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To regain our liberty (and our distance), we must slow the images down.

Paul Virilio

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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
Liberty
Must
Regain
Images
Slow
Distance

More quotes by Paul Virilio

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In industrialized warfare, where the representation of events outstripped the presentation of facts, the image was starting to gain sway over the object, time over space. Soon a conflict of strategic and political interpretation would ensue, with radio and then radar completing the picture.
Paul Virilio
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I have always been interested in the architecture of war, as can be seen in Bunker Archeology. However, at the time that I did the research for that book, I was very young. My aim was to understand the notion of 'Total War'.
Paul Virilio
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As I have said many times before, I was among the first people to experience the German Occupation of France during the Second World War. I was 7-13 years old during the War and did not really internalise its significance.
Paul Virilio
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I don't believe in simulationism, I believe that the word is already old-fashioned. As I see it, new technologies are substituting a virtual reality for an actual reality. And this is more than a phase: it's a definite change.
Paul Virilio
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Sovereignty no longer resides in the territory itself, but in the control of the territory. And localisation is an inherent part of that territorial control.
Paul Virilio
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France and Germany were opposed to a maritime blockade of the Adriatic Sea without a mandate from the United Nations (UN). So, what we witnessed in Kosovo was an extraordinary war, a war waged solely with bombs from the air.
Paul Virilio
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The body is not simply the combination of dance, muscles, body-building, strength and sex: it is a universe.
Paul Virilio
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The thing about collaborators is that you don't know you are one whereas as a member of the resistance, you do. [In WWII,] the worst cases of collaboration weren't among the real collaborators, that official militia, but among the people at large, who were collaborators without knowing it, by a sort of laxity, an apathy.
Paul Virilio
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Television can only destroy.
Paul Virilio
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I believe that the politics of intervention and the Kosovo war prompted a fresh resumption of the arms race worldwide.
Paul Virilio
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There are eyes everywhere. No blind spot left. What shall we dream of when everything becomes visible? We'll dream of being blind.
Paul Virilio
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Writing is not possible without images. Yet, images don't have to be descriptive they can be concepts.
Paul Virilio
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There is a buddhist proverb which I like a lot. It says: Every body deserves mercy. That means that every body is holy.
Paul Virilio
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While the human gaze becomes more and more fixed, losing some of its natural speed and sensitivity, photographic shots, on the contrary, become even faster.
Paul Virilio
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Concepts are mental images.
Paul Virilio
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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
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Cyberspace is an accident of the real. Virtual reality is the accident of reality itself.
Paul Virilio
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I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse.
Paul Virilio
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Under the Occupation, we in Nantes were denied access to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It was therefore not until after the War was over that I saw the sea for the first time, in the vicinity of St Nazaire. It was there that I discovered the bunkers.
Paul Virilio
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There can be no doubt about this. It even held true for the soldiers involved in the Kosovo War. For the soldiers stayed mostly in their barracks! In this way, polar inertia has truly become a mass phenomenon. And not only for the TV audiences watching the war at home but also for the army that watches the battle from the barracks.
Paul Virilio