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The University of Chicago Press and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts
London are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Afterall: A Journal of Art,
Context, and Enquiry.
http://www.jstor.org
30 | Afterall
When I first met Alejandra Riera before a Fontbarlettes. But I waited to finish the
seminar in Seville, she gave me a book in book before watching the film, which
French, whose title could be translated as: is like an emanation or a moment within
the enquiry process. In any event, not
Enquiry on the/our outside a goal or an end result. I will thus allude
(Valence-le-Haut) ‹2007— …› occasionally to the film, but will speak
dated 24 April 2012 mostly about the book, which has a
an image of collective thought wealth of material.
on the place people inhabit
with the inhabitants of the •
neighbourhood Fontbarlettes. 1
The book/enquiry is structured as follows:
It is a book that defies categorisation, and
that in fact does not ask to be categorised, a) a series of conversations with the
only to be read. I hesitated to accept the inhabitants of Fontbarlettes (titled
invitation, explaining to Alejandra that ‘exchanges’) and, at the end of each
I am no longer a philosopher: I stopped exchange, ‘footnotes’ made up of
teaching philosophy ten years ago and commentary and/or quotations inspired
practising it two years later. She replied: by the content of these exchanges;
b) a series of image plates corresponding
Muriel Combes considers notions to the exchanges;
c) captions for the plates, grouped together
of montage, history and collectivity after the plates.
Enquiry on the/our outside (Valence-
le-Haut) ‹2007— …›, initiated by The structure of the book thus suggests
that it should be read not continuously
Alejandra Riera. but in a back-and-forth manner, as one
navigates between the exchanges and the
‘That’s perfect. I’m not an artist either.’ notes, the image plates and the captions,
I let myself be persuaded by this sophism, and then returns to the conversations.
and, carried along by faith, I accepted
the invitation and opened the book. ‘Enquiry on the/our outside’ is the
She had also given me the two-hour title of several projects carried out by
video Enquête sur le/notre dehors Alejandra over the past few years — as if
(Valence-le-Haut) ‹ 2007—… › (Enquiry on it were the only thing to be done, tirelessly.
the/our outside (Valence-le-Haut) ‹ 2007— It is an enigmatic title, or a programmatic
…›), a version dated 15 July 2012 and one, which makes one want to follow
made together with the inhabitants of her programme as it unfolds. The dates
1 Enquête sur le/notre dehors (Valence-le-Haut) < 2007 — … > à la date du 24 avril 2012 is a response to the
commission received by Alejandra Riera from a group of inhabitants of the Fontbarlettes neighbourhood
who, following the initiative of Valérie Cudel, applied to funds from the Fondation de France’s
programme ‘New Commissioners’. Initiated in 2009, the commission was intended to last for one year,
but exceeded its original framework, as this core group of participants invited other inhabitants to take
part, eventually resulting in a 352-page-long book including 12 conversations, numerous footnotes and
39 image plates and captions, with the participation of Jo and Naïma Pino, Hafida Kada, Marion Barras,
Amel, Mohamad-Ali Osman and their children, Pierre Pellet, Catherine (Marie-Jeannette) Lacoste,
Ahmad Qamouch, Luc Fontaine, Rachid and Rachida Zahri, Michèle and Éliane Blache, Daniel and
Suzanne Anquetil, Mohamed Ben Ftima, Meriem Fradj and Xavier Hubert, Mireille Baudron, Alain
Nivon, Luc Baylion and Marc Papillon. See Alejandra Riera, Enquête sur le/notre dehors (Valence-le-Haut)
< 2007 — … > à la date du 24 avril 2012 une image de pensée collective du lieu que l’on habite menée avec
des habitants/es du quartier de Fontbarlettes (ed. Valérie Cudel), Valence: Captures éditions and Art3,
2012. The publication is accompanied by a film initiated in 2009 and dated 15 July 2012.
2 See Walter Benjamin, Images de pensée (trans. Jean-François Poirier and Jean Lacoste), Paris: Christian
Bourgois, 2011; and Gerhard Richter, Thought-Images: Frankfurt School Writers’ Reflections from Damaged
Life, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.
3 A. Riera, Enquête sur le/notre dehors, op. cit., pp.120—21.
4 Ibid., p.2.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
32 | Afterall
8 Ibid., p.12.
9 See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, ‘Percept, Affect and Concept’, What Is Philosophy? (1991,
trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson), New York: Columbia University Press, pp.163—99.
10 Rudolf Borchardt, quoted in W. Benjamin, ‘N [On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress]’,
The Arcades Project (trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1999, N1, 8, p.458.
34 | Afterall
11 W. Benjamin, ‘N [On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress]’, op. cit., N3, 4, p.463.
12 Ibid., N1, 10, p.458.
13 Ibid., N2a, 3, p.462. Emphasis the author’s.
14 Ibid., N3, 4, p.463.
15 A. Riera, Enquête sur le/notre dehors, op. cit., p.105.
16 Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Averroes’ Search’ (trans. James E. Irby), Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other
Writings (ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby), New York: New Directions, 1964, pp.153—54.
17 A. Riera, Enquête sur le/notre dehors, op. cit., p.79.
18 Ibid.
19 Giorgio Agamben, quoted in ibid., p.54.
20 A. Riera, Enquête sur le/notre dehors, op. cit.
21 M. Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, Poetry, Language, Thought (1951, trans. Albert
Hofstadter), New York: Harper & Row, 1971, p.57.
22 A. Riera, Enquête sur le/notre dehors, op. cit., pp.66—67. Emphasis the author’s. The footnote continues
as follows and clarifies: ‘Rather [Martin Heidegger] writes: “Mortals dwell in that they save the earth.
[…] Saving does not only snatch something from a danger. To save properly means to set something free
into its own essence.” And in a footnote in [Heidegger’s] “The Question Concerning Technology” [1954]
we can read: “Retten, to save from a danger, originally to snatch or remove, is also used in the broader
sense of helping or assisting.” And, further, in the body of the text: “To save is to fetch something home
into its essence, in order to bring the essence for the first time into its genuine appearing.” I don’t
understand what is the “genuine” being, which would only be genuine for a specific “we”. In contrast,
I think I understand something about singular forms of being, or about the odour and consistency of
the earth they save, which are not always those that we would recognise as “genuine” or “belonging to
our heritage”, those of “the origins”. And I still ask myself how to return the earth to the earth, since it
doesn’t speak our language and doesn’t claim anything as genuine, that is, as its full property.’
36 | Afterall
23 Ibid., p.105.
24 See ibid.
25 See ibid., pp.34—35.
26 Ibid.
27 See ibid., p.65.
38 | Afterall
This essay is an abridged and edited version of a presentation given by Muriel Combes at the seminar
‘Histor(ies) of the Present’, co-organised by UNIA arteypensamiento and Afterall at UNIA, Seville on
30 October 2013.