Esther Leslie (Professor in Political Aesthetics, Birkbeck, University of London)
Walter Benjamin. Laughter is the shattering of articulation.
Glass as a lens.
The photograph as shattering, dislodging time and space.
You can penetrate secrets when the image is fractured through a lens.
A photograph creates meaning in its fragmentation.
Theodor Adorno. The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass.
Sight becomes insight. Turned inwards.
Error is inherent.
The hyper-visibility of the fragment.
Blossfeldt.
The basic form of the advert: graphic sadism.
Playing with distortions of natural form.
The moment of shattering, request new laws and contains humour.
The camera leads the assault on natural laws.
Montage as a shattering of images but a layering of thoughts.
Articulates modes of thinking.
Restructuring of ordinary perception.
Commodity as microcosm.
Animation as showing us elements of our primitive selves, against the constrictions of the modern world.
Skyscraper aesthetic.
Taut. Mies. Glass House.
Eisenstein.
Inability to isolate and focus on detail.
Disney. Slapstick animation as a release of social repressions.
Marx’s Kapital acquires the elasticity of labour power.
Morality inherent in glass in its ability to shatter.
Are we shatterable or condemned to elasticity?
Laughter as a masochism we inflict on ourselves.
Donald Duck teaches us to take the blows in laugher.
Laughter opens a gap of potential.