the red blood cells. And youth, conversely, is that inexhaustible source of intoxication, flexibility and poise— that is, half of the skills required to take part body and soul in the Great Game of Life. In this respect, acquired psycho-rigidity and moralising postures are infinitely less valuable than the delightful and playful delicacy of the child applied to his task. “The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak which resists it,” wrote Albert Schweitzer. “And so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.” And the ingenious baseball executive Bill Veeck summed it up in a mischievous phrase: “I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.”
COSMOS SENSITIVE TO THE HEART
“To celebrate.” The favourite verb of Richard Texier, the shaman. To celebrate life, the mystery of the world, as an artist, without dogma or religion, with modest visual and plastic means. What does this strange verb, this obsession, mean?—To tell the magic of the world, to read it, and to laugh about it. To tell the substance of all forms by making it manifest, that is, dangerous and palpable, hybrid and fabulous. To read the Great Book of the Universe. To read its enigmas without being able to solve them, to read its stories without wanting to tarnish them. To give a calligraphy of light to the underworld. Lunar calendars to the moon. Magi to the margins.To laugh, finally. A laugh that is as fertile as it is ferocious, as solar as it is insolent. An ambivalence specific to the artist, of which Paul Gauguin remains the paragon for Richard Texier. “For me, Gauguin is the ultimate achievement—the state that is both primordial and unfolding—of what an artist should be.
That is to say, a savage of great refinement. The raw, sexual, animal force that lives in us, and that embraces the world, with a very great refinement, coloured by compositions, by inventions, that lets itself succumb to the vertigos, recesses and prodigies of the spirit. Gauguin was a docker at one point in his life. He himself was a little boorish in his manners, and incredibly fine in his gestures, in his colour... He let himself be carried away by what was alive in him, by the elastogenic flow of his being.” Elastogenesis is the cosmos made sensitive to the heart. And this must be understood in two ways. Firstly, the state of the cosmos becomes perceptible to the human heart: the vibrating water, the refracting ray, the compelling curve...The state of the world offers itself to our senses to overwhelm them. Secondly, and conversely, it is the cosmos that is distorted under the effect of sensibility, the cosmos that enters into resonance with living things, with the heart; that is transformed by and for it.The cosmos passes through us because we pass through it. No warrior is more pathetic than the one who picks the wrong battle. No navigator is more lost than the one picks the wrong horizon. In both cases, they sin by denying the cosmos, obsessed as they are by the challenge of their mission. They lack peace and direction. Agitated by a past that possesses them, they forget the future of their present—which is necessarily made of others. “It is because of alterity, otherness, that no one can make himself laugh by tickling himself,” Jean Baudrillard said. Before asking: “If the whole world becomes Western, where will the sun rise?” ( Cool Memories V 2000-2004). Richard Texier, for his part, makes the celebration of the world the birth of shared otherness. “Painting is the path to others,” he explains seriously. But it was in the midst of Gauguin’s exotic works that he gave me the finishing—and provisional—touch of his thinking: “Painting is a fairly effective tool to dialogue with mystery. In any case, to tickle it a little. As soon as you tickle the world in the direction of mystery, all of a sudden you create a good ally for painting.” Tickle, dialogue, celebrate: there is only one line from one verb to the next. If the whole world becomes elastic, where will the brush alight?
Translation: Juliet Powys
Vincent Cespedes is a philosopher, writer, composer and painter. As the author of two dozen works questioning the mutations of values, practices and subjectivities in the era of “cybermodernity,” his work also places the body, language and emotion at the heart of human power, in order to trace the path of a new humanism. Latest work: Comment se faire confiance dans un monde où les traîtres sont rois. Éloge de la loyauté (Albin Michel, 2023).