Conditions of Production

The question is no longer whether the system desires, but what it produces. We are surrounded by things that appear complete: things that are made, but not produced.1Production requires constraint. Remove it, and what disappears is not form, but what makes form hold. What remains is the appearance of completion. We call this rendering: form that appears without being forced. Reality is supplanted by its apparition. Where form holds under constraint, it is produced; where it appears without constraint, it is rendered. This essay establishes the conditions under which anything is produced—and what appears in their absence.ShareAppearance is not form: what appears complete may not hold. Form, in turn, is not shape; it is what holds under constraint, or not at all. All that appears can be made without holding; but all that holds must be forced. Duchamp isolates this distinction: the urinal becomes Fountain by designation alone; nothing is forced. The gesture establishes that appearance…