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Behind the smooth surface of the screens
In his two novels, Théo Casciani develops a radical phenomenology of the present, in which the boundary between physical reality and media projection is eroding relentlessly. While Retine (POL, 2019) dissects and radicalizes the creeping failure of a long-distance relationship in a highly aestheticized world of art installations and silent Skype screens as a “novel of a glance”. Insula (POL, 2026) this alienation in a near dystopia, in which a virtual reality pill and the father's tumor-induced disintegration enter into an uncanny symbiosis. Regarding the genre characteristics, Retine It can be classified as an aesthetic Bildungsroman or a “visualist” novel that already crosses the boundaries into art criticism. Insula It plays with the elements of dystopia and cyberpunk, but immediately breaks them down again to create a "non-dystopia" that exposes the present as the actual apocalyptic scenario.
Where the retina is located Retine While still functioning as a pain-sensitive membrane for a global "gaze regime", which "collects" images and transforms them into silent tears, the brain area of Insula The sequel to the first book explores a morally fraught experience between traumatic grief and algorithmic coldness. Both works portray humanity as a solitary being, mediated by pixels and data, searching for a fleeting, untouchable truth behind the smooth surface of screens in moments of collective crisis—be it earthquakes, fires, or political unrest.
Retine
The nameless narrator of Retine He moves between Paris, Kyoto, and Berlin, processing his world primarily through the images inscribed on his retina. He works as an assistant to the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (DGF) in the preparation of a monumental exhibition in Japan. His task is to create a gigantic image database for an installation, while he himself increasingly perceives reality as if through a camera lens or as a picture plane.
Alongside his artistic work, a gradual separation from his Japanese girlfriend, Hitomi, who lives in Berlin, unfolds. Communication between the two is limited to silent Skype conversations, in which glances replace words. This digital mediation emphasizes the physical distance and reduces his partner to a flat, abstract image, thus intensifying their emotional estrangement. The relationship seems trapped in a liminal state of images and expectations.
During his stay in Japan, the narrator witnesses a severe earthquake in Osaka, observing the sudden extinguishing of the city's lights. His perception constantly shifts between physical reality and a virtual world of images, manifesting in bizarre details such as a red-tinted chat or the obsessive observation of light reflections. Literature here becomes a vivid experience of the contemporary "regime of seeing" under the dominion of digital screens.
Upon returning to Europe, the narrator seeks out Hitomi in Berlin, amidst the celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and rising unrest. He participates in a demonstration on Tempelhof Field, which is dispersed by police helicopters and tear gas. The separation from Hitomi ultimately occurs without words during a performance at the Neue Nationalgalerie, solely through the power of a crossed gaze. The novel concludes with a vision of a man on a rooftop, which, like an optogram, definitively dissolves the boundary between observer and image.
Primacy of the retina as a sensory organ
In Retine The retina becomes the central setting of the narrative, as the protagonist defines his identity and story solely through the "riddle of images." This focus on the visual organ replaces classic narrative elements such as dialogue or psychological introspection with a pure phenomenology of seeing. The retina functions not merely as a passive receiver, but rather as a "sensitive seismograph" that stores and processes the enormous amount of stimuli of the present.
This biological function is closely linked to technological processes in the novel, particularly through the concept of optography. The retina is understood as the interface between light and sensitivity, where images are fixed as if on a negative. The protagonist experiences the world as an exposure process (temps d'exposition), in which reality is imprinted on consciousness through chemical and physical reactions—such as the "visual purple" found in the eye.
For the reader, this means a "plastic experience" that goes beyond mere reading. Casciani's language uses long, undulating sentences to simulate the workings of an eye that ceaselessly takes in images. Literature thus becomes a medium that places the reader directly into contemporary visual regimes, in which the subject exists only as a witness to its own visual impressions.
Aesthetics of the media surface
The principle of "surface realism" describes a reality inextricably linked to its mediated representation through screens. In the novel, there is no depth behind things; instead, the characters move in a liminal space between reality and its perception. This surface aesthetic is particularly evident in the long-distance relationship with Hitomi, which takes place almost exclusively via silent, pixelated Skype windows, reducing intimacy to a purely visual surface.
In this world, the physical presence of individuals becomes a mere “random blink” on a global screen. Casciani envisions a “planetary electricity” in which digital flames and information migrate from one display to the next. In this context, saying “I” simply means participating in a complex play of light, with the subject disappearing behind the smooth, luminous surface of the medium.
This aesthetic leads to the environment often being perceived as a model or a virtual projection, for example, when the hotel doors in Osaka or the cityscape itself appear like a human-scale maquette. The boundary between the physical world and its digital representation dissolves, turning reality into a trompe-l'œil that keeps the observer at a constant distance from their counterpart.
Poetics of ekphrasis and visual precision
Casciani employs the technique of ekphrasis to describe visual artworks, technical devices, or everyday scenes with almost clinical precision. This precision serves to conjure the described subject so vividly before the reader's mind's eye that language itself becomes visual art. Whether it's the reflection of an airplane in a glass facade or the exact pose of a naked body, the description aims to capture the object in its pure visual presence.
This "visualistic" style of writing brings literature closer to contemporary art, as it not only narrates but also "exhibits." Every object, from the red fur of a cat to a cloud of spilled saffron, is treated as a three-dimensional element within a curated narrative. Language becomes a tool for enhancing reality, not merely depicting the real but elucidating its visual intensity.
The ultimate goal of this poetics is the dissolution of the boundary between text and image. Through the detailed transcription of visual experiences, Casciani creates an "augmented reality" (réalité augmentée) within the textual space. The reader is compelled to see beyond the words and enter a purely visual world, ultimately transforming the novel itself into the final, fixed image of a gaze.
In Retine The “visualistic” writing style is realized through a hyper-precise, almost clinical description, reminiscent of the Nouveau Roman tradition of Alain Robbe-Grillet. This form of literature is not conceived as psychological introspection, but rather as a phenomenological record in which the subject merely acts as a “spectator of the inner self” or as an “instrument of the artist.”
Following Robbe-Grillet's approach, the narrator often observes events with complete detachment, even when he is part of the scene. A striking example is the opening scene: instead of describing the traveler's emotional state, the text focuses for minutes on the optical distortion of an airplane reflected in the glass facade of the Mercuriales towers. Here, language functions like a camera lens, capturing light reflections and surface textures (chrome, glass, asphalt) with technical precision.
Transmedial Poetics: Literature as Exhibition
In Retine A transmedial poetics is realized in which literature, film, theory, and visual art merge into a dense network of references. The narrator's perspective is structured by theoretical and aesthetic models: John Berger's Ways of Seeing provides the framework for analyzing visual forms of domination and the objectification of the body, while Jacques Rivette's film The Beautiful Noisemaker The novel reflects on the relationship between model and observer, as well as the temporal dimension of seeing. The figure of the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is not merely the protagonist; her work forms the phenomenological space in which the narrative unfolds. The novel itself appears as a component of a fictional exhibition—a text that curates and exhibits itself.
This intermediality also shapes the perception of space and time. The reconstruction of a scene from Wim Wenders' The sky over Berlin The man on the roof is frozen as an “optogram,” blurring the boundary between observer and image. Cinematic techniques from Yasujirō Ozu and Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s aesthetics of shadow structure the sublimation of light and surface, while musical references such as John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing” or Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” modulate the rhythm of perception. Casciani integrates these influences not as mere quotations, but as operative principles of a writing style that translates visual and acoustic processes into language.
At the same time, the novel is deeply rooted in the institutional art context. The protagonist is working on the preparation of an exhibition; the plot recedes behind the observation of materials, reflections, and spatial arrangements. Through ekphrasis, works by Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, or the duo Fischli/Weiss are described so precisely that the text itself takes on the quality of an installation. Theoretical writings—such as Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto"—are physically present in the space and mark the entanglement of biology (retina) and technology (screen). Literature no longer appears here as an autonomous medium; it is part of an aesthetic infrastructure.
This transmedial movement transcends the boundaries of the book itself: Retine It exists not only as a novel, but also as a lecture-performance and is integrated into exhibition contexts, thereby transforming the writing into a performative element and the text into an event. The novel thus constitutes itself as a dynamic structure that constantly regenerates itself in the act of seeing, reading, and performing—a literature that not only describes art but operates as an artistic practice. This aesthetic strategy is consistent with Casciani's entire oeuvre, which systematically intertwines literature, theory, and artistic practice: in addition to novels and essays, he creates performances, exhibitions, and film projects, works interdisciplinarily and collaboratively, and explores themes such as virtual realities, identity, and social transformation in the digital age. His training in the humanities and social sciences at Sciences Po, mathematics at the Sorbonne, and contemporary writing at La Cambre forms the intellectual backdrop for a practice that consistently combines aesthetic reflection with a spirit of media experimentation.
Color dramaturgy and the concept of optography
The novel's use of color focuses on the scientific and aesthetic motif of "visual purple" (rhodopsin). This light-sensitive pigment in the eye serves as a central metaphor for the fixation of images on the human retina. In the narrative, this biological phenomenon is technologically mirrored through the work on the eponymous installation of one hundred screens. The color purple (Pantone shade #752B58) runs as a visual leitmotif throughout the novel—from the violet lighting in the museum to the melting blocks of ice that transform the exhibition space into a colored "molasses."
The concept of optography forms the theoretical backbone of this color dramaturgy. The novel references the attempts of the physiologist Wilhelm Kühne to visualize the last image of a dying person fixed on the retina (the optogram). This dimension lends the narrator's gaze an existential weight: every image he "captures" becomes a potential final image. Literature here functions as a sismograph, recording the visual overstimulation of the present and attempting to find a lasting trace in the flood of digital images, one that burns itself into consciousness like visual purple.
The installation of one hundred screens, central to the novel, marks the culmination of this exploration of visibility. As the screens flood the space with an incessant stream of iconographic data from the internet, the melting of the colored ice leads to a physical liquefaction of perception. Consequently, the novel concludes with the concept of the optogram, with the final vision of a man on a rooftop or of a rebellious crowd in Berlin appearing as the last, permanently fixed image of an exhausted perception. Thus, optography transforms from a macabre science into a poetics of the novel, celebrating the moment of seeing as an act of ultimate fixation.
Insula
28-year-old Théo leads a life divided between Brussels and London, characterized by curiosity and a certain detachment from the world. At a cruising party in the City of London, he meets the mysterious Ivo, who offers him an illegal pill for a new virtual reality called "Insula." While Ivo takes the substance and shortly afterward collapses in violent convulsions, Théo only pretends to take it and keeps the pill. In the midst of this traumatic event, he receives news that his father is dying in Paris from an aggressive brain tumor, forcing him to return immediately.
In Paris, Théo accompanies his father during his final weeks at Cochin Hospital. The sterile hospital environment forms a bubble, while outside, the world is falling apart: a devastating earthquake rocks Europe, Russian hackers cripple infrastructure, and the political right is gaining inexorable power. Théo uses social media and encrypted messaging to stay connected with the world around him, while simultaneously working on his own novel. Moral He is working and trying to process his father's death through literature.
After his father's death, Théo becomes the target of a police investigation, suspected of involvement in a series of mysterious deaths affecting users of the Insula pill worldwide. The victims are found with strange "semen tears" in their eyes—a phenomenon Théo had already observed when Ivo collapsed. His friend Patrick eventually betrays him publicly, and Théo begins to doubt his own innocence and reality as his face increasingly resembles the digital composite sketch of the wanted perpetrator.
Isolated and desperate, Théo finally takes the stored Insula pill to enter the virtual world where he suspects the spirits of the deceased reside. He traverses a digital landscape where the boundaries between human, machine, and spirit blur. In the end, he finds his father in a virtual sperm bank, but the union remains a fleeting pixelated illusion, ending in a desperate cry at his own inadequacy.
intertextuality
The intertextuality in Insula This is most clearly manifested in the structural reliance on Dante's Divine ComedyThe virtual world of the simulation is structured like Purgatory, with the protagonist Théo, or rather his avatar, embarking on a journey across seven levels of a mountain island. This is in Théo's own novel manuscript. Moral The character Zak Meyer explicitly encounters the figures Dante and Virgil, while the plot explores the seven deadly sins, such as lust. This classical reference serves to place the modern experience of guilt, technological violence, and the "sperm that rules the world" within a timeless moral framework.
Another dimension is the integration of contemporary pop and digital culture, which is often ironically juxtaposed with "high" literature. Casciani interweaves lyrics by Kanye West ("I Thought About Killing You") or Frank Ocean with references to internet phenomena like Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, or the influence of Elon Musk, who shares quotes from the avant-garde author Kathy Acker on the X platform. These references reflect a world in which "everyone becomes their own medium" and algorithms polarize identity. Even video game franchises like Final Fantasy VII They are recognized as more politically influential masterpieces than contemporary films or novels.
The novel also employs philosophical and theoretical concepts to ground its phenomenology of the present. Théo delves into Quentin Meillassoux's speculative materialism to overcome the dogma of "correlationism" and imagine a reality that exists independently of human consciousness. Fragments of political theory, such as quotations from Guy Debord about capital stealing time, or the use of McKenzie Wark for AI prompts, permeate the text. This theoretical intertextuality allows the narrator to understand the private—such as his father's death in Cochin Hospital—as part of a larger, often dystopian infrastructure of data and power.
Ultimately, intertextuality functions as a literary archive of grief. In moments of despair, Théo lists a long series of authors—from Roberto Bolaño to W.G. Sebald to Joan Didion—whom he accuses of failing to prepare him for the physical harshness of dying, despite their literary engagement with death. This dimension is complemented by strong self-referentiality: the text alludes to Casciani's debut novel. Retine, while Théo within the plot works on the manuscript Moral He works on something that he eventually places in his father's coffin as an offering. This creates a hybrid textual space that mediates between fiction and reality in order to "resolve the real."
masculinity
In Insula In his novel, Théo Casciani paints a portrait of masculinity primarily characterized by vulnerability and a rejection of traditional identity categories. The 28-year-old protagonist describes himself as a complex "electron" who identifies as bisexual but simultaneously guards against identities he perceives as "traps." His masculinity is not defined by strength, but rather by a certain physical awkwardness and insecurity that dates back to his adolescence, when he felt shame about his body. This form of masculinity is defined more by observation and "passing through spaces without bumping into anything" than by active dominance.
A central theme is the confrontation with a problematic male legacy, symbolized by the father's family history. While the father is portrayed as a loving, almost maternal figure, the only one to care for his dying mother, the cousin reveals a past filled with violence: the other men in the family mocked the sick woman and called her a prostitute. This traumatic rejection culminates in the dying father's harrowing confession that he "hates what men did to him" and what "sperm does to the world." Here, masculinity is associated with a destructive primal force that leaves behind pain and humiliation.
Théo's fragile identity is contrasted by modern, distorted images of masculinity, such as the digital guru PagaTM or the matador Carlos Manzana. PagaTM embodies an aggressive, martial machismo that spreads radical messages from Dubai and understands masculinity as a form of conspiracy against the "sacred." Carlos Manzana, on the other hand, represents the ritualistic, violent masculinity of tradition, which, however, fails in the novel when he is defeated and severely injured by the bull. Théo views these forms of virility with a mixture of disgust and fascination, but recognizes in them only further "prisons."
The ultimate dimension of masculinity in Insula The key lies in its dissolution and transgression. Théo explicitly states: “Being a man is a disgrace. It’s over.” He strives for an existence beyond the binary of male and female, perceiving himself as “composite” and “contradictory”—simultaneously boy and girl, dead and alive. This yearning for disembodiment is fulfilled in the virtual world of Insula, where his avatar refuses to choose a gender. Ultimately, he realizes that the male self is a burdensome construct that must be relinquished in the pixelated inviolability of the simulation in favor of a more fluid, human form.
Non-dystopia
Théo Cascianis Insula The novel presents a "subtle dystopia" that is less a distant vision of the future and more a radical intensification of our immediate present. It is characterized as a "non-dystopia" because it negates the dystopian construct the moment it establishes it, relentlessly directing the reader's gaze to the ambivalences of the real world. This world is marked by tangible threats such as the unstoppable rise of the far right, devastating fires, and widespread cyberattacks on European infrastructure that cripple hospitals and airports. The dystopia lies in the "in-between"—in a space where the boundaries between fact and fiction, and between good and evil, are increasingly eroding.
The technological dimension of this dystopia manifests itself in a world where Big Tech and algorithms polarize and deconstruct human perception. Phenomena such as defective brain chips in celebrities, criminal robots, and the use of social media as currency reveal a society in which physical presence has been replaced by digital cluster interventions and the ego functions as capital. The virtual reality "Insula" serves as a substitute world for a fading reality, digitally simulating feelings and individuals lost through mass murder or environmental disasters. This digital space becomes the "daemon" of our own society, where violence is often perceived merely as background noise or a distraction.
Politically, the dystopia is characterized by the interplay of state authoritarianism and the influence of digital gurus. Police repression uses the fight against illegal VR substances as a pretext for comprehensive surveillance via biometrics and laser cameras. Simultaneously, figures like the digital guru PagaTM manipulate the masses by reinterpreting reality as a conspiracy and spreading radical ideologies against institutions such as sperm banks and pharmaceutical laboratories. The dystopia thus manifests as a culture war in which traditional identities become traps and genuine dialogue is rendered impossible by algorithmic polarization.
Finally, it links Insula The societal dystopia is inextricably linked to biological fragility and the traumatic process of mourning. The father's tumor-induced decline, whose illness attacks precisely the brain region—the insula—that bears the name of the simulation, reflects a world in which the human body itself becomes the stage for decay and technological coldness. The ultimate dystopian experience is the realization of total untouchability in the virtual world, where the longing for reunion with the deceased remains a mere pixelated illusion. The novel's ending presents itself as a form of apocalypse in the etymological sense, a revelation of the coldness of a world that has dissolved reality in favor of an inaccessible simulation.
Novel comparison: Isolation in the networked world
Thematically, both novels deal with the alienation of the individual in a world mediated by technology and images. While Retine focusing on the aesthetics of the gaze and the failure of a long-distance relationship, connects Insula These themes are interwoven with dystopian social criticism and the traumatic experience of a parent's death. Both works reflect how digital media shape and distort our most intimate relationships. Communication in both novels is almost exclusively mediated by digital means. Retine A telling silence prevails in front of screens, with the gaze being the only remaining link. Insula In contrast, it depicts a world of instant messaging, encrypted chats, and algorithmic polarization, where genuine dialogue is replaced by echoes and memes. In both cases, technology leads to isolation rather than connection.
The narrative structure in Insula is highly fragmented and self-referential; it alternates between the main plot, drafts for a book within a book ("Morals"), and a concluding VR journey. In contrast, it follows Retine a hypnotic, slow flow of long sentences that unfold like a sequence of images. While Insula driven by a complex plot, sets Retine on a visual phenomenology that focuses less on events than on perceptions.
Intertextuality is a central feature of Casciani's work. Retine heavily draws on film theory (John Berger, Jacques Rivette) and the conceptual art of DGF. Insula It has a broader philosophical foundation, employing speculative materialism and quotations ranging from Dante to Kanye West to construct a world between truth and fiction. The texts thus reflect the educational backgrounds of their protagonists.
The narrative space is global in both works (Paris, Kyoto, Berlin), but Insula This space is expanded to include vertical levels. The hospital room, the cruising office on the top floor, and the seven steps of the virtual mountain form a hierarchical spatial order. In Retine The space is more of an exhibition area or an architectural model that blurs the lines between reality and miniature.
The time structure in Insula is characterized by a pressing sense of impending doom and the countdown to death. Retine In contrast, it operates within a drawn-out, almost timeless aesthetic, in which moments are viewed as if in slow motion or through a camera lens. Both novels, however, utilize real historical milestones such as earthquakes or political unrest to anchor the plot in time.
In both cases, the constellation of characters is dominated by a solitary, young male observer who reacts to the world rather than actively shaping it. Retine The central axis is the absent lover Hitomi, while in Insula The focus is on the father-son relationship and the connection to fleeting, often dangerous acquaintances such as Ivo or Zak Meyer.
The metaphor of the eye is omnipresent in both works, but it is used differently. In Retine The retina is the place where the world is imprinted. In Insula The brain region known as the "insula" becomes a metaphor for isolation, addiction, and the unconscious, but also the name for the virtual world of escape. Both metaphors point to a biological and technological narrowing of perception. – Another metaphor involves liquids. Insula It uses visceral imagery such as "sperm tears", oil slicks and blood, creating an almost repulsive materiality. Retine In contrast, it works with cooler, aestheticized forms of liquefaction, such as the meltwater from blocks of ice or light reflections on water surfaces, which emphasizes the distance of the observer.
The poetics of both novels are characterized by extreme precision in description. Casciani uses language to simulate visual experiences. In Retine Literature itself becomes contemporary art that hypnotizes the reader. Insula Poetics is explicitly given a moral charge in order to explore the space between good and evil in a value-neutral algorithmic world.
A key contrast lies in the physical intensity. Insula It is violent, sexually explicit, and painfully real in its depiction of illness and decay. Retine It often remains ethereal, reducing bodies to pixels and distant glances, even in moments of nudity, creating a profound coldness.
The political dimension is in Insula Much more explicitly. The novel comments on the rise of the extreme right and the power of Big Tech as real threats. Retine The political aspect is addressed rather indirectly through the “regime of the gaze” and surveillance by cameras, with the demonstration in Berlin acting more as an aesthetic backdrop.
The Scream
Both novels reveal a form of revelation in their resolution. Retine Ultimately, this perspective leads to liberation through tears and acceptance of loss. Insula The attempt to find the father in the virtual world leads to the painful realization of the other's total untouchability. Both protagonists ultimately remain trapped in their own perceptual worlds.
Casciani develops a poetics of surface in both novels, I said. While Retine This surface celebrates itself as an aesthetic ideal, shows Insula The tragic consequences of the real world disappearing beneath this surface are revealed. Both novels end with the scream of an individual trying to feel themselves in a world of images and data, marking the decisive moment when the media distance collapses and the individual is violently thrown back upon their own physical existence.
In Insula The journey through the virtual simulation ends with the painful realization of the digital's "total untouchability." At the end of his odyssey, Théo attempts to embrace his deceased father in the simulated world, only to discover that he is merely a "dream of pixels, immaterial and untouchable." His cry—"I start to scream because that's how I feel; bad"—is a desperate reaction to technology's failure to replace genuine human connection or the physical process of grieving. While the novel programmatically begins with the word "Good," this cry marks the concluding "Evil" (Mal), a state in which Théo asserts his own suffering humanity against the moral neutrality and coldness of the algorithmic world.
In Retine This scream manifests as a somatic experience of the limits, in which a digital image compels an immediate physical reaction. As the narrator watches a video of a man jumping from a roof, Casciani allows the "scream of the angel" to reverberate in the room, triggering violent nausea and vomiting in the protagonist. Here, the retina, which previously acted as a "seismograph," passively absorbing millions of images, becomes the traumatic interface. The scream (or rather, the physical discharge) is an attempt to break free from the role of a mere spectator of a "fire invented by screens" and, through pain, to perceive oneself once again as a physical subject within a global "regime of seeing."
The scream remains the last resort to seek the "untouchable truth" behind the pixels. In this moment of existential distress, the language of data is replaced by the primal language of the body, violently shattering the boundary between sterile simulation and pulsating, pain-sensitive life. The scream is the radical act of an individual refusing to be merely a "random blink" on a planetary screen.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
