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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

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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
Certainly
Television
Happen
Words
Museum
Art
Site
Happens
Museums
Accidents
Cinema

More quotes by Paul Virilio

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Television exposes the world to the accident. The world is exposed to accidents through television.
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 have said many times before, interactivity is the equivalent of radioactivity. For interactivity effects a kind of disintegration, a kind of rupture.
Paul Virilio
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For the US, GPS are a form of sovereignty! It is hardly surprising, then, that the EU has proposed its own GPS in order to be able to localize and to compete with the American GPS.
Paul Virilio
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Digital messages and images matter less than their instantaneous delivery the shock effect always wins out over the consideration of the informational content.
Paul Virilio
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... the blinding Hiroshima flash... literally photographed the shadow cast by beings and things, so that every surface immediately became war's recording surface, its film.
Paul Virilio
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Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as it once was, but more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards a decline, it's civic fall from grace.
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
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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
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I think that cinema and television have nothing in common. There is a breaking point between photography and cinema on the one hand and television and virtual reality on the other hand.
Paul Virilio
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Video is originally a de-corporation, a disqualification of the sensorial organs which are replaced by machines. The eye and the hand are replaced by the data glove, the body is replaced by a data suit, sex is replaced by cybersex. All the qualities of the body are transferred to the machine.
Paul Virilio
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Television was first conceived to be used as some kind of telescope, not for broadcasting. Originally, Sworkin, the inventor of television, wanted to settle cameras on rockets so that it would be possible to watch the sky.
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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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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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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Earth is already being integrated into the Pentagon, and the man in the Pentagon is already piloting the world war - or the Gulf War - as if he were a captain whose huge boat would have become his own body. Thus the body simulates the relationship to the world.
Paul Virilio
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If we consider my latest book, Strategie de la deception, what we need to focus on are the other aspects of the same phenomenon.
Paul Virilio
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World War Two was a world war in space. It spread from Europe to Japan, to the Soviet Union, etc. World War Two was quite different from World War One which was geographically limited to Europe. But in the case of the Gulf War, we are dealing with a war which is extremely local in space, but global in time, since it is the first 'live' war.
Paul Virilio
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The body has a dimension of simulation. The learning process, for instance: when one learns how to drive a car or a van, once in the van, one feels completely lost. But then, once you have learnt how to drive, the whole van is in your body. It is integrated into your body.
Paul Virilio
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For the strategies of deception are concerned with deceiving an opponent through the logistics of perception. But these strategies are not merely aimed at the Serbs or the Iraqis but also at all those who might support [Slobodan] Milosevic or Saddam Hussein.
Paul Virilio