“Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.”
Jean Baudrillard
I like being condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future. Cool photo!!!!!
ReplyDeleteOriental screen? I like the way it is hidden in shadows ...
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure if I agree with this quote or not. I've been sitting here for 5 minutes unable to put into words how I am feeling. Hmmmmm gotta stew on this one a while. I think I like what Mr Burgus said ... 'I like being condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.' After all ... we are talking about fiction. Not reality, right?
What an interesting quote, definitely one to think about.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful art!
http://www.divshare.com/download/10430570-6f3
ReplyDeleteBeautiful piece of art, and the quote got me thinking..It's kind of confusing, really..
ReplyDeleteHi Prospero, I like your post. What we think reality is, probably is not. Thoughts happen but they don't have to be a problem. It can be cool (like that green color of your image) living in a land of apparent paradoxes. :)
ReplyDeleteBeautiful quilted tapestry. I agree with the quote. Since we always put something of ourselves in our fiction, it always contains some sort of our reality.
ReplyDeleteDismal
Beautiful piece of tapestry. Dark, moody photo. I like it.
ReplyDeleteHmm... this a 'deep' statement for me to comprehend. I would like to just think of imagination to be something creative...
ReplyDeleteSomtimes seeing your post just don't know what to say - everything would sound chliched!
ReplyDeleteGreetings:)
oui condamné a errer dans un monde imaginaire rassurant car comment supporter la noirceur du monde...
ReplyDeleteun monde imaginaire ou la beauté serait reine,et ou les hommes seraient devenus bons....une fiction non?...
You are in over my head but it sure gives me something to think about.
ReplyDeleteYou are giving us something to think about..
ReplyDeleteProspero, This is traditional fashion in Japan. I have a several kimonos, too.
ReplyDeleteBut wearing kimono is very troublesome to me. My grandmother wears kimono everyday, though.^^
Makiko
I read on Wikipedia that he was a satrap of pataphysics ...
ReplyDeleteWhen reality wins on the fiction ...
:-)
Wonderful shot, domo arigato!
Love your quote :-)
ReplyDeleteAmazing shot
very creative !!!!
Valentine hugs for Angelina
from Kareltje =^.^=
here again... it's so hard to leave this garden.
ReplyDeletei am not familiar with the context of this quote, but i am thinking: isn't this a consequence of the fact that our (western) approach of the imagination has (almost) always been "sur le mode négatif"? seeing an image in the mind, means actually seeing what lacks, the _absence_ of the object, thus anticipating its presence? but what if we manage to replace the nostalgia for the future with the fullness of the possible, the future with the subjunctive mode? (grammar!)
a bit in Musil's terms: "To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames. This principle, by which the old professor had lived, is simply a requisite of the sense of reality. But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifications for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility.
Whoever has it does not say, for instance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents: Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think: Well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not. The consequences of so creative a disposition can be remarkable, and may, regrettably, often make what people admire seem wrong, and what is taboo permissible, or, also, make both a matter of indifference. Such possibilists are said to inhabit a more delicate medium, a hazy medium of mist, fantasy, daydreams, and the subjunctive mood."
The dreaded 17th comment (dreaded by blog authors and architecture students). Baudrillard and contradiction often go hand in hand. Baudrillard, not a stranger to bombastic statements, develops theory about the abject uselessness of theories. Nonetheless, he is interested, most fundamentally, in the disruption of the structures of modern society. Baudrillard is best known for his postmodern thinking about the hyperreal in our society (and I should say modern Western society, dearest). The women in our glossy magazines are more than real, they are hyperreal. Our sports heroes are more than men and women, they are superhuman ... above the real. Our politicians deal in signs and symbols that no longer have any referents. They have become hyperreal. Think of the placards of pleasant scenes in heavily saturated colors that line the streets in Terry Gilliam's Brazil - behind the billboards, there is unmitigated, relentless squalor. We live in the hyperreal.
ReplyDeleteReality is a theme that courses through Baudrillard's work. Imagination is but a different side of that same coin. Fiction is that which has been imagined for you. And perhaps, it is a hopeful thing that we will never inhabit true fiction (a world already imagined for us). Being condemned to the imaginary is perhaps less punitive than it might appear. Maybe our task is to open the possibilities and fully realize the sacrosanct duty of the individual.
NOW the quote makes more sense to me! I see what you mean ... and it is so true! I have often thought that people who are depicted on TV and other media are not real. In fact, we don't even know who they are! They have been made up, posed around, and airbrushed until there is nothing there BUT FICTION.
ReplyDeleteAnd while we can be hopeful that we will never inhabit true fiction, um, I think we need to realized that - to a certain extent - WE ALREADY DO.
I think of Jules Verne. He imagine things which are now reality.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, models changed and airbrushed into something most of us cannot attain--well, that is actually fiction, isn't it?
And then also it is often a person's perspective--which brings me to the title of this day's marvelous photograph...
"Is not!"
"Is to!"
"IS not!"
"IS TOO!"
(grin)