Being and Neon

“This little book is a jewel of intelligence, finesse and culture, which takes a technical object without complaint and turns it over and over as Heidegger taught us to do with Van Gogh's shoes. What is striking is the ambition of a meditation on the maps of contemporary modernity, on the famous Greater Paris, on the subject, on the plural, without the evasiveness of the postmodern, of the absurd quotation. Luis de MIRANDA goes for a walk, he tells you that he goes for a walk, but he leads you with great mastery and knows where he wants to go. There is nothing gratuitous about this encounter of the kebab shop on the dissection table of the City of Neon. It is rather a new Cartesian meditation after Descartes and Husserl: where the stove and its heat have given way to the whirling sound of gas in a tube. I am, I create, therefore I hear.“

Born from an unexpected encounter with a neon sign on the Quai du Louvre, this book was composed based on a seminar given by the author in the winter of 2012. An inspired journey through the night, deciphering the halos of the past and the reflections of the present to give voice to a certain magic of the future.