Paul Virilio byl kulturní teoretik a urbanista, jehož dílo se soustředilo na technologie ve vztahu ke rychlosti a moci. Ve své práci čerpal z architektury, umění, města i vojenství, aby prozkoumal, jak tyto aspekty formují naše chápání světa. Virilio se zabýval dopady neustálého zrychlování na společnost a mysl. Jeho analýzy nabízejí hluboký pohled na dynamiku moderního života.
Filozofická esej se zabývá otázkou systematického využití kinematografických technik během válečných konfliktů 20. století. V eseji je popisován Viriliův „válečný model“, tj. forma fungování moderní společnosti, založené na násilné a konfrontační organizaci našeho života, ovládané cílenou distribucí obrazových informací.
Celistvost vnímaného obrazu je pouze relativní. Neustále skládáme dohromady jen dojem či účinek skutečnosti. Paul Virilio v Estetice mizení zkoumá fenomény, které narušují účinek reality a otřásají naším vnímáním. Ukazuje, že skutečnost není cosi pevného a celistvého, že naše vědomí a smyslovou zkušenost determinují technologie. Díky nim je naše vnímaní diskontinuální, piknoleptické. Vnímání i dojem skutečnosti jsou totiž fenomény rychlosti. Příkladem jsou Viriliovi dějiny kinematografie či automobilového průmyslu, ukazující rychlost jako hybnou sílu dějin dvacátého století, pod jejímž působením se rozpadají klasické dimenze prostoru a času.
Francouzský postmoderní filozof kriticky zkoumá sociokulturní fenomény dnešní doby a shrnuje je ve výstižném pojmu technokultura. V ní má informace o události větší cenu než samotná událost. Absolutní moc technokultury a globalizace nakonec člověka vyčerpává a dělá z něj zajatce světa simulace a stimulace.
Out of print for almost a decade, we are thrilled to bring back one of our most requested hard-to-find titlesphilosopher and cultural theorist Paul Virilio's Bunker Archeology. In 1994 we published the first English-language translation of the classic French edition of 1975, which accompanied an exhibition of Virilio's photographs at the Centre Pompidou. In Bunker Archeology, urbanist Paul Virilio turns his attentionand camerato the ominous yet strangely compelling German bunkers that lie abandoned along the coast of France. These ghostly reminders of destruction and oppression prompted Virilio to consider the nature of war and existence, in relation to both World War II and contemporary times. Virilio discusses fortresses and military space in general as well as the bunkers themselves, including an examination of the role of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, in the rise of the Third Reich.
Virilio and Lotringer revisit their prescient book on the invisible war waged by technology against humanity since World War II.
A new interview with the philosopher of speed, addressing the ways in which technology is utilized in synchronizing mass emotions.
Focusing on the concept of speed as a transformative force, Paul Virilio's work examines its role in shaping civilization through technological advances linked to militarization. He argues that speed, rather than class or wealth, drives societal change, presenting a topological history of humanity's evolution. Drawing from various thinkers, Virilio's "technical vitalism" explores the implications of rapid advancements, including military technology and information systems, offering a critical perspective on their impact on human nature and society's future.
A vision of the city as a web of interactive, informational networks that turn our world into a prison-house of illusory transcendence.
“One day the day will come when the day will not come.” Bleak in its analysis of the social destruction wrought by modern technologies of communication and surveillance, but passionately political, Open Sky is Paul Virilio’s most far-reaching and radical book for many years. Deepening and extending his earlier work on speed perception and political control, and applying it now to the global ‘real time’ of the information superhighways, he explores the growing danger of what he calls a “generalized accident,” provoked by the breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement.But this is not merely a lucid and disturbing lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy or democracy. Open Sky is also a call for revolt—against the insidious and accelerating manipulation of perception by the electronic media and repressive political power, against the tyranny of “real time,” and against the infantilism of cyberhype. Paul Virillo makes a powerful case for a new ethics of perception, and a new ecology, one which will not only strive to protect the natural world from pollution and destruction, but will also combat the devastation of urban communities by proliferating technologies of control and virtuality.
Art used to be an engagement between the artist and materials, but now as art practices and mediums have changed, these materials have also changed. Where art used to talk of the aesthetics of disappearance, it must now confront the disappearance of the aesthetic. In the twenty-first century, the new battleground is art as light versus art as matter. In this work, author Paul Virilio argues that this change reflects how speed and politics have been transformed to speed and mass culture.
