10 INTRODUCTION a commentator, the philosopher is obliged to pay attention to even the smallest of details, while treating even contemporary and uncertainly categorized works as classics. Writing about art also thematizes the potential of all writing. The most basic guestion remains, how can we furnish an explanation for our ability to converse about the unexplainable? How is it possible to speak of that which belongs to the realm of silence? Writing of art also brings with it the guestion of artistic language. According to Agamben, if artistic self-expression is indeed a language, as a form of pure communication it leads us right to the original experience (experimentum linguae) of language itself. Instead of existing language, Agamben focuses upon languge prior to language, namely showing and gesturing. Gesture is itself a transmission”, a revelation of intermediation, which contains both the point of departure and the goal of the communication simultaneously, but only in the form of a hint. Art as gesture is always on the path to communication. Agamben therefore speaks often of the inherent openness of works of art: there is no such thing as a finished artwork. Rather, at a certain point the work of art is suspended, traumatically broken, like a wounded body, stepping into the dimension of silence. Therefore the work of commentary too is an open, infinite process that cannot help but lacerate both reader and writer. Although Agamben heavily criticizes those who exercise aesthetic judgments in an official manner, the inevitable question arises: what is his own taste, in light of the artworks he selects? Which forms of art interest Agamben most? Undoubtedly, literature seems to be the media that lies closest to Agamben’s concerns, but over the past few years painting has also become ever more prominent in his aesthetic works. The range of film citations is surprisingly less broad, but Agamben does return repeatedly to the work of several directors. Theatre seems to be the least well-represented of art forms in Agamben’s philosophy, but comedy and various quasi-theatre art forms such as puppetry and dance have become ever more frequent in Agamben’s texts. In all this we see a fascinating openness to non-linguistic forms of art, and an interest in the peculiar way art can hint (without showing). Simultaneously, Agamben is also focused upon the way art deals with its own, often unrealized potentiality. The real artwork always destroys itself in the process. Only through a kind of self-shattering can art become open to us as observers and commentators, who are always searching for new ways of using art. In the final instance, our relationship with the arts is not so much aesthetic as it is ethical. If under ethics we understand not a set dogma of morality, but rather, an existential commitment to a certain form of life. Aesthetics (as the experience