[Summer 2020]

[Technology] is no longer opposed to human beings but is being integrated with them and gradually absorbing them.
— Jacques Ellul

By Alexis Desgagnés

I was asked to write about Benoit Aquin’s La dimension éthérique du réseau par Anton Bequii.¹ It’s not the first time that I’ve been asked. I haven’t said yes until now, for reasons that I mention with a concern for honesty in case anyone thinks that this will be an analysis by an accredited art historian. As an author, I often feel that my writing is constrained by the expectations associated with specialized writing on art. And so, today I am allowing myself a conversational tone and permission to attack the project that is the subject of this article from another angle. And then, with the climatic and technological catastrophe predicted, including in the images and words of the enigmatic Anton Bequii, who is the subject of Aquin’s new book, it seems to me that the time is right less for analysis than for action and, echoing a concern of Bequii’s, for speaking out.

Early in the planning for his project, Aquin asked me to contribute as an author. Although interested at first, I realized that it wasn’t the direction I wanted to take with my writing. So, I encouraged Aquin to write his own texts. After all, I told him jokingly, maybe he had inherited his uncle’s writing talent. Disappointed, he told me how difficult it was for him to write. I responded that that is true for most people, me included, and that the only distinction between people who write and people who don’t is that some people, despite the challenges inherent to writing, in spite of themselves, and in defiance of their incapacities, nevertheless undertake to write. So, Aquin got to work and, as the essays written for his project show, he did so brilliantly…

See the magazine for the complete article and more images: Ciel variable 115 – THE MARCH OF THE WORLD