written texts at the exhibition Les Immatériaux: how was writing trasformed by the digital turn?

Jean-François Lyotard curated, with Thierry Chaput, the famous and discussed Les Immatériaux, the exhibition that was held at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1985 (March 28th – July 15th), aiming to offer a representation of postmodern society. Les Immatériaux was focused on the effects brought by digital transformation at our life, in several fields: economics, authorship, architecture, human body, and so on. My contribution will examine the many aspects in which the written text and the writing were involved in this exhibition. Above all, the sound-track was an idea of Lyotard that gave him the opportunity of feeling as an author, inside a teamwork, like an exhibition is, whose curator is more as a film director than a writer. In general, Les Immatériaux showed how the written text becomes immaterial regardless of vocal instrument, but in the technological perspective, namely using tape recordings, headphones and local transmitters; setting a net of personal computers; proposing new forms of multi-branching tales. The way in which Lyotard faces the written text – his professional matter as a philosopher – at Les Immatériuax gives a clear picture of postmodernism, of what changes in this new historical and theoretical phase regarding in knowledge and thinking.