I can remember we were talking about half-learning. In-between. This also brought me to the liminal space (see post 1). We also talked about Zizek (post 2). How he constantly talks about the ungraspable of the Real. How we live in a symbolic structure and how there’s always something that doesn’t fit in. That thing is the non-representable. Where we would lose ourselves because we also need a structure to live form. This is the paradox. You could see that Camus is seeing also the Absurd as the paradox (see post 3). We want to know the sense of life but we will never know if there is a sense at all. I also recommended you Cusanus (post 4). Here you also see the paradox. The moment we stumble on the limits of our knowledge to know more, things turn over in less knowledge,  because we see the unlimited in the limited. Maybe it might be interesting for you to see how you interest of retrofuturism relates to Zizek (see post 5). The Zen Philosopher Dogen believed we are already there but not knowing it because we known (thinking) too much (post 6). We also discussed Lacan and Girard in relation to desire (see post 7 and 8). It might also be interesting to include Epicurus in relation to the problem of desire (post 9). In the paradox is confusion.

I can remember that we had a conversation about depth. I wonder if the deepest depth is the surface.  Warhol once said If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.

It’s about the nothingness as potentiality of meaning: the Zen-Buddhist mind. Zen master Dogen talks about non-thinking without a goal. That is why the works of herman de vries  (inspired by Zen) are so simple and at the same deep because they have no meaning but speak for themselves. I think this is the essence of beauty. Kant described beauty as purposiveness without purpose. We see something visual that shows a purposiveness but lacks a functional purpose. Contemplation becomes a goal in itself without leading to an answer. There is depth and at the same not. See post text Beauty. But there is also the sublime as described by Heidegger. This happens according to him when we are present in the becoming. When we bump into nothingness we use history to understand the future, in the nothingness we find possibilities. It’s an in-between state of change, in-between there is the nothingness of becoming because things are not clear yet. The moment of creating. 

But Plato also had his view on beauty by relating it to a memory of completeness where we were once part of, which we still feel a bit and vaguely remember. Leading maybe to nostalgia. By following our love for beauty (eros) we can come a bit closer. This fleeting memory of the world we were once part of. maybe also has something ephemeral. I think your work touches a lot upon these issues (nostalgia, nothingness, ephemerality, beauty, the futuristic past, and beauty as something in-between, as described by Heiddeger.) https://philosophynow.org/issues/125/Heideggers_Ways_of_Being

One of the words you also mentioning was decoration. See posts.

Decoration is a word that is strongly related to the idea of beauty as something empty in the sense that it doesn’t fulfill a functional purpose. We can enjoy something without needing to know what it is. It is as it is. The arts and crafts movement wanted to introduce a lot of decoration in houses as beauty for the souls, as a reaction to the alienation of the industrial revolution. These were functional objects without a human touch. Maybe it might be interesting to delve into the word decoration and how it is related to the aforementioned concepts that revolve around your work, like alienation, beauty, nostalgia, ephemerality, nothingness, the futuristic past, the in-between,  the unbearable self. For the last topic, it might also be interesting to look into the work of Byung Chul Han, who wrote about beauty and the importance the ritual. See posts. He is also dealing like Camus with the nothingness of life. At last, we have meta-modernism which talks about the in-between. In-between naive enthusiasm and critical irony. See post.

Best regards,

Hille