Clinamen: A Dialectical Meditation on Sensory Experience

This article presents a critical-philosophical analysis of clinamen, a sound installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, through the lens of Theodor W. Adorno's Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory. Rejecting subjective idealism and representational fixity, the study adopts a dialectical methodology grounded in the precedence of the object (Vorrang des Objekts), non-identity, and mediated experience. The installation-porcelain bowls drifting and colliding on water to produce chance-generated sounds—becomes a paradigm for exploring the instability of aesthetic experience, where meaning arises not through subjective imposition but from the material and sensory dynamics of the object itself. The analysis proceeds through three interwoven axes: (۱) a theoretical-philosophical rearticulation of Adorno's aesthetics, highlighting how clinamen embodies the resistance of the object to conceptual capture; (۲) a phenomenological reading that emphasizes acoustic intervals, visual motion, and perceptual discontinuities as forms of negative structure; and (۳) a critical reflection that identifies the listener not as an autonomous subject but as a “listening-object" whose position is shaped by the work's internal contradictions. The paper argues that clinamen exemplifies a dialectical identity constituted by contradiction, fragmentation, and becoming. Sonic and visual elements operate outside of traditional harmony or coherence, while temporality unfolds through asynchrony and singular, irreversible moments. Drawing on Adorno's notion of aesthetic autonomy and Michel Serres' reading of Epicurean physics, the work is interpreted as a site of generative deviation: a clinamen that transforms the conditions of perception and thought. Ultimately, the identity of the work emerges not through unity but through its refusal of synthesis, inviting critical awareness via the fractures of aesthetic experience.

کلیدواژه ها:

Negative dialectics ، aesthetic experience ، object primacy ، sonic installation ، non-identity