Neophenomenological strategies in techno-images. Towards the post-metaphysical ontology

Abstract

The article deals with the deconstruction of “metaphysics of presence”, based on the subject-object duality, in a postsecular/mystical approach. Post-metaphysical ontology, that is described here as negative ontology, needs a neophenomenological tool to be revealed. Characterized by a “wave” structure, beyond the “hard presence”, it can’t be defined as “being” or “non-being”. It is rather a kind of perpetual motion, determined by the trajectory of “photons of light”. This recognition seems to find an appropriate manifestation in a contemporary techno-culture. In the field of media technology (analog film or digital new media art), the negative ontology may be experienced by strategies of neophenomenology, in which “sus- pension” (epoché) gesture would concerns first the “ground” itself, then the aesthetics and narration, constituted by the cognitive/rational act of counsciousness. In other words, the visuality of the techno-image may be a tool of liberation of the perception from a cognitive/rational paradigm, which is closed to experience of what is the Other / the apophatic, wave Reality as it is. What should be underlined, in this proposal neophenomenology is not only the epistemology; the virtual image is directly related to negative ontology. An intuitive, mystical transformation of vision, proposed here, that denudes the discourse of representation, allows us to immerse into pure/“naked” Seeing and pure/“naked” Being. Exemplary materials to the outlined issues are films by Béla Tarr and video installations by Bill Viola.