Finding the Dawn

Finding the Dawn
Originally uploaded by Niveau.

When I stare into the shadows from the daylight I see another place. It isn't exactly 'the Gloom' from Nightwatch, but nor is it somewhere a somewhat diurnal species remains without thinking about staying or leaving. Allegorically, one is tempted to say that the current spate of bizarrely photo-realistic animated films from Antz and The Incredibles to Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence, A Scanner Darkly, and now Renaissance suggests we've lost our sense of 'world' where we've gained our sense of authenticity.

This isn't saying I want to juxtapose Badiou and Adorno under the umbrella of Zizek in the effort to unearth a seemingly forgotten irony about jargon (a lesson Zizek may yet heed). What I see in the highly effected computer drawn animations is the crust of the junk, the gomi, civilisation floats on. This sea of disaffected, obsolete, but nonetheless extant technical objects brings the postmoderns their rejoicing in uncritical play. And yet isn't there a worry that the de-criticality of play renders play bizarrely fundamental. The underbelly of play is then first philosophy. For Levinas first philosophy was ethics, "ethics as first philosophy." But in the
Levinasian way we find the Other to whom we are obligated undergoing a process of progressive mystification. Progressive in the sense that the fragile state of knowledge is whittled away by the 'experience' of the Other.

Renaissance takes up its place in the 'neo-noir' clique with suitable tenacity. But you don't need to see the film to know this. One raised eyebrow in reply to the trailer is enough. And it is precisely this minimum of difference between experiencing the enigma of the Other and daring to know in the gap between being and Being created by a critical self-consciousness that gives me cause for concern. Without the daring, without the courage of 'infinite thought' (Scotus), the abyssal character of this gap terrifies us.