• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.215-222
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• 2021

Duchamp chose readymades mainly for his denial of retinal painting and his desire and fluid thinking for changes inside him. His thinking is well presented in his readymade works. One of his early readymades, Bicycle Wheel, expresses correlations between beings and capital. Its essence is capital and the desire of beings. It is connected to Desire or Desire-Machine proposed as a social reform and creation model by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Bicycle Wheel does not simply end in desire relations between capital and beings, though. When the desire of beings is converted into positive desire, it can keep inventing and creating something that is repetitive, fluid, and new. Duchamp tried to convey this positive desire through his readymade Fountain. Duchamp created a ready-made article toilet into a work of art in Fountain, being driven by desire flowing inside him. This is connected to the attributes of nomads that refused to settle down and continue to flow in search of new landscapes. This way of his thinking is clearly reflected in his Box in a Valise. He was motivated to create this work by his fluid thinking. In this work, various situations can unfold often according to the directions of two elements, place and arrangement. Here, place guarantees fluidity, and arrangement variability or desire. According to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, fluidity represents nomads with the characteristics of flow and variation, and desire represents productivity or production or creation. Box in a Valise represents nomads themselves. The nomads defined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari keep flowing and create a new world. They are in line with the thinking of Duchamp that refused to settle down at one place and escape from the old order to create a new artistic world. This type of nomads can be called revolutionists or creators that acknowledge differences and create. Nomads also contain the concept of resistance to the old order. Deleuze and Guattari proposed a war machine as a model of this resistance. Duchamp and his readymades can thus be called war machines.