This work was created simultaneously with the other three in the ‘Hyperreal’ series. Like ‘Hyperreal 1’, which I wrote about in my previous post, it’s best understood as a single unit or block in a large building construction project. Like most real-life construction projects, the series is under construction ad infinitum, with new blocks being added over time.
I listened the other day to a lecture by an award-winning American novelist and essayist, and someone in the audience asked her about Michel Foucault. She dismissed the question by saying French intellectualism was a world she couldn’t relate to. This was strange considering how rigorously Foucault examined the influence of power and authority on language, from which she herself makes a living.
Earlier in her talk, she had raised some interesting questions about language and our ideas of what is real: Why do we equate reality only with the physical? Is love not real? If the human mind can be explained entirely in physical terms governed by biological and psychological imperatives, why do we allow ourselves to be distracted by the ‘seduction of an embrace’? Why does something that really moves us, like love, not obey the principle of cause and effect, which is fundamental to the natural world? Why are we separate from nature in this way? In a way, I think the ‘Hyperreal’ affirms the importance of asking those questions.
