Already from his early writings, Vilém Flusser’s interest in both theoretical and analytical practices was apparent. In Da Religiosidade [On Religiousness] (1967) and Língua e Realidade [Language and Reality] (1963), as well as in The History of the Devil (2014; Portuguese original 1965) he addresses the close connection between practice and language, between poetry and creation. His transition from this phenomenological stage to a greater engagement with phenomena connected with technology leads him to interrogate the laboratory. It is no longer language, but images as technical images which undergo a transformation within time and space. Flusser’s own synthetic and erratic writing, seemingly fragmented and without unity, is “laboratory writing.” In this context, this expression has a double meaning: experimentation with writing and the results achieved when moving from language (as the sense of reality) to technology (as a code for technical images).

Another level of meaning of the word laboratory for Flusser concerns the transition from the dialectics of the private and the public to instances in which the two categories are mixed. This means that there is no longer public or private space, but only a programmed telematic world. The postindustrial city (or laboratory city) is a “nonplace” of programmed, virtual games. The postindustrial city, or city of artists, will be the laboratory city and the city of experimentation. In this laboratory, Platonism is reversed, because it is no longer the philosophers who experiment, but the artists.

Original article by Victor Silva Echeto and Rodrigo Browne Sartori