Unimaginable happenings: Material movements in the plane of composition

Abstract

In 2005 W. J. T Mitchell published a book entitled What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. It is a provocative title, one that raises the possibility that pictures might just be animated beings possessed of a vital life. In a coda to the second chapter, ‘What Do Pictures Want?’, Mitchell is asked by a number of respondents – including Charles Harrison, Lauren Berlant, Teresa de Lauretis, Terry Smith, Mary Kelly and others – to address the following ‘troubling’ questions: ‘What constitutes “animation” or vitality? What defines a living organism as distinct from an inanimate object? Isn't the notion of the living image a mere conceit that has gotten out of control?’ (Mitchell 200..