Mit dem Zufall gegen den Zufall spielen
Flusser wrote the essay “Mit dem Zufall gegen den Zufall spielen” (Playing against Chance with Chance) for the exhibition Zufall als Prinzip. Spielwelt, Methode und System in der Kunst der 20. Jahrhunderts (Chance as a Principle. Game World, Method and System in the Art of the 20th Century) at the Wilhelm Haack Museum in Ludwigshafen am Rhein that was originally planned for spring 1991 but actually took place from January 18 to March 15, 1992. Looking at an ancient frieze, he muses on the relationship between fate and freedom and between necessity and chance. Until our understanding of history is based on historical and linear causality, the word freedom has no meaning. To achieve some freedom, we must be wary of scientific explanations and favor a magical-mythical consciousness: everything in the world owes its origin to chance, to coincidence, since the Big Bang. In prehistoric times, at the time of this frieze, freedom was the vain attempt to rebel against fate: it was a sin. Today, in post-history, freedom is an attempt to rebel against coincidence and evoke the improbable. Creativity is a game attempting to prevent chance from becoming a necessity and freedom the post-historical synonym of sin.
Flusser, Media Theory and I. From the Genealogy of Thought
This essay is a case study of a coincidence both in terms of a personal perspective of the author’s encounter with Vilém Flusser’s philosophical and theoretical thought, and with regard to notions of necessity, destiny, and fate. In the present essay, this type of randomness is called ‘primordial accidentalism’. The author discusses his experiences in applying Flusser’s concepts of apparatus, alphanumeric society and technical images, to the creation of concepts referring to digital photography, new media, new media art, cyber-culture and techno-culture. Moreover, the author recalls his experiences with the two Polish editions of Towards a Philosophy of Photography (2004 and 2015), which undoubtedly contributed to the popularization of Flusser’s philosophical concepts among artists, media theorists and philosophers.