This picture that you can see right here
Is a picture of a piece part of the project Las Muertes Chiquitas, that I did in Mexico,
and if you are familiar with Mexican arts and crafts there’s this kind called ‘perforated paper’
and usually the craftsman perforates it with a hammer and cuts it.
So there’s an important contrast between the fine silk paper and the hammer that perforates it.
I took the sentence written from this book by Maite Larrauri on desire,
the reason why we’re here today, according to Deleuze.
On of the things I liked about Maite’s book
is that Deleuze was sure about philosophy not being for philosophers, art for those who understand it,
but rather that even if, obviously, philosophers may understand philosophy better, this shouldn’t mean we can also enjoy it.
And in the middle of the explanation, she lets out this sentence,
saying that desire is such a difficult and complex thing
that, compared to achieving what we want
this opportunist mentality in our society, having some clear aims...
so, compared to this, desiring is very hard.
We do not desire an object but an ensemble, a set of relations…
but what matters is to desire, as it implies the very construction of the desire itself.
If desire is a process, then it’s construction, experimentation, trial and error, daring to do something…
it’s doubt, too, and insecurity, and in my artistic practice I’d define myself as an insecure artist,
and I’ve always thought insecurity can be a great creative motor,
is not something immobilising, but it actually gets me moving, which is also characteristic of desire,
according to Deleuze: this movement, this nomadism…
If desire is a transformation,
I’ve written, it means is a ‘during’, an in-between time and things,
not having a clear objective, knowing where I am and where I want to go to,
but rather being in-between emotions, ideas, facts…
and I also think that we never ‘are’, but we’re constantly being, we’re a process, a constant rehearsal of ourselves:
I don’t know what being a woman is. What is a woman? I don’t know what being a woman is, I just womany.
And if it’s a filigree, then it means desire is difficult; it implies patience, prudency…
and a kind of miracle in balance.
And this is also related to the ‘perforated paper’:
what I like about it is that it’s such a delicate and inexpensive material but at the same time precious and hanging.
It looks like they are open, as they’re really perforated, but they’re actually really tied.
So what he [Deleuze] means is that our way of being in the world, how we chose to live in it, is by creating it.
The exercise of living is creating world, or it should be this way.
For me, to desire is precisely to want to live,
as we live and our mortal living is peculiar:
it consists of feeling alive, I mean we do not only live but we feel we do.
That’s why sometimes we express the desire of wanting to live even more intensely.
And this feeling alive is already pleasant;
we already enjoy life by living it, life itself is pleasant.
This feeling alive implies passivity,
as nobody decides to feel that he’s living, but rather we already feel we are living,
from the start, there’s passivity in this living, a fortunate kind of passivity, it’s a wonder to be able to experience this kind of joy of life.
Thus, the fact that we’re passive beings implies movement;
that is, life is movement, as Deleuze puts it, and I think he’s completely right.
And this is because it’s affectation, which can be considered the start of an answer.
It’s because we find ourselves in a specific way that we look for,
long for, yearn for, imagine, walk and live more.
Life is at the same time affectation, that is, the capacity of being hit, and movement.
What typologies of movement could we draw?
It’s appropriate, because of the issue at hand here,
to distinguish between the movement related to what we call desire
or, in other words, that we can designate as desire; and the movement that we can describe as need.
What are the characteristics of need?
Basically, the word is quite descriptive:
it’s such a strong movement that you necessarily have to do something to ease,  at least temporarily, the need.
What about the movement called desire?
It doesn’t have to be read in terms of need
but actually it can be read in terms of creation:
you generate something, create it; you shape a situation, you imagine
and to imagine is simply to work with images, you imagine a situation and then you want it.
In this sense, this is a very appropriate sentence, as the hardest part is to generate, to create.
What do we generate, essentially? Where does it point to, what we generate?
Where does it lead? It’s specially Hegel who dealt with this issue,
saying that the fundamental human desire is that of recognition:
we are moved, very often but not only, by the desire of creating situation in which we are taken into account.
It can lead to a social and political dimension,
and actually Hegel thinks that the great historical motor is the desire of recognition,
translated into a social structure that we call Rule of Law
in which we are all taken into account as one.
That’s why Hegel thinks that this construction, the Rule of Law,
is the most excellent political milestone.
And that’s also how revolutions are explained:
revolutions emerge from desire, the will to do something.
We are not only looking for this formal recognition,
we don’t only want, let’s say, this kind of equal rights,
but rather we also want to be taken into account in our singularity.
A painter wants someone to appreciate and love his paintings because they are so.
And the movement that leads to do things in order to this to happen is a desire.
And that’s why we can effectively complete this itinerary talking about esteem.
Somehow, there’s a type of recognition related to love, to esteem,
and it’s probably the most intense typology of recognition.
In other words, feeling loved, the desire to feel loved, is probably the most powerful.
I wanted to read a fragment of Maite’s book:
‘a gate to enter Deleuze’s philosophy is to understand it as vitalist
but saying that a vitalist is someone who loves life is not enough,
that’d be too ambiguous, even trivial and humdrum.
At first sight, all human beings seem to love life, as they stick to it.
So we’ll borrow an idea by Nietzsche
and we’ll define vitalists as those who love life not because they’re used to living,
but because they’re used to loving.
So loving life because we’re used to loving does not refer to a repetitive life,
what is repeated is the drive for which we join ideas, things and people.
We can’t live without loving, without desiring, without letting ourselves go with life’s movement.
Deleuze’s concept of live, from my point of view, is too abstract…
This life that takes everything, that’s not the kind of life I’m talking about,
but rather each person’s life.
I mean, what I’ve explained with this outline
has to do with Deleuze except from this strength given to life as an abstract concept and not a personal one.
Actually, I liked a lot something you said before, I’ve written it down…
when you say you’re an insecure artist,
as many contemporary philosophers talk about the weakness of thought, but not in a pejorative way:
the fact that thought is a bit weak or feeble it’s not necessarily a defect,
but it can even be a virtue.
That’s why there are some I find to strong or hard.
Being insecure…  I was giving an example of how I realized that being insecure gets me moving, it’s very creative, very passionate.
I mostly realized it by interviewing these women.
It’s a strange feeling,
as they’re telling you very hard stories, as they are related to pleasure but also to violence, but you don’t feel pity,
they’re not asking you for help and they don’t even need your sympathy, actually they offer you theirs,
so somehow it’s this old story of an example of life.
We’re not what happens to us, what touches us…
It’d be really unfair if we were only what happens to us.
We’re rather what we do with what happens to us, with what live brings us and takes away.
The control of other’s desire is a symbolic violence that kills symbolically.
If there’s no desire, how can we live without desire?
And if I don’t desire my own pleasure, I’m dead.
And many women don’t desire their own pleasure.
You don’t have the right to give yourself pleasure or to decide on your pleasure,
and less as a woman.
But the system tells you:
here there’s pleasure, and I control it.
This is terrible.
