Undecidability: Room for Thought in the Visual Arts

My thoughts, when I had something to say or write, were that which was furthest from me (Jacques Derrida, 1978: 8). In this article I focus on the concept of the undecidable as proposed by Jacques Derrida, and draw on a philosophic study of the cinema by Gilles Deleuze to explore the nature and importance of the undecidable in the visual arts. From film and installation art I draw examples of what may constitute or suggest ‘undecidables’ that destabilize thought and create the possibility for an encounter with what Deleuze (1989: 278) calls the “un-thought within thought”.