CULTURE is our NATURE

NEOTENY

In the 19th century, a strange animal capable of reproducing in the larval state was discovered: the axolotl. It is therefore established that this animal has two adult forms: one that could be said to be total and the other “neotenic”.

The hypothesis of a neotenic character in the broad sense in human beings has an anthropological, psychological and philosophical dimension, underlined among others by Jacques Lacan. No other living being is born so helpless. Man would be the only living being forced to fill its first nature deficit with a "second nature" : the culture.

The theme of the Neotenic Man could even be seen as the underlying "grand narrative" of the West (Marc Levivier, Dany-Robert Dufour). Existing on the margins of the other great stories that have succeeded and vanished in the postmodernity. Always there, by being transformed. Ingredients of the story : naked monkeys, loss of nature, lack of survival skills, evolution theory, promotion of youth, mirror / doppelgänger, quest of the full potential, posthumanism…

From Prometheus to Frankenstein, how to think of a Man who lacks nature? Weakness or power? Something to assume or to avoid?

We are all here during the 6th mass extinction, sharing the same world. To keep all this in mind, we called ourself NEO TEN. Our job : poetic visual storytelling, trying to reweave humans with the living world. Or simply document their extinction. Our strategy : transversality, aesthetic collaboration, bridging the gaps, mixing art, philosophy, science and politics before it’s too late.

Meanwhile, in order to generate constructive discussions, we are sharing below more thoughts on some of our favourite topics.

CAPITALISM = NATURALISM

the story of Separation

  • Dualisms claim each time to map the totality of possibilities, whereas they are only two sides of the same coin.

  • Two sides of the same coin... whose exterior is concealed, denied, forbidden to thought itself.

  • What this requires of us is quite dizzying. It is entering a world that is not organized, structured, entirely made intelligible from these categories. The challenge is to flash between the two blocks of dualisms to emerge on the other side.

  • Was there a need for a struggle between the finite and the infinite?

  • At the moment of birth, life asks us a question. This question must be answered. At every moment of our lives.

  • It is neither our mind nor our body that must respond. It is the whole man who must respond. It is the individual who thinks and dreams, who eats and drinks, cries and laughs. And the question is this: how do you overcome what creates this experience of separation?

THE WAY OF THE WORDS

  • l think l see, but l only see words. l think l feel, but l only think the feeling.

  • More and more words are replacing experience. The human is not aware of it, he thinks he sees and feels, and only experiences thought and memory. He imagines himself grasping reality, it is only his cerebral self that grasps it. He, the whole human, with his eyes, his hands, his heart and his entrails does not grasp anything at all. He does not even participate in this experience which he believes to be his.

  • The borders of my language are the borders of my world.

  • Culture is a set of stories that we tell ourselves over and over again. The world is what we will manage to imagine.

  • New emotions require new languages.

  • Perception is always participation.

  • Perceived things are encountered by the perceiving body as living powers that actively invite us into relationship. How have we been able to break with these depths and find ourselves in the inert world which, now, is the one we commonly perceive?