As an embodied practice of thinking, attention is an active state of “being.” Hannah Arendt’s aesthetics of common sense “requires individuals to engage with others in the act of perception” (Nelson 95) as a way of course correcting a singular reality. The technology Arendt applies to writing a plural reality needs a balance of attention to create the necessary and continuous corrections between “differently situated others” (Nelson 96). Her relational way of thinking and writing that makes use of a “with” not “as” is reflected in a side-by-side visual structure.
When examining Simone Weil’s approach to the quiet space “between the thought and the truth to see what thought can’t accommodate” (Cameron, 216), substantial effort feels essential to move past mere thinking to a full-body practice of attention. Each visual shift in the singular cloud circle that represents Weil’s singular aesthetics is a single breath. Each one generates a layer of continuous becoming that contributes to overwhelming thoughts and transforming them into sensation.
Sky Imagery_01, Digital GIFs: varying sizes, collected images, 2019
WORKS CITED:
Nelson, Deborah. Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil. University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Cameron, Sharon. "The Practice of Attention: Simone Weil’s Performance of Impersonality," Critical Inquiry 29, no. 2 (Winter 2003): 216-252. https://doi.org/10.1086/374026