Work Lines IV

"In Woman is incarnated in positive form the lack that the existant carries in his heart, and it is in seeking to be made whole through her that man hopes to attain self-realisation."
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p173

The White Ribbon

It takes a positive act to enable a gesture. In depression, contraction, the plane of extension, gesture, unfurling, action becomes inhibited.
All writing about depression is a paradox, or at least can only happen after the mood has passed, for no positive gesture is possible in the spirit of withdrawal.
What does one do with doubt? The paralysis engendered by lack of faith must eventually be overcome, for the world does indeed keep up its turning.

To find a way forward when confronted by the doubt of no-faith, we either create new faith or remove ourselves from the dilemma. Taking a step back, ironically isolating doubt as a phenomenon in its own right, bracketed off as a thing to be observed. To this end, doubt is masked from its own cause and takes the form of a generative state. We forget the reality that gives us doubt.

Dance.

Dogtooth

Rudolph Arnheim, The Creative Eye
Rudolph Arnheim, Visual Thinking

It is the story of struggle rather than achievement, as allegory of process rather than synthesis. Translated into local codes of application.
~ Francis Alÿs, A Story of Deception, 2010

ego as structural edifice, dissolve
something given and the tense
structure gives way - no ego
Parochiality
Only seeing a narrow parameter

Tremendous relief in letting go.

Mary Martin - Abstraction vs. construction.

A Return to the Thames

The first of these videos is a part of the view from a pub window, right on the Thames. It's the changing colours that made me want to record it.



As often happens, once you do something with the original impulse, some other interest wakes up. It's as if after videoing water, the next step is to think about the framing of that video of water. I find myself making another video with the conscious addition of structures.



I haven't commented on the sounds. They're important, as two sensations overlapping to create the moment, and perhaps in an incongruous manner. The fad for 'assemblage' has been stimulating my thoughts recently. For the 2nd video I went outside and we lost the hubbub of people and beer.

Work Lines III (continuous update)

Edward Abbey

Mugabe and the White African, Channel 4

The fold of one 'half' over the other - a geological fold, physical land based in my imagination.
The camera, we/I moves from the partition (head on) between the halves and takes the dominant's side.
Woman is folded over,
unseen unheard from beneath Man's enfoldment.
Man seeks/achieves transcendence by overcoming Woman (animal) - Woman seeks transcendence by overcoming her animality. Again, Man's viewpoint - Woman nothing more than animal. To what extent is our language of this talk contributing to this understanding?
Language - rational, of man's domain?
Where is Woman subsumed? Within language?
Investigate animality.

The difference between knowing something through language and learning something through experience.
Investing the material with the spiritual - sacred earth vs. sacred thought, sacred feeling, sacred energy.
The feeling of fabric against skin - erotic, not because it fits idea of the erotic.
The moment of realisation - crystallisation, condensement, reification of new reality where the elements/conditions rearranged.

Division between sensible and conceptual/Idea - how this translates into 'eco', Natural, concepts of.

"The proper test is not that of finality, but of progress."
A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, Free Press corrected edition, p14

Quite nice having only limited powers of perception or sensitivity to things. Less responsibility to the chains of effect that lead out of every event, moment, thing.

Sensitivity: to take on - suffer - great imprints from things; to be impressed upon in great depth and length by the imprint of things.
- Not only prone to being hurt.

How do you make a structure? How do you make a visual representation of a structure?
Doomed to fail.
Francis Alÿs a structuralist - the pictures, the walking. Re-inscribing structure(s).

A painting reduces all elements, conditions, to an equality of substance and makes possible the re-rendering of both visible and invisible components on this new plane, for the ready communication of this portrayal and recreation within this new plane's substance.
The absurdity of trying to represent, make real/sensible structures, that are inherently non-representable. Or even just obscured too much for us to recognise this structual form. If it exists, visibly/sensibly or not, can we re-present it in sensible form?
By attempting, Man exercises his capacity for freedom and action and the right to transcend it, change it, have control of his destination.

Work Lines II (continuous update)

Agacinski

The sensitive object
TO TRY
Empiricism vs. Conceptualism

╚►

out of this an -No Theory
experiential mode
of DOING art emerges.


Representing the non-representable through the transformation of painting, through the mystery of the process of painting making real the mystery of the object (Idea or otherwise) itself. And visa versa...
Art being the act, the simple narrative of how it works.

Bernstein

Rationalism being a cognition of dead objects.
Living is deligitimised.
What would be the affinities between existences?
Wielding the critical axe - scything through the problem to pit the various conditions of the concept, question, problem against itself. Re-forming or reconfiguring the problem to produce a new object.


I am like a weather vane.

Where J. stands in for the cynic
<—> making both ways. All experiences, events, people, things like tokens, signs, symbols, for the meaning we have associated with them/it. For our own universe/service. Works both ways —> what happens as this tokenography works the other way?
Empty ourselves out from centre of universe - we are locus for other peoples!

David B. Smith
Charlotte Street

www.speculativeheresy.wordpress.com
www.planomenology.wordpress.com
http://www.k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/

laura douglas

Georges Braque
Bottle and Fishes, 1910-2

At losing ones job:
raw despair
at the primordial fear at prospect
of not being able
to support oneself,
elated at the
promise of new beginnings,
new chances, new
opportunities. Maybe
things'll get better!
Sick of this place
anyway.
Brutal anger at the
injustice of it all.
How has this been
allowed to happen?

www.opelori.com

MONOSKOP
PDFs.

Duty
manager
scoffing
the biscuits

The Overlap Series: Jogger
(with comic event)
2000-1


The Emancipatory.
Emancipation
as
revelation
Sacrifice
-McCarthy

Carly Simon
What's the rule?
Adorno?
(internalising the law/s)
Baldessari

Colouring my mind
Romanticism w/ its
cheap promise of c o m p l e t i o n


plays itself out at my mercy


Imagine, being given edifaces and abysses with our
birth and box of characteristics. The abyss we carry and on the other side of the cut
lies All That We Cannot See. All That We Cannot See - our blindnesses, our abjects, our beasts.
We cannot see them. They look like merky areas
of unseeing.
They unleash themselves on all that we encounter, colouring our perceptions, unknown to us.
Our neighbours,
the other beings we come into contact with can see,
they see our blindnesses, they make form
from what we don't delimit. Their eyes and their
powers make things out of our unseeing and give them back to us as real life encounters, the incidences, the bus stop chats with strangers, the friend round for tea, the kiss, the supermarket queue.

Other people see out blindnessess.

Bird song anchor points
To elevate
Come back to
yourself
Feel your periphery again
Feel your edge.

John Buckens

Exhibitions

Am greatly enjoying the Haris Epaminonda exhibition at Tate Modern. I may or may not write about why.
Saw the exhibition Unto This Last at Raven Row. One piece, 'Common Knowledge' really chimed with me. Again, may or may not write about why.

More Treen

Sounds: roaring sea, birdsong. Smell: fresh green, earth.

Treen

Just arrived back in London after a week camping in Cornwall. Still glowing with the wonder of it. A glimpse:

Canal Beasts

The Canal

We took these yesterday, on a delicious walk from Broadway Market to Regent's Park, all across North London and along the canal. Beasts to follow.

My favourites..

Save Middlesex University Philosophy

Petition
Website
Twitter
Facebook

Novalis Essay

Re: post below...

Writing an essay on Novalis' text Fichte Studies. Mostly I'm thinking about how to re-enact the movements he employs in both the concepts he explores and the flow of his text.

The movement is like this:

One thing moves forward. It meets something that divides it into two. Two things move forward. They meet something that synthesises them back together. Synthesis is more ideal than real and there is a discrepancy in the resolution. This pulls the thing ever more forward towards its resolution.

That probably seems really dull, but somehow I find it fascinating. Lets apply it to something:

I, a person/subject/consciousness posit myself and am promptly divided into two by this positing. The act of reflection on myself slices me into myself and my knowledge of myself, I become two. The two parts of me seek identity (what is known as an 'absolute I') and this search for absolutisation propels me forward. Identity is an ideal that I strive for but it is unachievable. The quest propels me forward.

I am not quite sure yet whether the is a convincing closure to the movement or not.

I want to write about the rhythm of the text and how the ideas Novalis posits follow their own momentum - a rhythmic, choreographical movement.

Flow.

It's a rain all day kind of day outside. Quite beautiful.

Still Intending

Hola!

Grappling a bit with intention again. Not only trying to decide what I want this blog to become, but wondering how to make the changes take hold of me enough to make me apply them.

For the sake of bringing abstract theoretical thoughts into life, it might be nice to post regularly about the philosophy I'm studying and how it interacts with life.

Gonna try this.

Continuity? Consistency?

I haven't posted for three months. The lack of continuity bothers me, but I don't necessarily think inspiration should be forced. My main reasoning was that I haven't had easy internet access. And when studying I think things are going in rather than coming out. Now I'm wandering if I'll start to produce again...

I started this blog last year when I was still in Crete, and it amazes me now how far away that world seems. I miss all the creative activity and the great openness I felt. England, the winter, the loss of light, and work work work have dampened me somewhat. I still hold aloft the ideal of that wonderful sense of inspiration again.

Is this an end post, a new beginning post or just a stop gap?

It's been a long time coming...

These images were taken on a ramble through Hertfordshire in February, the day before Valentine's Day. They are probably a bit dreary, but then English Winter is.

Tree lines and structures...

Tree lines, rivers, routes, veins, lungs....

Untitled #5

The Sky's The Limit

Crossing the bridge this morning I watched a small gull swoop down from on high, loitering slightly over the surface of the Thames, flying artfully -twist- playfully.

I thought about how that must feel, and I thought that the bird was my outer limits of experience, taking me flying while I sit in the bus.

I want to revive the ancient art of augury. (Maybe not the bit about entrails though).

Work Lines Worth Isolating

Molten light thick on a
tarnished floor, flows.

Axiom

Linking Hodgepodge

Sound of an aeroplane descending echoes my growing doubt.


Today I have been buzzing off of:

http://kvond.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/humanities-and-ponzi-just-what-secures-the-investment-of-thought/
Great post on the Humanities and the market.

http://www.omniglot.com/blog/?p=1955
Different names for the moon.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TEDBlog/~3/QHOOODxvVIg/cindy_gallop_ma.php
Problematic film and interview that I like (Make Love Not Porn) because I would too like to see a greater awareness of the language and tropes of pornography and its effect on our sexuality - without necessarily taking an anti-pornography stance. But, as the interview rolls on, it is clear that Cindy Gallop operates from within the media and marketing, the market, and this throws the luxury of thinking porn without the bad effects into doubt.

http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/dial_a_poem_poets/giorno_waldman/Giorno-Waldman_02_waldman_fast.mp3
This rocks! A mantra-like charmer, seducer, trance inducer that just makes me feel great about being a woman.

http://www.cinestatic.com/infinitethought/2009/12/proletarian-university.asp
Nina Power's posts continually keep me on my toes and give me lasting thought.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/audio/AGAT-WomenOfTheAvantGardeP2-112409.mp3
Sounds of the vagina anyone? UbuWeb is just amazing.

Work Lines (continuous update)

The following are lines I have scribbled on the back or in the margins of my rotas while working as a Gallery Attendant:

In longing there is escape from my present
a reach for more than.
An acknowledgement of my present limitations,
imprisonment.

Jeff Koons: funny, in your face, shocking - unreal - hyper-real, staged, ridiculous, egocentric, worrying.
Exposes the crassness, nastiness of the successful art world.
Unreality of imagery.
Strands of sexual liberation and money, fame = this.
Posed as porn films, what does she think?
Anti feminist but not because anti rights.

www.myspace.com/grainsuk

I am inside.
The world is outside.
On that threshold.

Ossification

Where are the lines of taboo? Fitting the female form into that shock factor - iconoclast - shock from images already exists.

I wonder if it would be possible to do a phenomenological reading of Peter Fischli and David Weiss' Untitled (Tate) 1992-2000 piece...

Jiří Kovanda 53

What do we hold as our object(s)?
The way we orient ourselves by whatever we place before us.
To the sane mind, the fantastical is an adventure, an important exercise in possibility and elasticity of thought. An exercise in the forgetting of the horrors of madness.
But with the first whiff of madness, fantasy's dark side, the devils and goblins, the devil worship and evil seeps forth again, makes us shiver, is threatening to our grip on reality.
Is reality anything more than the organising structures - grids - we impose onto it?

André Breton: What Is Surrealism? (Trans. D. Gascoyne) 1936

Uncovering the ground of the issue.
Pulling off another layer, flying carpet, rug. From under our feet (foot fall).
Pull away another layer to uncover the ground, uncover another carpet to pull away.

All this uncovering makes me think of falling down a well,
scaffolding gone, the brickwork is slippery to touch.
All this dismantling of conceptual structures,
and the ground is an eternal uncovering in the pursuit of a ground.
All this questioning makes me want to reach out and touch someone.

Gödel, Escher, Bach
Hofstadter - Maths, early 20th Century.

0845 300 7000 - London Bus Complaints

Fresh round drips off of umbrellas
collect in front of the art works,
bleeding into the wood grain and dust.

Weird, confronting the loneliness, grab a relationship and seals herself into it for some years. Jobs and houses follow. Experiment continues but with the expectation that settling down and moving up in the world is to come.

Colouring my mind
Romanticism with its cheap promise of completion
Plays itself out at my mercy

The Emancipatory
Emancipation as revelation
Sacrifice - McCarthy

Carly Simon

What's the rule? Adorno? (Internalising the law/s)
Baldessari

24th @ A's. Bring food etc.

The Overlap Series: Jogger
(with Cosmic Event)
2001-01

Imagine, being given edifices and abysses with out birth and box of characteristics. Across the way from the abyss, on the other side of the cut lies All That We Cannot See - our blindnesses, our abjects, our beasts.
We cannot see them. They look like murky areas of unseeing.
They unleash themselves on all that we encounter, colouring our perceptions, unknown to us.
Our neighbours, the other beings we come into contact with can see, they see our blindnesses, they make form from what we don't delimit. Their eyes and their powers make things out of our unseeing and give them back to us as real life encounters, the incidences, the bus stop chats with strangers, the friend round for tea, the kiss, the supermarket queue.
Other people see our blindnesses.