Vanishing Points: Articulations of Death, Fragmentation, and the Unexperienced Experience of Created Objects

Deftly deploying Derrida’s notion of the “unexperienced experience” and building on Paul Virilio’s ideas about the aesthetics of disappearance, Vanishing Points explores the aesthetic character of presence and absence as articulated in contemporary art, photography, film, and emerging media. Addressing works ranging from Robert Rauschenberg to Six Feet Under, Natasha Chuk emphasizes the notion that art is an accident, an event, which registers numerous overlapping, contradictory orientations, or vanishing points, between its own components and the viewers’ perspective—generating the power to create unexperienced experiences. It will be a must read for anyone interested in contemporary art and its intersection with philosophy.