Challenging reality: Leandro Erlich

The ghosts are us...

At the exhibition…

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Jorge: In school? Hmm. Our images projected into a deserted classroom. Nothing is what it seems, it would seem.

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Jean-Paul: Smokey mirrors. We know it is an image.

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A virtual boat ride?

Jorge: But he is using this as a catalyst to ask the question, “Is there more than one reality?”

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Jean-Paul: A clever optical illusionist. I give him that.

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Jorge: And it sets us questioning what is real.

Letting go...

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Voice-over

Are there multiple realities? Parallel worlds? Or only one?

Borges declared that “Reality is not always probable, or likely.”

Yet some philosophers argue that everyone sees the same things. An extreme form of this opposing view is Sartre saying, “Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them...there is nothing” (Nausea, 1938).

Leandro Erlich Exhibition Seeing and Believing at Mori Art Museum.

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French thinking -isms

Jean-Paul Sartre and 
Simone de Beauvoir

Richard and Philippe discuss French abstract thinking…

Richard: We French appreciate thinkers.

Philippe: Look at all the –isms we’ve invented.

Richard: Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism.

Claude Levi-Strauss

Philippe: Claude Levi-Strauss and structuralism.

Richard: Jacques Derrida and deconstructionism.

Philippe: Not to mention Simone de Beauvoir and feminism.

Jacques Derrida

Richard: But would you include a painter? Like Claude Monet and impressionism?

Philippe: Hmm, is painting on the same level as abstract verbal concepts?

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Voice-over

Two philosophers, an anthropologist and a sociologist revered by the French. Perhaps in other countries great thinkers are not always valued as highly.

Match the –ism with the definition…

For example…

1. impressionism         a. style of painting in which color captures light
                                           and expresses feeling

1a is correct

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2. existentialism           b. women should be treated as 
                                            intellectual equals to men

3. structuralism             c. writing does not have just one meaning, 
                                            it depends on the reader

4. deconstructionism    d. people are free but responsible
                                             for their actions

5. feminism                    e. elements are understood in relation 
                                             to a larger system

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