Artists

Mohamed Namou

Press release

Exhibition text "When a triggering factor is also a resulting factor, we find ourselves in a spiral. This spiral can be extraordinarily productive and virtuous, or, in the absence of new criteria, it can become trapped in a vicious circle, which is then described as 'the downward spiral.'" The Automatic Society: The Future of Work — Bernard Stiegler The merit of Félix Guattari was, from an early stage, to delineate three frameworks of enunciation, three backgrounds from which corresponding semiotic systems unfold: environmental ecology, social ecology, and mental ecology. These three ecologies constitute the field of his ecosophy. Beginning with the mobility of meaning and the plurality of processes of subjectivation, Guattari thus develops a clinical practice whose branching structure does not rest upon a fixed architecture, but rather upon the continuous transformation of assemblages. From this perspective, schizoanalysis makes it possible to observe iterative loops of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization. In short, it involves thinking through the situated localization of desire within the body, its delocalization within the socius, and its subsequent relocalization within machinic dispositifs that produce subjectivity. Desire therefore cannot be reduced to individual interiority: it circulates between biological, social, technical, and symbolic territories. The increasing velocity of information technologies and cultural industries makes these processes all the more pervasive. Through the speed of the inferences they enable and the constant need to reactualize processes of resingularization, these technologies transform the very conditions under which subjectivity is produced. This transformation takes place through an ambivalent movement of appropriation and dispossession of the means of production, which are now both individual and collective. The recursive acceleration of consumer society consequently generates ever greater and faster flows of information, increasing the disruptiveness of social relations and forms of attention. Information is so volatile that increasing distance from its source, together with the difficulty of stabilizing its meaning, gives rise to new disturbances in attention and experience. Phenomena such as FOMO, along with certain psychological disorders associated with it, can be understood as manifestations of this acceleration. This is precisely what Bernard Stiegler seeks to address through the growing difficulty, indeed, perhaps the failure, of culture to produce negentropy. To produce negentropy, in this context, is to introduce forms of slowing down, differentiation, and suspension into processes otherwise subjected to acceleration. The possibility of interrupting the flow consequently opens up a series of potential ruptures: moments of suspension from which a new individuation might emerge. In their absence, acceleration tends to make impossible any return to a unifying form of the totality of being. Biography Mohamed Namou (b.1987, Oran) lives and works in Avignon. He is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2014). Among his solo exhibitions, his work has been shown at Mor.Charpentier (Paris), Proyectos Monclova (Mexico), Levy.Delval (Brussels), Berthold Pott (Cologne). Among his group exhibitions, his work has been shown at Villa Medicis (Rome), Neuer Kunstverein (Wien), Lewben Art Foundation (Lithuania), Galleria Continua (Boissy-le-Châtel), Kindl Museum (Berlin) and AUTOCENTER (Berlin). His work can be found in various public and private institutions such as Lewben Art Foundation (Lithuania), Maria Baibakova Collection (NY, Moscow), ADN Collection (Bolzano), Zabludowicz Collection (London), Fondazione Memmo (Roma) and the Nomas Foundation (Rome).