Quote

The field of vision is comparable, for me, to the terrain of an archaeological dig. To see is to be on guard, to wait for what emerges from the background, without any name, without any particular interest: what was silent will speak, what is closed will open and will take on a voice.

Paul Virilio

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Virilio
Age: 86 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 4
Died: 2018
Died: September 10
Architect
Art Theorist
Exhibition Curator
Painter
Philosopher
Photographer
Sociologist
Urban Planner
Writer
Paris
France
Interest
Silent
Terrain
Voice
Fields
Emerges
Speak
Particular
Guard
Without
Name
Background
Take
Vision
Closed
Open
Backgrounds
Names
Field
Archaeological
Waiting
Wait
Comparable

More quotes by Paul Virilio

Image
Globalization cannot take shape without the speed of light.
Paul Virilio
Image
One can't even know what it means to be lost in reality. For instance, it is easy to know whether you are lost or not in the Sahara desert, but to be lost in reality! This is much more complex!
Paul Virilio
Image
Today, almost all-current technologies put the speed of light to work.
Paul Virilio
Image
The research on cyberspace is a quest for God. To be God. To be here and there.
Paul Virilio
Image
I am of course thinking here about new planes such as the Sukhois. There is very little discussion about such developments but, for me, I am constantly astonished by the current developments within the Russian airforce.
Paul Virilio
Image
For example, we have developed an artistic and a literary culture. Nevertheless, the ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy.
Paul Virilio
Image
Art is drama. Any relationship to art is also a relationship to death.
Paul Virilio
Image
I believe that the politics of intervention and the Kosovo war prompted a fresh resumption of the arms race worldwide.
Paul Virilio
Image
If we turn to the war in Kosovo, what do we find? We find the manipulation of the audience's emotions by the mass media.
Paul Virilio
Image
The cinema was certainly an art, but television can't be, because it is the museum of accidents. In other words, its art is to be the site where all accidents happen. But that's its only art.
Paul Virilio
Image
As I have been arguing for a long time now, there is a real need not simply for a political economy of wealth but also for a political economy of speed.
Paul Virilio
Image
To someone like Zurbaran, who paints still lifes, lemons and pears are the objects of art. But to the electronics engineer who works on the technologies of virtual reality, the whole reality has become the object of art, with a possibility to substitute the virtual with the real.
Paul Virilio
Image
What will prevail is this will to reduce the world to the point where one could possess it. All military technologies reduce the world to nothing. And since military technologies are advanced technologies, what they actually sketch today is the future of the civil realm.
Paul Virilio
Image
You cannot dissociate birth from death, creation from destruction, good from evil. Thus any art is a form of drama standing between the two extreme poles of birth and death, just like life is drama. This is not sad, because to be alive means to be mortal, to pass through.
Paul Virilio
Image
Already, viral contamination offers an initial response to the question of the downside of electronic circuits, but another area of research beckons the area of ecological pollution. The pollution not only of air, water, and other substances, but also the unperceived pollution of distances.
Paul Virilio
Image
Television can only destroy.
Paul Virilio
Image
War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there.
Paul Virilio
Image
I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse.
Paul Virilio
Image
In a way, technologies have negated the transcendental God in order to invent the machine-God. However, these two gods raise similar questions.
Paul Virilio
Image
To regain our liberty (and our distance), we must slow the images down.
Paul Virilio