Asemic Engagement with Ab-Sen(c/s)e
Notes on the Aesthetics of Merleau-Ponty
Merleau-Ponty formulates with remarkable precision the primary ontological theme: "What is proper to the visible [le propre du visible] is to have a layer of an invisible in the strict sense, which it renders present as a certain absence." It is this occult, secluded layer of invisibility that painting renders visible, that—in the words of Klee that Merleau-Ponty pieces together—painting annexes to the visible. It is because of painting’s engagement with this invisibility, which, while of the visible, also lies outside the realm of visible things, that Merleau-Ponty is led finally to what he calls the ontological formula of painting. The formula consists of words, written by Klee in 1916, that were inscribed on his tomb. They bespeak painting’s engagement beyond the here and now of visible things. Merleau-Ponty cites them in French translation: "Je suis insaisissable dan l’immanence." In Klee’s German the formula reads, "Diesseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar" ("I cannot be at all grasped on this side, in the here and now"). [from "Freeing the Line" by John Sallis in Merleau-Ponty at the Limits of Art, Religion, and Perception]
Asemics opens up the invisible as instantiations of meaning and of unmeaning, this, where the invisible reveals itself as statistical possibilities and as gap between.
Making Science and Engineering Pictures
