Agamben Resistance in Art

Deleuze act of creation is an act of resistance (against death and against traditional paradigm of
power/control)
For God to create the world, must have design in his mind already, but where did this design come from?
- Gods creation already contains within it the designpoetic act, that the acting is the creating of the
design simultaneously (Greek concept poesis)
- Like the creation is internal to the act, so is the resistance internal to the act
Potentiality means that I cannot do X
- Aristotle Otherwise, then the architect is only an architect when he builds, otherwise he is not
- Man who has potentiality remains in this position only when he does not exert it
- Man is subject who is always in potentiality
- Man is the living being who exists in the dimension of potentiality but also in inpotentiality
o (Aristotle) Inpotentiality the potential to not do X
Means poetic art is not the same kind of understanding cannot understand art in the same way as
design/architecture
- Art is pure act that has no design, that has no potentiality
In any poetic act, there is always some form of opposition
- So field of act is within the matrix of both what I can and what I cant
Pianist has the potentiality to play and the impotentiality to play, but pianist turns potentiality into nonpotentiality so that he is not able to not play
Benjamin Resistance to act is what holds back and restrains blind movement to the act, so that
potentiality exhausts itself
Potentiality that can only pass blindly to the act reduces art to just execution and lose its resistanceso
empty art
Lack of taste in artist is impossibility to refrain from actingacts too much and so does not have taste,
does not know what art is
- A great artist has a style that contains an inner mannerism of what it is
- Great artist is defined by his own incapability of his own art??
o Kafka the great swimmer (who breaks records) is the man who does not know how to swim
as such, greater than all others because doesnt not know how to fit into his own limitations
(to know how to swim means to know limitations)
The great act is not just that it is saying something, but also that it says that it is saying something
Aristotle from Nicomachean Ethics for the flute player, for the sculptoror should we rather say that
for the shoemaker there is ergo, but for man as such there is not
- Man as workless is terrifying?
Malevich inoperativity as the highest form of humanity the kind of painting that corresponds is black
and white Suprematism

True human praxis is, by making inoperative all the works and functions of living beings, to open up
space for new possible usage doesnt mean to do nothingcontemplation and inoperativity are the
metaphysical agent/operative of anthropogenesis, the development of man
- Worklessness is open space apart from the biological, social organizational purpose/destiny, opens
man to art
- This making inoperative is poetry itselfrenders inoperative the normal functions of language as
communicationpoetry is the contemplation of the language
- As poetry makes for the potentiality of speaking, philosophy and politics must accomplish for what it
means to act, as it abolishes all economical, religious, social works then show what the human body
can and open it to a new usage