Acts

of
knowledge
Research project
by

Edgar Endress

:: Acts of Knowledge ::
The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge is a Chinese Encyclopedia described by
Jose Luis Borges, where an alternative taxonomy is listed:
those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those included in the present classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that from a long way off look like flies.

This classification explore the arbitrariness (and cultural specificity) of any attempt to categorize
the world and demonstrates an other to our system of thought. In Foucaults book the Order
of Things, Foucault explicates an archaeological investigation of knowledge acquisition; he
also comments on the fragility of our current means of understanding the world. For Foucault
reasoning is the ultimate act of control, delivered through the power of representation to confirm
an objective order. Acts of Knowledge begins with a text found in an old social studies text
used in U.S. classrooms. This educational text delivers a structural form of knowledge and
a series of narratives about the similar and the other. Acts of Knowledge uses the primary
forms of knowledge -the encyclopedia- to question the structure imposed by the reasoning.
In that context, the acts of estrangement and the visual structuring of the dictionary and the
encyclopedias through collages questions the categorization, knowledge, and the arbitrariness
of otherness.

Video documentation

https://vimeo.com/74478582

Acts of knowledge

dom entries describe and narrate the effects of

the authors schizophrenia. In the journal, Damian
interactive video / installation
describes a lengthy personal process he created
to mask the voices he was hearing through mem:: The Written Passage / instalation developed
orizing and repeating definitions from encyclopeas part of the Act of Knowledege series. ::
dias. Later in the journal he described the voices
becoming louder and, in order to suppress them,
Damian start ed constructing elaborate scenes
from cutouts of the encyclopedias to occupy his
thoughts and shelter himself within utopian ideas
and fantastic narratives. Damian left a few notes
about a movie he was dreaming of making with
the cutouts.
The Written Passage is an installation that utilizes a programmed computer that randomly triggers
the 5 cameras installed around the cutouts. The
program also displays text from the journal and
the music is generated by a midi system that creThe Written Passage is based on a found journal ates musical notes based on the amount of light
written by Damian. I found the journal in an an- available (input through the cameras). When all of
tique store near Charlottesville in 2007. Without these elements are combined, they create a prodates or geographic references, the journals ran- jection of a film narrative of the construction of a