robin faymonville

1. If advertising, in the broad sense, is a tax on perception (Georg Franck), then silence, when turned into a demonstration, is an egalitarian redistribution of profit.
2. There is no need to be alarmist or reactionary — or even a progressive ideologue (which is just another form of the same) — to admit that our cognitive faculties, just like our bodies, are subject to evolution. Yes, our attention spans are weakened by an aggressive information regime and by the mental capitalism that seeks to profit by snatching from all sides our "available brain time". This, today, is a widely acknowledged truth. In this context, one must agree that any attempt to render this time unavailable constitutes a concrete act of resistance against the financialization of our attention. In silence, nothing slips in.
3. Silence, as a truce in speech, belongs to the trade union tradition of the strike.
4. As children, we played “the king of silence”. A teacher’s ruse to impose discipline in a playful way. But no one is fooled by the master’s game. That’s how we first lost the spontaneous joy of being quiet.
5. In a demonstration of silence, no one is king. Rather : silence is our kingdom.
6. Wittgenstein’s paradox : whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. And yet, treasures of religion and poetry have sought to make the unspeakable resonate. Mystical poetry is a contradiction in terms. When celebrated in this way, contradiction makes us lose our taste for coherence.
7. We are witnessing a rather unlikely reversal that almost vindicates that crusty old Plato: an ontology of visibility is at work. The more visible something is, the greater its perceived reality. The struggle for existence becomes a struggle for visibility — because what lies outside the image is deemed “non-existent”. This ontology of visibility carries with it a value system : what is more visible is more valued. But soon, all participants will be on stage : there will be more authors than readers, more stars than fans, more speakers than listeners. Pushed to its extreme, the ontology of visibility begs to invert itself into its strict opposite. Then, existence will be measured by its degree of imperceptibility. Imperceptibility, in and of itself, contains the means to defuse the logic of the victors. For silence allows us to perceive something other than itself.
8. An ablution, as a purifying ritual for the soul, is usually performed with water. When the faithful has no access to water, a dry ablution is permitted. Far from the rivers, silence remains an inexhaustible resource for our mental hygiene.
9. After scoring a goal, the football player crosses the field. He places a finger on his lips.