Book launch, symposium and lecture
Tuesday, April 5 – Thursday, April 7, 2011
Miguel Abreu Gallery
36 Orchard Street, New York, NY
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U rb a no m ic / Se q ue nc e P re ss L a unc h , w it h De x t e r Sinist e r Tuesday, April 5th 7 pm Urbanomic founder, Robin Mackay, and Dexter Sinister’s David Reinfurt will present their respective recent activities as independent and experimental publishers. Mackay will speak about his notorious ‘philosophical research and development’ journal, Collapse, and, with Tobias Huber and Katherine Pickard, introduce the collaborative imprint, Urbanomic/Sequence Press. New and forthcoming titles by Nick Land, François Laruelle, R. H. Quaytman, Reza Negarestani, and Fernando Zalamea will be announced. Reinfurt will discuss Dexter Sinister’s new The Bulletins of the Serving Library project and the end of Dot Dot Dot. A reception will follow. François Laruelle will be in attendance to sign fresh copies of The Concept of NonPhotography. F ra nç o is L a rue lle a nd No n- P h ilo so p h y Sy m p o sium Wednesday, April 6th 7 pm ‘Non-philosophy’ designates the new response, in a manner rendered possible and grounded, to that which must be called the ‘labyrinth of philosophy.’ Tobias Huber(Editor, Urbanomic/Sequence Press), Non-Philosophy and the Axiomatization of Philosophy Alexander Galloway(NYU), Laruelle, or The Secret Dustin McWherter(PhD, Middlesex University, London), Non-Philosophy and the Kantian Legacy Robin Mackay (Editor, Collapse), The Combustion of Human Spontaneity: Non-Philosophy as Ultra-Althusserian Anthony Paul Smith(University of Nottingham), What does religion have to do with a science of philosophy? François Laruelle will be in attendance for a Q&A with the participants and the audience. Tobias Huber is co-editor of François Laruelle’sforthcoming From Decision to Heresy: Introduction to Non-Philosophy (Urbanomic/Sequence, 2011) and the editor of Realismus Jetzt (Merve, 2011). He is a member of the editorial board of Urbanomic/Sequence Press. Alexander R. Galloway is Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Galloway is the author of several books, including The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Minnesota, 2007), cowritten with Eugene Thacker.He translated Laruelle’s essay The Truth According to Hermes: Theorems on The Secret and Communication. Recently, he delivered a series of 5 lectures at Public School, New York entitled French Theory Today: Possible Futures, one of which was about Laruelle’s work. Dustin McWherter recently completed his PhD at Middlesex University, London with a thesis on Kant and Bhaskar. A number of hisarticles will appear in upcoming issues of the journals Kantian Review and Cosmos and History. He served as associate editor of Collapse Vol. III: Unknown Deleuze. Robin Mackay is a philosopher and editor of the journal Collapse. He is director of Urbanomic and the collaborative Urbanomic/Sequence Press, as well as co-editor of From Decision to Heresy: Introduction to NonPhilosophy.He also translated Alain Badiou'sNumber and Numbers (Polity, 2008) and Laruelle’s The Concept of Non-Photography (Urbanomic/Sequence Press, 2011). Anthony Paul Smith, Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Nottingham and Research Fellow at DePaul University's Institute for Nature and Culture, is the translator of Laruelle's Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy and co-translator of the forthcoming Principles of Non-Philosophy (Continuum, 2013). He is also co-editing Laruelle and Non-Philosophy (Edinburgh UP, 2012). His own work is split between the development of a philosophy of religion as non-theology and an attempt to conceive of a non-metaphysics of nature derived from a unified theory of philosophy and ecology. T h e Co nc e p t o f No n- P h o t o g ra p h y Lecture by François Laruelle, Introduction by Robin Mackay Thursday, April 7th 7 pm Of what do these essays speak? Of photography in the flesh – but not the flesh of the photographer. Myriads of negatives tell of the world, speaking in clichés among themselves, constituting a vast conversation, filling a photosphere that is located nowhere. But one single photo is enough to express a real that all photographers aspire one day to capture, without ever quite succeeding in doing so. Even so, this real lingers on the negatives’ surface, at once lived and imperceptible. Photographs are the thousand flat facets of an ungraspable identity that only shines – and at times faintly – through something else. What more is there to a photo than a curious and prurient glance? And yet it is also a fascinating secret. —From Preface, The Concept of Non-Photography This objectivity so radical that it is perhaps no longer an alienation; so horizontal that it loses all intentionality; this thought so blind that it sees perfectly clearly in itself; this semblance so extended that it is no longer an imitation, a tracing, an emanation, a ‘representation’ of what is photographed. The Concept of Non-Photography develops a rigorous new thinking of the photograph in its relation to science, philosophy and art, and introduces the reader to all of the key concepts of Laruelle’s ‘non-philosophy.’ François Laruelle, Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris West Nanterre La Défence, is the founder of ‘non-philosophy’ and the author of around twenty works, including Une biographie de l’homme ordinaire, Principes de la non-philosophie, Le Christ futur: Une leçon d’hérésie, and Philosophie non-standard. An introductory collection of his essays, From Decision to Heresy: Introduction to Non-Philosophy, will be published by Urbanomic/Sequence in 2011.
