Untitled (detail)
Pencil on paper
50cm x 65cm
© 2009 Tammy Lu

“But what is an apparatus? First of all, it is a skein, a multilinear whole. It is composed of lines of different natures. The lines in the apparatus do not encircle or surround systems that are each homogeneous in themselves, the object, the subject, language, etc., but follow directions, trace processes that are always out of balance, that sometimes move closer together and sometimes farther away. Each line is broken, subject to changes in direction, bifurcating and forked, and subjected to derivations. Visible objects, articulable utterances, forces in use, subjects in position are like vectors or tensors. (…) Untangling the lines of an apparatus means, in each case, preparing a map, a cartography, a survey of unexplored lands – this is what [Foucault] calls ‘field work.’ One has to be positioned on the lines themselves; and these lines do not merely compose an apparatus but pass through it and carry it north to south, east to west or diagonally.”

Gilles Deleuze,  “What is a Dispositif?” (1988)