rule

“Cipher, not decipher. Work on illusion. Make illusions to make events. Make the clear enigmatic, make the intelligible unintelligible, make the event itself unintelligible.

 

Work on all events to make them unintelligible. Accentuate the false transparency of the world in order to spread terrorist confusion, the germs of the virus of radical illusion, in other words the radical disillusion of reality. Insidious, viral thought corrupting meaning, an accomplice in the erotic perception of reality’s disturbance.

 

Erase all traces of the intellectual conspiracy in oneself. Steal the reality file to erase its conclusions. But it is in fact reality that fuels its own contradiction, its own denial, its own loss through our meager reality. This is what gives us the inner feeing that this whole affair–world, thought, language–comes from somewhere else and could disappear as if by magic. For the world is not trying to exist more or persevere in its existence. It is on the contrary trying to find the most spiritual means to escape reality. It is seeking, through thought, what could lead to its demise.

 

The absolute rule, the rule of symbolic exchange, is to return what has been given to you. Never more, never less. The absolute rule of thought is to return the world as it was given to us–unintelligible–and if possible a little more unintelligible. A little more enigmatic.”

–baudrillard, the conspiracy of art,2005