Key Words, MAR Reading Group 2020-2021

Reading Days Keywords 2020~2021

Reading Days Keywords 2020~2021

Edited by first year students MAR Designed by Renata Mirón Final proof by Emily Stevenhagen

Table of Contents HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

About Keywords ...........................................................................................

INTRODUCTION

Waywardness and Artistic Research: Speculation, Skepticism, Difference. . ....................

9 10

READING DAY 1

Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?............ 12 Aesthetic education...............................................................................

14 Every Commonality is a Wave form. . ......................................................... 16 Historical collection.............................................................................. 22 Intentionality. . ..................................................................................... 24 Learning............................................................................................. 26 The modern. . ....................................................................................... 28 The postmodern................................................................................... 30 Technique........................................................................................... 34 Film review: Jem Cohen, Museum Hours, 90'.. ............................................. 36

READING DAY 2

Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?........... 40 Beauty. . .............................................................................................. 42

Insurrection. . ....................................................................................... 44

Clinamen............................................................................................ 46 Composition: Ocean resurface................................................................. 48

Vagrancy. . ........................................................................................... 52

Utopia and catastrophe.......................................................................... 54

The right to opacity. . ............................................................................. 56 The poss!ble........................................................................................ 58 Geometries of attention. . ........................................................................ 62 Film review: Marianne Lambert, I Don’t Belong Anywhere: Le cinéma de

Chantal Akerman, 67'............................................................................ 64

READING DAY 3 Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and

difference & skepticism?.. ................................................................................. 66 Allegory - Drawing the line..................................................................... 68 Chiasmus............................................................................................ 72

Citation - Constructing citations on the streets of Ajaccio.............................. 74

Endings.............................................................................................. 78 Fortune.............................................................................................. 80

History. . ............................................................................................. 82 How to taunt the enemy? A guide to a wayward life...................................... 84

Signifier and signified............................................................................ 88

Skeptic!sm.. ......................................................................................... 92

Reading.............................................................................................. 96 Film review: The Otolith Group, Medium Earth & Anathema, ±100'. . ............... 98

READING DAY 4

Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity...................................................... 100

Logics, according to Deleuze and Rajchman. . ............................................. 104 Deterritorialization .. ............................................................................106

Deleuze............................................................................................. 108 Aberrant movements............................................................................ 110 Immanence........................................................................................ 118 Undercommons. . .................................................................................120

Fugivity............................................................................................. 124 Study according to Moten and Harney. . ....................................................126 Battle...............................................................................................

128

READING DAY 5

Wandering research.......................................................................................132

Flâneur. . ............................................................................................ 134 Objects, according to Virginia Woolf .. ......................................................136 Outside.. ............................................................................................138 A flash of understanding........................................................................140

A brief biography of Thoreau.................................................................. 144 Freetime vs. production. . .......................................................................150

Glancing............................................................................................ 152

A Brief Biography - and many reasons for the waywardness - of Stanley Brouwn. . . 154 Film review: Astra Taylor, Examined Life, 90'.............................................160

READING DAY 6

Intensity: an ethical ideal?..............................................................................162

Bourgeois. . ......................................................................................... 164 Measure - How do we measure up?..........................................................166 Modernity ‫هتینرِدُم‬................................................................................168 The first time......................................................................................170

Morality............................................................................................ 172

Intensity............................................................................................ 176 Film review: Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi, 90'......................................... 178

READING DAY 7

Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values................................................................182

Repair............................................................................................... 184 Queer. . ..............................................................................................188

Family...............................................................................................190 Squatting...........................................................................................192

Recycle. . ............................................................................................196 Drafts to a confessional letter from a killjoy to a fellow killjoy........................198 The courage to love.............................................................................

202 208 Queer kinship: a perversion. . ................................................................. 210 Willfulness........................................................................................

Film review: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo

Matteo, 60'.........................................................................................212

READING DAY 8

Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course.......................... 216 The Androgyne: an ode to myself, my friends and my recent ex...................... 218

Conflict.............................................................................................224 Fragment..........................................................................................

228 Library .. ........................................................................................... 230 The adjective..................................................................................... 234 Love.. ............................................................................................... 236 The neutral. . ...................................................................................... 240 Ninism............................................................................................. 242 Sitting...............................................................................................244 Sleep. . .............................................................................................. 246 Twinkling.. ........................................................................................ 248 Film review: Hito Steyerl, November, 25'. . ................................................. 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY ~ FILMOGRAPHY ........................................................ 255 CITED REFERENCES .............................................................................. 256 CONTRIBUTORS .................................................................................... 260

How to read this book

About Keywords

TW

Keywords is a yearly publication written, edited, and designed by first year students of the Master Artistic Research of the KABK, Den Haag. It is the outcome of collective study and consists of approximately 100 short pieces.

These pieces are direct responses to a few pre-assigned texts, listed in a bibliography at the back of this book. These pre-assigned texts are part of the monthly MAR Reading Days, a seminar that supports participants’ development as artistic researchers. The texts on the syllabus are about productive uses for theory in artistic research, but are also selected to familiarise students with traditions of thought and practice that precede their own.

Before each Reading Days session students were assigned one keyword from the syllabus texts. They would then write a lemma about the word, which had to include a comprehensive definition and context. Everyone was invited to experiment with different genres, as long as they managed to meet the basic requirements of the task.

At the end of the year, we organised a collective editing process for the keywords. The result you now hold in your hands. The selected texts come in many different genres and styles. The book can therefore be read in non-linear fashion. You are encouraged to browse through the pages and land on pieces that intrigue you in the present moment. You can also look at the thematic index in the back or check for specific genres that you are in the mood for. The keywords are organised by specific reading days.

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Introduction

Waywardness and Artistic Research: Speculation, Skepticism, Difference

TW

10

Waywardness: to shout back, walk away, escape confinement, resist expectations, refuse norms, pursue alternatives, be at odds with the world.

Wayward people see how the world nurtures some by blocking others. They feel it. Know it. Hate it. The wayward therefore struggle against those who would build and administer such a world: from queers who abandon the slow death of compulsory heterosexuality, maroons who run from the ubiquitous colony, or dilettantes who say fuck you to the patriarchy and go off to do something cooler; when we go wayward, we refuse the rules that reduce our ability to live well.

So for the wayward, the good life gets defined mostly by what we do against the things that are being done to us.

Art often glorifies the premise of waywardness. Artworks and artists get credited as ‘good’ when they are about liminality, interstices, ambiguity, deviancy, or non-normativity, while both avant-gardism and institutional critique aspire to be wayward by default. Art should enhance the beauty of living dangerously! But ironically, such aspirations also posit waywardness as a rule… Surely a paradox.

From that point of view, we could say that waywardness is a desired yet rarely realised principle in art making and research. Something essential gets lost when waywardness is valued as a rule. A rule comes from order and predictability, so the moment that artworks or artists that want to be wayward get recognised as wayward, we often end up at one of the more self-defeating contradictions for art today.

It is similarly contradictory for an academic seminar about waywardness to be itself wayward. That doesn’t have to be a problem, for as long as the aim is to understand how waywardness gets valued within and outside of the forces that make it necessary. An underlying question to this year’s Reading Days seminar therefore was: what are responsible ways for us to think about waywardness, and in what situations does it become a good category for thinking and making?

During the Reading Days we also asked how waywardness could be kept as a principle for those who needed it, and better understood by those who were curious. We approached waywardness in multiple ways: as an attitude for critical thinking and researching, but also a mode of reading, arguing, recognising and/or inventing patterns. With these approaches in mind, we also worked with three concepts adjacent to waywardness: speculation, skepticism, and difference. The first was about making room for fiction and the ‘more-than’ of the given world. The second was about delaying knowledge and embracing the wisdom of the not-yet-made-up mind. The third was about truly acknowledging that, at the root of everything, there is a plurality without order.

11

READING

DAY 1

Foundations I: What is Artistic Research?

And what could be wayward about it?

Within an institutional context, be it the art academy or the museum, any attempt to analyse, classify and display, is inevitably attached to forms of power. In the texts of this reading session, both Claire Bishop and James Elkins, advocate in their own way, to alternatively embrace complexity, plurality and interrelations. The term constellation, as opposed to rational linearity, better represents the wayward approach they propose: a continuous conversation, across time and experiences. Similarly, the texts that follow, manage to divert further the authors’ ideas, bringing the reader into multiple and simultaneous directions.

Based on:

James Elkins, “Why Art Cannot Be Taught” Claire Bishop, “Radical Museology: What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art?” Film screening: Jem Cohen, Museum Hours, 90 mins

Reading Day 1

Aesthetic educationECF #essay, #aesthetics, #physicalculture, #democracy

Between 1917 and 1941 the Soviet government included physical culture as part of its revolutionary project to remake individuals and society (Hoffmann 3). Physical exercise and fitness were considered fundamental to the development of harmonious and complete individuals upon which a collective, socialist society could be built. From an anatomo-political perspective, this was a fruitful deal: a healthy population, reinvigorated by daily exercises, not only would be more prone to a continuous, efficient and aesthetic labor, but would represent an important resource in an age of large-scale industrial manufacturing and mass warfare (Hoffman, 4). Physical education was, therefore, systematically included in school programs and fitness was incentivized amongst the population, regardless of age and gender (Hoffman, 5). Aesthetics (and aesthetic education) played an important role in this story.

The discipline of aesthetics studies the relational logics between beauty, virtue, taste, and knowledge. It designates certain kinds of objects, judgments, attitudes, experiences, and values, most often applied to the arts (Shelley). The productive approach of the discipline (poiesis) studies what constitutes the aesthetic object. It examines the role of the artist in the gestancy of the work of art, and questions the notions of creativity, imagi­ nation, and inspiration. The receptive approach (aisthesis—closer to its greek roots: aisthetikos (Online Etymology Dictionary)—analyzes the aesthetic experience. It focuses on the recipient of the experience (mostly, the viewer) and exa­mines the nature of perception itself.

Both approaches are remarkably present in Soviet physical culture.

One of the purposes of the Soviet government pursuing the physical instruction of bodies was to make them able to produce aesthetic labor. This aligns with the marxist idea of dismantling work alienation, according to which workers should receive the benefits of their own labor, as much as be able to enjoy voluntary, recreational, and fulfilling jobs. Hence, the aesthetic object of physical culture was harmony, and its methodology physical exercise.

This form of labor, though apparently far from art, is not so distant from the ideals of beauty and virtue that prevailed during the middle ages, and which constituted for several centuries the object of aesthetics. It is also close to the notions of harmony and proportion that bloomed during the renaissance and which laid out the foundations of the modern discipline (Givone). There is, however, a notable exception: the responsibility of generating aesthetic objects was not reserved to artists or literates—anyone could achieve this objective with enough training. Therefore, the purpose of physical culture was no other than democratizing aesthetics.

But exercise wasn’t enough by itself and to achieve the fulfillment of their ambitious project, soviet authorities required the support of mass media communication.

To engage with their public, they produced posters and photographs that projected images of well-proportioned, vigorous, muscular bodies (Hoffman, 7), often accompanied by diverse body-machine hybridisations, in a call to a technology-led progress.

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Givone, Sergio. Historia de la Estética. Tecnos Hoffman, David. Bodies of Knowledge - Physical Culture and the New Soviet Person. Ohio State University Shelley, James, "The Concept of the Aesthetic", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/ entries/aesthetic-concept/ Online Etymology Dictionary. URL: https://www.etymonline.com/word/aesthetic

Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

A thorough knowledge of aesthetics and cunning use of the aesthetic experience was needed to create such a display.

Today, an aesthetic review of these visual materials could walk us through a rich lexicon of symbols and codes that, together with the right historical information, would offer an insightful view of the values that articulated Soviet society, and which, eventually, led to its downfall. However, to the non trained eye they might resemble vintage commercials in a second hand decoration store.

Long Live the Soviet Physical Culture Athletes!"

For Elkins, aesthetic education is all about learning to appreciate art. He also warns art educators from “making art a matter of aesthetic education” (Elkins 107). He seems afraid that a systematic inoculation of norms and methodologies may turn art into mere instruction, exposing it to all kinds of biases (just like soviet physical culture was, after all, militarized). His fears are justified, but I wonder if he fails to see the wood for the trees.

In the present context of absolute demo­ cratization of the means of production, distribution and access to images, and 24/7 exposure to visual stimuli, the skills to criti­ cally engage with visual materials should no longer be a matter for a few art students and academics. Insisting on the idea that aesthetics is just an elitist discipline means denying the proliferation of a visually illite­ rate population, unaware of how images today are generated, technology-mediated, and mass-distributed; unable to differentiate CGI from real life imaginaries and ignorant of the political implications behind

- USSR, 1939

everyday icons. Ironically, the democratization of the visual without the adequate education to deal with it is putting demo­ cracy itself at risk.

Against the swarm of memes, fake news, and deepfakes, aesthetics should be central in the basic education of young citizens, and visual-fitness should be incentivated in the population of all ages too. Failing to address this issue will only lead to exposing our whole culture to the social, economical, and political biases dictated by fashion (and other kinds of fascism). Hence, a revisited version of aesthetics, reframed beyond art and art schools, seems crucial for safeguarding democratic principles, and, moreover, for developing critical and forward-thinking individuals, upon which a more collective-oriented society could be built. The goal of Soviet physical culture seems not so far after all.

15

Reading Day 1

Every Commonality is a Wave formXK #fiction, #aristocracy, #persianpoetry, #exoticism, #Paris

Paris / Le Jules Verne I was in Paris to celebrate my grandfather’s 70th birthday. One of my uncles had decided to fly in relatives and family members from close and far, which for most visitors to this very lavish birthday party meant either a convenient flight from Scandinavia, or an exhausting time-zone crossing flight from New England, in North America.

The birthday party had become the perfect disguise for a week-long family reunion which would culminate in my uncle renting the whole Le Jules Verne restaurant in the Eiffel tower. I sighed when I heard of my uncle’s plan, I was not at all surprised, rather relieved, because— if you knew my uncle, you would know that it could have been much worse. He might say things such as ‘only the best is best for The best’, while stressing the last of the two definite articles and gesticulating with his open palm, like a conductor over his orchestra. I couldn’t wait, I say this with the most bitter irony, to hear his speech in this Michelin starred restaurant named after a mediocre adventure nove­ list writing for men, who find refuge imagining that they’re traveling around the globe in 80 days, or going to the moon (aka men who struggles with a midlife crisis).

Despair was inevitable. I started to self medicate with tea made of St John’s wort as soon as I heard about my uncle’s plan. My aunt was just as enthusiastic as my uncle, and had started to organize the performative aspect of the dinner; her idea was that each branch of the family would contribute with something: a speech, a song, a collective dance, playing the restaurants piano or a violin or any other instruments of any sort that secretly could be smuggled into the restaurant, so that grandpa would have no opportunity to figure out what was in the making.

Grandpa / Rumi Poor dear grandpa, he hated all kinds of public displays of wealth.

His mother was the last heiress to the small nobel family of Night and Day [Natt och Dag], and since the Scandinavian laws of nobility only recognized men as legitimate reproducers of a nobel bloodline, the poetic and ancient name of Night and Day saw its last day in her.

According to grandpa she hated all kinds of public displays, not only of wealth, but also of affections and opinions; to put it in his own words – she would even make a Victorian priest feel ashamed. He grew up in the compounds of the nordic embassies in Berlin, and one year before he started his studies at Harvard, he received, probably thanks to his fathers contacts, a minor internship position at the Swedish embassy in Teheran. In Iran he fell in love with the poetry of

16

Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, which, years later, he would introduce to me. I remember how when I was little we used to sneak away on Christmas Eve to his library, where we would light a candle, open a box of baklava, and read poems of Rumi.

On the day I die, when I’m being carried toward the grave, don’t weep. Don’t say, He’s gone! He’s gone. Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets and the moon sets, but they’re not gone.

Death is coming together. The tomb looks like a prison, but it’s really release into union. The human seed goes down in the ground like a bucket into the well where Joseph is. It grows and comes up full of some unimagined beauty.

Your mouth closes here, and immediately opens with a shout of joy there.

My own father was the one who took up the diplomatic tradition left after my great grandfather and became the third western diplomat ever posted in North Korea. My uncle, on the other hand, was of another sort. Even if he was the son of my grandfather, he didn’t have the upbringing of a diplomat nor nobility. Instead, he loved math and engineering; and after having been a fundamental part of the team inventing 4G, he became a multi-millionaire. He himself didn’t change his lifestyle at all, he kept on living in a small apartment, but relocated it to Monaco; he never really liked the cold of northern Europe. All his spending was instead a way for him to show his affection. He was, like so many mathematicians, not especially good with words. And even though I hated this marvel in opulence, that plenty of my relatives genuinely enjoyed, I couldn’t not love my uncle, because after all he had a heart of gold and was so loyal that it would be more likely for a stone to spontaneously evaporate than for him to break a promise.

My Aunt / Pronunciation Either way, my aunt expected me to read several poems during the dinner. She knew I loved poetry and she knew that it would mean a lot to my grandfather because of our common interest in Persian literature. She had called me a few weeks before: ‘I have never understood what you and my father see in that Arabic poet you two love so much, Romi or what’s he called, but I do know that he’s dear to both of you, and I do know that nothing would make your grandfather happier than having you read a few poems of Romi. Maybe you even could read one in Arabic, that would most truly make him happy, wouldn’t it?’. I remember it so clearly because afterwards I regretted that I sounded so irritated in my abrupt reply: “Persian, Rumi is Persian, and the language is Persian. How hard can it be?”. She was silent, and I regretted my not so well thought out outburst as soon as I said it. I more or less knew, in the midst of this silence, what would

17

Reading Day 1 come, both she and my father had these passive aggressive tendencies, especially when they felt that they where at risk of coming off as stupid in front of people they loved: ‘You know I always wondered how my father’s reading voice sounded like, he never read anything for us, neither to me nor to you father, he was to busy then, or that was what they told us. I think that we somehow reminded him of his own parents, they were very very strict, you know, so it was easier for him to laugh and share his inner life with you, the grandchildren. Either way, he loves you very much and I am sorry that I used the wrong nationality of that poet, it was not at all my intention and you know that.’ I couldn’t say that Arabic or being arab is not a nationality nor that the persian language is more complex than solely the border of a nation, or that Rumi actually was born in what today is Afghanistan, it would only make it all worse. So I just said that I’m sorry and of course I will read a few poems during the dinner. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to read one in Persian but I’ll try to do my best to learn and fully grasp the pronunciation.

Père-Lachaise / Wilde I had one afternoon shaken off my brothers and cousins. I don’t know how my parents had done it, but they had succeeded in shaking off all of us long before I did. I knew where they went, my father and mother both loved Degas, especially the blue ones in Musée d’Orsay.

They could stare and glare at the blues of the pastels and paintings of Degas for hours. The petite dancers, dressed by Degas in sublime colors, had become a symbol or even a totem of their unity, their life together, not only as husband and wife, but as comrades, as they sometimes giggling (like little girls) would call each other.

I was twenty at the time and had, quite like a cliché of a young European woman, evolved a small obsession for Oscar Wilde. So, when I finally was alone, I took the metro to Père-Lachaise. I painted my lips, fending off the movements of the metro car while holding the scarlet red lipstick in one hand and a pocket mirror in the other.

My lips were pouring with redness, layer after layer making them shine. Their presence forced the eyes of passers-by, willingly or unwillingly, to look. My goal was set, my goal was clear: I know it’s silly, but I had decided to kiss his grave – no matter what the sign, asking you not to, said Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust…

I thought I did all this out of mere fun, to smile at the practice of living the cliché, but Père-Lachaise, to my surprise, made me feel more empty and shallow than I ever could have imagined. There I

18

Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it? walked around the city of the dead. Grave after grave, amongst past celebrities and true geniuses. On some graves there were flowers slowly dying. It felt defiling somehow, that we the living, put the most brief beauty in the world, a flower without roots, on the grave of the dead; as if we wished to stress their non-existence, pointing our fingers saying, you’re not worth more than a dried out petal. The only life I saw was crows, the scavengers of cities, and an old lady in her late 80’s. Her curved back made her eyes unable to rest anywhere else than on the dirt of the ground. She was the reminiscence of the city, what it was and what it once had wanted to become, but never became. Now the scavengers were waiting for her. And what did I do? I passed the grave of Edith Piaf, humed non, je ne regrette rien, than kissed this queer mans grave as if I would have been important to him. I felt dirty – not necessarily because I felt disrespectful, but because I understood that I have no clue what true respectfulness is.

Only the scavengers know… and they know that we’re oh so lost.

Lilies / Darwish and Gavalda I think I left Père-Lachaise through the west gate, but honestly it could have been any of them, because it felt like I was walking in a thick fog. I let my feet lead the way and they took me onto random paths. Luckily the Parisian streets came to my rescue in making me fantasize about being a 19th century flâneur. An independent man, not bound to the fact of actually being chained to the realities of the second sex I actually was. These feelings of endless liberty made my humor rise more.

Earlier in the morning I had finished reading the pulp novel Billie by Anna Gavalda. The main-characters of the novel, Billie and Franck, were very close and dependent upon each other when growing up.

They had this intimate friendship, not in erotic or sexual terms but, in the sense of being interlaced into one emotional entity. Growing up it seemed as if they, at least, on a superficial level grew apart; but in actuality they just had a need to find a way to exist without the presence of the other; before being able to truly rejoin again. During this period of distance and separation they had the routine of regularly meeting once a year, always having a drink at one of the luxurious hotels in Paris. Luxury hotels, such as Hyatt or the Ritz, consist of a universe of their own. A parallel society unique to all of these high-end luxury hotels, with its own bureaucracy, its own versions of everything between postal systems and police reinforcements. A societal system separate from the political transformations outside of its walls, creating a sense of beyondness amongst its inhabitants, an own sense of civic identity, transcending geo-political borders and national affiliations. Since this world within the luxury hotels was so different from Billie’s and Franck’s everyday life, and foremost their abusive working class childhood in a small town in rural France, it somehow, through it’s otherworldly surreality, created a gap in their space-time, which became a foundation for their reunion. The separateness of this peculiar milieu, made it possible for them to meet without dealing, or even being reminded of, all the scars from their childhood, which neither of them were yet ready to deal with. Due to

19

Reading Day 1 all of this, I had made myself sincerely keen on the idea of having a cup of hot chocolate at one of these hotels, extending the experience of the novel I just finished.

One detail that now becomes quite important for this anecdote of mine is that when I left Père-Lachaise I passed a flower shop, where white lilies were sold. I bought one and, to the vendor’s surprise, attached it to my blouse, using one of the buttonholes. It looked clumsy but the quirkiness of it was very enjoyable. You might not know it, but the white lily, especially when fastened like this in a shirt or blouse, is a symbol for Palestinian peaceful resistance in literary and cultured circles of the arab world. It comes from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem A soldiers dream of white lilies, which in the most delicate way depicts an Israeli soldier in a conversation with a Palestinian subject. […]

- I dreamt of white lilies, an olive branch, a bird embracing the dawn in a lemon tree.

- And what did you see?

- I saw what I did: a blood-red boxthorn.

I blasted them in the sand...in their chests...in their bellies.

- How many did you kill?

- It’s impossible to tell. I only got one medal. [...]

The young man / Tunis A young man, most probably my own age, sat in a group of older gentlemen, next to the window of the restaurant located in The Ritz, at Place Vendôme. He followed the white lily with his eyes until it took a seat with me at a table further into the restaurant. He gazed at me and occasionally our eyes met. I gave him a quite kooky smile to show him that I was aware of the unusualness of the lily in my blouse.

The whole thing made me giggle, especially when he tried to hide a laugh but did not fully succeeded in covering up its traits. Anyhow, I felt obliged to direct my focus towards a cup of hot chocolate, that so kindly had been brought to me by the butler not long after I had seated, and to the colossal Shahnameh, the Persian book of Kings, which I had carried around in my bag the whole day. I had decided to read an extract from Shahnameh at the Eiffel tower dinner that would be held within a few days together with two other poems; the earlier mentioned, On the day I die by Rumi, and finishing with one of my own favorite poems, The Rain Song, by the iraqi poet Badr Shakir al Sayyab, which I also, to further please my aunt, would read in Arabic.

When I was born, my father was still working at the embassy in North Korea. Hence, I spent my very first years in Pyongyang. I have no memories from there, for me it’s barely more than a name written on a piece of paper and a quite uncommon, even exotic, birthplace compared to most of my friends and acquaintances. Anyways, it was our home, until my father could be reposted to a diplomatic mission

20

Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it? somewhere where it would be easier for my mother and my brothers (and me) to move freely (yet specifically my own inability to move in North Korea was caused, not necessarily by the intricate politi­ cal situation, but rather by my corporeality as baby). That’s how I came to Tunis. Tunis feels like home for me; the evening breezes from the mediterranean, the callings to prayer by the muezzins, and street vendors shouting out their bargains. It is somewhat surreal, not having citizenship in the country where you not only grew up, but where you also feel most at home. My passport says Sweden, but I never really learnt how to stop my homesickness with the midnight sun, blueberry abundant pine forests, clean streets, and well-structured recycling stations. Tunis is the reason why I know at least the basics of Arabic. Tunis is also the reason why french, rather than swedish, in many aspects feels like my first language, and not my second or third. There were so many francophone diplomats and embassy workers in Tunis, that french had become the lingua franca in its international kindergartens and schools.

The Prince / The New Beginning The young man had left his table without me noticing, and now he was standing in front of mine, clearing his throat. »Sorry miss, the lily… is the lily… « It seemed as if he was searching for the appropriate words. I couldn’t possibly know that he was Arabic, but I decided to take the chance, if he was, he surely would be surprised, and if not, it would at least leave him breathless, before I could answer him in English. And since he was asking about the lily it felt like the most reasonable thing to do, so I simply recited the first verse of the Darwish poem in question. I knew it by heart, thanks to the fact that I had listened to all the different versions of it on youtube, where the poem was set to music in a multitude of ways. ‫بلا قبانزلاب ملح‬ ٌ ‫ءاض‬ ‫نوتٌز نصغب‬ ‫ءاسملا ًف قروملا اهردصب‬ He looked more than surprised, he looked shocked. And after a short silence between us, that felt like forever and made me feel genuinely scared that I had made a total fool of myself, something very beautiful happened. He started where I had left the poem, following the edict of tradition. ‫رٔياطب – ًل لاق – ملح‬ ‫نومٌل رهزب‬ ‫شألا مهفٌ مل ̨ هملح فسلفٌ ملو‬ ٌ ‫ءا‬ ‫ اهسّ حٌ امم لّ ٕا‬.. ٌ‫اهمّ ش‬ Now it was my turn to look surprised. And this little shared experience of astonishment made us both let down our guards, which we humans normally tend to have towards each other, and not towards strangers. So when he asked if he could take a seat, it felt as if I had been waiting for someone who finally had arrived.

21

Reading Day 1

Historical CollectionRM #essay, #challengethemuseumcollection, #beauty

Pristine marble shelves support dusted treasures, untouched, proud, significant.

They accompany human history, eviden­ cing a consecutive tale of progress. A linear perception of time is useful. It is consequent.

However, it leaves an echoing empty room of the untold; the once unspeakable.

Historical collections are part of a testimony of the common ground, of that which builds an identity throughout communities, or nations. They are the voice however not of an absolute universal consensus but of an exclusionary authority confined in the enclosure of her times. The attempt to establish a collection that speaks with a global voice is hopeless. Instead, a museum could shape its collection to speak from singular voices who were once muted and subdued.

Immediate assumptions of what an art object represents can potentially be used to the museum’s advantage. Re-locating the familiar association as a complement instead of as protagonist may be a good strategy to induce a new reading of history, supported by other art works and documentation. It is however fundamental to acknowledge that historical collections have a limited potential, restricted not by the amount of works they contain but by the subjectivity of their reading. The power, influence, and public presence among the largest museums in the world—despite their close resemblance to capitalism—are a good starting point of experimentation in how objects can be displayed to a public, thirsty for consumption. Ideally, the viewer should be presented with a challenge and be incited to begin an internal debate. What do

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Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

I agree with in this space? Do I see my life pictured in that history? What is missing in this spectrum? Sadly, reflection is not easily induced. The museum competes against the digital feeds and endless threads. Novelty in our times has a redundant definition.

craft, technology, and business, but also between raw human emotions and desires.

The fact that the exhibition was housed in the Met Museum gave the work a heavier weight, accompanied by centuries of antiquity.

While art institutions have a crucial responsibility to take a political stand, contemporary artists should be permitted to explore their imagination, obsessions, and dreams. Yes, art should inspire change, expand possibilities, propose alternative presents and futures, change adults’ minds and repurpose youth’s ambitions, but also: shouldn’t art be an escape from the mundane of daily life and from horrific world speculations? Is it negligent to reintroduce beauty into our artistic language to escort politics into the museum?

Beauty in McQueen’s work is indeed savage, palpable, primordial, but also desirable. As former director of the Victoria & Albert museum Elizabeth Esteve-Coll asked: Could contemporary art become more popular—as McQueen’s name did—without trivializing? Isn’t beauty a good strategy to attract more audiences to the museum?

Savage Beauty, a retrospective exhibition of artist and fashion designer Alexander McQueen, presented his iconic silhouettes, his ingenious use of craftsmanship, and the fantasy world he created around his work.

He made the industry rethink the purpose of fashion and made the public aware of its interconnections not only between art,

Beauty as an evolutionary factor is hardly part of the art vocabulary today. It seems that politics has colonized the art dictio­ nary. As art critic Avelina Lesper repeatedly states, artists are now closer to an NGO than they are to art. The muses have left the building. Therefore, I wonder: could art potentially re-explore beauty without losing contextual judgment? Is it frivolous to pursue a contemporary art that is beautiful? And what if it is? Is thinking about beauty in contemporary art wayward or backward?

Savage Beauty at the MET. 2011

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Reading Day 1

IntentionalityEO #essay, #teaching, #intentionality, #visualisation

‘Teaching isn’t teaching unless the teacher intends to teach at any particular moment’.

James Elkins (Why 93) Intentionality, as used by James Elkins, is explained as follows in the Oxford English dictionary: The fact of being deliberate or purposive.’ But, in this text I will be exploring intentionality more broadly as it is used in philosophy, described like this in the Oxford English dictionary: “The quality of mental states (for example thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) which consists in their being directed towards some object or state of affairs”.

Let’s take a look at this intentionality. John Searle explains that you can direct your mind to Paris just as easily as you can direct it to New York, or to a chair just as easily as to a plane. It enables us to represent the world (Youtube). In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy the idea behind intentionality is explained as the mind being constructed as a mental bow whose arrows could be aimed at different targets. That target could be to teach art, and with that there is the intention to teach.

Searl distinguishes two modes of represen­ ting the world: “The mind to world direction of fit in which your perceptions tell you how the world really is. And the world to mind direction of fit in which your desires and intentions don’t fit how the world is but how we would like it to be or change it to be” (Youtube). So, for example, if I intend to open a door and I reach with my hand to open it, the world is changed in order to fit my intention.

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Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

In Elkins words: “I also think there is an indispensable component to anything that could be called teaching, and that is intentionality. The teacher must mean to impart something at a certain moment, and must intend it for a certain audience” (Why 92).

But, he also describes it as fiction that the art teacher knows what she intends. So, is the teacher capable of making a fictional world as she would like the real one to be?

One of the things Elkin suggests in teaching the visual arts is to teach without words.

I suggest imagining the opposite in visual arts: only use ‘words’. If I understand correctly, teaching without words is showing art: you show an object and with that you get a mind to world direction of fit. There is no action in that. Art is in its essence about the world to mind direction of fit. The artists’ desire is to shape a world (for example a painting or sculpture) like they intend it to be.

Why Art Cannot be Taught, James Elkins Oxford English Dictionary: https://www.lexico.com/definition/intentionality Youtube, John Searle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46qvb_HKIvg Stanford Encyclopedia: https://seop.illc.uva.nl/entries/intentionality/#Bib The Art Story: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/ryder-albert-pinkham/artworks/

Let’s look at what happens when a name is mentioned in class, or in a studio visit.

When a teacher mentions, for example, Ryder, like James Elkins does, your mind directs itself to Ryder. But if you are not familiar with Ryder your mind starts to wander. Ryder is mentioned in the context of an art class so they must be an artist, but are they a painter, sculptor or a poet? Your mind can only form what is called a ‘general thought’, or representation (Stanford).

your mind generates of a Ryder painting shifts to a painting with a certain mood. The teacher could also describe the pain­ ting: “the dark, bulky forms of trees billowing like clouds into the glow of the sky, the perspective heaping the layers of the composition onto a space that feels materially dense behind the dwarfed couple” (Art). Or, you could let Ryder speak for themself about how they worked: “I threw my brushes aside; they were too small for the work in hand. I squeezed out big chunks of pure, moist color and, taking my pallet knife, I laid on blue, green white, and brown in great sweeping strokes. As I worked I saw it was good, clean, and strong. I saw nature springing into life upon my dead canvas”. (Art) Every student could target this painting from his or her own perspective. Using the ability of the mind to generate images. And determine what it intends the painting to look like. When teaching art, intentionality is indispensable. Here, Elkins and I agree.

The philosophical meaning of intentio­ nality plays an important role, and the ability of the mind to represent the world can be used and challenged in learning and teaching art.

Now let’s pretend you would not go home and google Ryder, but the teacher would try and generate a more helpful picture of Ryder’s work without showing it.

If Ryder had been mentioned as Ryder the painter your mind forms a general representation of what a painting looks like. So it needs to be more specific.

For example, let the students listen to Wagner by whom Ryder was inspired.

Listening to his music, the general image

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Reading Day 1

LearningCP #academic, #un-learning, #awareness, #constellation

‘Learning’ is defined as the process of acquiring knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught.

As James Elkins exposes in his book Why art cannot be taught (2001), such an educational process is not as straightforward in the context of art academies. Being himself a professor of art history, theory, and criti­ cism, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Elkins voices criticism from within. He reveals the tension between the art institution—which claims to be capable of teaching art—and the difficulty teachers and students face when attempting to pinpoint exactly what it is that is taught to produce ‘good’ art/artists.

Amidst Elkins’ institutional critique and his attempts to analyse rationally what is taking place in art classes, he concludes that what happens in the teaching of art is irrational and that it therefore can’t be rationalised in order to ‘improve it’. He describes his own position as skeptic and pessimistic, not believing that what we know about art teaching is a good base to decide on any course of action regarding changes in the curriculum, as well as believing that any course of action will just make it worse.

If, as described in the Master Artistic Research’s reading document, one parts from the understanding that ‘artworks and artists often get credited as ‘good’ when they are about liminality, interstices, ambiguity, deviancy, or non-normativity’, which is something I personally agree with, then it would not be surprising that a big part of what plays a role in the production of ‘good art’ is not under the control of academies

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Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

1

Maxim coming from Vladimir Bartol’s book Alamut, Slovenia: Scala House Press, 1938.

(the institution). From that perspective one could even propose that ‘not being fully determined by institutional education’ is an inherent precondition of ‘good art’.

Therefore, any attempt to analyse ratio­ nally or quantify the effect of art learning on ‘good art’ would be by nature impossible, considering the artist/student would be submitted to other meaningful influences that can’t be overseen by teachers or institutions, at any given point. It is because of this that one would have to agree with Elkins, that the process of art learning is an obscure one.

In order to defend this, I would emphasise my own experience. Despite the fact that in art academies one is able to access specialised knowledge, critical thinking, and share reflections with colleagues that deal with similar experiences and vocabu­ lary, learning takes place outside of the art academy as much as it does within it.

Being observant to the dynamics that occur in daily situations, conversations, politics, discussions, experiences, which sets one to think, feel, imagine, and process information, can be as urging and enriching as the experience within the institution. I believe the dynamics that occur within and outside of the academy are inseparable and interdependent, as they feed each other in complex ways that are not easily discernible.

forces, motivations, limitations, and impositions in one’s artistic practice that allow the artist to act responsibly, according to her/his position, and respectfully towards oneself and others.

Another aspect that seems key to me in art learning is the process of unlearning. Societies stand on narratives that we construct and believe in collectively throughout the years, which is also the case for the arts. Keeping this is mind can only empower and encourage us to un-narrate and stop believing when necessary, and create space (if used responsibly) for the axiom: ‘Nothing is absolute reality; everything is permitted’ 1.

Despite this it seems to me that Elkins is trying to understand or analyse art learning in a rather linear way, where the idea of constellations and dialectics would be more suitable. Understanding those—as Bishop pinpoints in her book Radical Museology: Or What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art?—as an amalgamation of many factors that continuously relate to each other and interact with each other, be it power structures, educational traditions, or histories, both the personal and collective ones.

There is one aspect that I consider essential in art learning within academies. Namely, acquiring awareness of the underlying

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Reading Day 1

The modernEJR #essay, #dialogue, #museum

Hmm I don’t know? To take an active part in the present, isn’t that more in line with a contemporary way of behaving?

What if you swap the modern with the contemporary… like: ‘to be contemporary means to go with the present flow of things.’

My mother (and these are her words) likes modern art, as in historical artists that are mostly dead, preferably in a museum for modern art with included audio tours.

Whenever I take her to see an exhibition (i.e. she takes me, because the exhibitions I’d like to see don’t have audio tours), she takes hours. Carefully listening to everything the mechanic guide has to tell her. Intricate back stories are told giving her information on the personal lives of the artists, like a friend coming over for tea and some steamy gossip. But besides the gossip she will be educated on the meaning of color, texture, material qualities, and of course the history of the museum building will not be missed.

Usually we go our two separate ways, and decide to meet after a good few hours (when my mom is finally finished with her seminar in aesthetic and cultural understanding) in the museum shop or cafe. She will be able to give me a lecture on what she has just seen (or heard), but somehow I always wonder if she has really experienced art or if she really liked it. Or, if the contemporary museum of modern art uses our collective memory and understanding of what and what not to find aesthetically pleasing as a tool to tempt the mindless masses with a buffet of bitesize bits. Delicious art snacks, with a nice story.

Entertaining, palatable, easily understood, and quick. Unfortunately, these are not very

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Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it? nutritious. The museum has become like a twinkie. The focus has shifted towards generating income, huge visitor numbers, and nice photographable images.

To be modern means to go with the present flow of things. In other words, to take an active part in the present. The present being an ever revolving period in time, like a video on a constant loop. Therefore, I could almost say that to be modern means to almost not be alive at all. Because, to take an active part in an ever ongoing loop means not to move forward at all, but in essence to be fixed in time. However, in art, to be on a constant loop, is to be contemporary. The modern, on the other hand, is not (and never will be) a fixed entity. The modern is an ever changing fluid thing, that is focused on the future, individuality, and expression.

Strictly speaking the period that is described as the modern falls in between the end of the Renaissance and the 1990s.

I do, however, want to emphasize that we are looking at the west now, so west Europe and America. Whether modernity has happened or is happening is an entirely different question, and closely related to the place and temporality. What might be modern for me, might not be on the other side of the globe. Modernity might have happened later, earlier or, according to the west, not at all (Bishop). After the 1990s, speaking from a western viewpoint, we entered the era of contemporary art. After the second world war modern museums started to favor the term ‘contemporary’, when exhibiting 20th century art, using it as a substitute, referring to a certain sense of present, instead of to a period or style, as modern did. The contemporary was meant to encompass the whole present, including global temporalities. However, never being able to do so and failing time and time again (Ingold).

Or as Peter Osborne phrased it: ‘The contemporary is an “operative fiction”’.

So, the future oriented modernism has been replaced by a fixed, non-changing contemporaneity.

Where the modern and the postmodern have turned into -isms, the contemporary keeps floating like a marooned space ship into the abyss, never really knowing where it’s going and always arriving too late.

Works of art therefore will always grasp onto history. They are temporal knots in time. To be truly modern is to encompass a mix of past, present, and future. History is never history, but simultaneously the present: Moving beyond a canon of valid styles, but one can pick and choose as you go. This is what may help us move to a more politicized and critical understanding of where the future may and should head.

So to come back to my mother, the perfect 21st century museum visitor, she visits the museum, her eyes and ears covered. Only guided by the audio tour that gives her clarity. She has not seen art, as we might expect she has, she has seen palatable stories. Gossip, juicy insides, and background noise. Is it really the artwork that she has seen, or has she seen a glimpse of the artist? I’m wondering and thinking that I don’t know if my mother will ever become a critical thinker concerning art. I hope she will one day, and I envision our conversations. She might be able to understand her cryptic child. I wonder what would happen if we, artists, help the museum in becoming a playground for critical thinking. Maybe the spectator will follow. Guided by a calming voice, leading them through countless temporalities and presents that may all give them some idea of a foreseeable future.

If the present is different globally, contemporaneity doesn’t exist as temporalities will always differ.

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Reading Day 1

The PostmodernES #academic, #functionality, #activist, #utopia

‘We oppose a nihilistic vision of ‘art for arts sake.’ We are interested in an art form that crosses disciplines, integrating both the poetic and the functional’.

Lucy Orta, in an interview with Nicolas Bourriard Broadly speaking, the postmodern can be defined by three strands: Skepticism, irony, and philosophical critique of concepts of universal truth and objective reality. The postmodern, or postmodernity, is a western philosophical movement that began in the late 20th century, largely as a reaction against intellectual values and ideologies of the modern period, of the 17th to 19th century. Indeed, the doctrines characteristically associated with postmodernism can be described as a straightforward rejection of the ‘grand narratives’ of Modernism (or ‘metanarratives’, as Jean-Francois Lyotard coined in his book The Postmodern Condition in 1979), specifically criticising Enlightenment rationality. Postmodernists dismiss the tendency within Enlightenment discourse to adopt ‘totalizing’ systems of thought, and so their reliance on a transcendent and universal truth particularly with regards to biological, historical, and social development. They declare this nature of thinking not only to be false, but also to be imposing conformity on other discourses and so through this marginalising, oppressing, and silencing them.

Therefore, as a postmodernist you are skeptical of claims that any explanation, or so called ‘truth’, is ever valid for every culture, every tradition or every race. You believe that truth is relative, and reality is a mental construct.

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Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

Postmodern art draws on these philosophies, advocating individual experiences and our interpretation of these experiences as more ‘concrete’ or ‘true’ than a theoretical, overarching principle. Therefore, whilst modernists embraced simplicity and transparency, postmodernists look to the more complex, contradictory and multi-layered aspects of life. As an anti-­authoritarian movement by nature, postmodernism refuses to conform to a definition of what art should be, and therefore is not related to a singular style of artistic practice. Through this, it broke the boundaries between what was considered ‘high culture’ and ‘popular culture’, and so between art and life, creating a new period of freedom where ‘anything goes’.

The consciously anti-aesthetic stance of postmodernism has contributed to the increased production of art that is primarily about meaning, rather than aesthetic value, often going into the political. As theorist David K. Holt states: ‘(t)his state of affairs has been brought about by the establishment within postmodernism of the belief that the artist is a rebel and social critic and art is primarily a form of political rhetoric.’ (Holt 85-93) I started this text with a quote by the artist Lucy Orta, which rejected the notion of ‘art for arts sake’, the primarily modernist ideology that art has its own value and should be judged apart from themes that it might seem to touch on, such as politics, morality, and history. In my opinion, Orta’s work is an example of contemporary art which closely follows postmodern principles.

Indeed, in many ways she is exemplary as an artist who is both a rebel and social critic and her art practice is primarily a form of political rhetoric.

Creating what has in fact, by some, been termed ‘postmodern clothing’, Orta’s practice investigates the boundaries between the body and architecture, creating site specific performances and so called ‘interventions’ which are both representational

and operational in social issues. Through this, her work is inherently political, functional, skeptical, and anti-aesthetic.

This is particularly evident in her first significant body of work Refuge wear (19928); portable, lightweight, autonomous structures to be worn, that question issues of mobility and survival. Considered as portable habitats, converting to anoraks and backpacks, they respond to both the humanitarian aid appeals for shelter for Kurd refugees as well as the rise in homelessness following the economic recession.

Orta’s insistence on involving the public in a more active way, by presenting these works outside of the art gallery context, categorises them as socially engaged, becoming a means to not only make society aware of a growing problem, but also give individuals living in these precarious situations an active voice. In doing so, Refuge Wear follows the philosophy that art should be, as Orta states, ‘active, reactive and act as a trigger catalyst’, directly opposing the philosophy of ‘art for arts sake’.

However, perhaps my main reason for choosing Orta’s work as an example of the postmodern is Nexus Architecture (19942002), which I believe to be a defining image of ‘the wayward, postmodern crowd’.

The work consists of individual worker’s overalls which are connected to one another by sixty-five centimetre zip connections, called ‘Nexus’, shaping modular and collective bodies that visualise the concept of the social link. As Orta states: ‘Each individual keeps an eye on and protects the other. One’s own life depends on that of the other(…) Physical link weaves social link.’

Through the symbolic linkage of the ‘Nexus’, this work pushes for a community structure in society, investigating the power of unity, performed as public interventions in different social or political contexts. In putting order, specifically of society, into question and defying the limitations of what

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Reading Day 1 is ‘desired’ or ‘expected’, Nexus Architecture becomes ‘wayward’. Furthermore, its focus on social action and politicisation, as well as its absurdity as a performative piece— which is near impossible to manoeuvre— mirrors postmodern ideologies of irony, and of the artist as social critic. This and the forced interconnectedness of individual strangers, which philosopher Paul Virilio interprets as ‘an alarm signal alerting us to a new human fragility and precariousness’ (Coles, 122), embodies the ‘wayward’ and ‘postmodern’ in the ‘crowd’.

turns to violence to solve social problems…

Oppressive modernity continues to emerge with all its linkages’ (Meštrović 155).

Given that as a movement postmodernism inherently refuses to conform to a definition of what art could or should be, it might also be able to reject conforming to a temporality in art, and so perhaps ‘the postmodern’ continues to surround us today.

Evidently, there seems to be a fluidity in postmodern ideologies that extends into the art of today. Whilst theorist Claire Bishop argues that moving away from the historicity of Modernism and postmoder­ nism is the most generative form of approaching contemporaneity (Bishop, 19), in some ways it seems impossible to fully disconnect contemporary art from the historicity and ideologies of these movements. Similarly, there is a hypocrisy in the postmodern denial of modernist principles, particularly with regards to concepts of ‘the utopian’. For example, whilst Orta’s work encompasses postmodern doctrines relating to truth, exposing political and social tensions within many of her projects, and through this using art as a form of political rhetoric, she in this also addresses a utopian world vision, a concept notably related to modernism. Indeed, through the symbolic social link, does Orta not hope to change attributes in society, such as egocentrism, to alter the way people interact with one another? Orta herself has stated: ‘our goal is to help change people’s attitude and habits, activate debate… and even change current legislation.’

Is this not a utopian vision?

As sociologist Stjepan Meštrović states: ‘It is difficult for the postmodern individual to admit that he or she lives in a modern culture based on barbarism that

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Bishop, Claire. Radical Museology: Or What’s ‘Contemporary’ in Museums of Contemporary Art?. Köln: Walther König, 2014.

Broscaean, L., Stan, O. (2016). Transient Structures. Layers of Social Meaning in Conceptual Clothing. Postmodern Openings, 7(1), 149-164. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/po/2016.0701.09 Coles, Alex,. ed, Design and Art. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2007.

Dickson, Andrew. “Armed and dangerous: inside the world’s largest raincoat” The Guardian (2015). Accessed 24 September 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/ aug/30/red-coat- nicola-l-world-pop-art-london-tate-modern Green, Charles and Anthony Gardner, Biennials, Triennials, and documenta: The exhibitions that created contemporary art. Oxford: Charles Green and Anthony Gardner, 2016.

Holt, David K. “Postmodernism: Anomaly in Art-Critical Theory.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 29, no. 1 (1995): 85-93. Accessed September 24, 2020. doi:10.2307/3333520.

Lyotard, Jean-François. Introduction:The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 1979: xxiv–xxv. Archived 2007-06-10 at the Wayback Machine Meštrović, Stjepan, Durkheim and Postmodern Culture. London: Routledge, 1992.

Orta, Lucy. “Lecture: November 25, 2002”, Unboxed: Engagements in Social Space. Budney, Blackwell Orta, Lucy., Jorge Orta, Food, Water, Life’(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) Ales Coles, ed, Design and Art (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2007) Orta, Lucy. “Work of Lucy Orta.” Lecture, University of Michigan School of Art and Design, Michigan, December 10, 2009 Phaidon Press, pressPlay: contemporary artists in conversation. New York: Phaeton Press, 2005.

Tate, “Postmodernism”. Accessed 29 September 2020. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/postmodernism

Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

33

Reading Day 1

TechniqueRW #essay, #waywardness, #unteachable, #embodiment

Technique: ‘A particular way and order of performing actions.’ Most techniques come from extensive trial and error. ‘The master’ who has spent hours thinking or physically practising certain actions, designs a particular way and order of performing actions.

Many masters have come up with many techniques. All techniques have a goal, like being able to do a perfect pirouette, or playing a difficult musical piece, or meditating for days in a row, but the result of executing each technique may be different.

Let’s take killing an animal as an example.

You could kill an animal with a gun, strangle them, drown them, cut their throat, and several other ways. These ways all have a particular way and order of performing actions, so they have a technique. Besides the goal of killing the animal you could have another goal; doing it efficiently, painlessly, according to religious beliefs, collecting all the blood, keeping the fur intact, slowly, dramatically, or to achieve a comedic effect. Whichever technique you choose depends on which goals you want to achieve. To know many techniques is to be able to choose the right actions for the right moment.

I wonder if I can make up a technique that I’m not able to perform myself. Something like: writing readable texts in straight lines behind my back with my left hand. I could practise this and maybe at some point I’ll be able to do it, but until then I cannot tell you exactly in which particular way, and in which order you should perform which actions. So I haven’t yet designed a technique. I only have a goal I would like to achieve.

Now that I have a goal without a technique, I wonder if there is such a thing as a

34

Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it? technique without a goal. You may try and execute this technique: Sit on a bench that is too low. Hold your knees together. Arch your back. Arms are hanging down. Look straight ahead. Then start moving your eyes from left to right and back. Repeat this movement.

Slowly speed up. When you move your eyes as fast as you can, start wiggling your fingers.

If you have executed the technique like me you will probably have come to the conclusion that if you keep repeating; at some point you will either want to stop, or you will pass out. It really makes you nauseous!

This effect seems to be the only result of this technique (although you could perhaps use it in a performative piece).

I tried to create a technique without a goal, so I said some random stuff but actually not having a goal is a goal as well. If you poorly execute a technique, like shooting an animal but missing, you do not achieve your goal and you end up with an unexpected result.

Now I wonder: If waywardness is to always do the unexpected, can I design a technique whose goal is to always have an unexpected result? Like: First identify the structures around you. Reflect on what is constraining you. Note what is expected of you. Choose to do the opposite.

If you execute the technique, and a wayward result comes out, is it still wayward since someone else designed the technique, pushed you in that direction? Is a wayward technique only wayward the first time it is performed? From then on it is repetition, which is not wayward in itself. Can you even design a technique or give a class on being wayward? Or is the technique to train waywardness; designing the surroundings, creating a breeding ground for whimsy, and self-willing students?

had a theory, or a body of information; a set of methods or something that could be written down and handed on to students.

Elkins tells us techne was transformed into technique from the renaissance onwards.

From then on a technique was something you could teach people, while the arts, being not only a body of information, became ‘unteachable’. Following this definition, technique is narrowed down to the component of language. Whatever cannot be put into words is not part of technique and becomes unteachable.

There is not a single technique which is explainable only in words. Every technique is designed and executed by a body, and a body has so much nuance. Learning a technique with your body needs just as much observing and trying as it needs explanatory words. Teaching techniques should always be a combination of techne and empiera.

So how to teach and how to learn waywardness? Are there any techniques out there to use for this goal? Can we create one or is that not the point? I would say it is actually much more wayward to create your own techniques; by practicing, altering, and challenging your teacher’s, parent’s, societies’, partner’s, and neighbour’s ways of doing, their bodies of information, set of rules and methods. Waywardness is to change those to your liking, to your conditions, to your goals, to your body, to create your own particular ways and orders of performing actions.

How to teach is also a question of how to learn.

In Greek times you could learn by absorption (empiera), or example (techne). Subjects which could be taught were the ones which

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Reading Day 1

Jem Cohen, Museum Hours. 90' #review, #reality, #museum, #representation

Review by CP

Museum Hours (2012) is a film written and directed by Jem Cohen revolving around the transience of life, told through an encounter between two strangers at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Anne has flown from Montreal to Vienna where her cousin, who she has not seen in years, lies in a coma without any close family. Johan has worked as a security guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna for the last six years, after his previous careers as a road manager and carpentry teacher. During her visit to the museum, in between hospital hours, Anne and Johan start a casual conversation which will evolve into him helping her find her way around Vienna, as well as handling the situation at the hospital, developing into a friendship.

While one would expect Anne’s cousin’s condition to be the focus of the film’s story, this appears not to be the case. As it is beautifully described in a later scene, where a museum guide speaks about Bruegel’s paintings, what would at first seem to be the main topic or the most dramatic event, is not at the center of attention. On the contrary, all that seems to be important is everything that is taking place around it, the mundane.

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Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

Throughout the film, the camera continuously accentuates the human scale and the mundane in its images, focusing on the things we see through a window and those trashed on the street, when coming out of a hospital at night, visiting a city for the first time or when looking carefully at the person in front of us. Cohen stresses both the casual looker as well as the careful observer of details, and through this portrays the span of attention in which something becomes relevant to our eyes and becomes a meaningful memory.

Memory, and the idea of what remains, what we miss or think of, is strongly woven into the films’ core idea of transience. In the film one navigates through images of flea markets, photos on walls, paintings at museums, table conversations about the past. There is a strong sense that splendour and decay are complexly interconnected.

Anecdotes of full and abundant lives lie next to lonely poker nights behind a screen. The death of a lonesome relative with whom bonds have diluted in time is accompanied by the appearance of a new unexpected friendship. The portraying of one’s moment of desolation can become a greatly valued work of art later in time, such as Rembrandt’s self-portrait in Vienna’s Museum.

This gesture of referencing older art works to reflect upon our contemporary experiences is something the director applies with great poetry throughout the film. Whilst watching the movie, one feels gracefully moved between epoques, as if, in its essence, human experience wouldn’t have changed much in time.

When looking at representations of beauty, the grotesque, humour, sex, power, loss, among many others, one can find experiences and emotions within oneself to relate to, a quality and richness about the museum and the art works the director cherishes and celebrates in this film.

Similarly to the camera’s focus on the human scale and the mundane, throughout the film the museum is slowly brought back to human scale also. The reflections of the narrator gently personify the museum and its art works, suddenly sharing with us the same urge to read into images, to retain memories and the things that once mattered. Stories that we keep precious, reminded of the value of what has been before us, and hopefully what will be after us.

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Reading Day 1

Review by BR

For me Museum Hours is a film about the fusion of the ‘fantastic’ and the ‘real’. These two words can be interpreted in many different ways.

To begin with they relate to the genre of the film, which borrows elements from both fiction and documentary. As essay films usually do, Museum Hours breaks out of the constraints of narrative patterns to bring something entirely new to the table. The layout of the depicted universe in the film rhymes this distinction of genres, represented by the two worlds of the main characters: the museum and the hospital. Johann, who works as a museum guard, is surrounded by the artifacts of the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna. Anne has been summoned to Vienna because of her cousin, who lies comatose in a hospital. The two meet and a friendship begins to unfold beautifully, building a bridge between the way we approach art and our own lives which, for Jem Cohen, are seemingly inseparable.

Johann is at the center of this piece, all threads and sub-narratives are related back to him. His voice eloquently leads us through the narrative. His inner thoughts, all spoken in German, are presented as an oral diary of his everyday observations. As a narrator he raises philosophical questions, always relating them to what art means and how it’s perceived. For instance, during the birth of their friendship, Johann ponders on why he was attracted to Anne. What makes people curious about one person and not towards another?

This fundamental question of subjectivity is also a key element of how humans think about art. Building on this question of curiosity, Johann takes Anne around Vienna and throughout he rediscovers the city himself, only by having an extra motivation to see his surroun­ dings from a new perspective. In this way the city is portrayed as a museum, with exhibits like the flee market, Holocaust Memorial or even the more abstract phenomenon of Augustin the street vendor.

To further highlight the parallels between the art pieces and the reality of Vienna, subtle details of a painting are made visible and followed by close-ups of urban debris, while Johann’s internal voice comments the scene: ‘discarded playing cards, a bone, a broken egg, a cigarette butt, a folded note, a lost glove…’

The technique of merging artifacts and reality is recurring in the film, and so these realms are in constant dialogue with one another, just as the characters visit each other’s locations. For me, one of the most evocative scenes is when Anne takes Johann to the hospital where her cousin, Janet, is lying in a coma. Johann is asked to give a description of the painting he knows so well to Janet, who is in a state of unconsciousness totally unresponsive to the outside world. In this scene Johann’s position goes a step further to reflect on interpretation itself, by taking a look at how we look, giving a deeper understanding that art is, both as a living thing and a way of seeing. It’s not just the viewer who looks at the image but the image looks back

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Foundations I: What is Artistic Research? And what could be wayward about it?

to the viewer, and through Johann’s gaze we begin imagining what Janet would see. To orientate the viewer in this post-modern interrelatedness, finally Johann gives a simple example of the boundary of expression, ‘It’s bluer than I could ever tell.’

The transformation of prosaic to imaginative and back, from profane to savage, is christalyzed in the moment when Johann is looking at himself in the mirror and calls out his name, phrased as a title of a painting, ‘Johanne the Elder’. These symbolic gestures represent the core of the film and are fully resolved at the end, when the two realms fully blend together. In the final sequence, we hear Johann’s voice­ over in English, as opposed to his earlier internal monologues that were all in German. This switch is further highlighted by a new visual composition, namely the use of the handheld camera in settings of the museum, implying Johann’s first point of view. The only other handheld shot in the film is set in the corridor of the hospital, representing Anne’s point of view, again interrelating the two worlds of the characters. At the very end, the entire position of storytelling changes and we hear a landscape of thought in Johann’s interpretation. This sequence of static moving images of street scenes can be construed as a continuation of Johann’s description of paintings at the hospital, and as the last memories passing through Janet’s mind.

Therefore, these imaginary recollections of real life events become exhibits in Johannes’s newly discovered urban museum, gently reminding the viewer that the art we see in a museum began in real life, and it always finds its way back there.

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READING

DAY 2

Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

In the following chapter, keywords from the texts of Hartman and Retallack are discussed in various ways, and in different genres. For instance, through a symbolic dialogue between Télos and Genesis, Clara discusses Insurrection and the nature of resistance.

Two other fictional texts are written by Xenia and Elisa; whilst Xenia’s discussion of Composition is set in the mind of a character on a yacht crossing the mediterranean, Elisa’s looks at the shoes of Esther Brown while discussing Beauty. Contrary to these fictional texts, both Shardenia and Balint use a more academic prose to discuss Clinamen and Utopia and Catastrophe, yet in two very different ways. To enrich the thinking around Clinamen, Shardenia uses Epicurius as an intriguing case. Balint takes his starting point in a quote from Luis Borges and creates a piece of writing filled with metaphors. Another text in the genre of prose is the transcribed discussion on The right to opacity by Noortje, a discussion that deals with the experiences of queer life.

Omid and Rosa have two very different essaistic styles, this is very clear in Rosa’s more fragmentary essay on the topic of Vagrancy and Omid’s more fictional essay about The Possible. It’s fascinating to see how most texts in this chapter contain poetic parts, yet only Geometries of attention by Renata is a poem. In the poem, attention is sewn together with the sewing movements of the hand, and this presence of the hand in the poem creates a parallel between the use of punctuation, and the use of the needle and thread in sewing: ‘Thread Stab.

Pull -’

Based on:

Saidiya Hartman, “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments” Joan Retallack, “The Poethical Wager” Film screening: Marianne Lambert, I Don't Belong Anywhere: Le cinéma de Chantal Akerman, 67 mins

Reading Day 2

BeautyECF #shortstory, #vagrancy, #doingnothing, #dancing

Esther Brown wore uncomfortable shoes. Perhaps they were dancing shoes, the kind of shoes that girls admire in shop windows, whilst dreaming of dancing halls and first dates.

Flapper shoes with mid height heels and ribbons around the ankles, unable to warm her feet up in winter, but so nice for parties. Or maybe they were sturdy, leather, flat sole shoes. Shoes that ripped her tights up when she wore them for the first time, then, with the passing of seasons, worn out, scratched, patched shoes, stretched to the shape of her feet.

Esther Brown wore beautiful shoes Esther Brown’s shoes were either too small, or too big for her feet. They tore her heels and sore her toes to bleed. She got them as a present from a friend. She gently polished them before going to the movies and plays. She took them off when lying down with a lover, or a one-night stand. The feet that throbbed after dancing all night were now shivering with excitement. Years passed by and Esther Brown’s shoes hardened the soles of her feet. They grew corns on her toes and, step after step, deformed her bones into bunions.

Esther Brown’s beautiful experiment was achieving herself: black, eager, proud, idle, and free of pursuing an unbounded intimacy. At her time, a girl like her(1)—the kind of girl that would not hesitate to smash things up—must always stay ready to run. With shoes like hers, that was painful. But that didn’t keep her from rambling down the streets of Harlem. Wandering, dancing, drifting, spilling, loving, fleeing; sometimes doing nothing, but always Esther Brown on the move, drawing the everyday choreography of the possible.

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Inspired by Esther Brown’s story in Hartman, S. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, 2019.

[1] From the 1880s to the 1920s in the USA, a number of policies such as the ‘Wayward Minor Law’ or the ‘vagrancy clauses of the Tenement House Law’ made young black women living in cities extremely vulnerable to criminalization. Many of these laws were not based on an accomplished criminal act, but on the subjective presumption of a potential criminal future.

Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

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Reading Day 2

InsurrectionCP #dialogue, #fiction, #narrative, #revolt, #benignity, #constrainment On an early morning the word insurrection came to Télos’ mind.

She stood up and searched for its definition, to clear up any doubts regarding its implications to the current affairs she was in.

‘A violent uprising against an authority or government’, Télos read out loud.

Yes, the word’s definition reassured her. It was fully related to what was happening or needed to happen.

To further enhance clarity, she started to circle around the room, placing charcoal pieces in each corner, whilst trying to understand the degree of violence an act of insurrection would need to contain to deserve its name. The synonyms that appeared in the Thesaurus provided her with a more accurate image: ‘coup, insurgency, revolt, revolution, riot, sedition, uprising…’

Amidst her inner ramblings, the apparition of Genesis brought her train of thoughts back to the dimension of dialogue. Genesis laid her hand on her shoulder, and said calmly, ‘It seems you always invoke me at the verge of your rational climax, should my company disgrace the efforts of self-reflection? How have you been my old friend?’

With a sense of relief, Télos sat on the chair that was closest to her.

‘Oh Dear Genesis, how nice it is to see you again… What’s really at stake is never fully revealed to us, is it? What’s powerful seems so often to be obscure, diminishing our own capacity to provide… to oneself, the near ones, loved ones, to those in need… It feels disturbing to be reminded that ethics and morals can serve purposes that are blind to us, and aren’t necessarily benign in nature.’

While speaking, Télos moved her hand in the air. She sought for that fragrance emanating from Genesis that was so soothing, and conti­ nued. ‘If only power could be left to interact with those who either enjoy competing for it or succumb to it… Is it plurality that power fears so much? I suppose so, because if plurality propagates in unpredictable ways, then “the one power” form can never be applicable to such diverse shapes of existence… How much I wish that forms of social poesis, like Epicurus’ “Garden”, could be left alone, to propagate… But fear seems to be such a key factor in our behaviour, “my fear”, “your fear’’, “our fear”, “power’s fear”…’

Télos stood up a bit abruptly, and continued placing charcoal pieces around the room again. The piles of charcoal had grown quite big by now. ‘But what is it that you are craving for?’ asked Genesis.

‘Obviously to live fully, but so that others can’ exclaimed Télos.

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

Genesis started to go through the books laying on Télos’ desk, to find out what had instigated such a revolt of thoughts in her mind. She found two suspicious books, The Poethical Wager by Joan Retallack, where ‘The Garden’, as a social experiment, was mentioned, and Wayward lives, beautiful experiments. Intimate histories of social upheaval by Saidiya Hartman.

Starting to move very slowly in circles, to activate energy and bring Télos to some kind of conclusion, Genesis asked, ‘But would you agree with Hartman, that Esther Brown’s power to disrupt the “habitus”, understood as the embodiment of history in the amount of possibilities she could live, as Retallack would put it, was to her a way of living life to the fullest?’

Télos left the last piece of charcoal on the floor and stopped. She then looked around and noticed Genesis circular movement all around her body. She closed her eyes and let all that vibrant energy sink into her soft words. ‘I suppose I would agree with Hartman’s reflections, that Brown’s quest for pleasure and enjoyment was a way to claim her autonomy, to finally do as she wished. But the amount of possibilities through which that sense of enjoyment and passion could be explored was so constricted by that same power she wanted to destroy…. And when thinking of “destruction”, I would hope for a revolution, an act of insurrection that would manage to bring many things to a new alignment that feels caring and fair to everyone. But then such feeling pauses for a second, and leaves space for a humble interrogation…’ She took a deep breath. ‘How far would I go? What’s the limit of my courage?

‘Cause I would surely hope for a definition of insurrection in which the quality of “violent” would be taken out of it.’

With her eyes still closed Télos continued to whisper, ‘‘Cause the power Power can exert is at times terrifying. Silenced voices, kidnapped politicians, arrested protesters, reformation camps, to just name a few, remind us to what extent Power will go to preserve itself…’

Genesis stopped in front of Télos. With her two hands she moved her gently into a sitting position, and patiently replied: ‘But it is exactly amidst such paralysing contexts that both Retallack and Hartman advocate for small acts of waywardness, and the insurrection of the everyday. Gestures, such as experimental thought, small deviances in behaviour, the shaping of our own lives, the celebration of complexity, … all acts of ‘new-composing’. All gestures that find a sense of pleasure in ‘the new’. ‘Cause fear is a very powerful emotion, but so is pleasure.

It is through pleasure that one can celebrate, congregate, commune, and in turn inspire and propagate.’

Just after Genesis had added her final contribution to the intellectual debouch, four distinct showers of colour appeared inside the room.

They materialised the four scents of her divination: cinnamon, rosemary, thyme, and honey. Genesis knew how to play all her tricks so that one could only await her next apparition.

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Reading Day 2

ClinamenSF #essay, #clinamen, #contemporary

Clinamen, derived from clīnāre, to incline, is the Latin name that Lucretius gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, to defend the atomistic doctrine of Epicurus (Wikipedia).

Epicurus Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who was born and lived between 341 and 270 BC. Lucretius Carus was a poet and philosopher who was born and lived between 99 and 55 BC. Lucretius can sometimes be seen as the successor of Epicurus since he wrote a book based on Epicureanism: De Rerum Natura Libri Sex. In Rerum Natura, Lucretius addressed clinamen as a change of motion, when bodies, due to uncertainties, swerve from their course. (Retallack 2) Here, Lucretius tried to explain clinamen as a change of motion. The action or process of moving or being moved (Oxford Languages). This way Lucretius addresses the natural part of the significance of clinamen. The idea of not being forced into one direction. So, this way clinamen can enforce the natural capacity to have a will of its own.

Lucretius In the third century B.C.E. the Greek philosopher Epicurus posited the swerve (a.k.a. clinamen) to explain how change could occur in what early atomists had argued was a deterministic universe that he saw as composed of the elemental body moving in unalterable paths. (Retallack 2)

Uncertainly, from this I can deduce that clinamen was the name for research on atoms. An atom is the smallest part of an object and is used to explain the most dominant changes in every single move in the atmosphere that happened until now on planet earth. In this way, clinamen can also be explained by the big bang theory. The Big Bang Theory is a cosmological model of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution (Silk 208).

In the text The Poethical Wager, Retallack adds a significant component to the concept of climanem. She stated that Cage’s idea of chance operation, or composed clinamen, highlights a productive sense of contingency. She refers to this later when she defines writing as nothing more and nothing less than living and composing one contemporariness. (Retallack 16-17). In this way, the idea of “composed clinamen’’ manipulates one’s ideas by, for example, writing. I see writing as well as reading as a way to manipulate one’s thoughts. This has to do with the fact that writing, when it’s read, can lead to a change in the way of thinking, or can leave something hanging that triggers a reaction later on. Furthermore, you can force movements, and in this case it’s the movement of neurons. So, these movements are convenient since we can access information and react to it, which will sum up in more movements.

On the other hand, “composed clinamen” can be negative, or can suggest negativity.

An example of this is the pollution humans

46

Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation? have forced upon the earth in order to have more comfortable lives. A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object’s interaction with another object.

Whenever there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force upon each of the objects. When the interaction ceases, the two objects no longer experience the force. Forces only exist as a result of an interaction. (www.physicsclassroom.com) Humans forced objects into existence that, instead of working naturally, found their way to produce irreversible changes in the world’s ecosystem. This resulted in global warming and its consequences regarding the mortality of species that put ourselves in danger.

Furthermore, gravity emphasizes the unpredictable aspect of clinamen that is comparable to fate or destiny. How many times do we try to imagine how the future may look, and then realize that it’s just a fantasy? Who could predict all the happenings in 2020? Despite everything, we try to be positive by justifying all the negativities by clinamen, or a swerve in atoms. Just a bump in the movement of atoms can lead to a whole new story and incomprehensible changes that can be undone. Instead of this we just have to deal with it.

The Poethical Wager -Retallack, www.physicsclassroom.com Wikipedia.

Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the fact that clinamen has a contingency shift in atoms one can still ensemble the meaning regarding swerve in literary confinement.

In this way, this substantial move of atoms can also be related to words and open up new discussions. As I mentioned before, a composed clinamen in literature is a way of manipulating our brain to think or act differently. Along these lines, the actions of the society can be controlled by manipulating what they read or learn.

Clinamen, in the sense of a swerve of atoms, is primarily influenced by gravity.

Gravity is the force that attracts a body towards the center of the earth, or towards any other physical body that has mass.

(Oxford languages). This can add up to the significance of everything falling into place. Gravity is an important factor of unpredictability because you can do whatever you want but you always have to deal with the gravity on earth, or the weight of the body or objects. The power of gravity won’t change the own will of bodies but will direct their physical manifestations. This direction can go in many ways, one can just take the resistance of bacterias as an example. And even though gravity doesn’t force atoms to bump in each other it surely is an important aspect of clinamen.

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Reading Day 2

Composition: Ocean resurfaceXK #fiction, #jetsetlife, #ocean, #liquidity, #existentialism

ON THE YACHT Before boarding the yacht, I had pictured the front as the most enjoyable place of a boat. And, ever since Hussein invited me to accompany him and a few of his friends on the yacht, I had pictured myself sitting at the fore, greeting the sea, sensing the wind as if it was the freedom surrounding me. It was a fantasy. Everyone wanders around, every now and then, with utterly silly daydreams of having lives that aren’t theirs, no matter how dreadful or splendid our original lives may be.

But in reality I preferred to sit at the stern, at the furthermost end of the yacht, looking at how the horizon swallowed the sea. There, at the furthermost end of my vision, I saw that history, as well as the sea herself, is an ocean. The pasts are depths that stretch down towards the bottom of the beginning. The present is no more and no less than a surface—with it’s complex physics, yet simple actuality of surface tension. Whilst every rainfall and river is a future falling down into it, warping the tension with a constant penetration of presents. And, whatever glimpse we may grasp of the bottom is seen through the mirror of a surface. The focal point of the beginning rests in the parts of the present which we’re not aware of. The surface is inevitable, just like the present is in the act of gazing into the depths of the past.

MARILYN I had this picture I saw the other day, in the library of Princess Grace, in my mind. It depicted Marilyn Monroe sitting in a striped bathing suit, reading the colossal Ulysses. The contrast fascinated me: Society’s assumed stupidity of Monroe, against the idea of refinement and education connected to the reading of Ulysses. I said to myself, well that’s an ideal—an educated, slightly sad mermaid. I wanted to embody the picture. I wanted to stage it in order to honor it. I wanted to make all that I saw in the picture exist once more.

Maybe it was out of obsession, or maybe it was out of care, but I wanted it to become materialized in my presence. The fore of a yacht would be perfect for this embodiment; transcending the linearity of time in front of an endless field of baby blue, which is how the mediterranean looks from the harbour of Monaco.

Maybe all of this came to my mind solely because I already knew, and was thinking quite much about, that I would spend the following week on a royal yacht out on the mediterranean. The tricky thing was

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

that I would never be able to pull off being the subject of this image imprinted in my mind. I obviously lacked the privilege of good looks: I have glasses and lips not much thicker than the line of eyelashes on a woman in a fashion magazine. My eyelashes, contrary to theirs, are sparse like a tree during the end of autumn. Honestly, I think I resemble James Joyce more than Marilyn Monroe. So, rather than being fascinated by the fact that the book was held by her, I was fascinated by Marilyn herself; how she was holding the book, lost in the act of reading, unaware of reality despite the gazing of the camera and the sound of the shutter. And now, she’s carried away beyond the boundaries of not only her life, but life itself; used and interpreted whilst she and all subjects of all photographs are, or inevitably will be, dead.

FLAWS OF FORE The future, most of the time, doesn’t turn out how you pictured it would, not even the smallest of details. I knew this and I have known it for a very long time but, either way, I really believed I would enjoy sitting at the fore. But, surprisingly or not, I didn’t like it at all. It was too difficult to see, and likewise impossible to enjoy, the sea from there. And, after all, the sea was the main reason for my enthusiasm of being on board. When everything comes towards you, as it tends to do when you stand at the fore, it’s like the whole world lies within your decision. In one sense you see everything, but you overlook whatever that is. There are no details in the world you see, and since as they say God dwells in the details, you can’t see anything.

This happens without you knowing that you’re actually seeing nothing. The impressions scatter all over your senses, because without melancholia there is no sense of real attention. And how can there even be the slightest melancholia when everything comes towards you—even if you’re not moving? At the fore, the ocean—the most important part of a boat—can barely be seen. You see the foam, you see the delightful blues in the distance, you see islands and islets, birds and horizons. But the depths, the deep blues of the seas, the swirls that write secrets and mysteries on the surface of water, they are all impossible to notice. Only at the stern can you see them. At the stern everything is in a constant act of leaving, the horizon swallows the reality that once has been and it engrosses the whole sea you find yourself resting upon. At night, even the light drowns among the streams of the ink-black-dark water, in the spots of our bodies we can’t see.

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Reading Day 2

OCEAN RESURFACE The ocean is not a segregated object, bisected into parts. It’s not an object nor a thing. The ocean is a habitus, a way of life, it’s the source as well as the end for everything. The ocean is bigger than the land that we believe encircles it. Currents are constantly pulling up the cold water of the depths, the segments of the bottom, surfacing secrets by drowning what is known. That’s how the warm water gets cooler, how the present becomes the past. The present becomes the past not by the future pressing it down—as if the past was a drowned head, and the future the hands who drowned the head of the present—but by the constant resurfacing of the past, which gives the present its ability to fall. History doesn’t repeat itself nor is it built by constant progress. History is neither circular nor linear—it is resurfacing. The surface (as a phenomenon of surface) is always the same. The water creates the constant shifting of the surface. The rain and the rivers which fall into the ocean do not stop upon its surface, as the future that falls into the present isn’t just piled upon it. The passing of time is not a modality of the initiative of the future pressing down the bottom of the pile of the present into the shadows of the past. That’s not how the penetration of time nor the hydrological cycle works: the idea of linear movements, from future to present to past, is unexampled simply because it’s not true. Rather, the future transforms into the past in one single event. Only through the past can the present come into being. At the moment the water, entailed by a raindrop or carried by the stream of a river, enters the ocean it falls under its surface. And there, we see how the past is what carries what once was the future up to the surface of the present. The present is the past, and everything that has been the future resting onto the border of heaven. A heaven made up of air, which is the end result of all our breaths. What breathing has been and what it becomes. The surface of the ocean is a plain of pasts and futures, into which we spread the ashes of those whom we have been, and whom we once wanted to become.

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

51

Reading Day 2

VagrancyRW #essay, #wandering, #parasite, #stranger

Vagrancy: being homeless without regular income Until around the late 80s, vagrancy was illegal in western society, and living as a vagrant was punished with forced labour, military service or imprisonment. The fact that you relied on the care and hospitality of others, for food and shelter, would make you a parasite. I would say vagrancy, as such, can only exist in societies focused on economic growth and efficiency, in which the value of things depends upon their potential to be quantified.

Parasites Parasites obtain nutrients from their hosts, living on or in bodies of other organisms.

Not killing their hosts but often weakening them.

The word ‘parasite’ comes from ‘parásitos’ in Greek; one who lives at another’s expense, a person who eats at the table of another in return for amusement and/or conversation. Not so different from hospitality, in which you are invited as well, so why it’s negative connotation?

Hospitality In every religion I know, it is preached that you should receive guests; strangers, relatives, rich or poor, and treat them with kindness, dignity, and respect. It seems that current societies have forgotten these values. Why have we become so scared of strangers?

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

Strange according to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/strange

Adjective /streɪndʒ/ unusual and unexpected, or difficult to understand

[1] Hartman, Sadiya.Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner. W.W. Norton & Co, 2019.

[2] Hartman, Sadiya.Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: Wayward: a short entry on the possible. W.W. Norton & Co, 2019.

The Greek definition of ‘parasitos’ is diffe­ rent from parasites in the biological term: these organisms venture their host without an invitation.

Are humans a parasite to the earth? This is a question I am tempted to ask.

We are sucking out blood in forms of oil, gas, and coal. We scrape the surface of our host with bulldozers. We take down complete ecosystems, and see mother earth as a resource. We do not live in reciprocity, but in greed. And like a parasite, we haven’t killed our host yet but we sure are killing fellow species and weakening the earth day by day. It will keep spinning.

The question is: Will we survive our own parasitizing?

Vagrancy as social parasitism is considered negative Social Parasitism; when you contribute insufficientently to society. What insufficiently means depends on your world view and what is considered to be useless or threatening to the status quo. In the past you could be sentenced for social parasi­ tism, and in the Soviet Union many intellectuals were charged, since writing poetry was not seen as a contribution to the state —especially not when it contained criticism of this state.

Vagrancy as a spiritual path is considered positive In (middle-) eastern religions you can find examples of monks living a vagrant life. Sadhus, in Hinduism and Jainism, dervishes of the Sufi fraternity of Islam, bhikkhus; Bhudist monks and scramanic traditions all get rid of possession in order to follow their spiritual path. They are seen

as a meaningful contribution to society, or are even considered holy. The community donates food and gives them shelter. They are not punished but shown respect.

USA In the USA vagrancy, part of the Tenement House Law, was awfully used in a racist manner to suppress black women. According to Saidiya Hartman: ‘It was a ubiquitous charge that made it easy for the police to arrest and prosecute young women with no evidence of crime or act of lawbreaking. In the 1910s and 1920s, vagrancy statutes were used primarily to target young women for prostitution.’ (Hartman) Vagrancy comes from vagus in Latin to vagari meaning: wandering, roaming Waywardness - Vagrancy To quote Sadiya Hartman: ‘Wayward: to wander, to be unmoored, adrift, rambling, roving, cruising, strolling, and seeking.’

(Hartman) This could also be the definition of vagrancy’s positive connotations.

Waywardness does not always result in vagrancy, and vagrancy does not necessa­ rily come out of waywardness. They do, in this case, manifest in the same way. To see vagrancy as a form of waywardness is not to diminish a life without a house and a steady income, but to see it as an opportunity to break free of the treadmill of the status quo.

It is a way to question what is valuable and what is necessary.

Every time I wander in the night it is not dark, streetlights are bright.

They peer through my eyelids and the windows of the houses.

Always more lights on than expected. Away from the city, every step gets darker. Light does not come through my eyelids anymore it comes through my feet, my ears, my nose, and my skin.

Vibrant inside out.

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Reading Day 2

Utopia and CatastropheBR #academic, #borges, #exclusion

‘I dreamed I was awakening from another dream -an uproar of chaos and cataclysms- into an unrecognizable room. Day was dawning: light suffused the room, outlining the foot of the wrought-iron bed, the upright chair, the closed door and windows, the bare table.

I thought fearfully, “Where am I?” and I realized I didn’t know. I thought, “Who am I?” and I couldn’t recognize myself. My fear grew.

I thought: This desolate awakening is in Hell, this eternal vigil will be my destiny. Then I really woke up, trembling.’

Jorge Luis Borges: The Duration of Hell (1929)

While catastrophe is a threshold; a line existing of minimum circumstances, below which existence becomes unbearable, utopia is the ideal you can never grasp, your constant upwards aim and direction, in an attempt to reach perfection. Why is only the negative polar reachable in its full form? Nothing can be perfect, but nothing can be totally imperfect either.

Imperfections’ entirety includes perfection too, as truth includes lies in itself.

The Bermuda Triangle, between catastrophe’s bottom line and utopia’s highpoint, is our only certainty, the space we exist in. ‘Beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial we are nobodies’ (Borges).

Beyond our triangle only before and after exist, immaterial thoughts. If you were to escape the triangle, would you end up in an infinite space, a nothingness, and would that be a catastrophe?

Feeling excluded can feel liberating, as you don’t have to care about remaining inside.

Though, being excluded is catastrophic when you measure its consequences. To lose this longing of mind-numbing certainty is a risk in itself. In letting go of the grip, falling turns into weightlessness. Only the body

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Az Örökkévalóság Története, Az Idő Újabb Cáfolata, Budapest: Gondolat, 1987 Rolls Frakció. Szabad Vagyok. Péter, Dorozsmai; András, Trunkos; Lajos, Boros; András, Trunkos, Budapest, 1981

remains without the web it’s entangled in.

This vessel is your total domain where the two polars are ecstasy and annihilation.

These comprehensible features restrain and drive you. ‘I’m free! Says the monkey to the cage, -I’m not! Replies the cage. -I’m locked around these monkeys!’ (Frakció) When you have gotten used to falling, you have learnt how to fly. This is the hardest part.

Those glances looking down on you. The fear of indignity which is present in all fears.

When you don’t fit in you seem like a failure. There is a difference in the illusion of outsiderness. Like the extremity of choosing something just because you know it represents the opposite you reject. It’s only valid when, regardless of the context, you feel it is true, when it’s an instinctual reaction. Everything else is itself your choice, while if it’s a response the line between it is not clear. When figuring out what you stand for, the first step is to find out what you say no to. By ruling out, you voluntarily relate.

‘View reality as an endless set of situations which mirror each other’ (Sontag). These constantly changing reflections are not there to be ordered, but to be navigated through. See it as a sequence of decisions, not a premeditated strategy. The strategy is your awareness of making these decisions.

Once you’re conscious you’re liberated, even in catastrophic circumstances. That gives back full dignity to the victim and overrides the perpetrator. This, however, is easier to understand in theory than through experience. So why should I write when I can live too?

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Reading Day 2

The right to opacityEJR #essay, #dialogue, #queerness, #experience

We just moved into our new place. Boxes scattered around the rooms. They contain our life. Kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom. We lay down on the mattress that is lying on the floor. For lack of better, we drink wine out of coffee cups. I’m tired. You are tired. We will unpack tomorrow, for now we will talk. My head resting on your belly, I hear your heartbeat, I hear you breathe. I hear your voice deepen and resonate in your chest.

N: Opacity is a noun. It means the quality of lacking transparency or translucence.

L: That would mean that synonyms are opaqueness, non-transparency or lack of transparency, maybe even cloudiness, filminess, haziness, and mistiness.

N: Yes. But also blur or blurred-ness, dirty-ness, dinginess, muddiness, griminess, and smeariness. Opacity could also be seen as the quality of being obscure in meaning; I mean in the meaning of being unclear, impenetrable, unintelligible or incomprehensible.

L: All the things that Esther Brown so longed to be. To be seen, to be taken seriously in her choices of how to live her life, to live free. To not be translucent. One of the countless and countless young black womxn who didn’t go down in herstory.

That were forgotten.

N: I immediately had to think of an experience that a dear friend of ours shared: The feeling she experiences every time she goes out for drinks, goes into public spaces or even just enters a room, as a tall black womxn. The minute she walks into the room there are eyes on her. She explained how this always sparked, even though she’s very confident, a feeling of discomfort.

This often happens in mostly white, cis dominated spaces. It just made me think of Esther Brown. Even though they might live in very different times, they are both put under a magnifying glass. Esther Brown cannot go out and do as she pleases, as a young womxn who wants to have fun and make her choices. Because, if she does she will be picked up from the streets and put into prison or a reformatory. All eyes are on her, and yet she is not seen as a human being. She is translucent. The translucency is in the singular way she is seen, as a black womxn. If she would have the right to opacity she would be seen as an intersectional being. How do you feel, well I know but for argument’s sake, when you enter a public space, room, etcetera?

N: Yes but that is exactly what Hartman did, right? She will go down in history now.

L: When I enter a room, as a trans person, I personally feel completely invisible sometimes. This might be my own doing, but I do experience it as not being seen; in that way being seen through. Unnoticed. When people do notice me it feels, hmmm… it uhh feels more like an attack than it feels like sympathy. But you know, this is merely personal, it sounds super dramatic but that is my personal feeling at times.

L: The opaque black womxn. The opaque womxn.

N: But you have told me once, that you also quite enjoy the fact of being invisible or,

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation? now that we’re talking about it, translucent sometimes.

L: The reason why I enjoy my invisibility sometimes is that… there is no judgement.

Judgement as in when I’m being ignored there are no eyes. No nasty comments. I can make myself small. I can observe.

N: Hmmm… But when I think about that…

Well you know I see it like this: When you are translucent and people don’t even notice, that basically means that you are non existent. If nobody acknowledges that you exist, do you even exist at all? Like your presence...

L: But that is something that I struggle with.

I struggle with what you just said: Do I even exist? Why am I not being acknowledged? I don’t enjoy being unseen.

N: But you know I think you are not the only one in the community, who wants to make themselves as small as possible, like ‘don’t mind me, or don’t even see me’. Because I think for a lot of people it is the only way to be safe, but by doing so they are diminishing their own existence and are slowly fading away. I think it’s crucial to exist. But that is easier said than done.

L: That also reminds me of one of the speakers at Black Pride. One of the speakers said, let me quote: ‘Don’t dim your light and don’t ever let someone dim your light, because we have been dimming our light for far too long and if we shine too bright, let them wear sunglasses’. And that is a little segue back to the text—the right to opacity. I’ve had a positive experience with not being translucent or opaque in the Ballroom community. I went to this ball, and that for me was one of the first times in a long time…

like eye contact—and I was just welcomed.

Everyone was seen and welcomed there, like we see you, you exist, and you can exist here, truly.

N: That’s nice.

L: Yes, just acceptance.

N: I just don’t understand why it has to be so hard. That was also one of the things that made me think, because of this text, of another text by Gloria Wekker. She talks about the Dutch people and Dutch society and how it is built upon the remnants of its colonial past. According to Gloria, the Dutch have a collective memory, or as she calls it, a cultural archive, which is the product of receiving education and growing up in a post imperial society. With this cultural archive comes stereotypes and a deeply rooted fragility. The Dutch, therefore, believe that they are in fact a very progressive country, who accept everyone as they come. We are non-racist, don’t have racist traditions, and are, as we like to say it, ‘multiculti’. A famous phrase we like to use to emphasize our anti-discriminatory society is that we are colour blind. I think that colorblindness is in fact a quite dangerous phrase to use, because by doing so you completely diminish that there is in fact a difference between black, people of colour and white people, especially in the way we are treated. Again, I think this could be connected to the LGBTQ+ community and how our experiences are diminished by people who believe that queerness is a choice, or that non-binary-ness and the pronouns that come with it are mere fussiness. So yes, acceptance, but specific acceptance. So yes, Esther Brown should have the right to opacity, but this opacity should not result in colorblindness, which would, just once more, devalue her.

N: Well excuse me I noticed you!

L: Yes dear. In a long time, I truly experienced being seen. I was not bumped into, people gave me space, people smiled at me—

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Reading Day 2

The Poss!bleOK #essay, #capitalism, #freedomofchoice, #illusion

I am standing in the kitchen of KFC, where I work, and I am looking at the customers on the other side of the counter. A wellbuilt young man is standing in front of the counter and complaining to my colleagues about his order. I guess, maybe one piece of chicken was missing, or his food was not as warm as he wanted it to be. That is not important to me, nor interesting. It is interesting to me that he is wearing a short sleeve, dark brown Nike T-shirt with bold white letters saying: ‘JUST DO IT’.

I stop looking at him and continue doing my job. I put the chicken pieces in the flour, then in the water, then again in the flour, and then bread them on the cooking racks: ready to be fried. According to Marx, I am alienated from the chicken I am making, my product is not mine, I am not using my creativity, I feel detached from what I am making, emasculated, just doing a repetitive task, making profit and a commodity for my boss, whilst I myself am a commodity to the system I am working in. By silently preparing and frying chicken I am complying with the conditions that are set for me within KFC. The object that I am making, the chicken, enters the commodified world, engendering my ego-weakness, making me more vulnerable in my existence in society, whilst promising the customers a ‘more’ happy evening, a ‘more’ happy life, and trying to gratify them. (Marx 69-84) The same happens with Nike. ‘JUST DO IT’ is an oral gratification, an empty piece of informative order, a bag of deficit packed in a nice package presented to us, from a God, Nike, made by people just like us, miserable, and weak. It tries to remind us

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation? to enjoy our lives, to be our best, to break all the rules, to make the impossible possible.

Is it ‘possible’ for me to do otherwise? What is the other way of doing what I am doing?

What happens if I want to be a fugitive, recalcitrant, anarchic, willful, reckless, troublesome, riotous, tumultuous, rebellious, and wild man? Yes, I’d be fired. One might say you can choose another occupation, be a freelancer, work on what you love, love what you do, be one with nature, the universe. I would say that I don’t have that luxury in my life now. Time is running out and my landlord and school, amongst others, are waiting to pick up their monthly payments. They are thirsty. Sometimes ‘possible’ is far away, no one, of course, forces one to do such things, but we are not as ‘free’ to choose as we think we are. In this world the man who is wearing the Nike T-shirt reminds us where we are and what we should do. ‘JUST DO IT’. To do ‘it’—to do ‘what’?—I asked myself.

The first possibility Imagine you are born in Texas in 1940 among another three sons of a family who is using a pseudonym to avoid the law. Your father is an alcoholic conman who had other wives and families whom he doesn’t support. Your mom is an outcast Mormon from Utah. Your father is a strict man who would often whip his sons, and your mom constantly threatens to murder your father because he’s offending her religion.

During your childhood, your family frequently relocated throughout the United States, with your dad supporting you by selling fake magazine subscriptions. You are first arrested at the age of 14 for a car theft, and later for more serious crimes and you will spend many years in different prisons. You will be arrested in 1964 for an armed robbery, and will be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder at that prison. Finally, when you are conditionally paroled in 1976, you will rob a gas station and kill its employee, and the next morning

you will rob a motel and kill its manager, although both of them complied with your demands.

You are Gary Gilmore, accused of a double-murder, sentenced to death, and the year is 1976. What do you think was possible for Gary? When you know what he went through during his life. He lived the life of an outlaw, did so many things against the norms, and when he faced the firing squad in his last moments, he said: ‘Let’s do it.’ That’s where Nike’s inspiration for their slogan campaign comes from, and the irony of this is that Gilmore did not ask for forgiveness, nor showed any regret, his wayward life ended ‘heroically’. ‘Let’s do it’ means that he died believing in himself, in the way he lived and was. Was it possible to be otherwise?

Another possibility Imagine you are a girl from a poor family in rural areas in Bangladesh, then not much is possible for you. You will be sent by your family to work in textile production factories, deprived of basic education. Working in the worst work conditions, sleeping in rooms shared with 35 people, not allowed to leave the hostels and meeting your family, working more than 60 hours a week, all year round, in unpleasant highly humid rooms, lacking fresh air, not entitled for paid sick leave, ending up with around 35 dollar per month; not even paid a fair wage.

(SOMO 5-7) ‘There is no supervision or social control mechanisms, no unions that can help you to bargain for better working conditions.

You are a very low-skilled worker without a voice, so an easy target.’ (Ovaa) But, you should remember that you are still one of the lucky ones, because you are not among the dead ones (yet). Buried under a collapsed factory building which is a ‘really, really regular occurrence’ (Bangladesh, 2013) The factory owners, of the one you work in, built three additional floors on top of the

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Reading Day 2 five that were already existing to be able to produce more, because they only think about the profit; why not? The foundation was not meant to support this extra weight.

You among other workers noticed cracks in the building on Tuesday but were forced to show up for work on Wednesday anyway.

What is possible then? Freedom of choice is a luxury, it is an illusion.

The last possibility Imagine you are born in a Uyghur family in Xinjiang, China. You and ‘80,000 other people are transferred out of Xinjiang and assigned to factories in a range of supply chains, including electronics, textiles, and automotives, under a central government policy known as ‘Xinjiang Aid’.

You make Nike shoes during the day, and in the evening you attend a night school where they teach you Mandarin, because you have your own language and never learned Mandarin. You also learn how to sing the Chinese national anthem, and will later receive ‘vocational training’ and ‘patriotic education’, all because you are from a region which is described by your government as ‘backward’ and ‘disturbed’ by religious extremism. With the help of other workers, you are producing more than seven million pairs for the American God annually, while being kept in a camp equipped with watchtowers, razor wire, and inward-facing barbed-wire fences. You are free to walk in the streets around the factory compound, but all comings and goings are closely monitored by a police station at the side gate equipped with facial recognition cameras (Xiuzhong Xu 3-13). How can you choose not to be part of this system here?

Your only possibility is not having a choice.

Poss!ble ‘JUST DO IT’ is about the possible, but it is more about the opposite of what it tries to represent. It seems to me that it is about encouraging ‘us’ to achieve our goals. It is about success, victory, championship, and

overcoming difficulties. It is about comparing ‘ourselves’ to successful athletes and stars in the despair of becoming like them.

It is about getting to the point ‘we’ want to be at without killing more time. It is about the act of doing and not thinking, you don’t need to think, you don’t need to pay attention to your life, just do it, just buy it, just consume, just work for us in horrible working conditions. Just accept your slavery.

Just accept all the oppressive traditions of your society. Just accept whatever bullshit WE give you. Just be and do whatever that makes you not realize what’s going on. Just do it. ‘JUST DO IT’ is not about the possibility of swimming against the stream, the existentialist argument of choice seems like a joke here. There is no freedom of choice according to Nike, much has been determined for you, you should just do it; an imperative order which is eliminating the chance of making a choice for the individual.

Now, the irony becomes even more clear.

‘JUST DO IT’, represents a world of possibilities in front of us. It suggests that there has never been a time with more freedom of choice than now, everything is possible, but we shouldn’t forget, it only applies to the ones who are born in the right place, in the right family, and at the right time.

The ‘possible’ is not really possible as long as there is inequality in the opportunities.

‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ In the world of ‘JUST DO IT’, the situations determine what our lives will look like more than we think. We can only think that we have control over ‘our’ lives. The world is changing and is getting more complex than it ever was, the spider webs of capitalism are getting more invisible than ever, keeping us down from reaching the ‘possible’, suffocating many opportunities.

Let’s just don’t do it for once.

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Based on: Marx, Karl. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto, Prometheus Books, New York, 1988. pp69-84.

Flawed Fabrics, The abuse of girls and women workers in the South Indian textile industry, SOMO - Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, ICN India Committee of the Netherlands, October 2014. pp5-7.

[3] Based on: Ovaa, Sofie. Global campaign coordinator of Stop Child Labour, Child labour in the fashion supply chain, interview with The Guardian.

[4] From Business Insider: Bangladesh Factory Disasters Will Become ‘More And More’ Common [5] Based on: Xiuzhong Xu, Vicky. Uyghurs for sale, ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang. Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), March 2020. pp3-13.

[2]

1]

Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

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Reading Day 2

Geometries of attentionRM #poetry, #worldmaking, #timetravels, #craft

Thread Stab.

Pull Past, present, and future coexist Memory and yearning dissolve into a gelatinous mass of unintentional thought The now, is a blend of cold tea and rays of sunlight, snacking, keying, stitching Nostalgia arrives uninvited, an un-had memory of an unlived yet familiar history A mix of saddened wishes and eager expectations An idealized, irrecoverable past A past with no owner.

The act of noticing reconfigures time The future comes immediately, dissolves with the present as you notice Awake, return Cover the imperfections The body has memory.

The hand moves.

It follows an indiscernible pattern Do not try to make sense out of it As logic returns repetition becomes chronologic, arithmetical, decorative.

Grab a snack

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

Freehand draw Occupy the transit Play Reminisce about ancient civilizations Envision luxurious garments Wish for certainty, but rely on the unexpected Create. Nobody’s watching Remain entangled Play with the threads Connect the movements Watch yourself from the sidelines build a fantasy fuck reality Playing mind games there is no controller Veer the attention to the in-between, the shapeless, the unnamed, the forms in transition Inhabit the liquid, viscous substance Remain unsettled, entangled by virtue of play, of curiosity A greater realization Translate it. Give it shape and form allow it to enter the common.

That is giving voice to silence in a polylingual alphabet The unsaid speaks as well.

Time begins when you start noticing a knotted, interlocked, girded mesh of time

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Reading Day 2

Marianne Lambert, I Don’t Belong Anywhere: Le cinéma de Chantal Akerman. 67' #review

Review by EO

I travel through Chantal Ackerman’s life and work, with her as my tour guide.

She tells me about her films whilst sitting on her bed. I see the contours of a New York City highrise through the window behind her. We travel by cab, she has a hat on. We eat a sandwich in a New York City diner. We have a beer and a cigarette in a Brussels cafe.

I could listen to her raspy soothing voice for hours.

The voice that tells me about her mother taking piano lessons after escaping the concentration camps. How Chantal never knew about these lessons, because by the time she was born her mother was too busy to play. Busy with the repetitive chores that inspired Chantals movie Jeanne Dielman. We look at some clips from the film and see a woman cleaning, peeling, folding.

Chantal lights a cigarette whilst we look at some of the film footage she made of her mother. On the screen, Chantal is struggling through her mothers house, alone with a camera, a table used as a tripod, looking for the right frame. Her mother is wading through the frame, also struggling a little.

She shows me that her mother is at the heart of her work, and shares her worries that now her mother is no longer alive, she will have nothing left to say.

She takes me back to her childhood home in Brussels. We look out of the window; kids are playing in the street. Chantal was not allowed to play in the streets, her mother was too scared to let her go. So she observed. So we observe.

Chantal takes me into her world and makes me want to hold on to her, I want her to be my friend, my mother. After one hour and seven minutes I don’t want to leave.

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Foundations II: What is the relationship between waywardness and speculation?

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READING

DAY 3

Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism?

You can read a book a hundred times and can always get something else from it. Whether it’s your mental stage, the temperature of the room or the time of the day, many factors affect how we read. Each condition triggers different associations in the reader, creating various interpretations each time. Apart from these sometimes-accidental circumstances, there is the whole universe of preconceptions we’re subconsciously biased to when we turn the first page of a book. Another important part is the conscious decision in which we choose the context the text can be interpreted in, which some would call interpretation itself. What are the conditions for choosing the conditions for interpretations? This unsolvable dilemma is at the core of the following texts. Looking at Barbara Johnson’s and Michael de Montaigne’s writing, the reader can experience a variety of critical approaches on how we read.

Based on:

Barbara Johnson “ Melvilles Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd” Michel de Montaigne, “Of the Uncertainty of our Judgement” Film screening: The Otolith Group, Medium Earth & Anathema, ±100 mins

Reading Day 3

Allegory - Drawing the lineECF #essay, #line, #cyrcle, #rhizome

‘As an act, drawing a line is inexact and violent’. (Johnson 106).

Let’s take Johnny Cash’ famous song I walk the line, written in 1975.

A straight line is the shortest path between two points (A and B).

Walking implies a displacement from A to B. When Johnny walks the line, he’s performing an oriented operation. This makes ‘the line’ a vector.

Now, let’s take June Carter and Merle Kilgore’s Ring of fire, written a few years later. A ring most commonly refers to a hollow circular shape. When drawing a circle, any starting point (A) and ending point (B) are necessarily identical. You cannot walk a circle without arriving at exactly the same point you departed from. June ‘falls into a ring of fire’, so she is trapped inside a closed curve from which not only she cannot get out, but also where the border gets further and further from her reach as she falls.

An allegory is a literary resource in which the characters and/or plot of a story, poem, play or picture represent particular qualities or ideas that relate to morals, religion, or politics. In an allegory (at least) two

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism? stories cohabit the same literary space; a story understood literally within its own plot and sense, and an interpretation of the same, which is mediated by signs. Allegories swarm in popular culture.

Perhaps because both songs are about romantic love, the most hackneyed literary topic for western commonplaces, or because they are rich in geometrical symbolism, the popular anthems happen to be fertile for allegorical readings.

A simple interpretation of the first shows a man devoted to his new love, to whom he promises fidelity. For that he watches himself closely, avoiding desire and temptation along his lonely way: ‘I keep a close watch on this heart of mine—I keep my eyes wide open all the time.’ With these words, the man subdues himself to the catholic holy sacrament of marriage, represented by the line. ‘Because you’re mine, I walk the line.’

A similar analysis of the second song shows a woman captive of her own desire. But her love, unlike the one above, isn’t blessed by the holy sacrament. For she sins, falling hopelessly and without regret ‘into a burning ring of fire’. The more she loves the deeper she falls into the burning loop: ‘I went down, down, down and the flames went higher - And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire.’

Both songs are circular tales: They depict an ongoing action (a penitence for love) based on it’s own repetition, a common thing in folk songs. In essence, their plot is simple and the allegory behind it comes easy for all audiences. Perhaps that is the reason for their popularity.

But something changes when we take both lyrics together. This is only possible because it was Johnny Cash who finally interpreted Ring of Fire, making it one of his greatest hits, after having left his first wife (to whom he had initially devoted his love) to marry June Carter (who had also left his former husband in the process) in 1966.

June’s ring got in the way of Jonny’s line, or—not to blame Eve— Johnny’s line collided with June’s ring.

Luckily enough, the two figures happened to coexist in the same plane, making it possible to superimpose them. So, when the steady line intersects the cyclic prison, their trajectories modify each other,

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Reading Day 3 generating with their ensemble movement a third figure. In maths, this reciprocal dance is called a convolution. The figure resulting from this beautiful operation is no other than a spiral; the very same curve that, embossed onto the surface of a vinyl, captures sound. But, how could a line grasp the whole complexity of a song?

In an Euclidean system, where coordinates are taken for granted and the system can only be observed from within, drawing lines is establishing differences, judging, and taking parts. Drawing a line is performing a violent act of choice. But lines are also gateways into complexity. It is precisely from the convoluted iteration of a line that a fractal is created. Like a dendrite, like Chinese cabbage, like fluvial networks, like a cyclone, like a galaxy, like Fibonacci’s Sequence, like the Principle of Chaos.

In a way, it is possible to say that allegories are also convolutional operations. They couldn’t exist without an interpretative reading, superimposed onto a literal one, creating with their bonding a richer story. As structuralists pointed out, signs are complex ‘assemblages’ of signified and signifier, referring the first to the plane of content (the concept ‘behind’) and the second to the plane of expression, among which myths proliferate. Later on, deconstructivists extended this analysis, establishing the principle of ‘difference’, according to which it is impossible to identify signified and signifier, since language, especially ideal concepts such as truth and justice, is irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible to determine. A critical reading of allegories requires being able to recognize and interpret signs. And, most importantly, it requires us to acknowledge that the layers of meaning that constitute them aren’t fixed.

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism?

Allegories are entangled within the narrative(s) of history(s) as much as fractals are in nature. Very often it is not possible to tell the end of ‘reality’ from the beginning of the ‘myth’. Skepticism has proven to be a useful tool for navigating this uncertainty, but the risk of falling into the fractal loop of indeterminism is big, and might lead to disillusionment and inaction.

Back to our plot, when analyzing the story as a whole, it seems that Johnny crossed the ‘deadly chiasmus’ set up by the Christian status quo, to fall right into June’s ring of fire. Just as it happened to Billy Bud, the common plot of the characters contains its own marring.

When crossing the chiasmus, the tension ends, and each individual’s fate seems to accommodate the other’s, denying both songs in its own accomplishment.

If the listener had known from the beginning how the events would unfold maybe they wouldn’t have believed in Johnny Cash’s and June Carter’s love songs. But we don’t want to know how Jonny deviates from his steady line, and we don’t want to know how June’s ring of fire languishes to ashes. Perhaps we just like them precisely because they offer a still frame of a story whose ending we deny knowing.

‘Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edge”’ (Melville)

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Reading Day 3

ChiasmusSF #chiasmus, #desperation, #meanings, #poem

In Chiasmus, the words might jump from one sentence to the other in an x shape.

The ‘chi’ stands for x in Greek.

‘In rhetoric, chiasmus or, less commonly, chiasm (Latin term from Greek χίασμα, “crossing”, from the Greek χιάζω, chiázō, “to shape like the letter Χ”), is a “reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses – but no repetition of words”’. (Corbett and Connors 58–59, 74) So, chiasmus is like playing with words, their significance and objectives, in such a way that one phrase appears to contradict the other.

Chiasmus can be an allegorical way to use meanings, where questions sometimes seem like satire.

Chiastic (adjective): Referring to a figure that repeats concepts in reverse order, in the same or modified form.

Without understanding, there is no point of looking at it, since inattention would make you lose the order.

In the text by Johnson, she allows you to see it, whereas clarity in Melville’s book is not easily attainable.

Allowing for the existence of personification but revising the relation between personifier and personified positioning an opposition

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism? between good and evil only to make each term take on properties of its opposite, Melvilles set up his plot in a form of chiasmus.

This play between personification, personifier and personified, is like a party for the thoughts that enhanced the story.

The expression ‘deadly space between’ refers primarily to a gap in cognition, In my desperation to understand, I wrote it as a poem instead.

Deadly space between a heart and a soul, the destination where you can face the dead.

Clouds can come and go, and there is no way to find rain.

Heaven is upon the mountains, climb the hill, and you will find eternity.

http://oer2go.org/mods/en-boundless/www.boundless.com/definition/chiastic/index.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmus Johnson, Barbara. Studies in Romanticism; Melvilles fist: The execution of Billy Bud

Some people can fly above their sobriety, while others drink from their sorrows.

Music is, made to heal the soul, but no soul could heal without love.

There is no harmony without symphony, but our heartbeat is just harmonious.

You will find me crossing sentences and pieces, ‘cause I cannot find the parts of my broken heart.

I can still hear the waves from Westpunt beach shoveling on my feet, but I cannot seem to find my way back to that beach.

I got lost on the ocean of my desires with you, but the waves rushing by are still intact.

Calm, and you will hear my voice in the middle of everything, but that sound will not be tender.

The existence of your love was never a certainty, certainty is where I found happiness instead.

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Reading Day 3

Citation - Constructing citations on the streets of AjaccioXK #fiction, #ajaccio, #wordgames, #exoticism, #travels

I don’t know how Ajaccio became this thing for us, but it did. The day before our arrival we constantly talked about it. Together we fantasized over seeing its silhouette for the first time, and how it would feel visiting Napoleon’s birthplace. It started as a joke, and maybe it kept on being a joke all the time, but it felt more and more as something relating to something else. Because in the midst of all the jokes, such as when the prince with a twinkle in his eyes laughed ‘I’m going to Ajaccio to find inspirations on how to make the best of the Hashemite kingdom’, truly beautiful things were said, such as by Muhammed: ‘Why are we going to Ajaccio? To find the roots of our longing, to find a bed for our dreams and find peace in all our desires, that’s why we’re going to Ajaccio, to Ajaccio, Ajaccio.’

The prince was very fond of Eritrean coffee and the Eritrean coffee ceremony. He said he loved the spiciness, and that popcorn really works unsurprisingly well with coffee. Every evening we joined the prince in his beloved coffee ceremony, this was one of the core routines of the yacht, and the coffee turned quite often into something more Irish. This particular evening before we arrived in Ajaccio, when we all gathered at the deck, we started to play an association game: A children’s game, in which one person says one thing and the other says something associated with it and the third one says something associated with that, and so it goes on in an endless chain of associations. We decided to add a rule this evening before Ajaccio: Each association had to contain the name Ajaccio, preferably in the form ‘I’m (or We’re) going to Ajaccio to … or Ajaccio is …’

For instance: ‘Ajaccio, Ajaccio why have you abandoned me?’ (referring to the crucified Christ), ‘If Ajaccio can’t come to Napoleon then Napoleon has to come to Ajaccio?’ (referring to the chiasm about Muhammed and the mountain), or ‘He said he’s going back to find a simpler place and time, on the midnight train to Ajaccio’ (referring to the famous song by Gladys Knight and the Pips). After a while, the quotations we knew by heart started to become fewer and fewer, and more and more we started to refer to song lyrics and popular culture, which generally seems to get stuck in our memory easier than other things. We also started to mix these references more and more with our own ideas, words, and feelings; sort of quoting ourselves. And sometimes after something beautiful had been said, such as ‘I’ll find rest, where I breathe, I’ll find peace, where my heart beats, in Ajaccio, Ajaccio…’ someone would ask – ‘That’s lovely, who said that?’, whereby the one who said it would burst into a smile and say – ‘Oh, I just made that up.’

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I talked about this poetical and intimate aspect of the game with Muhammed later the next day, after we had arrived in Ajaccio, while the staff from the yacht hurried into town to find fresh groceries for the coming days, and some locally produced ice cream which the prince had promised us for dinner. As we walked towards the center of the city, in couples or trios, Muhammed asked me if I wanted to join him in looking for pomegranate juice. I have always felt a little awkward walking in bigger groups like this, as if you’re part of a parade of wealth, so I was happy for his question and replied enthusiastically – ‘Let’s find it’. He said to the others that we’re going for pomegranate juice and that we will join them at the house of Napoleon. Sakhr laughed – ‘I see, I see pomegranate juice, that’s good for the semen.’ I saw that Muhammed started to blush so I felt obliged to draw attention away from him, so I said – ‘If it’s good for the semen, shall I buy one for you Sakhr?’ The prince, who had been walking with Sakhr, laughed to Sahkr – ‘Be careful my friend, she’s faster than a falcon hidden by clouds.’ Sakhr took my hands, looked me in the eyes and said theatrically – ‘Would you? Old dear Sakhr would need some pomegranate juice.’ Whereby we all laughed.

Normally I would have been scared of my fast tongue, which I sometimes can’t control, especially when someone close to me or someone whom I feel responsible for is at risk of being made a fool.

But not with Sakhr, he really knows how to handle these situations, so I joined his theatricality and replied – ‘I’ll have two myself, my friend, my youth is no longer what it was.’

It was when we had left the others, on our hunt for a juice shop or stand, that we started to talk about the previous night and the association game we had played. Whilst our quotes became more and more banal and simple, drowning in references to popular culture, such as when one young woman who worked, or works as a model (I always forget which) said ‘Hit my Ajaccio, one more time’ (referring to Britney Spears). The sayings and quotes, if we can call them quotes, that we made up ourselves became not only more poetic, but also more honest and even revealing. I thought it was touching.

First, Muhammed suggested the scale as a metaphor – how one side becomes lighter so that the other side can become heavier. I thought, though, that both sides were revealing somehow; quoting Britney Spears is in some sense much more brave than, for instance, quoting Shakespeare or Leibniz. It is definitely connected to class, but also to what is shared within a culture and between cultures. Britney Spears is surely more directly widespread and known culturally and interculturally than Leibniz, even though most of us would say he is more important.

Sometimes quotes really express things better and more clearly than if you would try to say what you want to say with your own words. But the feeling I had yesterday night was that the main effect of qoutes was to give birth to our own words. First, we used them instead of our own words, then they became this bridge to our own creativity, assets, and languages. The quotes became the spark for our own

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Reading Day 3 selves to take form and reshape, through putting ourselves in relation to history and to what has been said. A being in relation to history does not only constitute a sense of seeing oneself within history, but it requires a place for oneself as well as a physical situation of oneself within history itself. In that sense quoting, citing, reading or experiencing cultures which gives you this inner emotional archive of quotes, isn’t only a capital, nor solely history and knowledge, but also, and maybe foremost, a way of getting into time, by giving oneself time. That’s why reading, for instance, has these feelings and sensations of timelessness. The act of reading materializes time while the act of writing grounds the self in time. They’re performed even when they’re not pursued.

I told Muhammed that I had read an essay by Montaigne the other day and how this made me think of quotes as layers of traces of presence within someone. In this essay Montaigne quotes Plato – ‘We read harshly and inconsiderately, because like ourselves our reason has in it a large element of change’, and for some reason, I wondered who I would quote if I would like to quote this quote by Plato when I read the quote in Montaigne and not in Plato? And it gets even more puzzling when I think about it, because the quote is something the character (or person) Timaeous says in the dialogue with the same name. The academica always have a solution, but that’s neither my point nor what I’m trying to get at here. It’s this aspect of meta-meta-quoting and what this can tell us about language and the constructions of the self that fascinates me. Because, even if Timaeus is a fictional character, it’s the character who affects me. I approach him as if he were real, which brings what he says to life.

Walking on these stone laid streets in the shade from the summer striking sun; seeing the back of Muhammed in front of me, watching his hands and fingers making the small gentle movements – back and forth – that he always makes while walking, made me feel at peace somehow, and it struck me there and then that we actually were walking in Ajaccio. I burst out – ‘I can’t believe we’re in Ajaccio now!’ He stopped, had a look at the buildings surrounding us and smiled. I don’t know if it was a good idea of me to say what I then said to Muhammed – ‘Before last night, I felt a little bit like this whole trip was some sort of ballyhoo, something extravagant and funny, but since yesterday night, it feels totally different, it feels serious, and it feels like we know each other more than we do. I don’t know what to say, and I don’t know what I’m saying, but it feels like we all came much closer to each other last night.’ He looked at me and said – ‘I’m so happy you came with us Jenny, I felt we came closer to each other too.’

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Reading Day 3

EndingsEO #poetry, #endings, #chiasmus

Why is it that when thinking about endings I immediately think of death?

There are all these other endings to think about.

The end of the day, the end of the line, the end of a storm.

Endings we long for, like the end of a root canal treatment or the end of labor.

The end of war.

Endings that come with us, moving through time.

Or with time, moving through us.

Then there is the end to an object.

But how to decide what the end is?

‘You sit on that end of the table, I will sit at the other end.’

Or do I sit at the beginning of the table, being it is opposite to the end?

Does this mean a table has multiple endings, beginnings or both?

A square table could have four endings.

It also has four corners.

These corners are the furthest apart.

Nobody wants to sit at these corners.

They can be sharp and hurt you.

But if they are the furthest apart should they not qualify as endings, and beginnings.

In my head I draw a line from one corner of the table to the opposite corner.

And from the other corner to its opposite corner.

They cross each other in the middle.

Beginning and ending meet.

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Reading Day 3

FortuneCP #narrative, #metaphor, #chance, #memory

I’m walking on the empty path, going slightly uphill, while the sun is not yet too high. The light breeze promises a gentle descent in a couple of hours. On each side, aged eyes and faces appear in the curved olive tree trunks, bringing a sense of organised presence.

Each of them is standing at a calculated distance from the other, shaped with a slightly different personality by time. Along the path, the bright wild fennel lightens the sight and smell around.

There is always this same point where the path eases for a couple of minutes, and you notice the mouth losing agility and the tongue sticking slightly to the sides. That is the right time. Just before the pine trees decrease in quantity, the fennel flowers start craving attention. While walking, your eyes identify the most precise and voluminous combination of yellow formations. You need to be fast. You catch the fennel stick with two fingers, about five centimeters below the flower and pull!

You feel the water being produced in your cavity, whilst your teeth smash the small yellow containers of taste. As it happens, the fragrance is soothing the efforts that are running down your face, and your breath seems to ease for a second. These are not violets, and their fragrance does not represent forgiveness once your fingers have pulled its stick. But there is a similar sense of chance involved in the picking of the fennel and the stepping on the violet. Or is there not?

Maybe not.

The one’s fragrance is a generous gift of accident, the second’s a measured exchange. This fast moment of calculating expectations might take place unnoticed, to ourselves or to others. There might be fragrances and colours attached to the gestures and emotional reactions words can produce, that make us pull one flower and not another.

It is slightly earlier in the day now, and a conversation unfolds between four. They are not speaking at the same time, one speaks while the others carefully examine the sticks and flowers of the talk.

There is one word in a sentence, together with the gesture and the slight change of head orientation, that releases a specific smell. The face of the person, now reached by that odor, changes expression.

The fragrance has deformed its factions from inside out. As I look around, the others respond to the same chemical reaction with a

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism? subtle choreography; the corners of their mouths slightly decreasing, as if pulled by gravity. From that moment on the decision has been made. A subtle combination of words, gestures, head orientations, and tones, which had first escaped my attention, shift my fingers to pull the stick, from a flower from a completely different direction.

As I walk on the path, I am aware of an automatic bodily reaction, when one eats wild fennel, it can aggravate the situation. It might taste differently than you had thought. If it does, you spit it out, without subtlety but with speed. It’s the same speed that you carry in your body when you lift your one foot to the next step on the rock.

When I reach halfway down the path, before the top of the mountain, I will be able to sit and rest. There is a cross, with two concentric stone steps at the bottom, where you can catch your breath. The wind is normally strong there, quite a relief, as the sun will have made its way to the highest point of the sky by then. There aren’t many wild fennel plants in this part. It is more rocky and more barren. Violets don’t grow there.

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Reading Day 3

HistoryEJR #essay, #history, #interpretation, #meaning

Proper order of things —> History. At least that is what we expect history to be. An accurate plot and story of what happened in the past. The strange thing is, I believe we can never be sure, at least when it’s not a personal lived experience. And even then, certainty is a fickle thing…

I wonder what history (happened reality) might be, if signs, readings, and interpretations are always personal, different, and forever wayward and changing (Johnson).

Can history therefore be a fixed thing, a law that we can, as it were, depend upon?

I think not. If interpretations are ambiguous, and actions are too, then how can a fixed moment in time be called history?

Because, surely, we are so keen to look into the past, in order to comprehend the present, or predict the near future. But, if signs are in their essence ambiguous, then I believe history must be built up of multiple, interchangeable, interlacing histories (more importantly herstories and theirstories). Because, if a book is built on three characters that can all be read differently according to what you want to see and read, and to your own historical knowledge and understanding, then the story of Billy Budd (Melville) can not be interpreted in just 4 ways, but in thousands or even millions of different ways; as numerous as people on this planet. My knowledge is not your knowledge, so our interpretations and the ways we read a sign are entirely personal and entirely different from one another.

Fiction can almost feel more real than reality.

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To know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that which historians probably strive for, will inevitably kill some of the truth; the remaining mystery. Crossing the border into the deadly space. The deadly space as a completely fitting sign. When I say the word chair, we all think of the same chair. Sadly, and maybe luckily, no less is true. When I think of a signifier the outcome will always be different. I do not see the same chair as you do, we all see a different chair. But, a chair nonetheless. Perhaps the meaning of the word chair means something entirely different for you than it does for me. After all, we all come from different milieus and backgrounds. The signifier itself will also change over time. Years ago she might have meant something entirely different. The circumstances will change over time. This is a sign of history. History will change, with its taking of the time, the signifier and signified. The meaning of history itself will change. She is a sign herself. Constantly evolving.

Now, if we look at the story of Billy Budd, history might be the underlying narrative here. She might be the glue that binds this story together, but only in the way she plays a role in the interpretation of that story.

Over time the historical context will change.

Mine is probably different from yours, or from someone who was born in 1800. Their reading of such characters and signs will be, all together, entirely different. I believe this is a product of one’s own cultural, social, political knowledge and state of mind. My history is different from your history. I think that, therefore, history should not be seen as a fixed martial law; something that is like an underlying current, but that opposes an arbitrariness that meddles with the plot. I wonder therefore, can a sign ever be called a sign if she will change layer upon layer (See Hito Steyerl, In Defense of The Poor Image, 2009), jumping through hoops of different languages, understanding, meanings, and histories. There is not one reality, but as it seems, multiple coexisting temporalities, and therefore histories.

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Reading Day 3

How to taunt the enemy? A guide to a wayward lifeRW #poetry, #instructionmanual, #choreography, #joke, #horse, #tonguetwister, #wordgames

First find enemy Glance at enemy from distance Gesture choreography to be executed slowly Stick out tongue Expose red interior skin by pulling down lower eyelid Grab crotch Draw 1 finger across throat Hold fist with thumb and index finger, extended in mirrored L shape in front of forehead Draw 2 fingers across throat Stick out tongue. Move it up and down Fist with middle finger extended upwards Draw 5 fingers across throat Point of thumb on point of nose, wiggle fingers Get big horse Sit on horse Gallop in circles around enemy -laughShout insult ‘It looks like a banana just pooped on your head.’

-laugh loudFind food enemy likes Put food on rope Throw Move it farther when enemy comes close Find weak spot like belly Take long stick Poke belly -make others laugh with you-

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism?

Let enemy repeat tongue twister ‘Otho quarreled Vitellius’ quality to quasi quick quote ‘whiter weaker wrenching words welcome weasel waffle woo. Softened soldiers sting ladies’ latest irritated living pusillanimity love in snow.’ Fine foam freaked Vitellius forming fifty filthy forms of doe saying: ‘When a twister a-twisting will twist him a twist, for the twisting a twist, he three twines will entrust; but if one of the twines of the twist do untwist, the twine that untwisteth untwisteth the twist.’

Sing happy birthday Bring cake Throw cake in face -roll on ground laughingGet back on big horse Let horse sit on enemy -laugh so hard you cryShout ‘Your mother…!’

Dance choreography to be executed fast Wiggle ass at enemy Move arms back while crotch forward, repeat Caricature enemy Moonwalk Point of thumb on point of nose, wiggle fingers Draw 5 fingers across throat Grab crotch -laugh hystericallyTell joke ‘What vegetables are a sailor’s enemy?’

‘Leeks’ -laugh, wink, laugh, wink, laugh-

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Reading Day 3 Fart in face Tell joke ‘Is it a crime to put sodium chloride in your enemy’s eyes?’

‘Yes, that’s assault.’

‘I know it’s a salt but is it a crime?’

-spit out saliva while laughingRun circles around enemy Moonwalk around enemy Wiggle ass around enemy Tweet ENEMY DOES NOT EXIST!!!!!!!!!

FAKE NEWS………..

IT WILL LOSE WHEN I BRING IT DOWN Shout insult ‘your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries’ (Monty Python) Gesture Expose red interior skin by pulling down lower eyelid Let horse fart in face

-horse laughs, rolls on ground and accidentally tramples enemy-

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975

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Reading Day 3

Signifier and SignifiedES #lyricalessay, #stone, #meanings, #multiplicity

S-T-O-N-E Stone. Stone is our sound-image. Our signifier. But is it ‘a stone’, or ‘to stone’, or ‘the stone’? Your signifieds are innumerable.

‘A stone’. I can hold you in my hand. You are soft and warm, basking in rays of summer sun. I run my fingers up and down you, circling your flat surface; caressing you. I stop in my tracks and face the water. Breath in the cool, wet, salty ocean air. I flick my wrist back.

Once, then twice, and the third time I fling you forward, right back where you belong. Out into the ocean. Where the water can endlessly caress your skin. With every wave your shape changes. You crash into your friends, and the chances rise of you cracking in half. A broken body at sea. I wonder what your insides look like. Are they grey, or marbled? You might not know yet either. You’ve left my hand and I move on. Under my feet the stones crunch as they grind up against one another, and give way underneath me. Where does the first layer of stone begin, on this endless stretch? Where does the floor end?

You are unstable but still you support me. I sit down and you crowd around me, moulding yourselves to the shape of my body. When I lie down, arms stretched out beside me, I feel your irregularities. They are fixing the kinks in my back.

‘A stone’s’ signified is a piece of rock found on the ground. It is the piece of rock that travels from here to there; that is picked up, and replaced or misplaced. How did you all get here? Crowded on this shingle beach, bunched up, one on top of the other. You were born as the ocean water passed over you, washing over you, with lines of loose stone particles. Like sandpaper. Now you are smooth to the touch. Now you are dormant on land, waiting to return to sea, to be remoulded. Stone is the pebble that crosses boundaries and borders.

From land to sea. From the beach, to collectors’ hands, to home.

From beach, to industry, to construction site; becoming the neighbours new driveway.

But ‘a stone’s’ signified is also weighted. You have a weight to you as you lie in my hand, ready to be thrown away. But it is not heavy enough. We are looking for 6.35 kg. Your name is used to measure my weight, but not your own. Maybe you are 1/100 of a stone.

‘To stone’. They use you to stone objects. They use you to stone cars in protest. They use you to stone people. Stoning as a method of capital punishment. They hurl you at people until that person dies from blunt trauma. But we also stone fruit. We remove the stone; remove

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism? the pit, which holds the seed of the fruit. The inedible. We remove the fruits of the mother, before we even bite into their flesh, sucking away their nutrients, tearing through the skin with our teeth. We tear the unborn child from the womb, and throw it into the trash, as we get ready to cut it into slices for our fruit salad. Cherries, peaches, and plums.

‘To stone’s’ signified is two fold. It is the act of throwing the stone, the act of violence, intention to harm, to injure or to kill, which is in every individually thrown stone. But it is also an act of removal, of taking away the inedible essence of a fruit; violently punching away the cherry pit.

‘The stone’. The stone of our fruit. The object that we discard. Why do we not plant it? If we were to plant it, we could grow another fruit.

A fruit tree perhaps. Outside you see many discarded stones. They are thrown to the ground by those who have eaten their flesh. Sitting on the shingle beach, we used to eat cherries in the summer months.

June. July. I pick two connected cherries from the plastic box. The perfect earrings. I loop them over my ear and they dangle down, one touching my cheek, the other behind. We laugh. Once the moment has passed I pluck the fruit from its stem, and pop it into my mouth.

Biting into the skin. Sucking out the flesh. Working my way around the stone. Once I am done I am left with the tasteless, hard remains.

I spit it out in front of me. To become a part of the shingle beach. To become another stone on this pebbled waterfront. For a moment I think, perhaps you will grow a little cherry tree, but of course I know you cannot. Not here. So you become something else. You become your own memorial stone. A memorial of this event, of me eating you.

‘The stone’ is just as much a memorial stone. The tombstone, headstone, or gravestone. The marker that is placed over the grave, with its very own personal inscription. A funeral art, focused on mourning and remembrance. Perhaps with just one name, or two, or numerous, of all the relatives past. An entire family spread over decades. These stones are made of stone. Of the very stone they are named after. We inspect them, nurture them, and tend to their decay, for the sake of our lost loved ones, as stones may settle, or topple over, or rarely, very rarely, fall and injure or kill.

The kidney stone is also ‘the stone’. But it is not made of stone, rather a collection of salt and minerals. Pebbles of calcium or uric acid. Its own little gemstone. It forms itself inside your kidney, to later travel to other parts of the urinary tract. These stones vary in size. They can be small, a fraction of an inch, or grow to a few inches across, and in some cases grow so large they take up an entire kidney. And so, the kidney itself becomes the stone, with a fleshy, red outer skin.

‘My stone’ is my kidney. Kidney stone pain is similar to that of a kidney infection, like the one I am fighting as I write. Except the

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Reading Day 3 excruciating pain that radiates from your central back, underneath your ribs, where the bean shaped kidneys lie, is rather like being stabbed in the side with a large knife. The stone rolls into the narrow ureter, it is too large and it causes a blockage. Pressure builds in the kidney. It is slowly pushed, travelling down, down, down, just like the pebbles on the beach are pushed further out to land with every wave. Once it reaches the bladder your urine burns. You feel like you urgently need to go to the bathroom. Day and night, our little stone is keeping you awake, asking for your attention as it continues to travel to land. Do I just have cystitis or are my kidneys about to explode?

You bleed as you pee. You cannot move. It is a debilitating pain. You are burning up, but shaking from the cold. But, at its end, this tiny little stone, our strange friend, will have reached its destination. It will have succeeded its journey, through your pain. Landing in the toilet bowl.

‘The stone’s’ signified is specific. It is weighted, referring to a specific stone. But it is not always made of stone. My stone is my kidney. It is not made of stone, nor is it made of salt or minerals. It is fleshy and squishy and warm, huddled inside my rib cage underneath my pancreas, and my liver. It is protected by my crowded organs and bones, yet at the same time is so vulnerable. It is like a stone, a pebble in shape and size, and it produces its own stones. Yet it has none of the same hardness, solidness, or unbreakability that we associate with stone.

‘Stone’. Stone without a, or the, or to, is material. The hard, solid, non-metallic mineral material that rock or stones are made of. It is the substance that makes up many of the previous stones mentioned.

Stone is favoured over other materials for the construction of monumental architecture. It is durable, adaptable to sculptural treatment, and is safe. It builds our homes, our schools, and our hospitals. It is what keeps us safe. ‘Stone’s’ signified, is the safety of its material, the reliability that it holds, the industrial process needed to obtain it, and the grey colour we associate with its final product. Stone is our safe outer shell.

The relationship between the signifier and signified is arbitrary, and there is no intrinsic or direct connection between them. For example, if our signifier is the word ‘stone’, there is nothing in the word S-T-O-N-E that refers directly to its concept. Its signified could in one context refer to the pebble on the English, Suffolk coast. In another it might refer to the seed of a fruit. Or perhaps to a weight.

Or a memorial. Or an illness. Or a death sentence. Or maybe merely the material itself. The relationship between signifier and signified is ever changing in every different context. Signs can only be understood and encoded in a context, meaning that, in the case of the word ‘stone’, a relationship between signifier and signified is made meaningful through its context.

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Caws, Peter. Structuralism: The Art of the Intelligible (Michigan, Humanities Press International, 1988), 71.

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Reading Day 3

Skeptic!smOK #narrativeessay, #existence, #doubting, #thinking

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism?

If I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt writing this assignment. This means I might not write anything, or if I write something it might not be related to what I was asked to write in the first place. But, since I cannot be sure whether I was asked to write anything at all, how can I be sure whether I have received such an assignment, or if such an assignment existed at all? Therefore, I wouldn’t need to fulfill such an assignment.

But, if I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt any writing system, which enables me to write.

This means that a pen and paper, or an electronic device, that could help me write this assignment might turn out faulty, or even untrustworthy to write with, or might not even exist. Even if they existed, I might not be able to use them since I am also doubting my capabilities.

But, if I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt my ability to write altogether. This means that these two figures in front of me that look like hands are only my impressions of two hands, and I cannot be sure whether they are really in my possession, or if they are just an idea of two hands. [1] Therefore, even if I knew how to write, now I cannot write with the hands that I might not even own.

But, if I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt having any idea about hands. This means that because I cannot trust what I see, feel, sense, and touch as hands, then, these might just be a false understanding formed by my brain, therefore, I cannot have any idea about the ‘true’ concept of hands. I am not sure when I am perceiving them, whether I am accommodating them to myself, or I am just trapped in a process of assimilation, which, at the same time, is a sort of falsification preventing me from judging what my hands are in and of themselves. [2] But, if I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt the very idea of a brain forming ideas. This means that I might not be able

to form any ideas, and what I consider to be my ideas are no more than imported ones, therefore, I cannot be sure about having any of my own thoughts in my brain.

But, if I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt I have a brain. This means that what I consider my brain might not even exist, because I might not have any information whatsoever about the existence of a brain.

I might never have seen a brain, or touched one, and might never even have spoken to another person about the very idea of a brain, therefore I don't know what a brain is. How can I think about not having a brain if I do not have an instrument to think about not having a brain?

But, if I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt thinking. This means that what I am describing right now is not showing a thinking process, and this might mean that I cannot probably think. [3] Therefore, I cannot form any ideas, and as a result, I might not even exist as the voice of this writing, and even if I do exist, I cannot be sure about the world I am existing in.

But, if I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt the existence of the external world once in all.

This means that I cannot be sure if the world of matters really exists, since I cannot form any infallible idea about the world that can serve as a foundation for my knowledge about it, or any idea that I might form can be called into doubt. [4] At this point, I'm not sure about anything. Even this sentence is betraying me.

But, if I am skeptical enough today, I will doubt doubting. This means that I may doubt the act of doubting. I might not even exist in the form that I previously thought I existed to be able to doubt about what I am doubting, but if I can doubt about what I have been doubting, then I should somehow exist to doubt in the first place. If I doubt, then I should be. [5] After writing these, the writer hit his head

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Reading Day 3 on the sharp edge of the desk in front of him, again, and again, once harder than before. The desk existed. He started bleeding, blood covered his eyes, blood existed. Mad, furious, unstable and dizzy, and unable to properly see, he grabbed the laptop which he was writing with and threw it at the window of his room, where he was sitting. The laptop broke, the window did not. He couldn't believe that it was possible for him not to exist, after all, he was able to touch, see, and feel, and I assume he just wanted to test his abilities. At last, he just opened the bedroom window and jumped out without any hassle.

He believed in ‘Skepticism’ and the suspension of his judgment (epochê), but not fully, obviously. If he was a true skeptic, he would have continued doubting (inquiring) about everything and could have completely suspended his judgment, leading to the tranquility, or peace of mind (atarâxiâ) implanted in his skepticism. [6] As a result, he could not have been able to hold any beliefs, resulting in not committing any action at all. [7] He could have still existed and shown that he had the ability to act, in this case, elimination of himself proved to be the pricey consequence of his faulty system of decision making. He rushed into forming an idea about an action that also unintentionally proved his existence without getting help from the divine. [8] Maybe he could have just opened his eyes and looked at his hands better. [9] Maybe then he could have trusted his ability to see the nature of reality itself, instead of thinking about this subjective state of the world, in which he got stuck, and which unfortunately led to his tragic death. [10] Commons sense or non-sense? [11] What could have saved this young man?

Appearances or reality?

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Impressions are perceptions that the mind experiences with the ‘most force and violence’ according to David Hume (1711-1776).

In line with Montaigne’s thought (1533-1592), now that because our state accommodates things and turns them according to itself, we do not know what the actual things are anymore; as nothing comes to us but falsified and altered by our senses. (Montaigne 1999: 600). See, E. Machuca, Diego and Baron Reed Skepticism From Antiquity to the Present. pp.238.

[3] It was René Descartes (1596–1650) who famously said, I think therefore I am.

[4] Based on Descartes’ ideas.

[5] It was Augustine (354-430) who famously claimed, If I doubt, then I exist.

[6] This was promised as a practical goal by Pyrrho of Ellis. Pyrrho of Ellis (365/360–275/270 BCE) was the first skeptic. He held three things: (i) The world is equally undecided and unmeasurable, (ii) One must not trust the senses and must be without opinion and belief as to how the world really is, and (iii) We must not assent to anything, and that will finally lead to tranquility (atarâxiâ).

[7] The Stoics’ counter-argument was that if one does not assent, then one does not hold beliefs and, hence, one cannot act.

[8] Montaigne suggests ‘Not to believe too rashly: not to disbelieve too easily’ whilst René Descartes developed an argument using God as the guarantor for the truth of cognition that is clear and distinct. Similar to Augustine and Henry of Ghent, he thought that it is through trust and belief in God that we can gain knowledge of the external world.

[Montaigne also thought we cannot obtain any guidance as to how to live our lives, unless God enlightens us. In the end neither the senses nor reason give us any foundation for truth or knowledge. See, Lagerlund, Henrik. Skepticism in Philosophy a Comprehensive, Historical Introduction. pp.108.]

[9] G.E. Moore (1873–1958) argued against skepticism and idealism from a common sense perspective. (being is perceiving).

[10] Based on Montaigne's belief, in reality, the person ‘who judges by appearances judges on the basis of something different from the thing itself’, relying on phenomena that belongs to the subject and its states—and not strictly to the object. (Montaigne 1999: 601) [11] Thomas Reid (1710-1796) argues that as long as the skeptic cannot show their conclusions are more probable than common sense, there is no reason to prefer skepticism.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), on the other hand, believed that skepticism does not make sense in ordinary language. The ‘doubt’ of the skeptic is not the same ‘doubt’ as used in an ordinary language situation. In such a situation skepticism is nonsensical.

[2]

[1]

Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism?

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Reading Day 3

ReadingBR #essay, #prejudice, #reading, #analysis

In the first section of Barbara Johnson’s Melville’s Fist she analyses the different binary interpretations of Melville’s Billy Bud story, giving examples of different possible readings. These positions are represented in the main characters of the story, whose fates all proceed in opposite directions to those the reader would expect; an illogical arc which Johnson argues provides the base for the widespread critical disagreement of the piece.

The two main characters, Billy Bud and Cloggart, relate to two different conceptions of language, or ways of reading. Billy represents a case where the intentional meaning corresponds with the actual meaning; the signified and the signifier are identical. On the other hand, Cloggart’s character stands for double meaning, the ironic way of reading with a difference between signifier and signified. These interpretative reading strategies swap sides through the act of transferential rage; the chiasmus of the plot, when Billy kills Cloggart. In this act language itself materialises, as Billy’s speech impediment, his inability to verbalise himself, takes form in this act of violence, resulting in Cloggart’s death and consequently his own too. This symbolic gesture of language itself, as being the indicator of the crisis of the plot, shows that Melville’s original intention was to question the limits of reading in general.

To complete the equation, the story ends with Billy’s court case, conducted by Captain Vere, the leader of Billy’s ship.

Through the presentation of this legal case Melville further highlights the limitations of reading, and integrates this very question

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism? into the plot. Captain Vere is put in a very difficult position as he’s fond of Billy yet, on the verge of war, he must set an example to avoid mutiny, becoming the ‘balancing wheel’ between the two characters.

reading reality. Both with children’s and drug affected brains, the individual’s state of mind is different from the ordinary adult, showing how our society is designed to rule out extraordinary behaviour.

Johnson argues that the fundamental factor which determines Vere’s verdict is history.

Choosing the context (the bible, Vere’s own moral, and martial law) in which the text and subtext can be interpreted is interpretation itself. Throughout the legal procedure and in his own bias, Vere has to navigate the numerous interpretations of the case, becoming a reader himself. However, Johnson asks; what are the conditions of choosing these conditions themselves?

She goes further stating that authority, as defining the context of interpretations, is a vanishing point of textuality, and that the judge or the reader is in the impossible position of having to include the effects of their own judging or reading within the cognitive text of their cognition. Thus, the essence of reading lies between the different interpretative positions that serve as parameters across which language constantly oscillates.

Reading and me

Reading and Waywardness Waywardness can be interpreted as a very specific way of reading. This position allows the actor to read signs in a completely unconventional way, and, by questioning the perspective, creates its own point of view. I think upbringing and childcare is a prime example to show how the fluctuating nature of reading can nurture kids to diverge from their environment and come to find their own perspectives. Embracing the different way in which kids tend to view the things around them is essential in challenging the given parameters. For instance, with secular education less people become religious as they have the chance to grow into their decision. Another good example is psychoactive drugs, which therapists argue may help patients to rediscover previously abandoned emotions, or observations, or discover new ones, opening the path of repositioning and new ways of

Johnson’s interpretation of reading, through Billy Bud’s story, really resonated with me as my own current project focuses on crime and punishment, and its different understandings. This relativity, in the context of my work, is extremely complicated, as my film also includes all sorts of hints and details that can define the final reading of the story. Sanyi, the protagonist of the film, is a product of our society. His close environment visibly affects him, making the underlying cause and effect relations less readable. The challenge is how to orientate the viewer to recognise the more profound links, allowing space for interpretations without making the storytelling too straightforward. I felt that in Melville’s case this was achieved through making the very dilemma of interpretation the turning point of the plot itself. Sanyi, 16, who committed a serious felony, is now facing prosecution.

Essentially, the story questions what service (individual and collective prevention) law has done, in this very specific case, and how its limitations can be grasped by pinpointing the system’s (state) deficiencies. Thus, it focuses on how bias affects a viewer, and how different readings are byproducts of the current socio-historical context.

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Reading Day 3

The Otolith Group, Medium Earth & Anathema. ±100' #review

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Foundations III: What is the relationship between waywardness and difference & skepticism?

Review by RW

Online and offline, we came together.

In front of a camera at home, or physically in the same space.

Every head visible on the big screen.

Feedback sounds fill the space when more than one computer is unmuted.

‘If you first mute then I will unmute, say what you want to say then mute so I can unmute again.’ In our enthusiasm we forgot and we started our opinion/question/thought too early, unhearable online, or creating feedback in the room.

Communicating computers. Rewinding, repeating, reformulating, actually makes the second attempt clearer than the first one. We defined structures, words before meaning, meaning before context, context defining words.

Two movies: First one, yellow at the beginning accidentally protected our eyes, but later in the original colors we got rocks, time, change, and poetics.

The Otolith Group shows and speaks, projecting human emotions on the natural environment. Is that authentic? Does it need to be as close to reality as possible? Can humans even not humanize?

The camera follows the contour of the mountain range, beautifully moving up and down to the left. The camera goes so fast. What tempo do rocks have? So much slower than we, I feel it’s almost perverse.

The second movie had many beginnings and many endings, musically and visually. Many images, many thoughts. They took me, they dropped me, they took me, they dropped me, they took me, they dropped me.

The Otolith Group, their titles, their subjects, their images, their sounds, their information, their knowledge, their research comes close and inspires me but their films left me in distress.

Also: happy dog and cat conversations weaved through the day.

We have hopeful futures laying ahead of us with and without our four-legged friends.

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READING

DAY 4

Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity In this chapter, you are going to read a few essays written in response to the introduction of Aberrant Movements, The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze by John Rajchman, and a few chapters of The Undercommons by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney.

On a white and cold Saturday, November 4th, 1995 Deleuze opened his window and contemplated the cold breeze.

Deleuze threw himself out of the window.

Deleuze was an atheist.

(A quote from the Keyword Deleuze, written by Shardenia Felicia) Aberrant Movements gives us an insight into Deleuze’s philosophy and his way of thinking. Rajchman explains how Deleuze tries to find the logic behind the irrational, illogical, and aberrant movements. For him, a movement is all the more logical the more it escapes rationality. ‘There is always something schizophrenic about logic in Deleuze, which represents another distinctive characteristic: a deep perversion of the very heart of philosophy. Thus, a preliminary definition of Deleuze’s philosophy emerges: an irrational logic of aberrant movements.’ (Rajchman) To create a concept around aberrant movements he seeks to create a logic to link them with other concepts. So, in order to define the abnormal, normality needs to be defined first. But for Deleuze there is no philosophy of the ordinary, the regular, or the legal. A philosophy of the ordinary for him, is the death of philosophy. To bypass this he creates another concept; ‘transcendental empiricism’ or the philosophy of immanence, by which he takes up and radicalises the empiricist school of thought, developing a systematic alternative to the mainstreams of modern continental philosophy. With the help of this new ontology, Delueze can define the new logics life ceaselessly produces, which are always the subject of their own irrationality. →

‘Study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice…’ (Moten and Harney) The Undercommons is Moten and Harney’s invitation to imagine and think about ‘another’ vision of the social order. The book draws on the theory and practice of the black radical tradition as it supports, inspires, and extends contemporary social and political thought to develop and expand its concepts: study, debt, surround, planning, and the shipped. These essays invite the reader to the self-organised ensembles of social life that are launched every day amid the general antagonism of the undercommons.

‘The undercommons can be seen as a conceptual space composed of people who denied resources and have been excluded from the commons, and its entailed rights and privileges. Maroon communities of composition teachers, mentorless graduate students, adjunct Marxist historians, out or queer management professors, state college ethnic studies departments, closed-down film programs, visa-expired Yemeni student newspaper editors, historically black college sociologists, and feminist engineers.’

(Moten and Harney) Reading between the lines, Moten and Harney don’t believe in a revolution in the traditional sense, not even rebelling against the constitution. What they instead prescribe for the future is to focus on ‘study’, and try to find each other.

‘The undercommons want to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places we know lie beyond its walls… so in the end, it is not a realm where we rebel and create critique; it is not a place where we “take arms against a sea of troubles/and by opposing end them. The undercommons is a space and time which is always here . . . our goal . . . is not to end the troubles but to end the world that created those particular troubles like the ones that must be opposed.’ (Moten and Harney)

Based on:

John Rajchman, “Aberrant movement” Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, “The Undercommons” Film screening: Terrence Malick, Badlands, Solange Knowles, When I get Home

Reading Day 4

Logics, according to Deleuze and RajchmanBR #essay, #deleuze, #perversion

Deleuze tries to find the logic behind aberrant movements. Perversion is the focus of his work, specifically what the conditions are that make something aberrant, and what makes something an anomaly. To create a concept around aberrant movements he seeks to create a logic to link them with other concepts. In other words, to define the abnormal, normality needs to be defined first. To him, logical doesn’t mean rational, moreover ordinary empiricism is the death of philosophy. To bypass this he creates ‘transcendental empiricism’ which includes the demonic, excessive, and essentially the irrational movements in itself. With the help of this new ontology, Deleuze can define the new logics life ceaselessly produces, which are always the subject of their own irrationality.

He proposes to change perspective and that instead of the traditional dichotomous, dualistic standpoint, the universe should be looked at as something univocal, or as Spinoza puts it ‘pantheistic’. This oneness can explain all the existing parallel concepts and the aberrant movements that all exceed the empirical experience; the unthinkable in thought, the unlivable in life, the immemorial in memory. He goes further and asks what if nothing is accidental, what if Nature is pure aberration? Or, as the predecessors

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity of this approach called it, eternity (Spinoza) or eternal return (Nietzsche). To break away from the classical concepts he proposes the question of ‘what to do with life?’ instead of ‘what is right?’ Life permeates the living things. It exists beyond bodies. Death motivates movements and these movements put things to death which aren’t necessary in life. The time in between the two (life and death), this everchanging temporality, is what defines the whole.

The attempt to understand this coexistence of all concepts and ideas at the same time, needs a lot of imagination but first of all it requires the reevaluation of time, at least how we think about it. According to Deleuze’s logic, time needs to be reimagined. This radical step takes the biggest courage. To do this we essentially need to reject the hierarchy that undermines the possibility of looking at substance, which without the help of an external entity can arrange itself into an infinite number of combinations. Present is something which has its actuality and, with the already happened past, a virtuality as well. Present is not a snapshot of a linear line and is not a cross section of a space. It is more like a realm where past, future, and present coexist. This approach allows the thinker to deconstruct the omnipresent interrelation of systems, and hierarchy. It makes us realise that, instead of always wanting to know what is on the other side, we can only constantly produce new ways of thinking.

attempt we’re only fixing something which is embedded in a hierarchy that is incapable of changing. This impotence which drives us and transforms us into the living dead, into futureless zombies as Deleuze puts it.

That is exactly why we need these aberrant concepts, which are there to be probed and perhaps on the trillionth occasion get proven, and change the existing configuration, keep it flexible for the rest of the coexistent flows of Duration, to allow the fold unfolded to infinity.

This idea resonates in Moten and Harney’s text about ‘the undercommons’, which is a space and time that has always been and will always be there. Its initiative is to urge a change of perspective, but not by repairing an already existing one, or by ending the trouble already there, but by ending the whole world that created these troubles. Don’t just reshuffle the cards, but play another game. For instance, language which doesn’t allow new ideas to emerge as the related context and pretext overrules the potential new meaning. Producing a new language takes a lot of effort but without the

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Reading Day 4

DeterritorializationRM #essay, #deterritorialization, #onion

How deep could you peel an onion?

Ciudad Juarez had been, until the last decade of the XXth century, a peaceful border-city rooted in traditional values, which were in nature very gendered. A commerce treaty among the United States, Canada, and Mexico (NAFTA), introduced in 1994, permitted the manufacture of Canadian and American goods in Mexican territory for a much cheaper price than in their homelands. When the production plants began to recruit workers it became evident that employing women—who traditionally were stay-at-home mothers and were in charge of domestic labor— would allow for much lower wages. Their smaller hands and attention to detail, they argued, were also more appropriate for the tasks in the manufacturing processes. The employment of women, although under very precarious and oppressive conditions, shifted the domestic power structures. The role of men became subconsciously threatened as they ceased to be the sole providers of their households. Together with a wave of crescent violence related to drug trafficking women became targets of sexist behaviors and crimes that range from threats, sexual abuse, and murder, which persist until present time.

The flows of capital do not know any limitations to the territories it can transgress.

We could think of, for example, an onion as a species of capital exploited by man, the capitalist, for his own benefit or greed. The prevalence and dissemination of the onion

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity is not more than the product of human obstinacy. Were the onion to have a mind, it could either feel cared for or violated, while its exploitation could induce either anxiety or pride.

An onion must be halved from the vertical axis after cutting off the upper and lower tips. As this aberrant movement traverses it and divides it into parts, the onion releases its only medium of self-defense, making the perpetrator release a tear. This last weep is an embodiment of a mourning that the onion cannot express on its own: The onion has lost its determining structure and finds itself, for a moment, in a space resembling a limbo; an unsafe, unknown territory.

unknown value systems and social structures, the reassemblage is only richer and more fruitful for the top players of the capital game, rather than for the whole cosmos of ingredients. These forms of exploitative deterritorialization have proceeded to domesticate all species: Massive industrial agriculture has made the onion and incalculable fruits and vegetables more inherent to the plate than to land. Nature does not run freely, as humankind doesn’t either.

Humans categorize, limit, and subjugate flora in their gardens, as they do to their own kind in prisons or manufacture plants.

How deep should you peel an onion?

The time in between is full of expectation: A sliced, chopped, or diced onion promises more possibility in the transgression of its original shape than in its permanence.

In culinary arts the disassembled onion encourages a process of non-linear re-assemblage, a system of relations without a center in an encoded territory. It promises a flavorful broth, a sweet and acidic base for multiple dishes. There is creative potential in the breaking of an onion’s body into an indiscernible pattern. This act could even be thought of as an act of liberation, as the diced layers can potentially gather into a richer and more diverse organization. Under these terms the onion seizes to belong to itself, the subject is shattered and rather becomes a spread-out unit in a larger assemblage. Its fragmented body begins to find new correlations and finds a new meaning to wholeness in contact with other and until then alien bodies. As the onion meets the buttered pan, individuality melts into a much pungent surface.

The human is, however, subject to much more impactful and complex forms of deterritorialization. The exploitation and transgression of human forms of life can be in fact more violent than promising, and does not guarantee reciprocity. When human-built landscapes are stripped from their core, and are reintroduced to

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Reading Day 4

DeleuzeSF #deleuze, #atmosphere, #believe, #poem

Deleuze was an atheist.

On a cold winter, January 18th 1925, Gilles Deleuze was born in Paris.

Deleuze attended the Lycée Carnot school during the Second World War. Deleuze spent an inspiring year in Khâgne at the Lycée Henri IV. Deleuze was an atheist.

Deleuze passed the agrégation in philosophy in blooming 1948.

In the bright spring of 1953, Deleuze published his first monograph on David Hume, Empiricism and Subjectivity.

He married Denise Paul “Fanny” Grandjouan in 1956 in the summer breeze, but Deleuze was an atheist.

After the Christmas holidays in 1957, Deleuze took up a position at the University of Paris.

Deleuze was an atheist.

Between 1960 and 1964, Deleuze held a position at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique.

During this prosperous time, he published the seminal Nietzsche and Philosophy.

In the snowing winter of 1962, Deleuze befriended Michel Foucault.

Deleuze was an atheist, and that didn’t matter.

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During the difficult years between 1964 to 1969, Deleuze was a professor at the University of Lyon.

In the spring of 1968, Deleuze defended his dissertations, amidst the ongoing demonstrations of May 68.

Deleuze was an atheist.

In the beautiful winter of that same year, Deleuze published his dissertation, Difference and Repetition.

In Autumn of 1969, when the trees were empty, he was appointed to the University of Paris VIII at Vincennes/St. Denis.

Deleuze taught at Paris VIII until his retirement, in the cold winter of 1987.

Deleuze was an atheist.

Deleuze had suffered from respiratory ailments from a young age. Deleuze developed tuberculosis on a cold winter, when it was minus 10 in 1988, and underwent lung removal surgery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze

In the last empty and depressive years of his life, simple, familiar tasks such as writing required laborious effort.

But Deleuze was still an atheist.

On a white and cold Saturday, of November 4th, 1995 Deleuze opened his window and contemplated the cold breeze.

Deleuze threw himself out of the window.

Deleuze was an atheist.

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Reading Day 4

Aberrant movementsECF #experimentalpoetic, #lifedeadagency

Aberrant movements threaten life as much as they liberate its forces (Rajchman 35) A massive chasm lays open at 67°34′48″N - 134°46′17″E Sakha Republic Russia Batagaika Crater as the chasm is known melts and spills gases and bacteria older than men A foul river of melted permafrost and mixed organic matter including ice-age mammals bleeds out from its cavernous mouth “Below the cliff face, steep hills and gullies drop to Batagaika’s floor. As more of the material at the bottom of the slope melts and comes loose, a larger face is exposed to the air, which in turn increases the speed of permafrost thawing. The crater will likely eat through the entire hillslope before it slows down. Every year as soon as temperatures go above freezing, it’s going to start happening again. Once you’ve exposed something like this, it’s very hard to stop it.”

(NASA)

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity What disturbs the normal flow (aberrant movement) / what determines the normal flow (logic) What logic do aberrant movements obey?

(Rajchman 25) Violent uneasiness Tearing Disturbance Hiccup Latency

Dislocation

Reflex Syncope (common fainting)

Inevitably aberrant movements happen in the instant of disjunction A spark of divergence A blind jump from 0 to 1 Conway’s Game of Life follows 3 simple rules 1 Any live cell with two or three live neighbours survives —> 1:1 2 Any dead cell with three live neighbours becomes a live cell —> 0:1 3 All other live cells die in the next generation. Similarly, all other dead cells stay dead —> 1:0 0:0 Iterate The game of life is a zero-player game

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Reading Day 4

[Life] compels the subjects towards experimentations at the limit of the viable (Rajchman 36) Slime mould finds its way

moves seeks (r)evolves engulfs digests One couldn’t say that slime mould think Not even that it has a nervous system Yet it thrives So do enzymes It is difficult to talk even think about biology without the narrative of purpose “Agency stems from two ingredients: first, an ability to produce different responses to identical (or equivalent) stimuli, and second, to select between them in a goal-directed way.”

(Ball)

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Death is the silent authority that in turn makes life aberrant Aberrant movements tear us from ourselves (Rajchman 37) Kusōzu paintings represent the nine stages of a decaying corpse From flesh to carcass a feast for scavengers They depict the gradual decline of the body into entropy The body becomes the ground

Aberrant movements partake of an “inorganic life” that permeates organisms and undermines their integrity a life indifferent to the bodies that it traverses no less to the subjects it disrupts (Rajchman 36) Laika horribly died of overheating during takeoff on November 3rd 1957 For a moment each one of Laika’s cells was living but the sum of all of them was already a carcass A feast for scavengers if it weren’t because “over five months later, after 2,570 orbits, Sputnik 2— including Laika’s remains—disintegrated during re-entry on 14 April 1958.”

(Wikipedia)

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Reading Day 4

The fold unfolded to infinity, the eternal return All regular movements are secondary, derivative Nature at its core is pure aberration (Rajchman 34) Close to Batagaika the Reka Yana river swings its way to the ocean the memory of the riverbed is visible for the observing satellite its flow new old and future crisscrossed like RNA in protein “Until the beginning of the 19th century, organic compounds were considered to be found only in living beings or to be produced exclusively by them. However, in 1823, the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler (18001882) conducted an experiment in which he managed to synthesise urea, an organic compound, from an inorganic compound. In doing so, he refuted the notion of the “life force”, the idea of which was that only living beings had the ability to produce organic matter.”

(Diferenciador.com)

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity How do aberrant movements not become part of a process of self-destruction?

(Rajchman 34) The river course is rich on carbon reservoirs Petroleum used to be living matter DNA traces can sometimes be found in petroleum That is why it is called fossil fuel It is not suicidal as long as the destructive flow is not reduced to itself but serves to conjugate other flows Suicidal is the contrary to connection: is organized disconnection (Rajchman 35) Through fracking or hydraulic fracture gas and petroleum are brutally extracted from the earth pores High-pressured water is injected into the ground until it penetrates rocks and the last bit of fossil fuel has been ripped out Returning a fountain of water and forced organic matter excessive byproducts of the living dead

One can easily fall from living into a whole other dead, to which capitalism drives us which transforms us into the living dead (Rajchman 37)

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Reading Day 4 Living isn’t excluded of dead as much as dead isn’t excluded from living To become a living dead you can either a radically isolate b radically dilute I twist my ankle until my fibula breaks For I live My thumb scrolls down a screen for 11,3 minutes For I’m not living My heart has beaten about 1,177,344 times For I’ve lived My retina wiggles under blue light for 10 hours a day For I don’t live A cell in my brain abnormally multiplies For I might die I digest petroleum derivatives cooked with petroleum derivatives while dressed in petroleum derivatives For am I living?

In 2020 I lay more than I stood In killing time I became different from a stone closer to petroleum

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Sources in order of appearance: John Rajchman, “Aberrant movement” Batagaika Crater Expands, NASA Earth Observatory, April 27, 2017 RGB (Red–Green–Blue) images of the Batagaika crater from 1991 to 2018. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12665-020-8895-7 Ball, Philippe. “Life with purpose”. Aeon Magazine, 13 November 2020. URL: https://aeon.co/essays/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life Detail from Body of a Courtesan in Nine Stages of Decomposition, handscroll, Meiji Japan, c.1870s © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Wikipedia. Laika. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika Diferenciador.com. “Compuestos orgánicos e inorgánicos”. URL https://www.diferenciador.com/compuestos-organicos-e-inorganicos/ (Translated into English with Deepl)

Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity

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Reading Day 4

ImmanenceEJR #letter, #complexity, #difference, #poetry

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Dear Immanence, Since I cannot seem to get to your intricate meaning, even after 4 weeks of getting to know you, I thought it most fitting to write you a letter. ‘Cause that’s what I often turn to in moments of misunderstandings, frustration, and loneliness. My dear Immanence, you’ve been a weight to carry, and for every text I read to somehow get closer to you, you become more and more vague, opaque, ambivalent, and distant. I googled you countless times, yet all your profiles don’t show what you might be like in real life. You are so reserved.

You are the cloud above my head; every time I reach out, you drift further away and take a different shape. I’ve tried to internalize you because, as Deleuze says, you are that ‘divine logic that inhabits all. That is among us. That is inside of us.’ That encompasses life and death. The ghost in the shell. The soul? The strange thing is that you are not internal to me, no, you have become like an external entity that I shall never be able to grasp. You, dear Immanence, have become transcendental for me.

The more I internalize you, the more alien you become.

Maybe I’ve gone too far in trying to understand you, lost in heaps and heaps of text on you.

The thousands and thousands of letters that have already been written to you. But you, no, you will not be caught, because you are never-ending.

I’m lost. So I thought it best to write you a poem.

I am a Goddess in the endlessness of my own soul The divine of my own celestial being I crawl into your skin, turn into dust I am all that has a will of its own I am in all The molecule The cell The organism The object The subject The creature The human The touch, the love, the falling in and out of.

I am all The holy spirit of the subject The subject that is all Immanence is ‘I’ The chaos of being Longing for inconsolability.

X

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Reading Day 4

UndercommonsOK #fictionalessay, #academicfiction, #study, #university, #abolition

Bart[1] is smiling and leading the way through all these white corridors. I arrived at the university building a few minutes late. It is early for me as I was working till 2 A.M last night. Bart is tall, blonde, and handsome in his white uniform. ‘Here we are!’ He says after a few minutes of walking me through the unending corridors. As we enter the basement of the building there is no natural light anymore, and it stops looking like the university anymore. I ask Bart about it, with a silent chuckle he confirms that the university building and the hospital are inter-connected: ‘it’s easier for medical students to travel from one to another, as it is for us now going there!’ A university full of bodies. A hospital full of students.

I found Bart, a Ph.D. researcher at Maastricht University, through a medical test advertisement about the effects of the potato protein on muscle growth, on a Facebook page for student jobs. After a few emails and a phone call, we agreed to meet today for what he called ‘the preliminary investigation’.

On the advertisement poster, it was stated that the participants will be reimbursed 175 Euro. Reimburse (riːɪmˈbɜːs) means to pay someone back an amount of money that they have spent doing their work, or to pay them money because you have caused them to have a problem. So, participating in this experiment might be considered work (wɜːk): An activity, such as a job, that a person uses physical or mental effort to do, usually for money. But, because of the passivity of the participant in almost the whole process, they are not doing much work, and not using physical or mental effort. The work is being done to them,

therefore the participant is not working as much. What remains is the second interpretation of the reimbursement, the damage that is going to be caused by this experiment, either during the experiment or because of its unknown side effects.

After taking a blood sample, Bart is reading through the activities of the test day. I am supposed to get a drink containing potato protein now, perform an exercise at midday, and then a small piece of muscle tissue will be removed from both of my legs on 3 occasions in the afternoon; as Bart puts it ‘as painful as a bee sting’. Later I would find out that it actually meant going through a painful muscle biopsy of my thighs 6 times, but he did not use the word ‘six’ on purpose.

For Bart had a professional manner.

Now, I am lying on the big white hospital bed, whilst Bart and his assistant are holding my legs. A tall and bald doctor entered the room a few minutes ago, and is performing the biopsy now. He is talking to me, laughing, and telling some stories that I don’t care much to hear. But he is truly enjoying his work, whilst pushing the giant needle deeper and deeper into my body.

His science is penetrating me, looking for its share from my flesh. The university is paying for it, and I am just trying not to look, not to hear and not to remember what I did for a petty amount of money.

My eyes are full of tears, but not of the physical pain (which was not at all comparable to bee stings!) but because of the decision that I had made. I regretted that I turned my body into a product, for science and education, for the hospital and the univer-

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity sity, the institutions, and for the state. But isn’t every job/activity in a way turning your body (or mind) into a part of a system that is feeding the capital?

An Encounter In the evening, I left the hospital/university building to go to work at McDonald’s. At first, I doubted whether I could work with six fresh wounds and bandages, but at that time it was not as painful. I thought it was not a big deal and that I could manage, but after a while, my pain came back to me in the kitchen. Amongst all the noise and the meat, and the lettuce and the cooking grills, my flesh started to hurt, more and more, to the point where I couldn’t stand it anymore.

After seeing tears in my eyes the manager agreed to let me go. The moment when I arrived at the lobby to leave McDonald’s, I encountered the doctor, the same bald and tall doctor who performed the biopsy earlier.

He was waiting for his food, a hamburger which I probably made a few minutes ago. A hamburger made from the flesh of another creature, prepared by a human who lost some flesh earlier by another one who has been taught to save lives. The doctor was still smiley, happy about his career and life, waiting for his fast-food production. He didn’t even recognize me. I rushed out.

An Analysis A doctor at a hospital performed an activity during a medical test to pay for his hamburger, the test was done and sponsored by a state hospital/university. A small part of the cost of the doctor’s life was covered by this money, which was paid from the government to McDonald’s. A payment with the activity of a body.

A student at an art academy went through

a medical test to pay for his education, the test was done and sponsored by a state hospital/university. A small part of the cost of the student’s study was covered by this money, which was paid from the government to the government. A grant in return for six removed tiny muscle tissues. A payment made with body parts.

The doctor helped science and humanity during the day, and spent his salary at night at McDonald’s. The state money was poured into the devil’s mouth through the doctor’s body. A payment made with a body. The doctor’s body keeps the capital alive.

The student helped science and humanity during the day, and earned some money at night at McDonald’s. The capitalistic monster’s money was poured into the government’s mouth later (the education cost) through the student’s body. A payment made with a torn body. The student’s body parts keep the capital alive.

To the eyes of the capital, they are both bodies; two individual bodies owned by the state, in different ways.

The doctor is unaware of the damage he does to the climate, society, and himself.

The student is aware of the damage he does to the climate, society, and himself.

The doctor is educated at the university, but he is not an intellectual.

The student needs the doctor in order to be educated at the university, but he studies somewhere else. He learns at McDonald’s kitchen, he learns by being in a squat, he

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Reading Day 4 learns by not having enough to spend, he learns by being, living, and existing.[2] One had the freedom to choose, the other was forced.[3] But, they both paid with their bodies. That’s what keeps the system going, and that’s what they are both guilty of; guilty of resting in the capital arms.

Something needs to be done to save Prometheus Where’s Heracles?

The Undercommons ‘Think about the way the American doctor or lawyer (here read as Dutch) regard themselves as educated, enclosed in the circle of the state’s encyclopedia, though they may know nothing of philosophy or history’ (Moten and Harney 34). The doctor is what Moten and Harney call a professional; someone who holds a great position in society, belongs to an elite class of people, and serves the state that owns the hospital, and the university where the ‘official’ knowledge is produced. In Moten and Harney’s view, the American university today[5] cannot be accepted as a place of enlightenment, rather a place of learning skills. And, being at the university is not a necessary part of learning, the university is structured (and funded) to serve the ends of capital and the ends of the state.

‘Certainly, critical academic professionals tend to be regarded today as harmless intellectuals, malleable, perhaps capable of some modest intervention in the so-called public sphere.’(Moten and Harney) They are taught in the most pragmatic ways, towards the market preferences and the development of capitalism, instead of becoming intellectuals. A professional is someone whose professionalism comes from the privatization of the social individual through negligence because of his high income, or maybe his prestige and privileges. Negligence in denying the thought of the internal outside, denying

the possibility of a thought of an ‘outside non-place’, which Moten and Harney call ‘The Undercommons’. According to them, there is no point in trying to hold the university against its professionalization.

‘This rolls out into ethics and efficiency, responsibility and science, and numerous other choices, all built upon the theft, the conquest, the negligence of the outcast, the mass intellectuality of the undercommons’ (Moten and Harney 33).

The undercommons can be seen as a conceptual space composed of people who are denied resources, and have been excluded from the commons, and its entailed rights and privileges. ‘Maroon communities of composition teachers, mentorless graduate students, adjunct Marxist historians, out or queer management professors, state college ethnic studies departments, closeddown film programs, visa-expired Yemeni student newspaper editors, historically black college sociologists, and feminist engineers. And what will the university say of them? It will say they are unprofessional.’

(Moten and Harney 30) The undercommons is a description of a real community of those who are ‘not part of an existing one.’ The excluded individuals who engage with each other in social activities, practices, and an orientation towards power described as study.

‘Study is what you do with other people.

It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice…

The point of calling it “study” is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present.’

(Moten and Harney 110) The use of the word ‘study’ radically democratizes the idea of learning; it is a challenge to perceptions of curricular education as a monopoly of knowledge. According to Bruce Wilshire, we can also look at the production of information and knowledge through the lens of Marx and think about who is controlling the means of knowledge production, as

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it will lead to a great extent to the formation of human identity itself. (Wilshire 54) With regards to this, Moten and Harney’s concept of study becomes more important; ‘studying is not limited to the university. It’s not held or contained within the university. The study has a relation to the university, but only insofar as the university is not necessarily excluded from the undercommons that it tries so hard to exclude.’

(Moten and Harney 113) But what is it that the undercommons need to achieve? Reading between the lines, Moten and Harney don’t believe in a revolution in the traditional sense, not even rebelling against the constitution, rather what they prescribe for the future is to focus on the study and try to find each other. ‘The undercommons want to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places we know lie beyond its walls…. so in the end, it is not a realm where we rebel and create critique; it is not a place where we “take arms against a sea of troubles/and by opposing end them. The undercommons is a space and time which is always here . . . our goal . . . is not to end the troubles but to end the world that created those particular troubles like the ones that must be opposed.]”’ (Moten and Harney 9) A bit optimistically, they argue that change will come when we won’t expect it, although they consider a prophetic role for the undercommons, not only in knowing about the future, but also as having the capacity to see the brutality of the already-existing, to point this out and tell that truth, but also to see the other way, to see what it could be. That is what the undercommons is all about, the possibility of seeing an alternative form of being. ‘The goal is not so much the abolition of prisons but the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society.’ (Moten and Harney, 42)

[2]

[1]

Bart is chosen to replace the real name for privacy matters.

Close to the concept of study according to Moten and Harney which will be discussed further.

[3] To make it clear, the same doctor was seen several times after the encounter at the same branch of McDonald’s, so there’s no doubt that he is a loyal customer and his appearance there that night was not an incidental one.

[4] Fred, Moten. Stefano, Harney. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, Minor Compositions, 2013. P.34.

[5] I don’t think that is so much different in other parts of the world either.

[6] Ibid. P.33.

[7] Ibid. P.30.

[8] Ibid. P.110.

[9] W. Wilshire, Bruce. The moral collapse of the university: Professionalism, Purity, and Alienation. State University of New York Press, 1990. P.54.

[10] Fred, Moten. Stefano, Harney. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, Minor Compositions, 2013. P.113.

[11] Ibid. P.9.

[12] Ibid. P.42.

Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity

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Reading Day 4

FugivityCP #fiction, #tradition, #normativity, #deviance

In Wovenhand one would grow up feeling a marvelous sense of community. There was an intrinsic beauty emanating from all folklore activities, rituals, and social gatherings. It was easy to absorb a sense of pride for the landscape, the architecture, from the people that created its history, and the traditions that had passed from one generation to the other.

David’s position was not different from that of the other children at that time. When going to the shops, older people would ask, with a smile, if he was Peter’s grandson. When replying with a yes, inquirers would feel proud to have recognized the lineage in David’s facial expressions. That was a habit that seemed common among the elderly, they made an effort to acknowledge the offspring of the people they knew from the past. A reassuring act that life was unfolding in a predictable manner. David would always smile back and reply gently, as his grandparents had taught him to do so.

A similar ritual would take place with the cordial ‘good day’ David would pronounce when encountering the elderly on the street. He did not know them, nor did they know him, but every time he spoke these words he saw slight contentment in their eyes, internally saying ‘fortunately some children still keep our old values and decency’.

The community would provide the fertile ground for children to feel part of something, already in their early ages. Ingredients such as imagination, fantasy, and celebration were carefully crafted to endure the long-lasting effects of the spell of belonging and perfection.

Slowly, David, as well as the others, realized that division was also an integral part of the ways of the community. They had initially experienced the art of storytelling from a place of naïvity, but later understood its potential for crudity. Tales of all kinds circulated around the community, but this time not in the same manner as when they were told in the main square, on a stage with a painted background and loud music. These tales were told in ‘petit comité’.

The tales going around spoke of the man that fled the country because of his debts, due to drugs, the woman that was caught cheat-

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity ing on her husband, or the husband cheating on his wife… tales that went on and on, ensuring to keep the rest of the community in its right place. One wrong move and one’s life would become a part of the community folklore, to be used for strictly educational purposes.

With that strictness also came a process of idolatry, at times silently and at times loudly, towards those who in adulthood had managed to create the perfect form of correctness. Successful jobs, perfect heterosexual couples, numerous offspring, and other forms of social representations that managed to reassure the efforts of the community towards its intact preservation.

Something characteristic of having reached the proper social position was the privileged status to be able to pity or comment on other’s misery.

As years went by, David started experiencing a breeze of fresh air when encountering different forms of doing, different lifestyles, and differences in general. Differences that would manifest subtly first, almost unnoticed, ensured to accompany him privately in perceived situations, as it was out of the control of others. These portable experiences of difference became private moments of rejoicing, his own sense of orderly and meaningful chaos. He experienced a particular sense of humor in this space that was yet to be categorized. A private pantomime of all that had been ordered before him.

In time, David extended his own sense of community to cohabitants with whom he shared a similar spark, complicity during private conversations, conjured projects, and waves of laughter. Normally they were people that would go relatively unnoticed, with no intention to be elected as distinguished inhabitant of the year. On the contrary, they would cherish the attitude of walking through the community, having a sense that it all belonged to them as well, but with no need of proclaiming its possession. What secretly also belonged to them, but they would have preferred to leave behind, was the nostalgia attached to the ever-lasting effect of the spell of belonging and perfection. The spell crafted during childhood; the idyllic sense of community that they tried to reproduce, but this time, in their own way.

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Reading Day 4

Study according to Moten and HarneyES #lyricalessay, #experiencial, #life, #crowd/collective

If I am studying now, shall I sit on that uncomfortable, light brown, wooden chair, behind that writing desk over there? In that blue-lit classroom, with the small window without curtains? If I am studying now, shall I sit behind that tall, unshaven, slim, young man in that 500 seat, crowded lecture hall, who is just a little too tall for me to see over? Or shall I sit at that dull-lit, mahogany desk, from either side towered over by bookshelves? Books. Books. Books.

They wrap over me and I’m learning. I’m reading. I know! I think. Do I know?

But, truly, study begins before all this.

Before the classroom. Before the book is open. Before you think you have started the seminar. Study never really begins or ends.

Study is on the walk to your destination with your best friend. Skipping down the tarmac path through the park, connecting the train station with homes and schools, past the big field that used to be bigger when you were smaller, under the oak trees you used to climb, trying to catch the squirrels. To feed the squirrels. To force feed them the nuts. Skipping towards your destination together, as if there was something so exciting to get to. Side bags bouncing up, down, up, down, crashing into one another, as you giggle about your new crushes.

I am walking through study, but not just studying by walking with others. Studying by walking with you. Studying in movement, walking with you and talking about ideas, my thoughts, your thoughts, but not just. Talking about what to eat, or drink, when to sleep, how the rain is fogging up my glasses and I can’t see. Show me the

Instagram meme on your phone, ‘oh that dog is so cute’, but now it’s sniffing my leg, leaving its snotty drool on my jeans. It jumps up and barks. I shout out, ‘I love you!’ and a twig cracks and breaks underneath my foot.

Interruption. I interrupt you. A pause. I pause you. I pass through you, and you can join me. Inside you. Inside your thoughts.

Inside this one thought. I am eternally indebted to you, as I study with you and through you. I am inside you. You make me see. Rip my corneas out and point me in the right direction. But sorry, I took your essence. I took away your flow. I removed your spleen, your filter, and we must start over. We start again. Into study across bodies. Across space. Across things. A speculative practice of a general study.

Will I study enough today, or enough at all, to ever understand enough about anything, or understand nothing in the first place?

If I study today, will I understand more about myself, or about you? We study as I am sitting with you in silence. The house is slowly getting warmer as I am huddled under two blankets on the couch with my laptop on my lap. Typing. Studying. You sit crouched next to the window on your phone. It is big, looking out onto the busy street. Observe the fat pigeon; that branch is far too thin to hold its weight, as it ruffles its feathers and approaches another pigeon it tries to woo. I wonder if it likes the attention. I can hear the cars down below.

Someone revs their engine at the traffic lights, *screech*, and the bird on the twig falls down. But, of course it doesn’t fall, it can fly, although its wings seem too small

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity for its fat body. Can you see the girl in the window across the street? Do you think she saw it too?

It was later that night that we discovered frozen beer is only half as exciting as it seems. It’s been stuck to the back of the fridge for 5 months. It became a block of ice. You ripped it from its frozen bed and scratched off its aluminium coating. Its skin. But now the room just stinks of beer, and there wasn’t even a party.

We’ve lost track now again. Where was I? Where am I? Where are we? We are in the smoking room of a bar now and we are studying. We are in the smoking area of the club in my dreams and we are studying! He’s asking me what I want to do with my life. Do I believe in God? What are my thoughts on Brexit? You know, the existential questions. Or maybe he’s just asking me for a light.

‘Got a light?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Got a light?’ (mimes flicking hand gesture) ‘Oh, sure sorry. Here you go’ ‘Thanks. So, ‘sup?’

I roll him one of my menthol cigarettes and he walks away, squeezing his way through the gaps in the crowd, bodies pressed up one against the other. Their bodies converse as he presses his way through the gaps, like meat through a mincer, ground up and then put back together. He loses part of himself and gains part of another, as their bodies study with one another. Becoming one, momentarily bound by a mutual encasing, like the intestine around sausage meat, then falling apart on the plate once punctured with a knife.

We have all been involved in this common intellectual practice of studying bodies. We are all in it together, always. We wake up, we eat, we walk together, we talk together, we dance together, we have sex, we shit, we sleep. We repeat. But I make my collective community with you here; our very own undercommons. As we study here together,

in this place that is not recognised by others, not contributing, neglected, we are the maroons of the undercommons, and study is a mode of sociality. A way of being with others, together. I want to join the study that is already going on everywhere.

In the everyplace. The no place. The all place. Beyond the blue-lit walls. Beyond the books. But I have already joined that, and so have you, and so have they. It is going on around us, always and everywhere. A world that is already at work in togetherness. It is what we do with others.

This is study, but study that is not ennobled by us saying that doing this sort of thing, in a certain way, makes it studying. It is its own common intellectual practice, and so these activities hold an irreversible, incessant, intellectuality that is already there.

All around us. It doesn’t need to be forced.

We are building something down here in our collectivity. Something beautiful. We are determining what needs to be learnt together, by spending time with this material and each other. What is our material?

Studying without an objective. Without an endpoint. Without any sense that we will ever escape feeling permanently immature and premature in our thoughts and our study. Disconnected from individual accreditation. From completion. From anything ever leading to anything.

And so we are indebted to each other. A mutual debt. Un-payable, unbounded, and unconsolidated debt. A debt we hold in each encounter with each other, and beyond. In the study group, the hospital, the smoking area, the hairdressers lounge, a bed, an embrace. Hold me and I am indebted to you eternally, and unconditionally.

I’ll see you again tomorrow for the same?

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Reading Day 4

Battle, Roses and Lesbian SexXK #fiction, #roses, #lesbianism, #sex

She gazes at the wall, breathing, she tries to breathe calmly as if she was sleeping. Her eyes follow the pattern of the wallpaper, she’s not moving her neck.

She’s in bed, with her lover next to her.

And the stripes of sun, through the blinds in the window, slowly set over the wall whilst the sun rises. Like a knife of light, decapitating the roses from their rococo-like haulms.

She thinks; Rosa Palustris, Rosa Kordesii, Rosa Glauca, Rosa Arvensis, and Rosa Setigera...

The hand on her shoulder, the hand of her lover, starts petting her.

‘You’re not sleeping… I know you too well.

I hear from your breath you’re awake, I see on the rhythm of your ribs that you’re awake… you can’t fool me.’

The lover whispers, the lover’s nail polish is worn-out, and she knows that last night’s lipstick of the lover is smeared out on both of their faces. She closes her eyes when the lover raises her head to look at her face.

‘You’re pretending.. and you don’t know it, but I see it, you have an awful poker face’ The lover’s laugh is a gurgling stream, or like magpies up the pine tree, that’s the laugh she fell for, down into the love. The lover’s loud laugh. … sacramento rose, virgin rose, winged rose, the burr, and eglantine’s rose ‘I can’t sleep…’, she murmurs. The lover’s head in her neck says: ‘Do you wanna talk about it?’

‘Why can’t I sleep; either it’s a tornado or a black hole in here…’ banging her index finger at her forehead. ‘Either it is running thoughts that scare the sleep away, or a pitch dark emptiness that engulfs the sleep long before I had the time to sip on it... And it’s all, everything, this – this whole thing, is just so brutal, so strong, and sometimes just slightly too much.’

The lover’s tongue on the bone of her neck; ‘What thing? Do you mean this thing?’

‘Reality is so fucking real, that is becomes surreal’, she grasps and continues, ‘life is no more than a constant now, it happens at this very moment, with no repetition, and it’s so substanssstia…’ she stumbles on the word substantial, she smiles to herself and then she tries one more time, ‘it’s so substantially physical, that it sometimes, when I think about it, turns into a car crash of experiential insights, and then I don’t know what to do with myself.’

The lover spits in her belly button and licks the spit with her lips.

‘I would say most people struggle with the opposite – feeling like faceless zombies.

But I hear you, there are rarely any true grey tones in life, most of the time it’s either pitch dark or these vibrant glitter rainbows.

I mean, you’re either having a faceless life or you’re having a face-off with life.’

‘And then it starts to feel like a greyish milky paste, paralyzing however. And if it finally feels like you have come somewhere in the thinking or in the so-called inner peace, the center moves, like magnetic poles, it moves. It repels. This problem, this angst or this meaning of life; the one thing amongst many things you try to understand about yourself and the world; it moves parallel

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity with the self-perspective and the insight.

But they never intersect. We only get close, we never reach. We only sow, we never reap… Like rats touching that goddamn electric bar, never understanding. We keep on drawing a circle, round and round we’re encircling, but never really touching upon the real thing, the true thing, the one thing worth touching upon. We can’t even tell what we’re trying to do. It all feels a bit ironic... and then you start thinking all this, and then it becomes so clear, that this, as much as everything, is just a desperate question – a stumbling in the dark. Why and how is this thought, or any thought I might have, possible within me? Where from, and through what? Is it from somewhere else or is it from within – am I a vessel or the mixer – anyhow, both seem somewhat reducible to the substantially physical immenseness of being alive as me. The more alive I feel and the more physical life presents itself, fettering my body and my soul, the more other my thoughts seem to be’

makes the thinker a thinker. Along with this, we also have to admit that this statement alone is more or less useless. Diplomacy is the plague of the ordinary; the refinement of all the axioms of power. By stopping with saying it’s somewhere or something in between is this very same diplomacy, this capitalistic and oh so straight diplomatic content, but creeps into our own thinking. We can’t allow ourselves to afflict that upon ourselves. It’s untrue, and untruths are useless. But it seems as if we, no matter what we do, will be afflicted by it, more or less, because there are no utopias, and simply because we don’t know what to do nor what to say. We don’t have the answers, and that’s painful for us’

The lover licks the salt from her suprasternal notch. The lover is slobbering all over.

The lovers’ fingers, the left hand of the lover, combs her pubic hair. Pulling it gently, then roughly.

‘Maybe we’re the field, or the air over the field, where armies meet, in order to kill each other. Hence the pain, hence the bloodbath thinking sometimes is.

And the cruelty a thought can have over another thought as well as the chivalry, the wonders, the surprising goodness.

This air is in all armies at the same time, in each soldier’s lungs. How many soldiers does it take to build an army, how many oxygen and carbon molecules does it take to build what we call air? They’re not built up by their individual traits, as uncountable individuals, but instead the air is uncountable as separate singularities of what air is consisting of, and this singularity is what makes their collectiveness breathable for us. I don’t really know what I’m saying right now, I don’t even know what I’m trying to say right now, except that it is complex, and that we can be tempted by the simplicity in believing that the thinker is thinking the thoughts, or in that the thoughts are what

‘So, we are constantly, with other words, being dicked down by Descartes and all these other men… and it’s not that I would say no, necessarily to him or all of them, I would just like to consent, even if I’m desperately attracted’

‘I would like to refuse them all, that would turn me on’ ‘Even if it’s undoubtedly so – that we at the same time are a place and a form for this internal antagonism, which our thinking is – I try to be skeptical of the indefinite article, at least the capital a, and I know this might be very rhizomatic, and thus Deleuzian of me. But I can’t tell, because when I think about the rhizome I think about the lily of the valley, it’s beauty as much as it’s poison.

I believe, as I believe Deleuze does, that we don’t have a center from which our thinking arises, instead I try to see and sense myself as a whole of shattered selves, like a broken mirror fallen to the floor. We shape and are shaped at the same time. We can undoubtedly stop thinking a specific thought through forgetting, and we don’t feel less or reduced by our ability to forget, we can even sometimes feel relieved and grown

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Reading Day 4 through it. So, rather than the common tree metaphor, I sense that we’re more like a patch of grass, so many individual straws in one singularity, in one subject’ ‘But we’re not independent, and I know you don’t mean it that way, and with that I mean Deleuze or the rhizome. The start of the thought still has its beginning, as I interpret Deleuze, within the rhizome, within the plant, within us. But when it comes to our thoughts it can sometimes really feel like it starts outside us, not in us, but rather freed from us. Revelations are an extreme example of this, but also deja vus and dreams in some sense… and this makes me think about thinking rather as a mycorrhiza than a rhizome. As you know, I grew up close to the moorlands, where the heath grows; and the heath has this very intertwined mycorrhiza with a specific mushroom.

The mycelium of this mushroom grows up through the whole stem of the heath, into the flower and infects the very seed of the heath. Well... infected might be a bad word, because they’re in this together, the mycelium of the mushroom secures and protects the seed, and helps it to live. They feed not on each other, but through each other.

We can very well be a rhizome as well, but it feels like, already from the start, before our beginning, there is something else in us which helps us be, helping us become and to exist. It is not surprising then that sometimes I feel that the one hardest to identify with is myself. There is no one I’m so stunned by looking at in a photograph as I am when I see a photograph of myself. It’s not out of narcissism, but because I can’t believe that the person I see in the photograph is supposed to be me. It’s a surreal experience, ungraspable. I question if that one in the picture is all that I am and all that I was. The main feeling in this experience is doubt, it is somehow, however irrational and paradoxical it may sound, impossible for me to believe in myself as existing. And, at the same time, that is the only thing I can believe in. This makes me draw the conclusion that the ‘I’ and the time cannot co-exist; either I am or the time is. They can’t be

at the same time. The ‘I’ is only now and the time is never present.’

The lover bites the perineum of her.

Touches the skin with her fingers. Encircles the anus with her index and exhales on her pussy.

‘It’s so pitiful for me at least. Seeing yourself as you were, because you see that the thing which I was was only a human. It’s like empathy always comes too late, at least when it comes to the self. One might ask if we have any allies within us, against us, and one might ask, if it is impossible to win over oneself, who then wins? Thinking is an unwinnable fight, but I guess just because it’s unwinnable, it’s not meaningless. We shouldn’t grieve that we can’t give up; that each try to give up is one more strike, because thinking can be fun. It can be a pillow fight in sexy lingerie’ Rosa Pinetorum, Rosa Pisocarpa, Rosa Pouzinii, and Rosa Primula... sulphur rose, golden rose, evergreen rose, and the threepenny-bit rose.

Haikus on Deleuze 1. thinking is the involuntary thoughts within yourself 2. what falls apart is the system; through only - intuition 3. you can never see your own monstrous children - what writing can be 4. escaping reason logic is far beyond rationality

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Wayward Movement: Aberrance and Fugitivity 5. psychoanalysis, popular opinion, nothing but chaos

15. baby boy, moist unload your juice in me, baby boy, foist

6. levels, plateaus, just like layers, in all are battle fields resting

16. dick me all down make me unbreath and forget mountain of man

7. the ordinary death of philosophy death of life

17. make me unbreath and forget, then dick ’em all down mountains of men

8. only perversions is strong enough to animate us

18. alone with your question necessary solipsism recreated allies

9. give birth to life logic and unreason all my, buttholes

19. aberrant is a coach of unthinkableness to thought’s border

10. cum in me, on me daddy daddy, draw lines with my spine

20. thinking is fighting, is fucking, is living, dying the death of things

11.

Antagonism I only hated myself dear one, my love

21. what was, is now Melville, Dostoyevsky then Chantal Mouffe

12. rhizome, symbios no centrality in thought a mycorrhiza 13. unthought, I say seed, sprout, beginning of thought not just, but of me 14.

I see me in you an enemy rests within in life, in hate

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READING

DAY 5

Wandering research Reading day 5 took place on: 11-02-2021.

We were in lockdown due to the Coronavirus and had a curfew.

We read about walking.

Street Haunting by Virginia Woolf: Virginia Woolf went on a walk in order to buy a led pencil.

The led pencil was just an excuse to go on a walk.

What she got out of the walk was inspiration.

Woolf states that the best condition for a walk is to go out on a winter’s evening.

What do we lose when we can’t do just that?

‘Without being outside people are losing the chance to meet the unknown, to find themselves in uncomfortable situations, and to learn about each other thus openness, empathy and receptivity are fading in general’ (The outside, Balint) We read two chapters of Wanderlust, A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit.

‘I sat down one spring day to write about walking and stood up again, because a desk is no place to think on the large scale’ (Solnit).

To think we need to walk.

‘I walk when there is sun.

I walk when there is the moon and the stars.

I walk, and I go far away with the breeze.

I walk because walking is infinite.’

(Flâneur, Shardenia) ‘Language is like a road; it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other in ways art and walking do not’ (Solnit).

We could not go on an evening walk. But we could write about walking.

Based on:

Virginia Woolf, “Street Haunting” Rebecca Solnit, “Wanderlust” Film screening: Astra Taylor, Examined Life, 90 mins

Reading Day 5

FlâneurSF #poem, #escapism, #slanderer, #walk, #freedom

The stroller, the longer, the saunterer, the loafer.

A man, with the ability to walk detached from society.

With his only purpose of being an acute observer of industrialized contemporary life.

But I am a woman.

The Passante.

And I walk past its meaning.

I walk on the road without a course or destiny.

I walk on the streets with the aspiration to reach the other side.

The other side of sensations.

One romantic sentiment that goes through the trees when the breeze shuffles them.

Still, careless to what has more value to the world.

Life of suffering and struggles.

I work for a community that does not even bother to look me in the eyes.

I walk and walk past everybody because it does not matter.

It is a nice feeling to walk and almost feel like you become one with the air.

The air.

Something that can lead you to your imposed destiny.

Or might deviate you from the road.

Some days I return home at dawn to grasp some energy to go again.

I put on my clean clothes, and I go again.

I go with the breeze.

And it feels like I can almost fly.

Wherever you want to bring me today, air, I will go with you.

It is a life of uncertainty.

Not ever knowing where you will end Sometimes I end up in rivers where the wind takes me.

I know.

I am in love with the breeze.

Sometimes the breeze takes me to gatherings.

And I observe the stupidity of my people.

The laughter of emptiness.

But sometimes, I am not able to ease my hunger.

But if you want to ask.

Sure, the answer will be; NO, NO, NO. I don’t want a job.

I want to be at one with nature and one with the breeze.

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Baudelaire, Charles. C’est que notre âme, hélas ! n’est pas assez hardie.

Wandering research It feels like it’s been calling us humans for a long time.

I want to be at one with nature and one with the wind.

I want to be at one with nature and one with the air.

I walk and walk until my feet are tired.

And not able to carry me anymore.

Until my throat gets sore of thirst.

I walk, I walk and walk.

At home, I write as a culmination of the walk.

I write this love song to the breeze that leads me.

Destiny is not what the world made us believe.

Destiny is the soft breeze that finds its way through anything.

It shuffles even through all the needless things that humans created.

Sure, I will continue to walk when the wind continues to illuminate me.

So many people see it as vanity.

And their profanity believes I am lazy.

But they don’t understand.

The happiness that you can get by doing the things that satisfy you.

I walk when there is sun.

I walk when there is the moon and the stars.

I walk, and I go far away with the breeze.

I walk because walking is infinite.

There are days that the weather makes it difficult to walk.

But I still walk.

Some days I had the pleasure of seeing the rainbow.

I will walk whenever I can.

Because not all of us can.

However, I can’t imagine my life without it.

I love the breeze that goes through my hair when I’m walking.

I will walk past my responsibilities.

No, I do not want to hear it.

I will walk away.

But if you cannot feel it.

And if you cannot experience it.

You won’t understand it.

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Reading Day 5

Objects, according to Virginia WoolfEJR #essay, #wandering, #materialism, #memory

An object, a purpose, an excuse for walking halfway across town to pick something up.

Today I ran some errands, I got up at 8, read something, cleaned the house, took the dog out for a walk, went to the pet store, was tempted by reading something again, went to do groceries, cooked dinner, and sat down. But I wouldn’t have done any of them, if I actually had to be somewhere else. A headspace. I needed to write this piece of writing, on objects according to Virginia Woolf. And instead, as I imagine Woolf would have done too, I ran errands.

The errands being the objects of procrastination. The action that keeps a certain tradition alive.

Imagine a sheep farm where no lambs are born. No such place exists.

So, instead of becoming an actively writing artist, as I suppose I should be to reach approaching deadlines, I became a wandering artist. I went outside. On a walk, using the poor dog as an excuse. I felt the walls of my apartment closing in on me; instead of it feeling like a safe heaven it felt more and more claustrophobic, like I was living in my own coffin. Surrounded by inanimate things who, when the stillness kicked in outside, started vibrating louder, and louder. Jane Bennett would describe this as vibrant matter, that incredibly loud silence inanimate bodies excrete, in these moments of stillness and inner silence.

They try to tell me something that I couldn’t possibly understand, because that is simply outside of my realm of comprehension.

Even though they are known to me, like old friends. I know exactly what most of them

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Wandering research look like, and can reminisce about them in my mind’s eye at any given moment. I wanted to be surrounded by strangers, who wouldn’t judge because they didn’t know me. So I fled. Onto the streets, into the park, thinking that perhaps Virginia would have felt the same sense of claustrophobia, after all she just had one room for herself.

Maybe her objects would have vibrated even louder than mine, or less so, because they weren’t that familiar, were less critical of her, and didn’t remind her of incredibly strong feminist grandmothers and teenage angst.

For these personal objects all share the same, they share memories. Memories that trigger my mind to wander, therefore I let my body wander. Straight lines, networks of streets, that all lead to a known location.

My mind, however, is a different creature, who has no clear destination.

Perhaps Jane Bennett and Virginia Woolf share some similarities in their opinion on objects, or inanimate matter, I thought on my fleeing walk. Bennett describes in one of her essays, The Force of Things, the power of the thing to draw attention. She calls this ‘thing-power’. It can demand attention.

Like the foot of the lady fitting shoes, like my bookcase that belonged to my French grandmother that she bought on sale, due to the closing of a Parisian bookstore. They have a personality, a character that speaks to us. An interior that fits our personality, inanimate bodies similar to our own. Yes usually these are objects of desire, that stroke our eyes with their innate beauty.

But, nevertheless, they do succeed and, by doing so, show us that they aren’t mere dwellers in a human built world. Perhaps we are as many dwellers in a world created by them. We are irreversibly connected with one another.

closing the little mirrored doors whilst keeping my head in the opening. Creating a mirrored room, in which I saw my own endless reflection. Her memory is embedded in these objects. She has become them.

However, my grandmother was so much more than a painfully 70s dressing table, or a Parisian bookcase. These are just snippets of her life. But, by saying this it almost feels like I’m trying to supersede the intricate meaning that objects can carry. Could the carried meaning of a single object bring across the complexities of one human life?… my god I think I got a bit carried away. I wandered off, again.

But I guess that’s what one does, when your home feels like a coffin.

I didn’t run errands, I didn’t do the groceries, the house is a mess, the plants need watering, there’s no food left for the dog. I just wandered off.

I wandered off, through a city not yet known to me, again heading to an unknown destination.

‘The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts.

This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it.’ (Solnit)

My grandmother died some years ago. The bookcase reminds me of her, so does her dressing table with mirrors that can fold inwards and outward. I used to play with it for hours, sitting in front of the mirror,

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Reading Day 5

OutsideBR #shortideas, #publicspaces, #outside, #non-place

The Outside: Outside is viewed as the representation of the shared, the collective, in opposition to the private and individual signified by the inside. Furthermore, looking at it from a psychological position, the outside can be the way one wants to be viewed or is viewed, contrary to how one sees oneself from inside. Both divisions correlate with the fundamental question of life today: What is the right balance between communalism and individualism in relation to abstract or physical space? Outside implies a relation to an entity which is considered a vessel enclosing the inside. How can one refer to both, the whole? Can we say the ‘side’ or ‘all sides’? Why does it have to be a side at all, dividing the complete?

Importance of public spaces: Looking at how public spaces, from urban exteriors to vast natural landscapes, have been transforming, we can investigate how privacy, in general, is viewed differently, changing the physical layout of our time.

Public spaces belong to the community whether it is a global, national, or local one, and the way in which we design and inhabit them affects our private spheres too.

The disappearance of public spaces: The disappearance of public spaces limits our own body, impacts communities, and erodes its democratic function. As Solnit states ‘many people nowadays live in a series of interiors-home, car, gym, office,

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Wandering research shops-disconnected from each other...on foot everything stays connected... and… one lives the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.’ This tendency is exaggerated now by the pandemic, as billions of people are stuck inside their homes or neighbourhoods which theoretically would encourage local communities. On the contrary, this tendency has accelerated the centralisation of power, wealth, and knowledge, and furthermore fear- mongering created an anxiety towards communal areas.

name a few, are in danger and subsequently, the human psyche is at risk of mental disorder. Outside has become something people long for and the growing claustrophobic nature of life will take its toll driving us to a turning point where the steam can be let off. In this essence, waywardness is shifting away from being an abnormal quality, becoming a shared aspiration of collectivity.

Fear as the main currency: Fear became a leading currency of interactions. As Solnit puts it, we tend to exclude the good examples we experience on a regular basis and focus on the extreme cases of hostility, creating an environment where suspicion precedes trust. This helps us to avoid some casualties but at the same time prevents meaningful interactions from happening which perhaps could bring more value into the equation. One thing is for certain, the equilibrium can’t be found by not trying, we have to give trust its chance.

Role of technology: Technological innovations also tend to limit physical spaces, and ‘services that don’t require leaving home’ have been enclosing our daily movements. Without being outside people are losing the chance to meet the unknown, to find themselves in uncomfortable situations, and to learn about each other, thus openness, empathy, and receptivity are fading in general.

Furthermore, being outside in the domain of the collective, organising grassroot initiatives, being part of communal enterprises, can be considered as rebellious from a state perspective.

In the absence of public spaces: The instinctual human quality of togetherness and its different materialisations like mass education, festivals, and elections, to

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Reading Day 5

A flash of understandingXK #fiction, #pain, #masochism, #abuse, #internalisation

I’ve always been fascinated by pain; for as long as I can remember.

How overwhelming a sensation it is, and still how easily forgotten.

I’m not one of those who blame everything on ‘I was not loved… my mother never hugged me’, no nothing of that sort. I had a most normal childhood, nothing special really, two parents, and they were loving. I wasn’t a lonely child. I have two older siblings, a sister and a brother, and a little brother I also had. We got along well, of course we had our fights and arguments, all of us, anything else would have been suspicious. But I wasn’t molested or anything, I’m not one of those people who cryingly confess that ‘when I dropped the soap bar on the floor I had my brother up my but’. Nothing at all in that way, not even close, not at all. I was happy.

We were all happy.

Of course, I’ve done weird and inappropriate things, and seen my bits of shared craziness. But who hasn’t? No one lives in a glass bubble; we’re humans, not goldfishes in an aquarium, so that’s just as it should be. Yes my big brother did have this thing for torturing animals, and now you will all use that as an explanation for my psychological state, but please do not do that. Because I doubt that that affected me at all.

If he was a grown-up man doing these things, he would have, with no hesitation from my point of view, been a clear ‘send him to the chair nominee’. But after all ‘torture’ is a bit of an over dramatic word to use here, he was just fascinated about life and death, power and force, as all boys are his age. They’re kids and they’re exploring the world.

Either way my memories don’t torment me at all. The flies crawling without wings, they’re just brief pictures from a very distant childhood. These birds with outplocked eyes, and the neighbor’s cat shocked in a black plastic bag and dumped in the river. Are just these diffuse pictures that come to my mind. Blurred as light damaged negatives. And I don’t associate them with my brother. No, not at all, I love my brother. I rather associate these memories and animals to this blur which the whole childhood from the viewpoint of being grown up is. It’s honestly hard to believe you’ve ever been a child.

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Wandering research As you might have figured out so far we didn’t have these kinds of overprotective parents, whom in their dust free houses harvest children allergic to being alive. And even if my father was an outdoor kind of guy and my mother also loved hiking – maybe not as much as my father but I’m sure she found a way to find peace with it. After all she taught me everything about flowers, while my father taught me about knives and ropes. They weren’t this pair of semi-fascist scouts, no they just liked their lungs filled with fresh air and the adventures feelings of climbing over fallen trees in the wild parts of a grand forest.

I have so much to thank them for, we were, and now I’m referring to me and my siblings, sort of the stars of the survival classes in school; ever since kindergarten to college, we were, and I’m not making this up, better than the rest. Which didn’t bother me at all, I was kind of a lonely wolf or a stray cat kind of person already from the start.

Observing the rest of the human race I was doomed to be apart from a pleasant distance. This trait of mine worked hand in hand with being a girl, even though I know, you might not believe that. Early on I saw that guys and boys are way more forced to some kind of socialness, they’re expected in one or the other way to be part and take part – they argue, they fight, and if they leave their group they become a potential enemy and need to be obliterated… the only position a boy can take in order to receive some sense of peaceful solitude is the role of the geek, the nerd – the weak and undateable – the unmateable. Totally undangerous for other men. But with us girls, and now I’m not talking about women, because women are a different kind of breed from us girls, in a much more refined way than men are different from boys. Boys grow up and become men, we all can see that, while girls metamorphose through this loss of freedom into women.

I hate women, they’re detestable.

BUT HAPPILY! I’m forever made a girl Unlike the boys, a girl can stray around, she can sit by herself, laugh and watch without being perceived as a potential danger. By the women she is perceived as cute or just strange. By the other girls she might, similarly to the perception of the women, be perceived as a bit odd, but more likely she’ll be perceived as an intellectual or just a fellow girl taking a break from sociability. For the part of the boys she’s just a girl as all girls are girls, and by the men she’s a more penetrable creature, a stray animal, a baby elephant away from its herd.

I LOVED MEN Early on I learnt what they wanted. How they wanted.

And they early on learnt what I wanted. How I wanted.

Pain.

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Reading Day 5 And I know that most of you are these hysterical feminazis who think men are animals, that might be true because we all are animals – a young little girl in pink as much as a bearded man in leather on his star-striped bike. Rather the reality is the opposite, men are gentle, constantly asking ‘I’m not too hard with you?’, ‘Just tell me to stop if you want me to stop, or if you want me to go slower, that’s no problem?’, ‘I bought a present for you, I hope you’ll like it’. But I want presents as much as I want questions.

I hate them.

The bigger the man, the bigger the pile of questions got. The trick was to have a look for BMWs, Teslas, Jaguars and never go with Fords, Opels or Audis. The better dressed the man, the fewer the questions, yet the purer the pain.

And I know so many of you refuse me this. You can’t imagine someone desiring this what I desire. And let me clarify this for you.

I WANT THIS. I HAVE CHOSEN THIS. I’M NOT A VICTIM. And it’s not like I’m addicted to it or need it to keep on being. I’m not one of these submissive masochistic high heeled pin-up kinda girls, not this blond Kimkardashian kinda girl. No! I just love it. The thrill of it.

Pain goes through my body. Limbs are shivering. Skin is reddened and later blued. Hair is ripped, uprooted. Lips are teared – all the kinds of lips a girl has.

It screams inside. It screams: run! It screams: No! It screams: oh... cc// sfXXljan??wf!! and then it doesn’t scream anymore. Void. A round heavy warm emptiness. I’m here. I exist.

I am A flash of understanding what life is, and that I and what this I is, is alive.

Nothing else is, than this.

I need it.

Pain.

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Reading Day 5

A Brief Biography of Henry David ThoreauOK #academic, #historicalbiography, #transcendentalism, #individualism, #fascism

Introduction Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 as the third of four children of a pencil manufacturer in Concord, Massachusetts.

In 1833, he went off to Harvard, where he was a good student, but he was indifferent to the rank system and preferred to use the school library for his own purposes. After graduation, he worked as a schoolteacher in his old grammar school in Concord, but found that he was no disciplinarian and resigned after two shaky weeks. Then he helped run a school until his co-director (older brother) died of tetanus. That was the end of Thoreau’s experiments in pedagogy, except perhaps on the page.

During his Harvard years he was exposed to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who later became his chief mentor and friend as he settled in Concord during Thoreau’s sophomore year at Harvard. Emerson introduced the younger man to transcendentalism, a belief that conceded that there were two ways of knowing, through the senses and through intuition, but asserted that intuition transcended tuition. Similarly, the movement acknowledged that matter and spirit both existed. It claimed, however, that the reality of spirit transcended the reality of matter. Transcendentalism strove for reform yet insisted that reform begin with the individual, not the group or organization.

Later on Emerson lent him a piece of land at his pond-side property where Thoreau went to live by himself on July 4, 1845.

Then 27 years old Thoreau began to chop down tall pines with which to build the

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Wandering research foundations of his home on the shores of Walden Pond where he spent the next two years. For the next few years he was busy writing Walden, a series of 18 essays describing Thoreau’s experiment in basic living and his effort to set his time free for leisure, which was published in 1854. On and off from his retreat from the Walden pond until his death (at forty-four, of tuberculosis), he worked as a surveyor and in the family pencil factory. But it was only after Thoreau’s death, in 1862, when “Walden” became a cornerstone work of American nonfiction and its author an American hero thanks to vigorous championing by his family and Emerson.[1]

Thoreau the disobedient abolitionist Thoreau was known as an outspoken abolitionist.[2] He condemned the Fugitive Slave Law, served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad[3], championed John Brown’s[4] raid on Harper’s Ferry, and refused to pay the poll tax in Massachusetts, partly on the ground that it sustained the institution of slavery, and much of Thoreau’s status stems from his absolute opposition to it. But one may reach good ends by bad means, and so did Thoreau. Emerson wrote of Thoreau: ‘Not a particle of respect had he to the opinions of any man or body of men, but homage solely to the truth itself.’

He believed that every one of us has to figure out life by ourselves, in our own way, we need to reach “the wisdom of life”, we should trust our own thoughts to reach our personal and objective truth. But what makes him eligible is his belief in his own prophetic qualities: ‘sometimes, when I compare myself with other men,’ Thoreau wrote in Walden, ‘it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded.’ [5] Transcendentalism is what arguably gave him these illusions, based on some deviated beliefs. ‘He, such as his fellow Transcendentalists, was suspicious of tradition and institutions, and regarded personal intuition and direct revelation as superior foundations for both spiritual and secular beliefs.’ [6] Not everyone can be a prophet in the end, and I think we have already suffered from those who offered a better transcendent life superior to this earthly life, while the population lived in intolerable conditions, had to survive only with the hope of a greater future but with no change in their actual physical lives.

Thoreau wrote in his essay, Civil Disobedience: ‘The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.’ [7] This potential recipe for disaster was his reaction to the unjust

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Reading Day 5 government and “this can be read as a call to obey one’s conscience over and above unjust laws.” But as a broader theory of governance, which it was, it is troubling.

People routinely perpetrate wrongs out of obedience to their conscience, even in situations when the law mandates better behavior. (Consider the Kentucky county clerk currently refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples,[8] or certain religious beliefs that stand against human rights, for example in circumcision, or marriage of under aged girls.) How can we run a society where everyone tries to decide and behave based on their conscience and not the law?

‘There is no more insidious political theory than this. When consciences conflict— and antagonism is never worse than when it involves two men each of whom is convinced that he speaks for goodness and rectitude—what then?’ The scholar Vincent Buranelli noted in a 1957 critique of Thoreau: ‘Who is to decide? Thoreau’s theory has overtones of Rousseau’s Legislator who can do what he pleases with the people under his control because he alone can fathom the holy intentions of the General Will.’ [9] It was exactly subordinating law to conscience that produced Hitler, Mao and Saddam Hussein, Thoreau’s ideals can create deadly evil if the situation allows it.

Thoreau the Individualist ‘To Transcendentalists the individual is the center to any moral progress. The centrality of individuals means that the solution to any problems is going to come from you as an individual, not as an outside intervention, so too the issue of morality. It is the individual that is central to reform, not government intervention or government coercion.’ [10] That’s the remedy that has been used for centuries to put up with cruel rulers, the church, the mosque and other power structures.

Individualism is an advocate of a social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control. It

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Wandering research demands that everyone be independent and self-reliant, and also imagines a self-centered egotistical society full of individuals who live by themselves. What individualism neglects is the innate quality of human beings as a social creature and the power of living together. In John Dewey’s view: “men are not isolated, non-social atoms, but are men only when in intrinsic relations to one another, and the state in turn only represents them, so far as they have become organically related to one another, or are possessed of unity of purpose and interest”.[11] Democracy is a form of moral and spiritual association that recognizes the contribution that each member can make in his or her particular way to this ethical community. And each of us can contribute to this community since we each only become the individuals we are through our engagement in the institutions and practices of our society.

But Thoreau didn’t believe in the ruling of the majority, as he didn’t see that it is most likely better to decide about how to run the society with all our wisdom. He critiqued democracy on many occasions: ‘Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?—in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?’ 12] Or where he wrote ‘All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon… I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.’ [13] John Dewey who also shared some critiques on democracy believed that it’s through education that we can overcome this problem of election in

democracy, we have to be very precise and responsible for our votes as they’re crucial to the future of all of us. But Thoreau gets close in his critique of Democracy to Plato, and Rousseau, but unlike them he doesn’t propose new methods to run the state, instead what he offers is a passive form of ‘civil disobedience’.

After all, he is not that concerned with society, as long as you are living a life that corresponds with your conscience and beliefs about things, nothing can really bother you. He doesn’t think that it is your duty to actively lobby for change. ‘...the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free (free in his thinking), fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.’ [14] And that to me sounds similar to the teachings of Dalai Lama, or other spiritual leaders, let the bad rule, we meditate instead and fix the world from the inside. We live in our minds, let the rich steal and cruel rule. ‘I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.’ [15] But what happens if this place that we came to live in is a suffocating bad place?

According to Thoreau ‘It is not a man’s duty as a matter of course to devote himself to the eradication of any even the most enormous wrong, he may still properly have other concerns to engage him, but it is his duty to wash his hands a bit, and if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and compilations, I must first see at least that they do not pursue themselves sitting upon another man’s shoulder, I must get off him first that he may pursue his contemplation too.’ [16] But are we at least obligated to be respectful to the majority or are we obligated to

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Reading Day 5 speak up and change things for the better?

Thoreau’s idea is not about standing up against society, and it doesn’t stand for what is morally right but it is more about how we should go about standing up against society.

His passive version of ‘civil disobedience’ is merely a weak form of resistance with not much of value because in the end, he was indifferent towards the society. ‘Hatred of slavery compels John Brown to pick up his rifle and head for Kansas, Thoreau curses and raves in print—and then strolls into the woods to look, with completely engrossed attention, for the first breaking up of the ice on the pond, for the earliest buds of spring, for the appearance of beaver and blacksnake after their winter’s hiber-nation.’ [17]

The conclusion So in the end, this form of Transcendentalism and Individualism that Thoreau understood and acted upon, are not advocating revolutionary ideas, although it might have looked so. Thoreau in some ways endorses rebellion against societal norms, but for him the natural way of life is the truest form, and as a naturalist he wouldn’t revolt against the will of nature: ‘I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to nature, it dies; and so does a man.’ [18] The weak will be eliminated naturally so that the healthier, the better, and the stronger will flourish. It is not so difficult to connect that to some of his possible German apostles a couple of years later, who could master the art of soap making based on his teachings. His carelessness for society and humanity is jaw breaking. To Thoreau most people are not individuals but passive ignorant subjects that constantly seek for others to define who they are in exchange for the security that society brings them.

He could not differentiate that absolute autonomy of individuals and living in a society doesn’t always contradict each other. Unfortunately, he could not see that a balanced life is somewhere in between the will of an individual and the society they live in, and if everyone was to live like him, in the woods, then there would be no social life, no books, no ink, and no readers to attend his revolutionary writings after all!

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Introduction based on Online Britannica Dictionary and an essay: Schulz, Kathryn. The Moral Judgments of Henry David Thoreau. New Yorker, October 12, 2015.

Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, was the movement to end slavery.

[3] The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century, and used by enslaved African-Americans to escape into free states and Canada. Members of the Underground Railroad often used specific terms, based on the metaphor of the railway. For example: guides were known as “conductors”.

[4] John Brown was a militant American abolitionist who felt that violence was necessary to end American slavery, as years of speeches, sermons, petitions, and moral persuasion had failed. An intensely religious man, Brown believed he was raised up by God to strike the death blow to American slavery. He led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859, but he got killed which made him a martyr to the antislavery cause.

[5] Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, and On the Duty Of Civil Disobedience. The Project Gutenberg EBook, 2008. p.91.

[6] Podcast, Philosophize this! Episode 83 - Henry David Thoreau. Mostly based on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[7] Ibid. p.225.

[8] Schulz, Kathryn. The Moral Judgments of Henry David Thoreau. New Yorker, October 12, 2015.

[9] Buranelli, Vincent.The Case Against Thoreau. JOURNAL ARTICLE, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Jul., 1957), pp. 257-268.

[10] Podcast, Philosophize this! Episode 83 - Henry David Thoreau. Mostly based on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[11] From The Online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Ethics of Democracy. EW1, 231-2.

[12] Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience. The Project Gutenberg EBook, 2008. p.225.

[13] Ibid. pp.228-229.

[14] Ibid. pp.240.

[15] Ibid. pp.231.

[16] Ibid. pp. 229-230.

[17] Buranelli, Vincent.The Case Against Thoreau. JOURNAL ARTICLE, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Jul., 1957), pp. 267.

[18] Ibid. p.236.

[2]

[1]

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Reading Day 5

Free time vs. productionRM #prose, #subtleradicalism

The least productive human on earth would go on a pilgrimage. He would know no hours, minutes, or seconds. No breakfast, lunch, or supper. No alarm clocks or daily shows. No expiration dates. Only sunrise and twilight, hunger, pain, and sleep. He would be dubious of the media as well. No trends would dictate his taste, no ads would pollute his desires.

He would respond to failure without a feeling. He would empty the drawers and turn them upside down; the contents would spread out across the floor, not piled or arranged or classified. The least productive human on earth would wake up and stare at the ceiling.

The least productive human on earth would be an empty vessel; a reborn who knows no time distinctions. He would carry all histories, all tenses. Forever being and becoming, an embodied contradiction. On the road there would be no schedules, no careers, no goals. He would forget every expectation, whether his or his family’s or his friends’. He would bring along only what would help him survive. A water flask, a change of clothes, good walking shoes, protein bars, and toothpaste. No books to read, no music or podcasts to listen to.

The pilgrim would place a heel on the ground, followed by the arch, finishing with the toes, and repeat on the other side. He would walk without direction, without rhythm. The more the path would stretch, the more he would forget, the less he would think. Not even knowledge could be reclaimed as his property. He would not write diaries or carry a sketchbook. His blisters would be his only evidence. In his mind there would be no shortcuts. All paths would be main and never alleys or backstreets. With every step the rules disintegrate and blend into new associations. Logic would abandon time, deeming it unquantifiable.

Progress would be liquid, time in no shape or form, equal to humans and gods alike. An incommensurable thread as long as the fibers that had ever protected a species from the threats of nature and age. A thread that stabs and sews, repairs in asymmetric patterns. A humid clay that glues and fills ruptures and fissures.

The pilgrimage would not start nor end. It would only branch and swallow. The more pairs of legs it swallows the more it becomes ceremonious, a march of an army that carries, attends, responds, and supports. The wind and water would scour the marks of their steps.

With some luck the sun would come and its heat would settle the mud. A pilgrim’s path can erode, but his steps are a fossil, an evidence.

The pilgrim carries his home on his back.

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Reading Day 5

GlancingEO #prose, #glancing, #family

I am writing this piece sitting on my couch, eyes absorbed by my screen. Even if I would like to, I could not have gone outside for a stroll. I have a curfew, together with the rest of the country. So I challenge myself to a walk of the eye.

When glancing at something we look at things briefly, it is the eye that swiftly moves over something, it is the eye that is walking. Virginia Woolf’s glances take us on a journey. When something catches her eye it transports her through a world of associations, taking the reader with her. Everything becomes a window into something else.

But what I find is that there is no need to look. I sit here surrounded by objects so familiar to me. I know that behind me is my grandmother’s closet, high and heavy. I feel the weight of the closet, as I’ve moved it around this room so many times. I do not have to look inside it to know that on the second shelf from the bottom, in red marker, Edam is scribbled in my grandmother’s spiky handwriting. The door is adorned by an oval mirror, a little chipped at the bottom from one of its many journeys.

This closet was bought by my great-grandmother when she got married in 1916. It lived in her bedroom only to be passed on to my grandmother when she got married. It then moved with my grandmother throughout her life, from Edam, where it got its mark, to Voorschoten, Ommen, and Boskoop. After my grandmother’s death, my sister took it with her, from student house to student house, and from city to city, having to leave it behind only for a move to New Zealand. She then lent it to a friend, until it finally arrived at my home.

I glance at myself in its mirror. The same mirror I looked into five years ago, and everyday since. I think about my great-grandmother who used to look in this same mirror more than a 100 year ago, my grandmother 60 years ago, and my sister 10 years ago. What this mirror might have witnessed! It must have been exciting in my great-grandmother’s marital bedroom, where babies were made and born. But what I remember are the quieter times.

When it must have gotten the occasional glance of my grandmother shuffling through the house in her slippers. A silent house, a woman alone. Reminiscing of the times when it was busy, with her five children flying through the house. To my sister sitting on the floor with her friends drinking and getting ready to party. To now be a witness of the daily routine of my partner, myself, and our son.

Just to be sure, I take a look inside the closet. You have to lift the door a little bit to open it. It always makes the same screeching sound. When I open the door the mirror gets a glimpse of the rest of the room. The occasional diversion from its normal static view. I push away the books that lie on the second shelf from the bottom. Is the marker really there? It takes only a glance for me to see that the red marker is not red, but rather green.

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Reading Day 5

A Brief Biography­—and many reasons for the waywardness—of Stanley BrouwnRW #biography, #walkingart, #degrowth, #accelerationism

154

Wandering research Stanley Brouwn’s foot is 23 centimeters.

Stanley Brouwn was born in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, on June 25th 1935. At that time Suriname was a Dutch colony.

According to Stanley Brouwn, this information is not relevant to his work.

What might be relevant to Stanley Brouwn’s work is that Surinam is 1.476377,95 foot in length, 1.476377,95 foot in width, and 4.671.916,01 foot in circumference. Or, to be precise: 1.956.621,74 sb-foot in length, 1.956.621,74 sb-foot in width, and 6191304,35 sb-foot in circumference.

Stanley Brouwn measured.

He measured his foot and called the length an sb-foot.

In 1957 Stanley Brouwn moved to Amsterdam.

My foot is 23 centimeters as well.

One sb-foot equals one rvw-foot.

Stanley Brouwn measured his steps, each one different; a reflection of a specific moment. In 1972 he published them in a book, called Construction. It consists of pages full of steps with slightly different distances; 850 mm, 844 mm, 847 mm, 842 mm, 840 mm, 851 mm etc.

My steps are 375 mm, 672 mm, 749 mm, 813 mm, 784 mm, 556 mm, 470 mm, 487 mm, 613 mm, 606 mm, 422 mm.

According to my measurements, Stanley Brouwn took very big and equal steps.

Stanley Brouwn counted.

He counted his steps.

Stanley Brouwn counted his steps and printed a card in 1972 reading: ‘18,947 steps, the number of steps counted in one day’.

Stanley Brouwn measured a step, a space, a door, an opening, a roof, and transferred the measurements into wood and steel. He then put the sculpted distances in another space.

At the end of the fifties Stanley Brouwn hung plastic bags with rubbish from a ceiling.

Stanley Brouwn does not want to be put in an art historic box.

According to Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust, Stanley Brouwn is the first to turn walking into performance art.

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Reading Day 5 Stanley Brouwn layed down papers on the street. Whoever walked or cycled over the paper, left traces, steps, lines, stains, etc, and created the piece of art. We see the unfolded action, at a specific place, at a specific time.

Stanley Brouwn refers to his work in his exhibitions.

This Way Mister Brouwn is a series of hand drawn instructions of how to get from point A to point B. Mister Brouwn would ask a random passerby to draw and tell him how to get somewhere.

Mister Brouwn didn’t want his picture to be taken.

The visual representations of the walks, the hand drawn directions, embed different temporalities; the actual time of the passerby explaining the direction, and the passerby and Mister Brouwn imagining the way and walking it in their minds. In the drawing I see the complete walk all at once. I don’t need the road to unfold in time, I don’t need to walk from a to b, the drawing shows compressed time.

I see the potential walk in the future, while the drawing refers to an encounter in the past. By imagining the walk I bring it to the present.

Mister Brouwn does not associate his work with a political agenda.

To walk a walk takes time, to imagine a walk takes less time, to see a walk takes the least time.

And all this time, the drawn walk may have, or may not have, been physically walked.

There are 2 pictures of Mister Brouwn.

Mister Brouwn walked in the forest of the Kroller-Müller museum.

He put a sign up on every spot where he started a walk.

‘In many ways, walking culture was a reaction against the speed and alienation of the industrial revolution.’ says Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust.

I can start a walk from where Mister Brouwn started a walk. We are connected by space over time.

On November 25th, 1975 Suriname gained independence.

Mister Brouwn said that if you walk in a certain direction there are an infinite number of people walking in the same direction. They are connected by time over space.

Mister Brouwn burnt his old work.

Mister Brouwn lived during the space age. The US and the Soviet

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Wandering research Union raced to send people up into space first. All eyes were directed up towards the sky. Mister Brouwn looked down to his feet and the streets they walked.

Mister Brouwn demolished all evidence, didn’t reproduce his work, didn’t digitalize, only refers to his work in his exhibitions, and lived in his time. He passed away and now he lives in the past.

Mister Brouwn won a David Röell Prize in 1980.

I don’t think he wants me to be able to find him and his work on my computer in his future. Still I found two pictures of him, a few quotes, pictures of his work, and some analysis of the art historic box in which he fits, on the internet. Should I share these? Or respect his wishes?

He managed to plant his feet in the earth, slow down, and walk whilst the western world was accelerating by tram, train, car, plane, zeppelin, and spacecraft.

Mister Brouwn was a professor at the Kunstacademie in Hamburg, and De Ateliers in Haarlem and Amsterdam.

The internet has a forever in it, a promise of infinite accessible time. Not bound to space and time, a continuum floating in the air compressed in our devices. You can be anywhere at any time.

Mister Brouwn didn’t digitalize, he used his and your imagination to connect time and spaces.

‘Language is like a road; it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other in ways art and walking do not.’ (Solnit) Mister Brouwn won a Sandberg Prize in 1987.

Rebecca Solnit is right, but Mister Brouwn has conceptualized the walk and makes you experience a temporal dimension while standing still: A different experience than the actual time and physicality of the walk he took, but still ‘a work of art’ which unfolds in time.

Mister Brouwn doesn’t connect his identity and private life to his work.

The walks of Mister Brouwn will have consisted of infinitive elements, encounters, weathers, views, sounds, smells, etc. We don’t get to know those, he doesn’t share them. We get only the facts, the numbers, and we imagine his walk. Each of us imagines differently; his one walk turned into many walks in our minds.

Mister Brouwn was part of the Documenta Kassel in 1972, 1977, 1982, and 2002.

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Reading Day 5 His work existed in a specific place and time. He didn’t want to and it is impossible to reproduce. It seems his thinking would also suggest that his work is specific to his place and time in the world, his history, his conditions, his personal life and identity.

Mister Brouwn won an Oeuvre Prize in 2000.

Mister Brouwn does not present arguments, opinions or statements, this makes him look objective; presenting facts, measurements, and numbers only. But what Mister Brouwn used to measure all these facts is his body. What can be more subjective and personal than building your whole work on the size of your body? In a way we all do of course, our body is how we relate to the world around us, we all have a relationship to these standardized sizes, which are so normal now. But Mister Brouwn didn’t comply. He confronted people indirectly, time and time again, with the loss of the personal and the local in an accelerating and globalizing society.

Mister Brouwn died on May 18th, 2017 in Amsterdam. 1 sb-year is 29.914 days. I am 9102 days old which makes me 0,3 sb-year. How long is an rvw-year?

I will never know.

According to Mister Brouwn ‘it is even very probable that I shall be able to summarize all the projects I shall ever carry out in my life under one title, which would be We Walk on The Planet Earth’.

He never did, now I do: Stanley Brouwn walked on Planet Earth.

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Wanderlust, a History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit, 2001. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_sur001195501_01/_sur001195501_01_0011.php http://plaza.ufl.edu/kgladdys/ART6933/articles/brown1.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Age https://www.metropolism.com/nl/reviews/34127_stanley_brouwn_mens_loopt_op_planeet_aarde https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/artists/13151 https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Brouwn https://www.dewitteraaf.be/artikel/detail/nl/2929 https://prabook.com/web/stanley.brouwn/3742564

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Reading Day 5

Astra Taylor, Examined Life, 90' #review

Review by SF

‘The unexamined life is not worth living’, Plato This review is based on all the sentences that popped into my mind whilst watching The Unexamined Life, which is more or less about philosophy and politics. The interviewer/filmmaker is moving from place to place, with the camera, which gives this film a dynamic aesthetic, triggering the viewer to continue watching.

Cornel West: Thank God you don’t have to go to school to be a philosopher! It is the lever of wisdom. It takes a lot of discipline and courage.

The philosopher tells the truth about things. Cornel gives a personal view on what he thinks the philosopher deals with in everyday life.

Avital Ronnel: Boredom has an offshoot of melancholy, which interests me as a response to these dazzling things we are producing.

Avital just said what I was thinking about when she started to talk.

‘Boredom’. How something so simple can entail such a large story if we are only philosophical about it.

Interviewer: Does life have a meaning, and what is it?

This question is something a lot of us deal with at a certain point of our career as artists. But this is also an important question that everyone deals with at a certain point in their lives. I wonder, why is it that creative people have to deal with it the most?

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Wandering research Kwame Anthony Appiah: Context we evolve as species in an aspect of globalization.

We evolve as species but do we change our behavior to better the world?

Or, is it getting worse?

Martha Nussbaum: Women’s oppression has always been partly occasioned by their physical weakness compared to men. If you leave out that physical asymmetry you may leave out a problem.

Is that it? Is the problem solved just like that? Then why didn’t we solve it yet? But this does not do well for people with serious physical and mental disabilities. It’s a serious political problem. The change has to start somewhere, and sometimes you don’t have the power to make it happen. Sometimes the only thing you can do is make a painting.

Michael Hardt: All we can do is observe what their revolutions were.

Democracy means the ruling of all by all. The only way to rehabilitate the concept of revolution is democracy. Rather than that, we are instigating utopia every day. Aristocrats talking about the revolutions sounds absurd. The funny part about this is that we still talk about it.

Slavoj Žižek: Part of our vision of reality is that this (‘trash’) disappears from our world. Trash doesn’t disappear. The way we approach ecological problems is the crucial field of our ideology today. Wrong ways of perceiving reality. Ideology addresses very real problems, but it mystifies them. Can you imagine what kind of unthinkable catastrophe would occur on earth?

To me, this was the most valuable interview in this documentary. It was a reality check. Let’s get rid of the trash; let’s make it invisible to our home.

Judith Butler: Most disabled people also say ‘go for a walk’. Buildings are accessible in San Francisco, which leads to social acceptability.

We became aware of people with disabilities. Oppression of disabled people: housing problems, not enough career opportunity, socially isolated. Where do our boundaries lie as humans? And, does it become non-human?

Another reality check; Can you walk? I think this film only needed these two fragments. The interview with Judith Butler and with Slavoj Žižek. It would have been a shorter film, but an interesting one.

Cornel West: How do you generate an elegance of earned self-togetherness so you have a ‘stick-to-it-ness’ in the face of the catastrophic calamitous, the horrendous, the scandalous, and the monstrous?

And just like that the film ends with the fear of the unknown.

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DAY 6

Intensity: an ethical ideal?

Can the promise of intensity live up to its claims? This question opens up the general ethics of contemporary life. Tristan Garcia’s book The Life Intense paints a picture of an ethical paradigm for feeling and experiencing ‘intensity’, but also ‘the ideal’, with intensity defining a huge shift from the pre-modern paradigms for supposed ‘good human life’ (regarding piety, stability, and grace).

So, intensity is the constant drive to ‘feel alive’, and life therefore isn’t about the good or the bad (virtues), but ‘the degree to which life is felt’. We must FEEL alive, and all tools should be employed to pursue this drive.

We ex p l o r e d G a r c i a’s t h r e e p r o p o s e d strategies to approach the decree of intensity: 1. Variation (CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE —we must change place, change friends, change things. Never standing still, we must always update). 2. Increase/accelerate (A constant growth and exponentialism), and 3.

Premaverism/The First Time (Remember our first time darling?)

We explored what it is to ‘spice up your life!’

Based on:

Tristan Garcia, “The Life Intense” Film: Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi, 90 mins

Reading Day 6

BourgeoisRM #fiction, #bourgeoisnow

He meets her by the bottom of the stairs as he leaves the house. She happens to arrive at that precise time every day. She stopped making eye contact long ago, but expels a polite ‘good morning’ nevertheless, and he responds with the exact same words. Their resented intimacy is echoed around the house, but, as other uncomfortable situations, it remains unspoken. She dreads this encounter. Her face reveals her self-hatred; she resents having to be herself at that moment. She delays climbing the stairs and facing his mess. She is way over fifty, and overweight. The swelling of her ankles indicates diabetes, possibly cardiovascular diseases as well. Without exception, the bedroom is cluttered from floor to ceiling, from corner to corner. Stained dishes, empty beauty products, but mostly dirty laundry cover the entire floor, the bed, and the closets. She wishes she wouldn’t have to suck it up and bend over to pick up his mess.

He pays for his status with his time and dignity. A life of comfort and experiences was promised to him. He was told he deserved everything in the world, that he was handsome, smart, and unique; that he would never receive no for an answer. Superficial friendships and trustless romantic relationships opened up opportunities for him. He was given a key to the door, and a place in the parking lot with his name on it. When he enters that office however, he encounters the bitter reality that, in there, he is just another pawn. He aged beyond his desired position. Several years after graduating he still runs errands for the second, or even third ranked. He executes them obediently and resentfully. Every day he gets closer to admitting that no tailored suit or degree title can upgrade him to the reality he desires. He resents every order he receives, every document he has to deliver, and every meeting where his opinion is not asked for.

But despite these disappointments he arrives home and he is king. He owns everything in and around the property. Fancy furniture, mortgaged cars, and a marble kitchen. He paid for all of this from his own pocket. It belongs to him. He enters the living room and throws his keys onto the glass table, scratching the surface, letting her know he has arrived. All his effort and dissatisfaction comes down to this moment. He turns the tv on, sits on the sofa, and presses his dirty soles against the beige leather. A nasty growl tells her he’s hungry.

Before he commands her by the click of his thumb and middle finger, she approaches the room and asks him if he is hungry. She enjoys removing the pleasure of commanding her from him. By now she knows how to read the cues and plays the game like a pro. Every dismissed command is a point in her favor. As she lays the plate on the table she allows the ceramic to clink just a little. Enough to irritate him, but not enough to reveal her intention.

He may own the table, the dish, and the food served but when it comes to her, she cannot be owned.

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Reading Day 6

Measure - How do we measure up?ES #lyricalessay, #memory, #growing, #mybody

In the kitchen of the house where we grew up there is a white wall, dividing the dining room from the stove, sink, and microwave.

This wall, like all the walls, is painted glossy white, with thick emulsion paint; protected from oil splatters, spraying from greasy pans. Nothing was ever hung on any of our walls. No paintings. No photographs. No memories. We were always ready to move.

Onto the next place, and into the next country. We would never have to repaint.

But this white wall became our mural. A thin strip of unchanged space, somehow stuck in time, slowly greying, covered in small pencil lines and numbers. Dates.

11/02/2003. 20/04/2007. 30/05/2012. The last date; the year I stopped growing.

We’d stand with our heels touching the base of this wall, barefoot and cold as our feet stroked the wooden floor panels. We’d straighten our backs, correct our postures, and wait patiently for the heavy recipe book to be placed upon our heads.

I’d look up and ask my mother; ‘how do I measure up this year?’. ‘Just one centimetre taller than the last’, she’d reply.

This kitchen became the home of measure. Our yearly ritual to track our progress, and our time spent growing. Now when I gaze upon the surface of that wall, and it’s smudged numbers, I wonder, did it hurt as my body stretched itself, bones elongating and muscles strengthening, in time with others my age. In time with myself. These measurements, the lengths between the pencil lines, became the stand-ins for our physical development, snapshots of a growing process neither our minds, nor bodies will ever remember.

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Intensity: an ethical ideal?

Leonardo Da Vinci once explained upon creating the Vitruvian Man:

King, Ross. Leonardo and the Last Supper. (Bloomsbury Publishing: London, 2012), 165.

Garcia, Tristan. The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession. (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2018), 27.

‘If you open your legs far enough to reduce your height by one fourteenth and at the same time ‘spread and raise your arms until your middle fingers touch the level of the top of your head,’ your navel will be at the centre of your outspread limbs and the space between your legs will describe an equilateral triangle.’ (King 165) This followed Vitruvius’ claim that the distance measured from the toes to the top of the head equals that from fingertip to fingertip if arms are outstretched. (King 165) This is our measure of the body, of our proportions. A method of measure in art I use daily to construct my paintings, and to build subjects. We are measured by what we are constructed of. Supposedly, in my body there are seven heads, just as in my head there are two palms, and in my palm there are four fingers. By creating one circle of measure, my body apparently fits into each other part of itself, with each limb constantly compared to another, through measure.

records, and keeping time of minute differences in performances, once invisible to our own eyes. We are endlessly comparing, and in this are ever losing ourselves.

I notice myself ‘measuring up’ to those around me. How do I measure up? I am losing sense of my self-actualisation and so I must stop measuring. But it is difficult. It is impossible. Now, I do no longer measure myself, for I no longer grow. I have reached my ‘maximum’. I am left only to measure the distance to the kitchen in the house where I grew up, and the months left until I can return there, to gaze upon the fading measurements. The measured lines of my ‘progress’.

With ‘The Tanner Scale’ I am measured to develop breasts and grow pubic hair at 11 years, to have my first menstrual bleeding at 12.5 years, and to reach my adult height at 15 years of age. Is this the age I stopped measuring myself?

Measuring systems became what allegedly made the world ‘thinkable’, ‘knowable’, and ‘livable’ (Garcia 27).

We deem to have ‘understood’ our bodies and their growth. But measure excludes and measure is toxic. With measure comes a constant need to compare. To ‘measure up’. We are not all the same, yet we measure ourselves against one another. I did not develop breasts at 11. I did not reach adult height at 15. Our bodies are not all made up of seven heads. We measure up our progress, our achievements, and our performance, against each other. We are keeping track of

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Reading Day 6

Modernity ‫هتینرِدُم‬OK #fiction, #capitalism, #pain, #existence

they cut you wide open, with a knife, exactly on your belly, draw the line first, that is how they do it, no medicine, no nothing, they cut you when your eyes are open, you see all the faces around, you hear the doc asking for the knife, that is how it works, you understand that it is coming, you hear the pain, you feel the coldness of the sharp edge of the knife on your skin, you see the reflection of the sun on the smooth polished surface of the knife, oh the knife, such a beautiful creature, a true lover, and there is blood, red comes out, a lot of it, and they cannot even stop it, blood and blood and blood, give me a sponge or something, the doc asks, and they try to slow down the flow, no one has ever stopped the flow he says, give me the scissors, why do I hear everything, the right arm goes inside, the doc is inside me, till his elbow at least, oh it is not enough, two arms would do, you hear the doc breathing rapidly in your face, I want to go, I want to go, I don’t want this, you start crying, pushing, pulling, swearing at their serious faces, no one hears you though, you only think you can go, you masturbate over your freedom, but by now you should have felt the scissors, you should have heard it of course, one of these good japanese scissors, stainless steel is cutting you, cutting your belly, cutting your intestine, cutting your veins, cutting you wide open, cut me daddy, you remember, him, your dad, he takes you to the barber, you remember the barber cutting your ear by mistake, one move, only one small movement of two fingers in the air, at least two fingers, click, click, and two metal lips kiss each other, a bloody romance, X of scissors becomes I, and then I becomes X, and the red comes out, a lot of it, and they cannot even stop it, blood and blood and blood, give me a sponge or something, the barber asks, and they try to slow down the flow, no one has ever stopped the flow he says, look at the mirror at least, smile, you have less of an ear now, pay at the desk, please, I came to cut my hair, where is my dad, the memory of my dad can pay the bill, I have less of an ear, more of hair, my dad takes me to the school, bring out your scissors, we cut papers today, stupid shapes we want to make, draw the lines first, and cut them, cut them, cut them, the whole class is cutting, the whole class is bleeding, go wash, the whole class is washing, time to pray, wash before pray, pray for your pain, Allah will heal the pain, the pain which is real now, take my pain away, my memories hurt, the past hurts, it hurts, the change hurts, the change is what you are afraid of, the change is what it hurts, what it bleeds, and red comes out, a lot of it, and they cannot ever stop it, I hurt, I pain, you should be happy he says, the teacher, the barber, the imam, the father, the doctor, at

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Intensity: an ethical ideal? least you exist, now, we give you you, you, you can be whatever, do whatever, be wherever, think however, goodbye my son, it is all about I, existence of I, I eXist, I eXis, I eXi, I eX, I X, X, I, X, I, X, I, X, I, X, I, X, I, X, I, don’t even care that much, give me my ear, my veins, my intestines, my blood, my faith, take your modern life with you, and your modern God, and your true love, and your horse power, and your self-sufficient individualism, oh my illusions, oh my, what a freedom, what a life, what a death, who wants to immortalize me, who can stop the flow? ‫هتینرِدُم‬ Modernité.

XIXIXIXIX. X into I. I into X, into X. X to I to X Equations X=X=X X*X*X X/X/X (X)^(X)^(X) Illusions XXX - XX = XX - X = X-X= X= Change X X X X Someone told me X is not the longing for the past but an effort to make the future without I. I I I I I am to be blamed.

I I I I How modern.

I cut myself wide open.

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Reading Day 6

The first timeCP #narrativefiction, #remembrance, #presentism

Laura was born in a small town in 1962, to a happily married couple who long dreamt of the perfect baby she would become. Her development, by the age of three, in no manner contradicted the Ages and Stages parent’s guide to normal childhood. Her first scrolling along the kitchen floor, her first steps and first ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, all seemed marked by universal seasonal changes. Her personality slowly formed to be cheerful and well mannered, as her construction of sentences grew more complex with time. At the age of five she had already developed a talkative character, and her parents saw in a cute light her habit to call family members by a different name. So was the case with Laura’s aunt’s daughter, for example, who she would call David.

Her aunt and mum, in between their agitated Sunday gatherings, discussed how funny it would have been for their father to witness his name mistaken by his grandchild’s. The name swap seemed to be a costume that Laura embraced with all normality. She even called herself differently, Dana. By the age of seven, Laura’s parents had grown awfully concerned. Laura’s occupation with names was now joined by stories which could no longer be taken lightly.

As the alarm clock went on, Laura jumped out of bed, rushing to her appointment. She decided to take the train to avoid the traffic, and as she sat down she took out her diary. Every morning, Laura rehearsed the same ritual. She wrote down memories that the people she met the day before had evoked. She also titled her diary in a rather unpoetic manner, considering her experience, Of reincarnation and past lives. The particular notebook she was holding in her hands was just one of the many she had already filled in with Dana’s past, that by now had outgrown her. After all the daily flashbacks had poured out of her, she would energetically close off the diary and put it back into her purse. From that moment of the day on, Laura couldn’t care less about remembering Dana’s life in such disturbing detail. In fact, she had cultivated a parallel obsession, to construct a full new life for herself. Her appointment today was the fifth this week.

The moment Laura had grown old enough to wander off to the nearest city, she joined any community centre activity she could find in the ads. She would make new acquaintances at a rate that to other people would be unbearable. It was excessive to herself too, actually, but she got hooked to the sensation of saying ‘Hi, hello, my name is Laura, yours?’ and having a blank page appear in her mind. No previous connection, no attachment, no responsibility. It was a relieving

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Intensity: an ethical ideal? experience, worth the effort. Her friendships didn’t really last. For her, creating a bond had become more like an existential checklist.

A list that had to grow larger than Dana’s in order not to disappear in Dana’s past.

Laura was aware, though, that for as long as she would remain in her family’s home town, her ambition was doomed to fail. There were too many karmic ligatures around.

But she didn’t know how to overcome one sensitive thing. When she engaged with someone she truly appreciated, it could never live up to what Dana had experienced. While Dana’s dear cousin, David, married strongly influenced by the family’s interests, her partnerships had always been very close to her heart. Those sentiments and remembrances would permeable flow between Dana’s and Laura’s existence, in a way that the present got a sense of a constant past.

During Laura’s moments of intimacy, vivid visions would infiltrate unforgivably. She could then see the eyes of that man standing in front of Dana, with unsettling precision. The eyes, the focus and intensity, and that particular moment in time that kept reappearing in front of her. She couldn’t remember all the details, but that image would nonetheless leave Laura every time still.

Laura came out of the train vividly, walking with that swing that would take her over when she was excited. It was a particular movement, and a smooth and dynamic countermovement, the bodily drift of adrenaline and of a hunger for more. She opened the door of the community centre and ventured rapidly to the third floor, where the gathering would be taking place. As she entered the room, she put down her coat, fully in control. No glimpse of nervousness or hesitation. She scanned around subtly, as she normally would. ‘Do I know anyone?’, she wondered to herself, knowing deep down this frenzy was cursed to cease once again soon.

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Reading Day 6

MoralityRW #essay, #shortstory, #electricityorenergy, #machinesorappliances, #acceleration

“The libertine, the romantic, and the rocker are three models of the same humanity, one that demands more than lighting, heating, electrical appliances, and the other material benefits brought home by electricity. This kind of humanity lets electricity- course through and exalt the whole of its being. The impact of this project on the youth of the twentieth century was extensive. This democratisation had real effects and, for the majority of people, intensity now had to do with the normal way of arranging one’s life, not a moral ideal fit only for certain exceptional people. No longer rooted in a singular morality, intensity started to be understood in a much more general, ethical sense.” Tristan Garcia

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Intensity: an ethical ideal?

I am no island in what I think I should do, my morals come from outside in. I can diverge, pick my own path by how I do what I think I should do, my ethics, a little more personal.

At some point I should listen to what I would want to think I should do. Inside-outwards, I will change my morals. I will swim against the current, or in a lake with no current at all.

It is 11 o’clock at night but inside it is bright like sunshine.

The woman is sitting in the glowing lamplight of her living room.

She is devoid of internal electricity. She turned the lamplight on at 5.

The brightness in the room didn’t change. It was the same as the leftover rays from the lowering sun which pierced through the window. As the earth spun, the woman turned away from the sun and now slowly her artificial light had taken over the room.

No longer rooted in a singular morality, intensity started to be understood in a much more general, ethical sense. We all look at each other and the speeds we go at, asking ourselves if we progress too slow. Since there always is someone in our vicinity who lives their life at the speed of the Duracell battery rabbit, the conclusion always will be: yes, I am slow.

Garcia tells me, acceleration is how people want to live their lives, but I say that people are forced to accelerate to be able to survive!

This morning, when the woman was fully charged, she started her chores by washing the dishes.

She placed all her cups, plates, pots, pans, and cutlery in the machine.

She plugged herself into the machine and transferred her energy. She then took the vacuum from the cupboard and cleaned the whole floor on an endless inhale.

Nobody wants to allow their senses to go numb, to barely experience what happens during the day but in the race of maintaining several part-time jobs to pay all the bills, you are not able to stand still.

Next came the washing of clothes. First a batch of whites, then some wool, and lastly her towels.

Three times she turned on her cycle of watering, turning, soaping, centrifuging, and turning again. While her current made all these machines working full tilt, her levels were slowly dropping. She then boiled some water in the cooker, hoping to recharge by drinking tea.

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Reading Day 6 Garcia also tells me that the three models of the same humanity: the libertine, the romantic, and the rocker want their senses heightened by all kinds of artificial products. That they need change and therefore need this acceleration. He does not tell me or these people that there is constant change all around us all the time. That no situation, concept, natural phenomena, or encounter, is ever exactly the same. It seems that the heightening of the senses, since it is something one should take from the outside in, is temporary. It does not satisfy and does not increase my sensitivity. Garcia tells me that these three models of the same humanity don’t know that if you really pay attention you don’t need to search for amusement. Instead, you can be amazed all the time by your surroundings.

The whole day her house vibrated.

Waves of sound roared whilst the currents flowed from her to her appliances.

No wonder she is devoid of internal electricity at the end of the day.

To cook, she controls three currents at the same time, the stove, the blender, and the oven.

Exhausted, she eats.

I have put my memories, communication, security, and health in electrical machines. The myth of progress tells me that only if we keep on growing, going faster, getting bigger and stronger will we humans conquer the world and redirect the natural disasters that are coming our way. Technocrats promise a better life with every new gadget, but do these electronics really make me happier?

Her last bit of energy goes into feeding three lights at the same time to stretch the day. She pushes the night away to be able to finish the chores on her list.

Of all the spinning things in the universe, she spins the fastest.

How I do what I think I should do, what I think I should do, and what I would want to think I should do.

The woman has a neighbour; the other woman.

She doesn’t keep a list of chores.

She has no electrical appliances and does not even own a clock.

The other woman walks barefoot, preferably on sand and grass.

The other woman touches nothing.

The other woman sleeps when it is dark.

She wakes when the light arrives.

She gazes into the sun every morning and lives off the light.

She keeps her energy inside.

I am no island in what I think I should do, my morals come from outside in. I can diverge, pick my own path by how I do what I think I should do, my ethics, a little more personal.

At some point I should listen to what I would want to think I should do. Inside-outwards, I will change my morals. I will swim against the current, or in a lake with no current at all.

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[1] Garcia, Tristan. The Life Intense.

Intensity: an ethical ideal?

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Reading Day 6

IntensityEJR #intensity

Intensity /ɪnˈtɛnsɪti/ Noun Noun: intensity ; plural noun: intensities 1. The quality of being intense The pain grew more intense.

2. The measurable amount of a property, such as force, brightness, or a magnetic field Hydrothermal processes of low intensity.

Strength, power, potency, vigor, force, severity, ferocity, vehemence, violence, harshness, magnitude, greatness, concentration, extremity, seriousness, gravity.

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Intensity: an ethical ideal?

The pain grew more intense with every step you took in the direction I was going.

You asked me to slow down, but I kept on moving forward at the same pace. My knees are killing me, you mumbled softly, not loud enough for me to hear, I accelerated.

You like this town because nothing ever changes. Predictable, set, secure, safe.

You were born here. The house where it happened is no longer your home. After the divorce your parents moved in different directions, they stayed but grew further apart. Hundred meters feel like a kilometer here. You moved in with your boyfriend, found an apartment above an ice-cream shop in the shopping-street. You bought a house a few years later. You walk the same path over and over again, until your weight and footprints leave behind a permanent imprint, like so many others before you, that walked this same path. Deeper and deeper, digging through layers of time, layers of sand, clay, rock, gravel, compost, limestone, water. Until you hope to reach the core, that so many others before you have tried to reach. Lukewarm fluid. Your mediocrity amuses me. Even though I might be just as bourgeois as you. Your cookie cut out life forming a sharp contrast with the nonconformity I try to live up to. But honestly, I’m doubting if I haven’t conformed to it too.

Security is a comforting future.

I’m crushed between the hard metal springs of my mattress and the hardness of you. I know which one I prefer. I accelerate again.

Consequences Burnout is a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive amounts of intensities, or looking for these excessive amounts of intensities.

It occurs when you feel emotionally drained, overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands.

As the search for the intense life continues, you begin to loose interest and motivation that led you to take on certain roles at certain times.

Spreading my legs for you to enter me.

Spreading my legs to accept pleasure but all I felt was pain. Your knees were killing you again. I changed directions. I jumped the cliff. ­ Was that your first time? – you asked.

– – No– I lied. What first time? Isn’t every time a first time. Next time I’ll change the layout of my room, then the second time will be a first time too.

You will ask if I moved that vase. I won’t answer since I’m already thinking about the time after; what I should place on my nightstand so I’ll have something new to look at while your weight crushes me. As

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Reading Day 6

Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi, 90' #review

Review by ES

Koyaanisqatsi - Translation from Hopi: ‘A crazy life; a life in turmoil; a life out of balance; a life disintegrated; a state of life that calls another way of living.’

Where am I? I am seduced by this question. The camera glides over rock faces with delicacy and grace, as if stroking skin. We flick to and from different mountain ranges, gazing over desolate land from above, empty of human existence. Where are we? Mountains are shadowed by other mountains but there are no humans, there is no trace.

We see shapes in these mountains. They resemble skyscrapers. In this dystopian place, they are their own uninhabited cities. I am watching, anticipating as the music builds. No words are spoken, as words would not be able to describe this scene, or explain its emotion.

Language can no longer describe the world we live in.

Smoke is building, blown about, and inhabits the emptiness. Dust particles become crowds with one another, creating shapes in empty spaces, becoming clouds.

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Intensity: an ethical ideal?

Clouds, clouds, clouds. Clouds roll in and out of each other as they form and disappear in their timeless movements. Looking so alien, yet so familiar. So full and solid, yet so fluid. Like floods, like waves, like industrial smoke: The broken dam, or the waterfall.

Expanses of clouds are like expanses of water. Their natural patterns are alike. Clouds circle in waves, over one another. Over and through.

They are obstructed by objects, mountains, just as water passing through lakes is obstructed by rock. Just as water passes over itself.

Are we flying through the air, as we traverse these landscapes? Are we a bird? Or are we a fighter pilot?

Mountains are under destruction. Destroyed by large, black-smoke producing machines. They crumble, they explode, and dust flies around. Humans are disrupting.

There is digging, churning, pumping, extracting, compressing, burning, and exploding. Sourcing in the desolate landscapes. All the time new patterns are produced. New waves and new clouds.

Now mountains are towns. Cityscapes of skyscrapers. We watch clouds pass through their windows. We follow them through this new landscape.

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Reading Day 6 We watch the plane make its way to the ground, through clouds. It lands on the hot fuzzy earth, making a reflection with itself, as if on water. Our man-made bird; beautiful but menacing.

Motorway lines make waves as roads loop over one another; interconnecting systems connecting human to human, and city to city.

Lines of people waiting, queueing, standing. Moving.

Lines of cars in traffic, making waves over bumps in the road.

Lines of cars waiting, making patterns as they stand still.

We are at war, and the mechanical warfare stands waiting. Tanks and fighter jets are waiting.

Now we are the fighter pilot, following the line of flight of this container. We watch as the mountains envelope us, and the missile sinks slowly to the ground.

We scan the city from below. We glide through it on foot amongst the rubble. Amongst the trash. We see in minute detail places left behind. Abandoned. They have exploded. Where has everyone gone?

And now they are being destroyed. Smashed, knocked down, gone.

They crash to the earth and become dust, integrating with the natural earth. Now the air is crowded once more.

Everything moves, endlessly. Time is passing, and clouds are moving us through the city. We are a swarm. A mass of people. An ant hive watched from above as we traverse our landscape. We are rustling pixels, following the ones before us.

Our movements are choreographed dances of waiting and moving at crossways. These movements are ingrained in our muscle memory.

Muscles remember the path from one subway to another, from one escalator to the next.

We encounter obstacles: Elevators becoming filtering systems.

Ticketing gates designating the flow and speed of our movement.

One, one, one. One after another. We are distributed.

And we continue. To walk with a direction, and flow, in the mass.

You are no one. You are of many. Invisible?

No. An individual. Three faces shine through the crowd, and we see their features. Who are you?

The lights of the skyscrapers flicker on and off in a timelapse. The lights of cars on the motorway become strings of colour. We are scanning the city from above in fast-speed.

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Intensity: an ethical ideal?

The pace of life is too fast, but we depend on this speed. It makes us efficient.

We must increase our speed of production, and consumerism. Up, up, and ever up. The conveyor belt of production. The conveyor belt of our movement.

But where am I? I keep wondering. Am I the subject of this film as its viewer?

It is about my experience.

I am seeing what is surface level, as I traverse our streets here. But what do I see from above? Perhaps it is our history, going unnoticed in the everyday. Our transition from nature, into technological milieu, into mass technology as ‘natural life’; as merely lived, rather than truly experienced, in the now.

Is this what we marvel at from above, in Koyaanisqatsi?

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READING

DAY 7

Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values Can a system be created in a way that sustains and supports ever-transitional practices? Can conflict be generative? What’s the power of (re) using? Can worlds be (re)shaped from failing to accomplish the right use instructions? On Reading Day 7 we discussed, accompanied by the readings of Ahmed and Schulman, what may happen when bodies do not fit seamlessly into the spaces designated for them (Ahmed 224). We discussed the possibilities of uses (of spaces, rules, institutions, and bodies): The queer use, the missuse, the wayward use, the refusal to use, or to be used... Since instructions are only necessary because they can be refused, we examined them through a reparative looking: What are the values that underpin the right and wrong instructions?

How can they be subverted?. Building together (recycling, reusing, sharing), doing with others, weaving support systems, communities, which allow us to say no; to learn to love what does not, and will not, last (Ahmed 226). We took time, all the necessary time, all the wanted time, to get to the point.

Maybe we never got there.

Based on:

Sara Ahmed, “What’s the Use?” Sarah Schulman, “Conflict is not abuse” Film screening: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo Matteo, 60 mins

Reading Day 7

RepairEJR #essay, #queerness, #gender, #trans

Let me tell you a story about repair. He came out a few years ago; back then his mother was not yet familiar with the concept of trans-ness. All she felt was a sadness which came with losing her only ‘daughter’. Pronouns, changes, short hair, and masculine clothing. All she could hear was God telling her no; he should accept the body that was given to him. She told him countless times: ‘Why can’t you be a butch lesbian, a butch girl, a masculine girl, a cool girl?’

All she could hear was NO. When he found me, she was still not accepting. Misgendering. Ostracizing. Turning a blind eye. I was angry, claiming she failed at being a mother, failed at being a parent, failed at unconditionally loving and supporting. But I failed to see her trauma too. Overshadowed by his trauma.

Years went by and she became softer, more accepting, as she saw that it wasn’t just a phase; as he registered to the clinic, put himself on the waiting list, and found a loving and accepting partner.

Until she was at a funeral, with countless people that she hadn’t seen for years, that hadn’t seen her newborn son for years. An auntie asked if she didn’t have a daughter and a son, instead of two sons. She replied yes, she did, but her oldest son is trans. He

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values overheard the conversation. He sobbed when he got home, old pain, old hurt, old misunderstandings, all faded away. They were both on the way to recovery. The wound started to heal, got repaired, but left a beautiful scar. A scar reminiscent of the time, the history, and the moments past before the repair.

Refusing Instructions: The Word is Queer, and she’s Julian Moore Queer a word with a history – feeble, frail, invalid, incapacitate, falter, weak, tearful, worn. Tear; wear; queer. A word that can be claimed, that should be claimed. An insult turned into a shield of protection.

A safe space, a guard, a community, a life, a love. An insult made mine. A word that scares you shitless in high school but is worn with pride in later life. It’s a feeling: Something odd, something strange, something disturbed; something wronged.

We go through life and come out the other end weak, frail, worn, and torn to shreds; but nonetheless we have lived. I shall live, I will live. This word that we now carry high above our shoulders, is heavy with unspoken history, unseen lives, death and destruction; it embodies the decaying, the soft, the breaking, the quavering, and the wavering too.

My arms are tired of carrying the dead weight above my head.

Why can’t I just be? Why must I embody this word, let it seep through my skin; penetrating my organs, reaching my heart, until she beats just for her.

We reuse the word, we hold on to the baggage that she holds; a queer bag, worn and torn from the years of use and reuse, of carrying heavy weight and books full of history. A lucky backpack that saved our, well at least my, crush and slight queer icon Julian Moore from falling down and dying on the cliffs, in the second film of the Jurassic Park series. The backpack that

might be ugly and worn, but she is the one that carries memories. We wonder at her tears, we love her for her worn-ness. She is the one that saves lives.

But there seems to be a right queer and a wrong queer: The boy that uses the key as a toy is the right type of queering because a child is expected to play with things that aren’t in their first use toys. But the boy that plays with the toy that is not intended for him, like the barbie, is the wrong kind of queer. The barbie is intended for a girl.

Heteronormativity is filling the room, filling the cup, filling the mind, and all the intentions: The future. Barbie no, key yes. Living in such a world is like a trap. I feel myself disappearing, slowly, slowly, watered down, erased, diluted. Restrictions are the starters of perversion. A willingness to deviate from the right path: The straight path. Because I’d do anything not to be erased, diluted, or disappear. The assignment of performing time and time again; the assigned gender that was given to you. If you do not, structures change, and you are queering the rules. If that is the case then let’s be perverts.

And yes we can disrupt and should disrupt the meaning of that insult. History is not the only one making choices here. NO we do. We are the squatters, we are the disrupters, we are the complainers, we are the vandals. We kick in the doors of the places we are not welcome in. We make room for ourselves. We are the vandals of the nuclear family. They shiver as we break down their paths, with hairy legs and hairy armpits, cut off jean shorts and short hair. ‘Is that a girl or a boy?’ they say. We take out the stones of their path that they engraved for years and years for supposed heterosexual future generations to come, and we replace it with sand and grass. You must find your own way now, and in time a natural path will form for our generations to come. Because we will not be silenced, and we will not disappear.

And we must, yes we must, come in the guise of a plumber or a gardener, promising to fix the hole, to fix the garden; but instead

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Reading Day 7 of fixing we will widen the tear, let the water stream, let the flowers bloom wild. And in doing so we repair. We repair the hurt and the pain, we do it slowly because we must not forget the ones that went before us. The brave individuals that decided, yes this world may not be made for us but hell we are going to change it and create a world and a future where there is room for us. Not because we must, but because we need to. We need it; we need it like water, like food, like sex, like a room of ones own.

And where there is a need, opportunities are created. Yes that kitchen may not have been made ‘intended’ to host book clubs and parties, but now she does. The kitchen becomes a queer space, because she is used in a queer way. My body is a queer space because I’m not performing the heterosexuality imposed on me. I refuse. I won’t follow my own user instructions. Fuck that.

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse. I’m not following the path. My life will not be watered down to one assignment. Entering and reentering the same door.

It will not be easy my love, deviation is made hard for us. Let’s go astray, let’s linger. Queer use is to never get to the point.

Lets get rid of the venerable and beautiful. We are destructive and loud, ready to cut, scratch, and break. We don’t want no polished nails, we want them nibbled down with dirt underneath, dirt from digging out those tiles. We will not polish, we will not refine. I will not shave my legs to make you feel comfortable, because according to you I’m dirty, so deal with it. We will take your institutions, that you hold so dear, like the family, and squat them. Tear, wear, break, shatter the container. We occupy, we obstruct, we disrupt the usage. We will force open the door we will queer use your space. We will queer the path, again and again. We will open them up, for the ones they were not intended for. We are here to unblock the system, but first we have to stop it from working.

But be careful of your position dear. We must disrupt the system from within, with-

out being tempted to walk the path intended for institutional critique, since you might end up not changing anything at all.

‘Those of us who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns’ (Audre Lorde) Although we might seem fierce and strong, and we want to kick in doors and take up space, sometimes we need to hide in order to survive. We become faint. We are fleeting, flickering, hiding in dark spaces where we are safe and unseen. As being seen can be dangerous for the ones that are deemed dangerous. Using the less used paths. The vacant places. Empty, useless, and safe.

Queer: A word with a history. Queer: A word that has been flung like a stone, picked up and hurled at us; a word we can claim for us.

Queer: Odd, strange, unseemly, disturbed, disturbing. Queer: A feeling, a sick feeling; feeling queer as feeling nauseous. To queer use is to make use audible, to listen to use.

Queer use as reuse. Queer use as coming after. Queer use: We linger; we do not get to the point. Hovering above each other’s bodies. The bliss of queer sex, there is no point, no beginning and no ending. Queer use; to live in constant threat of violence.

Queer use; to not be ingesting, to spit out.

Queer use: To not be properly proper. Queer use; to mind and queer the gap. Queer use; to be the vandal. Queer as snap, snap, cut, cut. Queer use; to open the door. Queer use; to create the door. Queer use; to go astray.

Queer use: When we aim to shatter what has provided a container. Be an inconvenience, be an obstruction, disrupt usage. Do what’s necessary. To occupy. Queer use; in reusing old words for how we assemble we widen their range of uses. To damage.

To become the leak. Queer use; to explode.

To not be silenced. Queer use; to survive, to become faint. To be useless. To dismantle a world that only accommodates some.

Queer use; the building project. To create shelter. To misfit and to make fit. To see limits and restrictions as openings for queer use. To hack. To inherit the past struggles

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values and past modifications that made it slightly easier for generations to come. Passing down. Secret passages. An appreciation of the wrinkle and the scratch. The expression of time. Queer use the work that needs to be done for queer use.

We scratch, we scratch, we scratch.

We queer the places where we have been and where we will be. A tail, a trail, a path.

A map.

A child becomes a woman, a woman with a history, with an inheritance of chosen families and generational knowledge. It’s written in her blood. This history she cannot change. She can only draw a future that is entirely hers.

Empty houses become meeting places.

Books become flower presses.

Paper is queer.

A body becomes a home.

Thinking of one of my dearest friends, an artist and activist. Never, to weaponize.

Never, to indicate that we will not go back, but we will never forget. They cried as I held their hand when the word was tattooed across their chest. NEVER. Never, we will never not be here. We will not be erased, we will refuse to disappear.

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Reading Day 7

QueerEO #essay, #queer, #feminism, #gender, #sexuality

The meaning of the word ‘queer’ changed over time, but also bears different meanings at the same time and even changes depending on who uses the word. I, for instance, would never say: ‘My word, you do look queer.’ (Youtube) But in 1922, ‘queer’ in this context meant: ‘my word, you look unwell’ (Youtube). And was repeated as many as 12 times in a comic monologue written by Bert Lee and R.P. Weston.

When I look up the word ‘queer’ in the 1828 Merriam Webster Dictionary, it comes up with: Odd; singular; hence, whimsical. This was before 1840, the year the word ‘queer’ was used for the first time to refer to a gay person, by John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry. (Autostraddle) In today’s version of the Merriam Webster dictionary, ‘queer’ fills no less than 2 pages. ‘Queer’ as meaning odd, strange, nauseous,... However, most young people will now associate the word ‘queer’ with gender identity. Or, as Merriam Webster puts it; ‘of, relating to, or being a person whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual and/or whose gender identity is not cisgender.’

To label yourself ‘queer’ can be positive.

‘Some sources trace the first adoption of “queer”, as a positive self-label, to the group Queer Nation, founded in the early 1990s as a radical organisation to combat violance agains homosexuals. By co-opting the word “queer,” QN claims, they have disarmed homophobes.’ (Colombia)

It is different to relate to another person as ‘queer’, because the word can become a slur. Hence, my hesitation with the first sentence.

The first time I saw someone relate to themselves as ‘queer’ was on Instagram. It must have been 8 years ago, in fact I think it was the hashtag ‘queer’, used by one of my college friends.

I am a cis gendered, heterosexual, she/her person. Words that are relatively new to me. And it was this week that I, for the first time, saw this description in an Instagram bio. Gender or sexuality is something that I never had to think about.

It is like the perfectly fitted jeans, one that does not leave marks on my skin. So you almost forget you are wearing anything.

But for some, these one-size-fit-all, mass produced jeans do not fit that well, they need a slight alteration. In an article by ‘One World’, Anne de Hooge states that: ‘The word “queer” can be used as a, fuck you, to the norm.’ That makes me think, not for the first time, who am I to write about ‘queer’.

Am I like a white middle aged man writing about Feminism?

I read an article from NPR, in which it is debated if it is appropriate to use the word ‘queer’ in their reporting. Mallory Yu, a producer for All Things Considered, states: ‘In terms of reporting, I think it’s really important to not use the word “queer” when someone does not identify that way.’

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values Does this make it wrong for me to write this piece?

I listened to the Good Point podcast, where Jeremy Bayley and Rafael Roosendael talked about the position of women in the Art World. Rafael, obviously uncomfortable at the end of the conversation, asks: Rafael: ‘Did I say anything offensive?’

Jeremy: ‘In the last thing?’

Rafael: ‘Yeah I wonder because it is such ahh... it is not my cup of tea.’

Jeremy: ‘The most offensive thing you can do is be uncomfortable with a conversation (...)’

Youtube, S. Holloway written by B. Lee and R.P. Weston: https://ap.lc/e5rlR Merriam Webster: https://ap.lc/GIUVR Autostraddle: https://ap.lc/CGXvF Merian Webster: https://ap.lc/oBEH3 Columbia Journalism Review: https://ap.lc/Ewaq4 One World: https://ap.lc/bda06 NPR: https://ap.lc/CAGkz Good Point Podcast: https://ap.lc/CviaS

Rafael: ‘I agree with you in theory. But it seems when you take part in a conversation, you are also taking a risk. If you’re quiet you’re not taking that risk.’

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Reading Day 7

FamilySF #essay, #family, #postcolonialism, #language, #love

‘You enter only to realize that the space is already occupied.’ (Sara Ahmed) Family is on different occasions shown as a happy picture of the perfect family. This serves as a conventional way in which society depicts the family; and this is conventional since the first thing most people think of with the word ‘family’ is heterosexuality. The father, the mother, and the children: A ‘perfect’ picture of a family. We see this picture everywhere; in commercials, cooking books, banners, on medical folders; and it’s sickening. Nevertheless, we say it’s open and we invite everyone in, because everyone can be part of the family; right?

But the queer won’t feel accepted, rather they might feel drowned or asphyxiated by this narrow meaning of family.

‘Queers need to do more than marry each other in order to destroy the institution of marriage.’ (Sara Ahmed) Even the idea of gay marriage doesn’tbreak this heterosexual interpretation of what a family looks like, because, you still have the same dynamics that represent the same heterosexual ideology of a family. To break this idea, one must understand that a family is: A group of people that is not bound by blood or signed papers. Family is an all by all interpretation that has to do with individual beliefs and personal affiliation with each other. A family is a group of individuals that characterize themselves with each other, from different perspectives. The family has

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values to do with identification, whether you like this person or not and whether you sleep with them or not. Family should not only be tied to sexuality, because the a-sexual also deserves to have a family without judgments. And, most importantly, family goes far beyond just humanity. Family is a home; a place where do you feel the most at home?

‘Heterosexuality given casually for the children as projection of the future.’ (Sarah Ahmed)

Ahmed, Sarah. What’s the use.

I just remember my grandma saying that I have to learn how to clean the house, since that is what I will be doing once I have kids.

It’s the projection of what society thinks is ideal onto their children. It is also the meaning of what the patriarchy determines as family. That is where it actually goes wrong. Parents are creating this perfect future for their kids, preparing them for this unknown reality. What if I don’t want to be a housewife? The children might find themselves forced into these ideal dreams.

Society determines for us what we should be dreaming about. Furthermore, if you don’t aspire to be in this picture you’re weird, cast out, rebellious, and deviant. And you’ll probably have to change it, because otherwise you will be stuck in this unhappy, or unreal, apparent future that you want to create for yourself. Unhappy, because society won’t picture it, and unhappy because this means you want to force it. Why do we have to force society to accept your decisions? Why do we have to force society to take notice and respect your sexual orientation? Why do we have to be responsible for that burden?

who doesn’t get a seat at the table. Family has also to do with acceptance, which also implies acceptance of the post-colonial consequences.

The foreigner should have the same opportunities as the privileged white descendents whose ancestors embezzled their residence, tore their ancestry families apart, and brought them to the Caribbean to work.

Forced them into slavery and even forced themselves into their genealogical trees.

Herewith, the foreigners don’t know where they came from, so, the colonizer gets to tell the story: ‘You started to exist when I discovered you.’ Today the foreigner is categorized as the criminal, the loud one, the slut, the ‘belasting trekker’, the aggressive one, and one who won’t be formally accepted in royalty. The foreigner is a foreigner and will always be one. You have to speak my language, you have to do it right, you need the accent, you’ll forget your language, I don’t want to speak that and it’s not part of the royalty. Forget your country, it’s a lost cause. You have to accept that it’s better here to sit and eat with the servants.

Because you’ll never get a seat at the royal table, but you might get in the house. Your refusal to this forced reality might end in brutality and your disappearance. Don’t obliterate, I’m still your family.

You have to open institutions for those whom they did not intend.

That is where the queer meets post-colonialism, and diversity meets inclusions.

‘A refusal to do something properly, a refusal to forget one’s language and family, a refusal to disappear.’ (Sara Ahmed) First, it was the colonizer taking spaces, forcing themselves into bodies, creating these new family dynamics through generations. But they still seem to refuse the idea of accepting these people into their family and their society. It’s the foreigner

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Reading Day 7

SquattingES #lyricalessay, #house, #nature, #object, #ownership

‘To squat, to make use of a space without owning a space, is to throw open the question of what space is for, to be released from the obligation to fill all the rooms in a certain way.’ (Ahmed 211) As Nature Inhabits the Uninhabited: A tree inhabits the uninhabited inside; the inside of the remains of an old hut in the marshland, now a shell one observes from outside. Observed from a well-trodden path only sometimes covered by water. A path only sometimes uncrossable; there are days on which we cannot visit this abandoned hut. There are days we cannot visit its inhabitant, squatting tree. These days we cannot visit the nature that feeds off its branches, its roots, and its leaves, or that which floats in the salty marsh water below.

No one seems to know who owns this house, or what it was used for, and for more than 20 years it has been left to sink slowly into the marshland water. It has been left to be enveloped by the green and mud that surrounds it. And in this, it has become more separated from the path that connects it to the town it resides in. The path that connects it to the people.

Now it is squatted by nature, and as the squatting tree grows, and grows, and grows, crumbling the foundation on which this sinking house sits, this building’s future is becoming more fixed. It can no longer be repurposed by humans, or used for its original purpose.

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values And so, it continues to be reclaimed and reused for a new purpose; to build a new community. It is squatted by this tree, and perhaps it has been by others also. Perhaps a seagull made its nest here in mating season, protected from the bustling noise and rattle of people visiting the busy seaside town.

Perhaps fish have resided in the waters that slowly digest the building’s walls, using its stone facade for shelter. Perhaps nature has turned this building, built for us, by us, into a haven for its own kind. As protection. As a safe house. As a place for new life to start living, away from the unstable touch of man. It has repurposed this house through the hands of the squatting tree.

Each time you leave your shelter, you will present an opportunity for the next one just like you. You will signal to others as you leave that your shelter is now available.

Even when you die in that shelter. Even if you die in that tin can, or that human debris that you have found as your new home. A home you can no longer crawl out of. A home of slippery plastic waste, now stuck to your skin. A home in which you are stuck forever.

The Clownfish’s House:

Mr. Hermit Crab, you are a squatter! You occupy your empty, scavenged mollusc shell to protect your fragile body. Your non-calcified abdominal exoskeleton, soft, spongy, and spiraled, requires an exogenous shelter system. That is an obligation for your survival, or you will be defenseless.

A spear, or tooth will otherwise puncture your spongy skin, and you will die. Your insides will spill out into the expansive dark everything of the sea, and you will disappear. Into nothingness, with only your claws remaining, floating in the open.

A clownfish will always have a special relationship with its anemone. Its anemone is its host from birth, but although a host, an anemone is squatted by its clownfish friend. The sea anemone is its own predatory marine organism, surviving, built through itself. Grown alone, was it built for the clownfish to reside in? Was it made to be occupied by it? A columnar trunk topped with an oval disc ring of tentacles and a mouth, it is armed with stinging cells which it uses to catch its prey, engulfing them whole. Crabs, molluscs, and small fish, just like the clownfish. But not the clownfish, for the clownfish is immune to its sting. It is protected by a mucus coating, as it lives between the tentacle fingers of this sea oracle.

Your shelter is a mobile, repurposed property. You have taken it from another sea body that has left it behind before you. A sea snail, perhaps eaten from within its shell, in death has presented you with your new home. You will live within this reused structure, that you did not build for yourself and that was not made for you, until you have outgrown it. Then, you will pass on to the next, reusing that one for your own purpose yet again. Maybe this time it will be the shell of a Bivalve, or a Scaphopod, or perhaps a hollowed-out stone or piece of driftwood. Maybe this time you will be immobile in your home. You will be stuck, inside a coral or a sponge, until you outgrow it once more. Until you move onto the next squat.

This is a different kind of squatting. If a building was an organism and could form a symbiotic relationship with a human, if it relied on us just as much as we relied on it to survive, we could begin to understand the symbiosis that occurs between a clownfish and its anemone. Between the anemone and its clownfish. What the anemone gives the clownfish in its ability to squat it, the clownfish gives back to the anemone.

The clownfish receives protection from predators by the anemone’s stinging cells, and the anemone, in turn, is protected from polyp-eating fish by its clownfish. It uses the nutrients present in the clownfish’s faeces and employs the clownfish as a cleaner that eats its algae collection, and food leftovers.

Mr. Hermit Crab:

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Reading Day 7 What the one benefits from, the other does also. The squatter, for its whole life, repurposes the toxic environment of this tentacle grassland as its shelter, and in so doing is eternally bound to its home base. And so, the home base is too, for the eternity of its squatter’s existence, physically bonded to it. The anemone needs its squatting clownfish.

Henry, You Suck: Henry is a squatter of the cupboard he resides in. Day and night he waits for the ritual to restart. A ritual between him and me. The cupboard protects Henry from strangers; the users of his building, of his place of occupation. Of his life with me.

There he is protected from the others who will use him, who will abuse him, who will use his tube to clean the dirt they have brought into this place of meditation.

Destroying our ritual. They will use him for convenience, as if he was an inanimate object. As if he was not real. As if he could not talk.

‘Oh gosh! Look at the filth I’ve brought in on my shoes. Look at all those leafy crumbs!

I will go hoover them up.’

inside. The unused space that, with him in it, becomes unusable for anything else. For mats, or blocks, or belts.

Henry and I are connected in the action we create together; in the action of cleaning this space. A space neither of us own, but both of us occupy. We are keeping it clean together, for others. Only occasionally do we reap from the benefits, when we get drunk side by side on Friday nights.

It’s complicated, this thing. Him and me.

Henry and I. We aren’t even made of the same material, but we depend on each other. We love each other.

Henry is an anomaly in the yoga studio, just as I am! The mats, the blocks, the belts are meant to be there, but he with his wide smile, and me with my hectic attempts to dust the dust from the cupboards, to wipe the muddy footprints from the floor, and to peel the used pads from the toilet sinks, are not. We are not supposed to occupy this space. But without us, its image cannot be maintained. We maintain it together in our ritual.

No. No. No. That is not part of our routine.

That is not part of our ritual.

Henry is a squatter of his cupboard. It was not made for him. It is too small for him.

His hoover pipe is crammed inside like a knotted piece of wire, bouncing off, wall to wall. He is bursting out at the seams, and I am pushing the door shut; his rounded, red body fits safely inside, but his arms are flailing about, pressing outwards forcibly.

But Henry is not stuck, for when Henry is with me, he becomes himself. We are him together. I activate him. We activate each other. And so, he wants to occupy this space. Maybe because I want to occupy it myself. He is seduced by the claustrophobia, as he waits for the ritual to restart. He wants to squat the cupboard; this unoccupied space that was not made for him to fit

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Sara Ahmed. Whats the use? On the uses of use. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019), 211.

Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values

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Reading Day 7

RecyclingCP #narration, #récit, #sublime, #anew

I write down some ideas and ask my sister what she thinks. Without hesitation she suggests giving it a try. I want to be as transparent with him as I can, so I continue to sharpen my thoughts after speaking to my sister. Quickly, I call him to make an appointment and we agree on a date.

Monday at ten o’clock.

I walk to the meeting feeling both nervous and excited at the same time. I ring the bell, a very loud old bell, and the sound of slow aged steps approaching follows. The door opens and he takes me to an office, with windows to the garden of the parish. It is a room with old, dark brown furniture, and a wall full of books behind the rustic desk that is placed at the center of the space. I sit down and I start explaining my ideas. A few sentences later, amidst all excitement, the priest takes out a magazine from one of the drawers. He mentions there is an article in a recent religious publication that touches upon similar ideas. A fortunate coincidence that brings up an open hearted conversation and the agreement to shoot the film in a couple of weeks.

In the following days, I make sure to order the wooden structure at the local carpenter and explain how each piece needs to move.

I pick up the coloured paint, the smoke bomb, and the flares, and I finish working on the monologue. Lastly, I find the right light bulb and instruct my sister in what will be her operating role during the filming.

On the day of the shoot everything fits gracefully into the car. We park as close by

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values as possible, and as the loud bell stops ringing the door opens. The priest finishes his cigarette and walks us to the church where we unload the tripod, camera, the structure, and appliances in the main hall. We didn’t forget the lighter.

We place the wooden structure on the altar, next to the microphone into which the priest will read the monologue. For the sake of a clear composition, we turn on all the lights and move the flower pot to the side.

While we’re discussing the scene, the priest himself suggests wearing the official ceremonial clothes for the performance. That sparks a fire inside of me. It grows bigger as the action continues. It is a fire that doesn’t burn; a catalyser.

I hesitate to break the existential trance, but after a few moments of silence, I stop the recording and shout ‘Perfect!’. To our surprise the priest releases an intense coughing. He has tried to keep it in for as long as the smoke has been spreading throughout the big hall. And, from behind the wooden structure, amidst the smell of gunpowder, I see my sister reappear, with sparking witty eyes.

We go over the scene a couple of times and once everyone feels comfortable we move into our positions. I am standing, behind my tripod, next to the fourth row of benches in the middle of the aisle. The aisle that normally functions as the architectural choreographed experience of grandeur. But this time, as I look around from where I’m standing, things start to mutate: the altar, the tunic, the ritual, the architecture, the symbolism, the history. Suddenly everything is transformed into a play. There is silence, and there is fire. I press record.

When the first word reaches the microphone, the reverberation in the space fills the bodily cavities bravely. All my membranes start resonating with the same frequency. And as it goes on and on, each word enhances my senses. The range of vision alters, and the lungs breath at the rhythm of each movement of the scene. The words speak of what can not be categorised, while the particles of things seem to accelerate as their weight becomes lighter. For an extended moment in time, it all belongs to an array of possibilities. It makes power moldable and deference playful. Amidst the lightness, its seriousness can be felt in an exhilarating manner. And, by the time the last flare spits the final gleam, the opulent purple smoke is gravitating in space.

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Reading Day 7

Drafts to a confessional letter from a killjoy to a fellow killjoyXK #essay, #fragments, #queer, #feminism, #new-wave-of-queer, #queer-critical, #callin/callout

Draft one: The problem with the killjoy Where is the line between being unnecessarily insensitive, and being true to the sake of the killjoy? The idea of being a killjoy is to say ‘the truth’ when something ‘false’ is said. The problem that I stumble upon as a killjoy is the fact that no one is perfect.

None of my friends are perfect. I’m not perfect. Am I, as a killjoy, always obliged to call out my friends, and, by that, making them uncomfortable, when they’re doing or saying something wrong or inappropriate?

In theory, yes seems the very right answer, but in practice I feel that the line between this YES! and insensitive rudeness is very fine.

Maybe the question of the practice of a killjoy is not a choice between bravery and rudeness. Rather, it seems to be a question of strategy to me. When is the killjoy-act useful? This takes me to the problem with grandparents… Let me restart my letter.

Draft two: Grandparents Grandparents. We all have them (or have had them). Who are they and how to deal with them? Meeting grandparents might be, for some of us, like taking a few steps back in time; and for some of us it will, as well, be taking a few steps down in class.

I’m thinking about the recurrent discussion in social media about when to call out or when to call in someone. Can a killjoy

call in rather than call out? Can a killjoy be strategically sensitive to the relational delicacy that connects the killjoy, as an individual, to the people the killjoy loves?

I’m thinking about my own grandparents, who don’t really know the appropriate language: White working class people saying racist things not necessarily out of a racist conviction but out of the education and culture they have received. An education and culture not owned by themselves but directed towards them.

How should aspects of class change the strategy of the calling out practice of the killjoy? For instance, if during dinner my grandmother would refer to the Swedish pastry ‘oatmeal chocolate balls’ with the very inappropriate, but still quite common name, n-word ball, should I, as a killjoy, call her out there and then? It would certainly kill her joy, but I don’t believe it would have the desired political and structural impact. I would just make her feel stupid, as most parts of the society and every man in it have made her feel during her whole life. A society that has told her to shut up and do the dishes as a good, ‘stupid’, working class woman (even more as a working class woman from one of the finno-ugric ethnic and linguistic minorities, native to the north of Sweden). I sincerely believe that it would be better for me, as a killjoy, to remain silent in that situation and, rather afterwards, delicately insinuate a private conversation with my grandmother (tete-atete so to speak) and talk to her about the issue with using the n-word.

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values

This sensitivity I have coined above in draft two doesn’t seem to me as a killjoy practice, because I never really kill the joy. This makes me think about where the killjoy-act is actually located and how it is directed.

I have to start over once again. I need to reflect on the ontology of the killjoy.

Draft three: The feminist killjoy Killjoy: As if joy never ever existed Killjoy: The joy that was never yours Killjoy: The contentments over what is, and the nostalgia over what could have been.

The feminist killjoy presupposes: 1) That there is a joy to be killed or ruined… which presupposes a difference in the perception of what joy is, should be, or can be… which presupposes an active difference in political, ideological, philosophical, and/or religious ideas and perceptions… in other words: A present potential for conflicts arising from a plurality of ideas and beliefs.

2) The feminist killjoy, obviously needs to be feminist… which means that the killjoy-act always has a direction. The feminist killjoy-act is directed towards patriarchy, white supremacy, hetero-cis-normativity etc. (A human can kill joy by saying many inappropriate things, and the term ‘feminist killjoy’ surely doesn’t include all of them.)

And now my head starts running wild! I think about the importance of agonistic pluralism… and if the killjoy is a reaction with, or a reaction against, the idea of agonistic pluralism, as a fundamental to democracy. I think about Chantal Mouffe.

I think about what’s the opposite of killjoy – is there a silent-joy? – is there an enhance-joy?

Draft four: The killjoy practice Enhance-joy: party… (the ‘if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution’ idea)

Enhance-joy: raves in Berlin and ‘why don’t you dance naked?’

Enhance-joy: being somewhere else as being silent (or the comfortability of seclusion) The question I pose to myself: If I’m surrounded only by my queer-trans friends what joy and who’s joy should I kill?

There are two fundamental aspects to the practice of the feminist killjoy: diversity and difference. If a human is surrounded by people just like her it’s probably very hard for that human to kill any joy. Hence, as a killjoy, I need to surround myself with people who are different from me and whom I don’t agree with – who’s joy I can kill and who can kill my joy. I also need to have in mind, or at least reflect upon, who’s joy I want to kill or whom I wouldn’t mind killing my own joy. These two aspects are likewise important in order to create social and relational situations where we can kill each other’s joys in constructive ways.

From this, I can draw a conception of two steps or parts in the feministic killjoy practice: 1) The feminist killjoy – as the one who kills the joy – needs to intermingle with the straights, the whites, and the middle and upper classes, in order to kill their joy.

2) Likewise important but sadly quite often forgotten, is that the feminist killjoy entails being someone who makes it possible for others to kill their joy. And, if the most politically correct call out practice is directed upwards in power, it is essential for the feminist killjoy to intermingle with people who are ‘lower’ in the socio-political hierarchy. If you’re middle class you should intermingle with the working class, if you’re healthsome you should intermingle with the sick etc.

Is the killjoy a new phenomenon, or is the killjoy just someone thinking and reflecting independently? This makes me think of all the grand and outspoken philosophers through time.

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Reading Day 7 Draft five: Uncompromised thinkers Killjoy is a fashionable (gamer-like) name for an independent person. They have always existed, everywhere, everywhere. I think about the uncompromised thinkers; people such as Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt (Arendt certainly killed a lot of people’s joy by coining the term ‘banality of evil’ in her essay book Eichmann in Jerusalem). The independent thinker would say their ideas and thoughts out loud, at a party or a dinner, without paying any pivoting attention to the contentment of other people. Though I certainly believe that the independent thinker always reflects on when to speak and not to speak, and what is the ‘right thing’ to do in a specific situation. With this in mind I can coin three qualities or traits that the killjoy of today, as well as of yesterday, would need: 1) The virtue of bravery, or just an uncompromising sense towards one’s own convictions and thoughts; 2) ‘Know thyself’ – a highly developed self-perception and self-knowledge; 3) Attention or ability to attentively reside in the world and in oneself – a trait which I believe presupposes the first two.

What’s the relevance of Socrates’ philosophy of maieutics, the critical dialogue and the methods of Elenchus when it comes to the practice of the killjoy?

Draft six: Socrates SOCRATES SAID the endpoint of every philosophical discussion Even though there is a resemblance between the Socratic method, or the maieutics, and the practice of the killjoy, they’re not the same. The Socratic method focuses on the other, it pivots around the other part (not yourself) in a conversation. With this method you try to approach the other person’s thinking as sincerely as you can, no matter what you think or believe yourself. Hence, you may ask yourself: What if what the other person says is true? With this approach you try to challenge what the other person has said as if it was true, and

as if you would like to deepen and enrich their arguments and thinking. This way the flaws of what the other person has said will arise, and the untruth in their previous statement will become clear to them. This will come as an insight from themselves rather than as a disconnected statement about wrongness inflicted upon them. In relation to the socratic method, at least as I have pictured it here, the killjoy seems rather self-absorbed, more concerned about stating truistic truths and opinions – such as TRANSWOMEN ARE WOMEN or WE ARE HERE WE ARE QUEER GET USED TO IT – than genuinely trying to change and challenge the actual thinking of the other person.

By comparing the killjoy practice and the socratic method, some aspects of the killjoy practice become clear; silencing, political ignorance, and potential oppressive privilege at the part of the killjoy. It seems more than fine for the killjoy just to teach the other truistic truths, opinions, and statements without really changing their underlying structures of thinking.

It seems as if the killjoy is content with a world of silent fascists – an invisible fascist – which I would say is a much more dangerous fascist. A truly precarious subject would never afford to make the mistake of teaching fascists how to be invisible. This makes me doubt that the killjoy practice is an egalitarian practice for the truly precarious. After all, aren’t many of us feminist killjoys just educated, middle class people using one or several precarious aspects of our identity (such as myself using my transgender identity), as a tool for reenforcing our power and position in relation to other people? And, isn’t this a sort of ‘internal fascism’ that we all have hidden somewhere within? An ‘internal fascist’ the socratic method tries to teach how to think and, by doing so, to unfascist every part of us?

Is my portrait of the killjoy in this draft just a misconception based on a set of rightwing influenced myths? I do believe it is possible for people to misuse aspects of their identi-

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values ties in corruptive ways. And I do believe that power structures reside both on a structural level (concerning identities, backgrounds and experiences) and on an individual level – that everyone no matter who they are and what they think can potentially oppress others. This misuse of precarious identities can be very obviously seen as an oppressive act – it can have an ‘oppressive aesthetic’–, but most of the time it is quite dubious and difficult to spot, dressed in an ‘egalitarian aesthetic’.

With this said, I can turn to a critical clarification of my statement above: There is no opposition between the socratic method and the killjoy practice, as I made it seem. The socratic method is concerned with thinking processes whilst the killjoy is concerned with infectious political statements dropped in social situations as unchallenged truths.

The killjoy-act is nothing else than a way of resistance towards these infectious political statements. It’s more than possible, even recommended I would say, to try to combine the killjoy practice with the socratic method.

Some statements, though, are so infectious that they’re not possible to deal with or unpack with the socratic method (unless you are one of these genius, feminist philosophers) and only then is when you turn to the practice of the killjoy.

Can the socratic method and the killjoy-act be integrated with each other? Can they intersect in one unity? And if so, is this ethically desirable?

Draft seven: The Socratic Killjoy The socratic killjoy is never liked (when the killjoy is liked it’s not a killjoy anymore).

The socratic killjoy makes everyone feel awkward… fascists as well as feminists.

Socratic killjoying is a more or less conscious performance of always thinking and stating the opposite (enacting a sort of childish defiance). It takes responsibility for the existence of agonistic plurality and, in situations where there is a lack of certain perspectives, it enacts them (taking the

role of the parasitic being, or the irritating fly). The socratic killjoy pulls off the best possible arguments for fascism amongst feminists – improving and nuancing their feminism. The socratic killjoy corrupts and turns fascist arguments into socialistic proofs amongst fascists – turning them into the most radical of anarchists.

I should kill all of my friends’ joy – answering my question in draft four about who’s joy I should kill if I’m surrounded by my queer-trans friends. I should enact the role of an anti-feministi-anti-queer killjoy. For instance, if my friends would talk about heterosexuality as a straight path, and illustrate this with a picture of a well walked path in a landscape (Ahmed 205), my responsibility then as a socratic killjoy would be stating that queerness is as much a straight path as heterosexuality is. That what is considered to be queer is actually just another version of straightness. That all the rainbows, unicorns, glitter; all the leather, latex, and mustaches are just creations of an alternative straightness, and that they create an imagined collective, forcing people to resign their own aesthetic preferences and abilities to think by themselves, in order to be part of this collective.

I would say that the true queer is dressed very boring, more grey and conventional than exhuberant and original. I would say that only loneliness is properly queer. I would say to all the self-appointed queers (myself included) that the true queer is the person about whom we think (without admitting it to ourselves) ‘What a depressive looser!’ The true queer is the grey and lonely person, who no one wants to be with.

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The courage to loveECF #conversation, #love, #friendship, #intimacy

To love is to care; to unconditionally support the well-being of the other. To love is to be able to say no. Love is relational, multidirectional, and might not be reciprocal. But loving can also be circumscribed to an individual: To love yourself. And yet, you can get to love the other by loving yourself, as much as you can learn to love yourself by selflessly loving the other. It requires courage to love because through love, the suffering of others can become your own. To love is to accept this conflict; to take a leap into the unknown.

E met C for the first time in 2009. Since then, their friendship has been like an elastic band; sometimes a safety net, sometimes a whiplash. Despite this, they take care of each other in ways they couldn’t care for themselves. They often talk about love: While C’s spills all around, E’s remains timid. Through each other, and the clashes their different views on love create, they are learning how to love. To love is to learn to love. *

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values C: What do you find most difficult when dealing with your own emotions and how to express them?

E: Maybe the lack of synchronicity. For a long time I was scared of showing my emotions; I thought that other people would adquiere some power over me by doing so. Generally, I didn’t trust people, and I would be very cautious about what I would share with others.

While everyone else was learning how to interact and to feel with others, I was learning to repress my feelings; and at some point I stopped being clear about what I was actually feeling. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the repression, I guess. With the passing of time I changed my attitude towards people, but I keep automatically containing what I feel. I relativize it, scrutinize it, compare it, distance from it, or ignore it. And that makes me feel asynchronized with many people. It has advantages: Since I rarely respond to anger or impulse I avoid unreflective confrontations; but it also separates me from people who feel in a much more immediate way, and who also expect a similar response from the other. This is particularly difficult with the people I love, because I think they expect something more from me and they feel disappointed when that something won’t come, or comes diluted. In addition, I think there is a growing culture of feeling intensely, from which I often feel very far, but that’s another question.

E: The other day we were talking about how I’ve been learning alongside you while you were learning to love/to love yourself. Can you recall any time in which you’ve learnt from me too?

C: Each time I’ve felt overgrown by negative emotions I’d look to you as an example of good practice. I don’t dislike my exacerbated capacity to feel, but it can be painful when negative feelings or thoughts take the lead and push me into destructive loops. Many times, when that happened I’d look at you for inspiration, as the kind of person that keeps her shit together. But sometimes that was painful too, because I would compare us instead, and I was clearly in a disadvantaged position. However, since I’m more stable, whenever I feel I’m having an excessive visceral reaction I often think on how you would react, and generally it helps.

C: Are you afraid of loving? Of vulnerability and exposition, and the subsequent possibility of being hurt?

E: I don’t fear loving as much as establishing relationships in which I cannot correspond to the person loving me the way I think they expect me to. That makes me feel great insecurity about my own feel-

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Reading Day 7 ings, and fear of hurting the other person, since it’s often them who turn towards me more intensely. Then I start giving up space to please the other, and I try to accommodate myself to them. It is then when I become vulnerable, because it becomes harder and harder to say no, and I place myself in situations I don’t want to be in. When someone loves me intensely, I often feel debt and pressure to be reciprocal, and guilt for being unable to express the feeling back as strongly.

I’m scared of disappointing, and not meeting expectations. For that reason I find it so hard to build intimate ties. Perhaps I should value my own feelings and needs more.

E: Have you noticed any change in your way of loving / loving yourself from the moment in which you start to gain understanding about mental health and queer / not normative affects?

C: About mental health… My biggest change has been becoming more patient and comprehensive with myself. I’ve learnt that I was being hypocritical: I would acknowledge no human is perfect, but I wouldn’t allow myself to be imperfect in spite of it. I needed to be on top of my game, standing out and being the best. Mediocrity was terrifying. And that only caused me suffering. Especially because not only am I imperfect, as everyone else is, but I have the extra burden of a mental disorder.

Fortunately, I’ve learnt to listen to myself, and to feel proud just for achieving things that mean a greater effort to me than to neuro-normative people. I’m also making great efforts to avoid comparing myself to others, even when it’s in favor of myself, because it does no good.

About non-normative loving… up until today I haven’t done so well, but I’m working on it. The first time I considered loving someone beyond a normative relationship was when I was about 21. At that time Yellow World by Albert Espinosa was of great help. Honestly, I think that many of my issues when sustaining normative relationships derive from my non normative perception of love and affect.

So, I’m a bit troubled by it. Loving myself despite my mental condition relies mostly upon myself, but I haven’t drawn the rules when it comes to loving someone else, it’s all more socially modulated, and I’m still not sure how to navigate it.

C: Can you identify any moment in your childhood, or education that might have conditioned the way you love yourself and prefer to be loved?

E: I don’t really know… I’m fortunate because I’ve always felt loved by my family and friends. Somehow I’ve been instilled that to love is as much to care as it is to love, and thanks to that I’m able to uncon-

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values ditionally love those whom I care for, even though I’m not clear what my loving position towards them is. I don’t know if this makes any sense… I sometimes lack words to speak about this!

On the other hand, I can’t really figure out why it’s so difficult for me to build intimate bonds. I guess my childhood was rather isolated and away from the group, but I can’t see reasons to keep complicating so much, because from my teens onwards my relationships have been positive. It’s true that in my house we’ve always been compassionate and forgiving with each other, but extremely demanding with ourselves. I guess that affects how you love yourself somehow.

C: I think we should definitely verbalize more affect among friends. And also physical affect (I’m not talking about sex here!). We should tell each other we love us. And romantic love language should stop being possessive[1]. I don’t like saying someone is mine, nor anyone saying I belong to them.

E: I would like that ‘te quiero’ (I love you) stopped meaning by default ‘estoy enamorado de ti’ (I’m in love with you). And also, to be able to tell someone how much I care without having to make a thousand detours… ‘Me importas’ (I care about you), who says that?! I also think ‘me gustas”’(I like you) should stop being exclusively romantic. I like being with you, and I like you as a person. But that can sound creepy too…

C: Honestly, ‘amar’ (to love) is a tool we don’t use in Spain[2]. If we used it more often, we could easily use ‘querer’ (to love) for non-romantic kinds of love. I don’t use ‘me gusta’ (I like) in a romantic way anymore, but then I need to footnote ‘I like you, as a friend’.

E: To me ‘te quiero’ (I love you) is nearly a taboo word. I don’t think I’ve said it without drama in at least 10 years.

You should practice that…

C:

*

This keyword contains a Q&A between C and E, exchanged after both had read Schulman’s text on Manic Flight Reaction and Ahmed’s What’s the use?. Each asked 3 questions to the other, without previous agreement, about how they feel and understand love. The conversation happened on Whatsapp and was originally written in Spanish. It has been adapted and translated for the purpose of this text. The images show an excerpt of a previous conversation between them.

[2]

[1]

In Spanish, “querer” (to love) also means to want. So, “te quiero” at once says I love you and I want you.

Amar (to love) is more widely used in Latin American Spanish. In Spain it is more commonly restricted to literary language.

E: One of my major problems when speaking about love is precisely the lack of right words. I think the verbal language of love is so influenced by normative romantic relationships that it isn’t appropriate to refer to other kinds of affects. It’s also extremely idiomatic. Is there any word in Spanish you would like to redefine, erase or incorporate to make speaking about love easier?

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Reading Day 7

WillfulnessRW #diary, #seasons, #blood/menstruation, #climbingrose, #hormones

March 12th: Spring hides in the ground, in the buds on the branches, in the longer light of every day, in the excitement, in the birds coming back, and in me. I am aching to open my closed doors, windows, eyes, and ears.

March 16th: After a week of winter, spring burst open today. All the accumulated energy came out at once. The world turned from black, grey, and white into green, red, yellow, blue.

March 18th: I bought a rose called Filipes Kiftsgate. The rose is able to climb trees, just like me. It has white flowers which bloom in abundance only for 8 weeks. The rose was bought to climb around the door but, when I realized it could grow up to 18 meters long, I decided it needed a different place to bloom.

March 21st: The forest floor is like a cushion covered only in small white flowers. They popped their heads above the ground to find my smiling face.

March 23rd: Today, summer fully emerged. The sun was there when I woke up, took a swim, had dinner, read a book, and went to sleep. I wish summer would last longer than a week.

March 27th: Filipes Kiftsgate is waiting for me to choose a place to root: An immense responsibility.

I walked around the neighbourhood to check trees, parks, houses, and gardens. I can’t decide which place is the best for her, and closest to me.

March 30th: Summer pushed me high, and when fall knocked on my door I started falling downwards.

I kept spiralling and tumbling until I pierced the ground. Underneath the soil I found the toads hibernating. I joined them, dreading the downpour which I know now, is to come in one week.

March 29th: Tonight, in the extra hour of darkness, I planted Filipes Kifsgate next to a tree in the dunes.

Since it is fall now, she will be able to shoot roots before winter, quieting down and emerging in two weeks. As silent as possible I entered the bushes and dug a hole next to a big tree.

I saw myself lying in the hole, and I put Filipes next to me. I covered us with earth, emptied a bottle of water, wished us well, and left.

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values April 4th: Filipes is doing ok. He is not yet sprouting but I can see from below that he is rooting and will shoot his branches in a while. The toads around us know they too must wait for spring to come before they can leave the soil.

April 6th: A day full of wind, sun and horizontal snow, which blows so hard that I have to put all my weight against the wind. Icy spikes of hail attack my body. My legs feel heavy as bricks.

Together with the flow of blood, winter has arrived again, as heavy and dark as always. I am getting emptied just like the clouds. Who is putting me through this? My body? My mind?

Someone else to blame would make it easier.

April 9th: Winter disobeyed my wish for it to stay away this month, to be postponed. It is just three weeks ago that it left, why is it back already? Today sunlight alternated with hail and snow for hours. Now a white darkness has taken over. Spring has lost the battle, the sun is out but unable to melt my cold. Hail and snow are here to stay; on the streets, on the cars, and on me. Did winter wilfully disobey me, or does a part of me want the seasons to alternate monthly? Does my mind like the roller coaster highs and lows? Weeks ago, when it was spring and summer, the cyclical ritual of my body seemed like the most beautiful idea. But starting with fall and being fully winter now, the darkness is so vast and it feels like it won’t ever leave. I wish for it to never arrive again. Please let me be the equator.

April 10th: My body, my hormones dictate my cycle. They give me seasons, let me burst with energy and break me down again every month. ‘Queer use could thus also be interpreted as vandalism: the wilful destruction of the venerable and beautiful’, writes Sara Ahmed. My body as the queer user, building me up and breaking me down again and again. But also my mind as the queer user wants to become the equator; a life without seasons.

April 11th: The one who decides what is the venerable and beautiful is the one who builds the laws.

The one who builds the laws, is not the one who is wilful. The one who is wilful just does what she needs to do. Spiraling around the law, breaking the law, deciding for herself, she is carving her own path. Using but for the law misusing, obeying but for the law disobeying, spelling but for the law misspelling.

April 12th: Besides the occasional drip, the rain stopped today. The sun came out. Is this winter leaving again? All the branches, trees, leaves, and buds are still wet but the rain and sun is intensifying their colours. The toads can end their hibernation, Filipes Kiftsgate can begin to sprout and I will ascend back into the light again to be spring once more, and maybe waywardly stay spring forever.

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Reading Day 7

Queer kinship: a perversionRM #essay, #non-nuclearfamily, #kinship

My friends Kaja and Nikita and I met in 2016. We were guest students in the art university of Hamburg. They, both Danish and 22, had not known one another before but an instant spark erupted between them, one that made their encounter feel as if they were in some way meant to be. As months passed by I grew closer to them. We spent a few afternoons together, the three of us gathered by the hearth of one or the other’s apartment, playing with clay or sharing hot tomato soup. Thinking of them as separate people grew unthinkable. I could not mention one of their names separately from the other’s. Kaja and Nikita. Nikita and Kaja. It did not take them long to realize that they shared something that could barely be put into words. A love, respect and admiration for one another beyond what vocabulary could describe. A kinship, perhaps?

After I left Hamburg our friendship became distant but remained as honest and genuine as ever. It became clear to them that they would share a life, they wanted to weave each other’s space, time, minds and bodies. They moved in together to an empty apartment which they furnished with flea market and self-made furniture and decorations. As often happens with long-withstanding partners, the space reflects their joint personalities but the fragments of their individuality remain represented in their private bedrooms. Kaja’s, the agreeable, smiley and childlike, grew into an indoor jungle with segments of pink and babydoll limbs hanging from the ceiling (she finds their chubbiness and shortness amusing to draw). Nikita’s, stoic, mature and practical, has a wall-wide bookcase, a drawing desk and a mattress laid out on the floor.

After five years of having settled in Hamburg they became the nucleus of a tight knit group of artists and illustrators who spiraled in their direction looking for a place for safety and familiarity. They both fell well into the role of care-takers and their kitchen grew into a place for kinship, reflection and play. This group is now more like a chosen extended family, bound together not by blood, but by the willingness to find intimacy outside the constrictions of the nuclear family, an intention to form a fenceless home with plenty of porch life, without a rectory that determines the straight path to follow.

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values In many ways Kaja and Nikita have unintentionally perverted my views on family, romantic partnerships, heterosexuality, intimacy, and gender roles. Without willing to be disobedient, their nature originated a challenge to what seems immutable by their gender.

They refuse to make their bodies exclusive to receive affect and validation from their heterosexual partners, releasing both parties from the burdens of the absolute responsibility and faithfulness usually expected from heteronormative relationships. Far apart from the hegemonic nuclear family, they have cemented a queer form of family which embraces non-blood-related members and non-sexual partnerships. Kaja is together with her 3-year boyfriend (whose name is also Nikita. Coincidence?), and Nikita as well as their kin keep their hearts open to other forms of relationships, but certain that in that little apartment in Wilhelmsburg they will always find home.

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Reading Day 7

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo Matteo, 60'

Review by XK

#review

This text was supposed to be a film review of Pasolini’s visits to Palestine, but the text wanted something else. It became a conversation between me and a few of my memories from when I lived in Palestine. I have been to most of the places Pasolini visited; they looked different back in 65’.

The sequence in the movie of the Moroccan quarter in Jerusalem leaves me breathless. I’ve watched this sequence over and over again.

I think it’s extraordinary! I have to show this to all of my friends.

When I lived in Ramallah I wrote a lot about the destruction of the Moroccan quarter, after Israel occupied the old city of Jerusalem in 67’. Hundreds, if not thousands of year old houses were crushed to create the square in front of the western wall. One of many war crimes Israel has never been prosecuted for. The little sequence in the movie, just a few seconds no more, is valuable and so important – because it proves something that the state of Israel wants to be forgotten – that the Moroccan quarter did actually exist. I move myself to tears when I write this. Those houses, those homes, can’t be forgotten. Or will they be?

We follow Pasolini through the Galilee and on the Syrian side of Lake Tiberias, now also annexed by Israel. We follow him to the Jordan River, to Nazareth, and to Jerusalem – the old city with its famous Damascus gate. I’ve seen the Damascus Gate so many times, for me the gate carries memories of relief. Close by the gate, just a few hundred meters further, is the east Jerusalem bus station, from which the Palestinian busses go to the west bank. I’ve taken these busses so many times, and every time there is this tension, because no one really knows if Qalandia, the Israeli checkpoint, will be open. Always as soon as I was through Qalandia I knew I could find my way home to where I lived. Technically I could walk if I wanted to, it would take a while but it would be possible because there would be no walls in between anymore.

Pasolini was right, the Galilee really looks like Italy. The Galilee is the rich part of Israel, or the ‘European’ part, a bit greener than the rest and quite hilly. I passed through the Galilee when I was on my way to the Golan Heights in occupied Syria to celebrate my 25th birthday. I wanted three things for my birthday; to do something special, to do something I normally wouldn’t do, and to be alone (or at least with people I didn’t know). On the eve of my birthday, I went to the

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central (western) bus station in Jerusalem. It was the first time for me at that bus station. Normally, I only went with smaller Israli-Arab shuttles or Palestinian busses. I had learnt to avoid Israeli bus station in order to avoid questions and interrogations, if they would scan my red-flagged (pro-Palestinian) passport.

The bus station was crowded with young teenage Israeli soldiers, their machine guns loaded, hanging freely at their sides. I was thinking WTF this is crazy, I don’t want to be shot and I certainly don’t want to be shot by mistake. As always I could find busses going everywhere except the place I was going to. Finally I found my gate, it had been in front of me from the very beginning. I had just been too early and the name had not yet popped up on the screen. The bus went up through Israel towards the border to Lebanon. We passed the outskirts of Nazareth, a city I had been told by Palestinians as well as Israelis is the most boring city in the whole holy land – Was that the reason for Pasolini’s disappointment? In the film he turns to the microphone and says ‘these faces…. These faces…. And the landscape is so archaic.’

Since the bus was late I missed my connecting bus in Qiryat Shermona. I was not surprised and I was not worried. I’m an expert in improvisation – I’m not bragging, it’s true! Ever since I traveled in India for half a year as a 19 year old trans woman, just starting on

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Reading Day 7 hormone replacement therapy, I was a master in creating c-plans on the b-plans which didn’t work out, and d-plans on the c-plans when they didn’t work, and e-plans on the d-plans etc. etc. It was impossible to have plans. Panic is the way to mindfulness. And raising blood sugar levels is crucial in these situations.

I ate an apple I had taken with me (travel food). I double checked if there were no more busses... There were no more busses. I looked at google maps to see how long it would take to walk… okey 5h 40min... that’s a little bit too long… then I would be in Odem (the village I was going to) around midnight. I thought: Maybe there’s busses to a city or bigger village close by to Odem – and from where I could walk or catch a hitchhike – such as Qatsrin, Majdal Shams or Mas’ada? Yes! From Mas’ada it would only take 1h 30 min to go and there was a bus to Mas’ada going in 30 minutes. The journey not only took me further away, it also took me further up (to be specific 1 kilometer up). When Pasolini was here, this part of Syria was still under Syrian control. 65’ just a couple of years before the six days war and the loss of so much.

From a bit outside Mas’ada I got a hitch hike. Two Israeli dudes (military style – think about the stereotype of men from the southern states in the US – those kinds of people). They were nice to me, and all the time I was thinking if they were nice because I was going to Odem – an Israeli settlement in Syria (illegal according to international law). Maybe they think I’m one of those European settler girls?

Probably. And the landscape did look even more ‘European’ now than in the Galilee. Up here in the mountains of the Golan Heights, and in the vicinity of this settlement – it looked like some kind of mediterranean tempered Switzerland. Flowers, valleys, and trees.

There were cows, and the bells around their necks created a very familiar soundscape.

As you see I had decided to (for once) try to spend time with settlers.

These people whom I boycotted, who I wanted to be evicted, because they take advantage of a land stolen from other people [and even if they have grown up there, born after 67’, bla bla bla, it is still stolen.

Only because you inherit something stolen, for instance art or land, it’s not rightfully yours and you aren’t less obliged to turn it back to the rightful owner]. [...]

I wanted to write about Pasolini visiting the kibbutz in relation to this. I wanted to write about how he talks about Arabs and Israelis in different ways. I wanted to say that I found his journey to be made quite strongly from an Israeli perspective. I wanted to write about all the weird experiences I had in the Golan Heights, about the hysterical german guy I met in the settlement who talked me (over) into climbing Mount Hermon (Syria’s highest mountain) with him. How much I cursed him that day; I didn’t have proper shoes.

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Artistic Research Case I: Queer Values I wanted to try to put words to how surreal it was visiting a settlement. What it’s like being in some sort of American villa suburb, but no you’re not in America you’re actually in Syria. I wanted to write about an argument I had with an American woman from Texas. We talked about Palestine. I wanted to write how it seemed as if no one cared that the Syrian civil war was raging, and that we could hear the bombs during the night or see the lights from explosions from the highest point in the settlement. Awful, awful!

I wanted to say that afterwards, when I left the settlement, I bathed in the Jordan river for the first (and only) time in my life (so far). It was beautiful, the rhododendron was flowering in pink and orange. I wanted to write about the extremely, super warm day when I visited Capernaum (probably one of the most mentioned places in the Bible after Jerusalem). I wanted to write, try to put into words, the unique atmosphere at the dead sea, the ‘not of this world’ feeling it has.

There, even I would say, as Pasolini said all the time – archaic, so archaic.

But I don’t know how to write or say this. It has to rest a little bit more.

So I’ll end here and I’ll watch the news. Aljazeera.

Is the third intifada coming?

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DAY 8

Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course For this eight and last session, we explore the nuances of the neutral, a concept studied in a lecture by Roland Barthes in his later years.

Drawing from an astonishment and respect for the complexity of language, we explore the sense of the neu-ter, the neither/nor, and propose seeing apparent opposite things as equivalents, pushing the boundaries to see what holds.

Based on:

Roland Barthes, “The Neutral” Film screening: series of short selfportraits by Maria Lassnig, Michelangelo Antonioni, Hito Steyerl

Reading Day 8

The Androgyne: an ode to myself, my friends and my recent exEJR #monologue, #letter, #love, #communication

Jules I met you in a bar, just shortly after I met a mutual friend of ours. I had just moved to the city and worked day and night at the restaurant to try and make ends meet in my involuntary gap year. I knew no one in the city, just the few people I shared a student house with who had mainly been art students. I quit my university, studying earth sciences had not been as glamorous as I had expected it to be. In my naive 17 year old brain, I thought I would be off to foreign countries in no time, taking soil samples with the hope to switch to archeology at some point. So to keep myself busy and meet new people, in the few free hours I had to spare, I just hung out at bars. Usually getting too drunk and ending up in strangers beds, to then arrive at work late the next morning. I had just known our mutual friend for a week, a flamboyant fine art student called Leroy who seemed to be friends with everyone, when he asked me to go out with him. We went to this scruffy bar where they played Robin and served ridiculously cheap cocktails. I quickly lost Leroy as he went, as I now know, his usual social butterflying way. Alone in this bar, which was too crowded, too noisy, the music too loud, the smell of just grown-out-of-puberty-but-not-completely sweat hanging in the air, I scanned the room for other vaguely familiar faces. That’s when I saw you. You were in the middle of the improvised dance floor, your dark blond hair slicked back in your then iconic wet look, piercing blue eyes, a row of silver rings in your ears, a butchy heavy-chain resembling necklace, sharp jawline, black clothes, meshy top, platform boots. You had a subtle, nonchalant, coolness about you.

You drew me in with your eyes. You introduced yourself. I was in a trance. You could feel my displacement, my newness, my youth. You asked me if I wanted to go outside to smoke a cigarette with you. I obliged. You took me by the hand as we moved outside and swiftly touched my hip when we exited through the door.

You asked me if I was new to the city and I told you my story, of feeling lonely, of feeling estranged. Not knowing what my future would bring, feeling sad and useless working as a waitress, having too little time to reflect. Too many lovesick nights, too many one night stands turned into accidental crushes, too much shit. You comforted me, we smoked another, you bought me drinks, you looked deep into my eyes with a calming certainty that everything was going to be alright. You are young, you have time, you seemed to be wanting to tell me, or imprint on me. We danced until I got tired. You asked me if I wanted to com home with you to drink a cup of tea.

You lived on the highest part of town, overlooking the city and the train station. Your house was a dream filled with tasteful vintage furniture, curious ceramic objects, books and with your own and friends photographic work hanging on the wall. We drank tea and talked for hours until sunrise. You asked me if I wanted to stay over. We slept in your bed, spooning but barely touching. I could feel your heart beating through your shirt, your chest, against my back.

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course I could hear your every breath, arduous sometimes caused by the–as I now know–asthma, amplified by your smoking. The smoking that you kept picking up and quitting again, only for a few months and whenever a stressful period was approaching you would start again.

That afternoon we had lunch together. It felt like we’d known each other for years. That was the beginning of our friendship, that year we dated for a brief moment, which ended after finding out we were more compatible as close friends. You felt and feel like a sibling to me, as you keep telling me quite often too. You pushed me to apply for the fine art program. You overflowed with joy when I got in. We started living together shortly after. Those were the first times we fought, mainly about my never ending flow of temporary boyfriends who – and in retrospect you were completely right – treated me like shit. I was with you when you came out to me as non-binary. I was with you when you came out as trans. I saw you grow into an artist, an activist, a public speaker, an artistic researcher, a teacher, a fighter. As your body grew on T (the term used by the trans community for the hormone testosterone) your muscles grew tighter, your mind grew stronger, as did your willpower and your need for justice.

Last summer we cycled to the other side of the city, where the air was cooler and the intense heat seemed a little less unbearable. We laid down on a blanket in the tall grass on the river bank overlooking the city that kept on going without us. We brought two bottles of wine to celebrate my admission to the master and to drink on my goodbye. As we drank we talked about the first time we met and all the years that followed and how we had ended up to be here exactly on this day, on this blanket, on this afternoon, in the tall grass. I reminisced about your piercing blue eyes and how they had become more intense in looks and in color as you grew older.

You told me you loved me. We kissed like two friends that were reunited after so many years apart. Or maybe we kissed like that because we knew what was about to come. We kissed goodbye.

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Reading Day 8 Ben December 2018 N: Hey could you pay me the money for drinks last night? I will send you a tikkie!!

B: Noor!!! I’m not going :((( N: Ben! Where are you, I’m making chocolate milk :) B: Are you going to be there tomorrow?

N: Yes of course!!

B: Buennoooo buenoo B: Are you awake?

N: BB I woke up at seven! (annoyed) B: Okay okay I was just checking N: I just had two hours of driving lessons B: Mitch is already here, I will be here at 17 N: I will be there at 5 past 13 B: Good N: I will arrive earlier, I managed to get on an earlier train B: “sends a screenshot of a tinder profile” N: AAAAHHH, I’m dead!

B: YES! But how?!

B: Do you get it?

N: I don’t know N: I’m confused N: You know I sort of broke up with Django last night….

B: Well it’s not like I didn’t see that coming..

B: Or are you confused because of the break up?

N: That is what everyone keeps saying!

N: No because of that boy B: Aah that’s good?

N: Yes I’ve never felt this relieved N: It just wasn’t working N: I noticed that I was becoming unhappier by the day, we just can’t give each other what we both need B: No, I understand. It makes me think of this talk that we had about me and Lionel, and dating someone who’s going through something. Not that Lionel and Django are the same, but you get it.

N: Yes, just drama, walking on eggshells.

It’s just not worth it.

N: I just felt it B: He’s just not capable of being in a relationship at the moment N: You’re absolutely right N: I just can’t be myself around him

N: Where are you?

B: Downstairs N: Like in the basement or on the ground floor?

B: Noor, I think I need to ask Lyra to parti­ cipate in that conversation 2019 N: Bennyyy!! Happy New YEAR!! Are you coming to De Groen this evening?

B: YOU TOO my darling! I’m here! Where are you??

B: I don’t know if I’m going to stay here all evening..

N: I need to be there at 9 B: Ahhhh. Mmm well I need to work tomorrow so I’ll leave early.

B: You know we can also ask Julius.

B: For Tuesday.

B: Damn it’s almost my birthday.

B: Should I do ‘wedding’ as a theme?

B: I want to do something that’s inclusive yet not too much fuss B: Maybe ‘wedding’ and ‘glitter’?!

B: Sounds a bit too corny B: How did your performance go?

N: It went well.

N: You can also do funeral?

B: OMGGGGGG GOOOODDD IDEAAAAA N: I need to tell you so much, my god this holiday!

B: I’m sorry I didn’t show up btw B: Same here!!!

B: Let’s meet N: Lunch?

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course Lau Dearest Noortje, Hereby your request for a letter is fulfilled. End of letter. I only jest, sorry. I suppose it was also time to address certain matters of the heart.

First off, I want to mention how grateful I am to have received a smile so warm and sweet, it stuck to me since that very first smile. This might get super gooey and sweet so stick with me please.

Okay, here we go; when I saw you walking towards me in the city, it was in slow motion, you stood out from the crowd and you had me gasping for air (in my head) a little. Then the realization came to me that I knew you, though somehow it felt completely different by the way our eyes met and we exchanged ‘the smile’. You warmed my heart and ever since, keep warming my heart every time you smile at me and see right through me.

Since we started seeing each other more and more, I’ve grown quite fond of you. How I can make you laugh (at me) and I at you makes me so comfortable. Your secret dork/nerd side completely won me over and I absolutely adore it. You make me feel calm and loved when you reach for my hand when we walk. I know I’ve told you already, but my mantra for this year was: love & patience. Never could I have guessed or dared thinking I was the one receiving this at this time when I wasn’t even searching. Being around you gives a certain balance. It’s not restricting or claustrophobic whatever, there’s all the time and space in the world to be myself/ourselves with each other. I can’t wait to see you grow and see all the amazing things you will do may I have the honor of calling you: my love?

Truly yours, Laurent X

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Reading Day 8 L: Are we still together?

N: I don’t know…

N: If I’m honest with myself, I’m not happy at the moment. I think we need to have a serious conversation about this, especially with the approaching move.

Missed voice call by Laurent <3 L: Can you please pick up!

L: I think we’re both unhappy . This is making me hopelessly sad because I want to communicate with you, especially about these kinds of things, and all of a sudden everything is so black and white.

L: I ask you every time what’s going on, you never reply!!

L: So please can we talk about this!

N: I’m sorry, not now L: I wanted to leave you to have some time for yourself today but I just want to say, I do love you and I don’t want to lose you. I really want to make this work.

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course Noor They grab their phone. Open up the app store. A friend recommended OKCupid. They download the app.

Details: Woman | Lesbian, Pansexual, Queer | Open to either monogamy or non-monogamy | Single | She/Her/They/Them …….. They/ Them They hesitate. She, her, they, them. They, Them. They let the words roll over their tongue, come out of their mouth to see whether they fit, feel right, do not ask for a performance of femininity. Do not ask for a feminine body. A young woman. A woman’s body. The body of a young fresh girl. A girl. A cunt, tits.

Am I really all that is. We see boobs and we see women. We see a supposed female figure stuffing a slimy creature in their panties and all we see in a woman pissing. Wetting themselves.

Ancient 60s performance art references pop up in our mind. How exciting, what is that person going to do with those scissors?

Sweating with anticipation as the blade snips closer and closer to the stiff rosy grey nipples.

About me — My self summary: Visual Artist and Master Artistic Research student — intersectional feminism, performance artist, kink and fetish lover.

Try to be vegan, but mostly vegetarian. Love the outdoors, cycling, hiking, whatever. Looking for new connections, friends, meaningful hookups and fun dates.

I have an Ibizan Hound and a cat so animal lover is a must.

Would love to find someone to watch tentacle porn with.

Cannot see likes, so if I tickle you send me a message or check my Instagram @eleonoralien X

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Reading Day 8

ConflictOK #academic, #capitalism, #redbull, #wingsforlife

There is an intrinsic conflict within the concept of Red Bull company. On the one hand, Red Bull energy drink is one of the unhealthiest drinks that you can find in a supermarket, while on the other, through their advertising and marketing strategy this brand has tied itself to a sporty adventurous identity. But how did they extract this potential energy out of this conflict?

The US Department for health clarifies on their website that ‘there is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that energy drinks can have serious health effects, among them are diabetes, obesity, insomnia, serious heart rhythm disturbances, and blood pressure. It can also harm children’s still-developing cardiovascular and nervous systems and increase risk-taking behavior in teenagers’ (National Center For Complementary and Integrative Health).

The conflict appears when Red Bull continuously represents itself as an energetic supplement and stamina improving drink for athletes, through the sponsorship and ownership of sports teams (five soccer teams, two Formula one teams, and an ice hockey team). The Red Bull experience for the consumer doesn’t stop with drinking a can of energy drink, it becomes the extension of an athletic activity, their trace can be seen everywhere in the sport world, from motorcycle racing and cliff-jumping, to paragliding, windsurfing, and air races.

(The New York Times) We might need to take into account the words that most of the time are attributed to Joseph Goebbels, to understand the strategy of Red Bull: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course According to the group Athletic Interest, one unique marketing strategy of Red Bull is that instead of a ‘sober’ storytelling, they employ what one could call ‘story-performing’ (Youtube). For example, one of their latest events was Wings for Life World Run, an online running competition and a charity campaign with the aim of finding a cure for spinal cord injury. So, in this way every participant can become part of this ‘performance’; they will be active subjects rather than passive objects for the advertisement. ‘Red bull doesn’t do conventional marketing, they create their own stories and produce the content with their own media house.’ (Youtube) Red Bull engages with the customer in a deeper way than traditional advertising ever could.

During the Wings for Life World Run event, all the 184,236 participants in 195 countries, including people in wheelchairs, started the race at the same time (11:00 UTC). The competition didn’t have a fixed location and everyone was free to run in their hometown as much as they could. There was not an actual endpoint, therefore everyone could continue until they were caught by a virtual Red Bull catcher car that chased them via the online app. In order to participate in the event, a minimum of 15 Euros needed to be donated, which resulted in them raising 4,100,000 Euros in total. Red bull reminded visitors to their website, on every page, why they were doing this – ‘THE GOOD CAUSE’, ‘100% OF ALL ENTRY FEES AND DONATIONS TO SPINAL CORD RESEARCH”, and “WE ARE RUNNING FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T!’

tion in both of his legs. After his surgery he became a para-athlete and participated in the Paralympics.

When Anderson’s race was over, the organizers brought him immediately on to the Red Bull TV. To our surprise there’s a whole camera team by his side to cover the end of this monumental championship. The commentators are excited and passionately congratulating him until one of them asked: – What’s in your mind brother?

– I’m in pain!

– You’re in champ pain! But how does it feel when the pain kicks in?

– I always forget that this is so painful, it’s like giving birth. I forget the bad negative feelings after a while!

After saying goodbye to him the commentators continued: “This is a monumental achievement, with all the pain he had in his back, shoulders, and arms he finished it, because he knows why he’s out there, he’s motivated, he’s trying to achieve something spectacular.” In addition to this, I also think he was out there to make a point, to show that having a disability will not mean the end of the world, he is strong and actually, as the Red Bull advertisement suggests: ‘If you believe in it then everything is possible.

The only limit is the one you set yourself.’

(Red Bull)

It is important to note that the whole competition is based on the idea of running.

This is underlined in the title: Wings For Life World Run. Paradoxically, this year’s winner was someone who was excluded from the race even before the starting pistols went off. Aron Anderson succeeded to complete 66.8 km before he was caught by the chaser car. He uses a wheelchair because of the surgical removal of cancer in his back in 1997, causing the loss of func-

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[8]

Reading Day 8 ‘Every year, around the world, between 250,000 and 500,000 people suffer a spinal cord injury (SCI). The majority of spinal cord injuries are due to preventable causes such as road traffic crashes, falls or violence.’ (WHO) There is a lot more that needs to be done to find a solution for millions of people around the world who dream of walking on their feet again. And it is admirable what Red Bull is doing, the Wings For Life World Run brings attention and awareness to a good cause. But does a good deed compensate for a bigger more complex wrongdoing? Is it morally acceptable to spend money on charity whilst all your wealth is coming from a polluted source? And how big is Red Bull’s contribution to this cause? Red Bull has earned approximately 6 billion Euros in 2019 of which one third was directly spent on marketing and advertisements. While all the donations to the SCI research in 16 years of its conduct are as small as 32 million Euros.

blood pressure cases they are responsible for. What matters is how much money they can donate to find a solution for SCI. This conflict is a clash of interest. How can we decide whether this is an evil company that profits out of diabetes and blood pressure, or a good charitable humane company that invests in sports and medicine? At the end of the day, what matters to Red Bull CEO’s is the image they create and how that affects the sale of next year.

How to sell more than 7.5 billion cans a year?

The more evil a company is, the more charitable it gets. The more harm a company does to public health, the more they would show off with their claims to help the health worldwide. And all of that comes from the inner conflict they try to face. Roland Barthes in his lecture series on the Neutral mentions that for 19th and 20th century thinkers such as Marx, Darwin, and Freud, the conflict was seen as a value, something to be made use of: ‘conflict is not an evil, it’s a motor, a functioning.’ The friction that exists between the opposing beliefs and facts that seem to be true and exist together simultaneously might release some hidden energy. And the inner conflict of the two opposite sides within Red Bull – being a dangerous unhealthy energy drink and also the picture of a sportive company – is what makes them do what they do.

This is a situation in which there are opposing demands and needs and that makes it almost impossible to make a choice between them. Red Bull doesn’t need to necessarily think about all the diabetes or

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Barthes, Roland. The Neutral. Lecture Course at the College de France (1977-1978). Trans. Rosalind E. Krauss and Denis Hollier. columbia university press, new york, 2005. pp125-6. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/energy-drinks [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/sports/autoracing/25iht-srf1prix25.html [4] There seems to be no evidence that it was used by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, though it is often attributed to him.

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBRNQMolTPw [6] Barthes, Roland. The Neutral. Lecture Course at the College de France (1977-1978). Trans. Rosalind E. Krauss and Denis Hollier. columbia university press, new york, 2005. p128.

[7] Red Bull commercials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjuqPmrsne0 [8] https://www.redbull.com/int-en/wings-for-life-world-run-report-photos [9] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/spinal-cord-injury

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Reading Day 8

FragmentXK #academic, #fragments, #fragmentarythinking, #writing, #birthofmeaning

The spaces and gaps in between There’s always something in between.

Something in between books, chapters, paragraphs, sentences, and words. There’s also an ‘in between’ letters (the little space in between the a and the b). Spaces and gaps are sometimes misunderstood as no-thing… but they’re an important something, or at least a constitutive nothingness. When we write, we write with words and letters. But not only. We (foremost) write with spaces and gaps – with the in betweens. There is always separation and difference. The interesting aspect to this is that it entails, more or less, that everything is fragmentary. The all (mind the italics) is a state of fragmentation.

Empty space and equality What we perceive as fragmentary is shifts in the equality of the spaces in between the bodies of texts (or rather the body parts of a text). The ‘inequality’ of the spaces creates the sensation that something is missing, that something has existed (and is no longer there), or that something could possibly exist [that there is a potentiality for something to fill the space].

When reading the Bible, you sometimes come across paragraphs such as Mathew 23:14, which say ––––––– (nothing). A lost fragment. An omitted fragment. This hole in the text creates an own narrative through the questions it invokes. [In me: Why is this gone? Censorship by the church for potential unliked meanings? Or a mistake by an earlier owner? Did someone spill coffee whilst reading?] In other words: The space creates its own narrative, it forces creation, it makes us question. Barthes says only death is creative. And, as we see, out of the killed paragraphs (the spaces of the lost fragments) the reader creates.

Openings The fragments (and the importance of spaces and in betweens) opens up for wider interpretations as well as for total misunderstandings. For me this is an ethical aspect… an ethical potentiality. I believe these openings, the unsureness inherent in the fragmentary form, make room for the readers themselves (not necessarily for their ego – the space as a mirror in which they narcissistically could specter themselves.

But for their presence as thinkers – the text speaks to them, and waits for their answer.

This direction (speaking to) creates action or at least activity).

In the womb I think about écriture féminine, I think about Hélène Cixous. She defines écriture féminine as fragmentary. The fragmentary as a resistance to linearity and to patriarchal (rationality). The fragmentary text is a text which does not force meaning. Through its own perforated being it gives room for the other in itself. [This can be tied to Irigaray’s thought on the placental… the mammalian possibility of carrying the other (alterity) within and that this has an ethical actuality for humans].

Inherent fragmentation Understanding is a desire of difference and otherness, of that which is not the same.

This desire can come as a will to possess (making the other the same – which is the case for many kinds of understanding). The desire can, sadly only at times, take the form of an acknowledgement of the alterity of the other. The co-existing (with the other) needs negotiation and sometimes (most of the times) a repositioning of that which is understood as the same.

The constitution of meaning (how mean-

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course ing becomes and is) needs difference and otherness, or else it will erase itself… it will implode [letters can’t be written on the same spot… that will create an unreadable text… ungraspable meaning]. There’s always meaning to be interpreted. But, that said, it doesn’t mean that the potential meanings will be understood, or that there is a correct way of understanding.

Kaleidoscopic vision The fragmentary approach or method gives a kaleidoscopic vision [imagine: faceted eyes]. It’s a tiptoeing act to write fragmentary. Writing fragmentary is failing honestly – each fragment is an honest failure to say something. [Failure is inevitable… the best possible is then to fail honestly]. Barthes approaches the Neutral in a what I would describe as the ‘fragmentary method’ – he knows he can’t speak directly about what the Neutral is, but he can speak around it [it’s similar to via negativa, and negative theology: suggesting what God is by saying what God is not].

Death When our opinions, ideas, concepts, etc. are proven wrong, or just dismantled by the ideas of others, it sparks creation (hopefully... if everything happens ‘as it should’) because we don’t just take on the ideosphere of the other. Now we sort of have to re-create our own; re-distribute, re-figure. This is why it’s essential to open oneself for critique, and with that I mean making it easy for others to say something against you. [What Barthes calls subjective humbleness – saying things like ‘in my opinion’, ‘in my view’ etc. – is thus only riskily used, since it makes it harder for others to critique. The humbleness here is actually just arrogance with a mask of humbleness].

itself, is not written from the first page to the last. Text is written from within. A text always has a plurality of centers.

Ordering fragments is difficult because it requires attention and sensation. The multiple centers (gravitation points) in the text have to be balanced and composed – the author has to be aware of the inner textual gravity. [There are no systems or models for this, you can start, for instance, by ordering the fragments from A to Z, or according to their size, etc. But the system (this is not a rule… but close to) always has to be broken. That gives life to the text. And it is in this act that intuition enters into the practice].

Eternity The fragmentary can be re-ordered and re-interpreted. Always! Endlessly?

A writer of fragments retains the possibility of negation, that is of saying no to an interpretation. This extraordinary position comes with the sacrifice of the ability to say yes. A writer can’t exclude other interpretations by saying X is the right interpretation.

The writer can (only) describe their ambition and vision with the writing of the text – but not what the text in itself is.

The fragmentary form gives the text a life of its own. A text has its own life if the ‘meaning’ is created with and through it. [A writer who thinks I wanna write X and then writes X doesn’t write a living text… a living text is born from a writer who doesn’t know what the meaning of the written is or will be.] By emphasizing the in betweens, the fragment turns the power of the author (authorship) into freedom of the author (which in the case of the author is the practice of writing).

The writer is always the last reader [Always remember this].

The gravity of interpretation The hard thing, the very difficult thing, with fragments and writing fragmentary is the ordering. How to place them – which fragment should go first, second... (not to mention last). A fragmentary writing, which I would say is the inner nature of writing

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Reading Day 8

LibraryEO #essay, #library, #books

Library: ‘A place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (such as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale.’ (Meriam).

I listened to a podcast about Street Libraries but did not finish it, concluding early on that they did not understand the beauty of the street library. They focused merely on the bad quality of the books they contain (Eeuw).

To understand my story let me first explain how I define a Street Library: A collection of books, left in an outside bookcase by individuals, there to be taken for free by other individuals. Street libraries take different forms: Some are open, some have doors, others are chests or little houses.

I am determined to take the Street Library seriously. Therefore, I find the one closest to my home (see picture), go there and take out every book it contains. I start by making an inventory of its collection. h t t p s : //d o c s . go o g l e . c o m /s p re a d s h e e t s /d /1 E f G o 2 x- e Q k xS G R KO H H E U X i R Z 5 U X m y _ R j 4 yFq R z E a sT U/ edit#gid=0

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course The library consists of: 29 discarded books.

17 Dutch, 6 English, 3 German, 2 French, and 1 South-African book.

The oldest book is from 1958, the youngest from 2017. With 3 books, most are from 1991.

How can I give this library importance and make people see the beauty I see? I could, for example, order the books: The author’s names in alphabetical order might be the most logical, but I am a visual person. My iPhone app library used to be organized by color. I conduct different experiments using this method. (see pictures) *Idea borrowed from Anouk Kruithof (bottom picture).

But this is not what attracts me to these libraries. A personal library tells you a lot about its owner. But the Street Library is A Library of Discarded Books. Each book was left there for a different reason, left by a different person.

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Reading Day 8 Examining the books closely, what can I find out about the people who left them?

- 5 books have a name written in them, 2 of them I can read: Bonnie and Bas. Bas also scribbled his phone number on the cover: 0618909937. I tried calling him, planning to ask why he discarded this book. Unfortunately he did not answer his phone.

- 4 bear signs of a former life in another library.

- 2 are full of sticky notes and yellow markers, 1 of them has some small blood splatters on the back.

- 1 contains a message on the first page: Willeke, hope you like this. - Some pointers for life. x Sep. 97 - 1 still has a receipt in it.

No clues on why these books were banned from their bookshelves or why they have become part of the collection of abandoned books, waiting for a new owner to adopt them.

In old library books there is a form attached to the first page of every book. When a book leaves the library the date is stamped onto the form in the book, leaving a trace of its usage. What if you were forced to write a little note in every book you discarded?

What notes could these books contain?

Looking back I can see I was in the middle of a midlife crisis. I dreamt of becoming a writer and moved to Scotland planning to work on my book there. My wife was supportive and as a parting gift she gave me ‘Brieven Schrijven, een Kennis een Kunst’.

I sat at a small desk in my room for days, weeks, staring out of the window, a blank page before me. I had to declare defeat and go back home, humiliated. I didn’t even write my wife one letter. It is too painful to look at this book now, an unwelcome reminder of how I once dreamt too big.

I work as a receptionist at the museum ‘Ons Lieve Heer op Solder’. My shifts are long and some days boring. Especially outside of the tourist season in dreary January. So I ordered ‘The Three of Us’ by Julia Blackburn to read during my shift. I devoured it in a week. The book traveled around the office for years. One day when cleaning my desk I decided it might be nice for somebody else to read it and enjoy it like I did.

As a new Mom living in a foreign country I felt insecure. My baby cried for weeks on end. At least that is what it felt like. My mom came from France to help me and brought me this book: ‘Votre Bébé de Jour A 1 An’. I used it like an encyclopedia. Paging through it with every problem I encountered. Teething, no poop, too much poop, cutting nails for the first time. Sometimes finding an answer, a lot of times not. But it is better to try something than do nothing. Now my baby is two and we grew out of this book together.

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course Now that public libraries are closed due to the Coronavirus I frequently scan these Street Libraries during my city walks. Two weeks ago I took ‘Het Bernini Mystery’ with me. I observed that almost every street library contained a copy of this book. Bored and home alone I read it in two evenings.

I then brought it back to the same library.

I got this book from Jack with a promise of life lessons. What I learned is that Jack is not such a nice guy.

I wish I found one of these notes in the books I took home. Every time you take a book out of a Street Library there could be a surprise in the book you take. That possibility is what makes me return to them.

Now that I got to know this library collection more intimately, it feels like it’s my library.

I name it: The Library of Discarded Books, Waiting for Adoption.

I search my own bookcase to select a book I can part with and choose one from Kluun, ‘God is Gek’. A book I took from a street library myself and that has the name of its previous owner in it: Max Jasper Tocks.

I attach a note to the first page: Five years ago I was the one taking this book from a Street Library.

Guilty of the notes in the margin. Found some solace on page 18.

Hope you get what you are looking for.

Meriam Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/library De eeuw van de Amateur (podcast): https://eeuwvandeamateur.nl/?p=848 Tacx, J.P.M.. Brieven Schrijven, een Kennis een Kunst.

Blackburn, J. The Three of Us. Bacus, A. Votre Bébé de Jour A 1 An. Brown, Dan. Het Bernini Mysterie.

Kluun. God is Gek

I put this book plus the whole inventory of the library in two bags and brought them back to The Library of Discarded Books, Waiting for Adoption. I put the books back on the shelves and leave a notepad.

I attach the following instruction: Please leave a message for a future reader.

Tell them a little bit about your history with this book, and the reason you leave it here for them to find.

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Reading Day 8

The AdjectiveCP #fiction, #fluidity

There has been a commotion in the streets all day long, and a large area has been completely closed off.

As soon as I get to the nearest point allowed, a beam of light, much brighter than the sunlight, blinds my view. As I get closer, the brightness turns into something that is hard to describe. As a matter of fact, I am not able to find even one word that can get close to the experience.

By six o’clock we are about fifty people surrounding ‘it’. Most of us are just observing, mesmerised, whilst a few others are discussing quite vividly its behaviours and qualities.

I am looking at the ‘thing’ and suddenly a strange sensation overwhelms me. As I am staring at ‘it’ I literally see myself staring at my thoughts. These are a combination of the thoughts that I am thinking right now, as well as parts of my memories, all combined in a fluid consistency that resembles the movement of the ‘thing’’s surface. It feels as if ‘it’ mirrors mental states in a way that I have not experienced before. In that state of mind there is also clarity.

I realise soon that there is something the ‘thing’ reacts to consistently, though I am not yet able to identify what it is reacting to. When it does, it becomes slightly more solid in specific areas. These solid parts turn into clearer shapes. Then they acquire daily qualities, such as the ‘big’ area in the upper left side. Or the ‘beautiful’ area, or the ‘ugly’ part. There doesn’t seem to be a relationship between these appearances, although they all share the same treat. They lose the luminous quality of the original fluid consistency, as the ‘thing’ becomes more recognisable.

Suddenly a realisation strikes me. One of the solidifications seems to take place in consonance with the conversation between two people.

They are arguing, contradicting each other’s points of view on the origin, or even the purpose of the ‘thing’’s presence. Through their argumentations and definitions something of the ‘thing’s’ original state is being transmuted, but no-one else seems to notice.

The objectification takes place at the same time as my mind is immersed in this mimetic trance. When a part of the substance becomes more material, my mind too experiences a punctuation.

It is in this ‘punctuation’ that their argumentations and definitions

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course become a ‘moulding space’. They literally give shape to it, and in this shaping the ‘thing’ loses something of what it possessed before. It is this first ‘punctuation’ that brings my attention to it, and when it happens a second time I look around to realise I am the only one noticing it.

I perceive, as well, that there is something about this process of individuation that introduces a strange sense of calm. There is a feeling of self referentiality in the thoughts that are being activated inside me, they feel familiar. There is also a sense of control with which one can induce direction to the thoughts. There is a sense of potentiality, of combinations that can become entities on their own, to be experienced in that state of observation. There is a sense of humbleness of what I can not know outside of myself, and the realisation that what I am noticing might be only my experience.

As the night falls, suddenly the ‘thing’ vanishes in the same way it appeared, unrequested. All those gathered look at one another with expressions of great surprise and exclaim loudly how they have never seen something quite like this before. Amidst their need for exteriorisation and chattiness about what just happened, I feel no urge to speak. I gather all the sensations still contained in my body and stare at my thoughts once more, making sure that for a while I can still avoid punctuation.

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LoveSF #essay, #poem, #love, #bible, #believe, #upbringings

‘…it requires that one distinguishes and separates within the diversity, and that one chooses the single object of one’s gratitude and one’s affection. Very endoxal idea that to love is to choose, to eliminate, and thus to destroy “the remainder” + assimilation of the multiplicity of desires to indecision and, from there, to softness, to the “limp” = vitalist idea: what lives is only alive if it destroys what is around itself.

Roland Barthes According to this, love is a sensation that involves choice. This means that love is something reserved to a certain particularity and it has to do with individuality. In this way love can be determined as something egoistic and selfish. Remarkable is the fact that love is always slightly differently understood in Christianity. However, the way Christianity expresses love can be conceived as questionable, imaginary, and even magical. Since love is something you can’t touch, but something you feel, this certainly makes room for relative interpretation of what love is.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 bible ‘4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

In contrast to the interpretation of love being a choice, the bible interprets love as something general and humble. In the passage above, the bible also brings the interpretation of love as being something safe. In this general way of speaking about love, the bible suggest that love should represent the exclusion of discrimination. But how real is this? Since, the bible also talks about how God abominates some people.

Leviticus 18:22 bible ‘22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: It is an abomination.’

However, the bible wants you to believe that everyone can be loved

by God. Rather than just give an interpretation of what love is, there

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course is also negation of some things that deviate from its true meaning.

What is noticeable is that there is no negation to love being the equivalent to fear. Because the bible wants people to fear God at the same time as love him. So, you should fear and love God at the same time. And since God is our heavenly father there is no problem in inflicting fear at the same time as we are loving our children. And for generations we thought that there is nothing wrong with that, since it’s God’s will.

1 John 4:17-19 bible ‘We are forced to the conclusion that the fear of God is not only okay but a necessary part of our lives. Our question instead must focus on; how does the love of God work? along with the fear of God. We must hold back from stating that the love and fear of God are mutually exclusive; both are necessary. They work hand in hand. Having one does not mean not having the other.’

I was raised to think that love and fear walk hand in hand.

I chose him based on fear.

I chose him based on a biblical ideology of love.

And his coercion to sex was always justified because I seemed to like it, since, it always ended in ecstasy for me too.

I misconstrued the meaning of intimacy for forced sexual experiences.

To me, love always had something to do with fear.

To fear and love God the bible says.

To fear someone is to love someone.

My parents always inflicted fear on me.

It’s now a pattern embedded in my belief and in my choice of whom to love.

I couldn’t understand why I always ended up with the same malignant lover.

A lover that doesn’t care for what I feel.

Can I call that even a lover?

The meaning of love is relatable to your upbringing.

Love is a psychological experience.

You can learn a specific definition from the dictionary.

Love is an intense feeling of deep affection.

Love is a great interest and pleasure in something.

But in the end your upbringing will determine how you feel and search for love.

To me, love is fear.

The fear of being caught when I do something he doesn’t like.

‘The utopian feeling of sleeping as a couple could be desired as an absolute act of love and, whatever its realization is, as a golden fantasy.

Why: sleep thoroughly woven of trust. To sleep: mobilization of trust.

Cf. to sleep on both ears {dormir sur ses deux oreilles}: on the ear of the

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other and one’s own, to sleep with one ear open. To sleep together-utopically-implies that the fear of one’s image being surprised is abolished: little matter that I be seen while sleeping --’.> Albertine’s sleep, observed by the Narrator:34, act of falling in love (of love-pas­sion), not of love, because the gaze sets oneself apart.’ (Roland Barthes) You go to sleep thinking that the person lying next to you will protect you. Even though you fear that person and you won’t notice, since you have been taught that you should submit.

Ephesians 5:22-33 bible ‘Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.’

There is a distortion of the significance of protection and safety from your partner.

‘To sleep together-utopically-implies that the fear of one’s image being surprised is abolished.’

On the contrary, you will wake scared every time you see your husband. But that is love right? ‘…what we love with the choicest, the most rare, the most delicate, the most tender love, what in us asks to be put beyond comparison, we would discover it at one point, abruptly, by chance, under the ostentatious form of a public farce; it’s the most painful turn the amorous path can take.’ Roland Barthes But you still believe that love is pain and you keep on loving.

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The Neutrals- Roland Barthes Bible.

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The NeutralHL #conflict, #philosophy, #reality, #bufferzone

To uncover more about the Eastern ideology Barthes deals with, he speaks about ‘the whole’, which has been important in the East, and that the conflicts dealt with in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism are slightly different.

Confucianism sees multiple conflicts between humans, as it values human relationships.

They solve conflicts with the heart of ‘仁인’, who knows ‘道도’, which is the heavenly heart that everyone has and loves all humans through ‘예’. Conflict arises when the ‘道心도심’ is lost and the ‘人心인심’ grows. Human emotions such as anger and hatred, are naturally felt as long as they are human, but the mind must be ejected according to the situation. This solving of conflict, as well as a focus on moderation, is important in Confucianism.

In Buddhism, conflict arises because of the agony and reincarnation of the mind. So it tries to resolve the conflict and feel happiness by knowing that everything is a Buddha with a loving, compassionate heart, seeing and feeling the object as it is.

In Taoism, conflict arises from abandoning nature and choosing artificiality, and the mind is greedy for a concept and title, and this greed also spreads to material things. Therefore, if we abandon ‘人爲 인위’(artificial) and practice ‘無爲 무위’ (action without intention) and become pure like a child, there will be no conflict. In Taoism, it tends to focus on personal conflicts that arise in the mind.

Confucianism focuses mainly on the common conflict we think of, whilst Buddhism and Taoism are about conflicts with a more philosophical approach.

In this way, in the East, conflict is viewed as bad, and harmony is important.

So, how can we maintain the neutral, which is a complex of political issues of several layers?

How should we consider a space where conflict and neutrality are tightly condensed like a buffer zone? Can it really be called a neutral situation that avoids confrontation and tension? Is it something like an error situation? If the neutral appears as a cold space where any human breath should not exist, can it be called ‘neutral’?

What role should these buffer zones play in order to remain neutral?

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NinismRM #lyricalprose, #ninism

Reality is neither particular nor general

Particular is neither unique nor uniform Words are neither authentic nor mutable

Authentic is neither original nor copy Companies are neither families nor commissions Family is neither innate nor given Obsession is neither sweet nor sour Sweetness is neither naïve nor astute Someone is neither nobody nor everybody

Nobody is neither underdog nor futile Photographs are neither evidence nor fiction Evidence in neither absolute nor perishable Interpretation is neither reading nor extruding Reading is neither swallowing nor imprinting President is neither father nor CEO

Father is neither patron nor companion Silence is neither alive nor dead

Alive is neither intense nor hyperconscious Violence is neither acquired nor intrinsic Intrinsic is neither definitive nor disposable Results are neither conjured nor borne

Conjury is neither vengeance nor aid Evil is neither demonic nor misfortune Misfortune is neither fateful nor seized Unity is neither heterogenous nor homogenous Homogeneous is neither pure nor diverse Public is neither exposed nor secretive Secretive is neither intentional nor unintended Friendship is neither permanent nor temporary

Permanent is neither perishable nor eternal

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Faces aren’t masks nor mirrors

Masks are neither characters nor standards Self is neither singular nor collective Collective is neither cuddly nor claustrophobic Human is neither natural nor fabricated

Natural is neither harmony nor prophetic Belief is neither faith nor lore

Faith is neither blindness nor practice Passion is neither inherent nor acquired

Inherence is neither obligation nor choice Goodness is neither subjective nor objective Subjectivity is neither fixed nor malleable Beauty is neither purity nor pollution Pollution is neither unwanted nor expected Childhood is neither innocence nor wildness

Innocence is neither celibate nor virtuose Fun is neither harvested nor obliviated Oblivion is neither ignorance nor erasure Liquid is neither flexible nor rigid Rigid is neither restrictive nor accessible Evolution is neither predictable nor aleatory

Predictable is neither dull nor secure Communication is neither nuance nor integrality Integral is neither whole nor digestive Challenge is neither pain nor comfort Comfort is neither pledge nor dismissal Heaven is neither finitude nor permanence

Finitude is neither objective nor singular Remembrance is neither testimony nor fiction Fiction is neither myth nor promise

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SittingRW #sitting To transfer your weight to your sitting bones.

Sitting in a classroom, distracted by the birds outside.

Sitting on a bus, watching the landscape go by.

Sitting and being in a hurry, hoping time goes faster.

Sitting in a corner, facing the wall, head lowered.

Sitting underground, dark and damp.

Sitting still.

Sitting silently.

Sitting in a silent space amplifies your own noises.

Sitting silently is to sit more quietly, a silent body does not exist.

To sit and only hear your surroundings your mind needs to stop commenting, questioning, and thinking.

According to Barthes, in Latin, ‘silere -stillness, absence of movement and of noise- would refer to a sort of timeless virginity of things, before they are born or after they have disappeared’. I wonder how you could not be silere before you are born, or after you have disappeared since you do not exist anymore/yet. Even more, I wonder how something can have an absence of movement and of noise altogether. The earth is turning in its solar system which is moving in an expanding universe, whilst the molecules of which everything exists, consist of atoms with moving protons, electrons, and neutrons in a lot of empty space. When Latin was a living language, the general worldview was different from now. If silere is physically impossible, it refers to a conceptual stillness, absence of movement and of noise.

An existing before and after of things in the minds of other people.

Silere was used mainly for nature while nature can not be silent. I think it is the longing for silere by people who project this timeless virginity on nature since it’s tempo used to be slower than the tempo of humans. Changes would not be noticable to us and therefore we might feel silere when we were in nature.

Tacere was used to refer to a verbal silence, not by nature but by people. This differentiation angers me, people are nature and other animals can be verbally silent as well. The language’s I use, Dutch and English, cut people off from the natural world. We are animate but the rest of the natural world is inanimate. Language has a huge influence on how we look at our surroundings, it cuts things off, divides, clusters, builds a world which might not correspond with the actual world. It is constructed by people and should always keep on moving with changing people in a changing world.

To sit still is to move as little as possible. To be almost silere. Almost, since a body is always moving.

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course To sit on the bottom, while the weight from above makes it hard to breathe.

To sit in darkness, a falling mind.

To sit whilst you owe your time to something, someone.

To sit because you cannot stand.

To sit across, next to, behind, on top of the one you love.

To sit and have a seat at the table.

To sit and be heard.

‘To sit with eight people within the horizon of a conversation. At what moment and how many times is it appropriate to speak if one does not wish to be considered silent?’, Kafka wondered.

Sitting with others whilst feeling deeply alone.

Sitting on a roller coaster, moving up, down, sideways, inside out.

To sit and slowly merge.

To sit and listen.

To sit and embrace.

Sitting on a horse, the lower body relaxed and moved by the animal.

To sit uninterrupted, with no demand, no task, no responsibility.

To sit, seeing yourself mirrored in all that is in front of you.

To sit, wanting to be tacere.

Sitting still and zooming out, seeing yourself from above, on the map, you are in the middle of the mountains, such a small dot on this map while this map is such a small dot on earth.

To sit and feel how small you are.

To sit and interrogate.

To sit and never move again.

To sit and wait.

To sit and sigh.

To sit and cry.

To sit in the rain.

Sitting still and zooming in, through your skin, connective tissue, bones, fluids, organs, cells.

To sit and feel how big you are.

Sitting while screaming out loud your name, your desires.

Sitting on a plane is high, not the same as sitting on a mountain.

To sit on a mountain.

To sit with the sea.

To sit and see the sun moving.

To sit and do nothing, without being wrong, without being in debt.

To sit and be heard.

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SleepES #lyricalessay, #object, #subject, #animate, #communication, #codependence

You sit in a subtle state of stillness, without dreaming, as you sleep. You are absorbing the environment around you, watching us from afar as we sit on the sofa, watching an apocalypse movie. You sleep with your eyes open, and with your eyes open, to me, your sleep seems instead an act of waiting.

Sleep as suspended death. For you are not dead, like the others may say you are. You are alive and waiting.

When I do not need you I do not regard you as I should. Although I see you from the corner of my eye as I traverse the room, you are merely an ornament to me as you sleep.

You are dead, for when we speak of objects we will often describe them as inanimate and lifeless. In their inability to move without our action – their continued silence and incommunicability with us – we rarely perceive them as alive.

But are you ever truly dead? No, to me you are animate. As I sit here writing, I can see you. Your eyes point in two directions and one of them is staring at me. I know you want me to use you. I know you want me to hold you. I know they need water from your beak. You are silent but you are watching me as you sleep. Just like the bird you represent you seem to sleep with half your mind, for a flamingo, whilst sleeping on one leg, will shift its weight to the other without waking; the other half of its brain stays awake so as not to lose balance. In this state of sleep, I feel you are near. You are trying to move me to grab you and use you. To wake you.

Without a voice I can understand, we are left to communicate with each other through touch, and through our actions.

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Gibson’s ‘The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception’ (Lawrence Erlbaum: New Jersey), 134, Tilley, Christopher; 2001. “Ethnography and Material Culture, “ in Handbook of Ethnography. P. Atkinson et Al. (eds.). London: Sage Pub. Barthes, Roland. ‘The Neutral’ (Columbia University Press: New York, 2005), 37.

These allow us to control each other and this is when we both become alive. I have you by your neck and now I can fill you up from inside out. Water from the tap pours into the hole in your back and will pour out of your face later on. Dust has settled on your skin, as you have been sleeping for a while now. The tulips have died from the frost and lack of water we have provided.

The basil looks dramatically sad.

losing focus on you and what we are doing.

Sleep as the suspended time between uses.

Or perhaps you sleep the moment just before and after we activate each other?

The moment just between when you are perceived as dead or alive. Sleep as the airlock between your two bodies. Dead and alive. Immortal– close to death– versus anxious living (Barthes 37).

But come on then, we’ll fix the problem.

As we proceed with the task at hand, your body’s weight dictates my body’s movement, and we are in motion together.

A seamless action; a coordinated dance routine between you and me. You make me a watering vessel. A carer. Without you I would not succeed. Without me you would not either. When our joint action is complete, when you cease to be animate, you fall back into your sleep. Into your death.

But truly you do not fall into nothingness. You are not frozen, although you are dreamless. You are living a utopian sleep.

So what happens when we perceive your death as suspended death? As sleep. The sleep in between your interactions with us; my interaction with you. If an object is ‘born’ when it is used for a purpose by us, are you then ‘born’ through our ritual?

Or, not born, but rather awoken, by this ritual of watering: Of keeping the plants alive. Then you are awoken through our codependent relationship. You are awoken as the action we create together activates you from your slumber and me from mine.

By turning death to sleep, and accepting our codependence, you gain a sense of agency.

But when is your true utopian sleep? Is it precisely in the suspended time when my hand is about to reach you? In the moment’s gap between my fingers and your plastic skin, in the spark we feel, the current running in the air between us, as I am grabbing for your neck? Or is it whilst I am thinking of you? Between my fingers, between my thoughts of you, between

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TwinklingECF #shortprosaicthing, #journey, #instagram, #vividness

My first dive into the Neutral revealed to me a matrix of, at least, 3 dimensions. And there are probably more, so I’ll be using the mathematical notation (i, j, k,… n) instead of the Cartesian (x, y, z), which detonates a continuum: Axis i: the ‘twinklings’, ‘traits’, ‘scintillations’ Axis j: the marginalia, des ‘traces écrites’ Axis k: the bibliographic references And then it is Barthes himself, his voice, his intimate memoirs that leak all around: The rising flour and binding substance (axis l?).

The aim of each lecture, or leg in a journey, is to examine knots, which are the essence of the journey itself. It isn’t an easy task to inspect an n-dimensional knot. You just see a bunch of threads, for a brief moment, whilst they’re being lit by the candle light of your guide, and next instant you see a completely different bunch, or nothing at all. This discontinuity is, precisely, the nature of the scintillation. To scrutinize knots some mastery is required; the help of the guide (the master) is indispensable (but you may not trust him too much, you might get lost after his next detour).

Whilst reading the Neutral, the vividness of the images; the continuous variation; the brief, disarticulated, fascicle-like storytelling; the obsession for the minutia, made me think of Instagram. I think Barthes would have been an amazing instagrammer. In fact, he would have been the master mind of Instagram. I can perfectly picture it: The 14th lecture happening in the neutral space of the app. A live stream, a guided tour around the most banal and unexpected realms of the matrix. A worldwide lecture. A total influencer.

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The hyperpresent fits this kind of journey very much: present, after present, after present, the exploration is performed, a story is told.

What about? It doesn’t really matter, as long as it flows. There is a sense of urgency (vitality) embedded in each miniature. Stick to this joyous dilettantism as much as you can, but don’t fear missing out. FOMO is the greatest of the mistakes: It blurs all nuance, it kills attention, and intention. It’s important that you know at least you’re diving. As soon as the speed of the scroll is faster than the speed of your synapses you’ll be lost, and the way back shall only be found in a state of flux.

Just as there are some rules, there will be homework too. The lecture would be participatory: Students would need to collaborate in outgrowing the matrix. Look at life from the corner of your eye, if something catches your attention for more than 1,5 seconds, catch it, it might come handy afterwards. A simple description will do for now.

It’s fine to be shy, bored, to stutter in indecision, to observe skeptically from the back of the class, or to burst in excitement to stand out.

But you will have to, eventually, refuse to believe the master, to say ‘I don’t buy that shit’, to go wrong, and to live according to it.

Then the phantasmic lecture will be finished. It will be, unfortunately, the last, but it will last forever.

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Hito Steyerl, November, 25' #review

Review by OK

‘Images do not represent reality, they create reality, they are second nature’ November is a visual investigation of the role of images in the revolutions. It explores how visual languages have the power to even shape different realities. In this short video essay, Hito Steyrel takes us with her on a journey to see how one particular image of a seventeen years old German girl was used for the Kurdish cause many years later, after her execution as a terrorist somewhere in northern Iraq by Turkish forces. In her exploration, Steyrel thoroughly uses archival materials from a vast variety of resources, from Bruce Lee and Martial Arts movies, to American B-movies, from documentary footage films about the Kurdish cause, to a commemoration of the Soviet Bavarian Republic in Münich.

At first, this video seems to be an autobiographical piece about Steyrel’s best friend, Andrea Wolf. Together they had shot a feminist Martial Arts B-movie in 1983, in which Andrea was ‘its glamorous star’. In this movie, which was never finished, three girls are continuously fighting the bad guys, and in the end, it was Andrea who could kill them and disappear into the horizon, riding a motorcycle. This was fiction, a non-reality in which Andrea had become the hero in fighting evil.

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Artistic Research Case II: How Roland Barthes would teach a course We don’t see what exactly happened to Andrea after this amateur Martial Arts movie, but many years later, she appeared in some documentary footage on Kurdish satellite television. There, Andrea explained that she had participated in the revolution left in Germany, and through them got to know what was going on around the world.

She talks about the party and their ideology, something that she had to go through a year and half of political education and training to fully absorb. The goal for her is to bring all the knowledge back and make use of it in Germany. Finally, she got to go to fight alongside the PKK, in the Kurdish regions between Turkey and northern Iraq.

When she was killed in 1998, no one knew about the exact location of her death, and her body never came back, but that was not the end of Andrea Wolf’s story. * ‘A mixed zone is created where the boundaries of war blur in the definition.’

In the second half of November, Hito Steyerl examines the spectrum of interrelationships between territorial power politics and the individual forms of resistance. On the macro level, we learned that Germany has supported Turkey in the conflict in Kurdistan. After the fall of the Berlin wall, the weapons of the former national people’s army of the GDR were given to the Turkish army. On the individual level, we hear about the story of a Kurdish girl who set herself on fire in Manheim, in 1994, as a protest against restrictions imposed against the PKK in Germany. It was after this incident that Andrea decided to join the PKK. When asking a friend to translate the documentary footage from Kurdish television, Steyrel found out that its director was living in Berlin a few blocks from her. Many Kurds and former fighters lived in Germany, while many Germans, such as Andrea, had fought in Kurdistan for the PKK. ‘It was then that I realized Kurdistan was not only there, but also here.’

We hear the voice of a former fighter, recorded in Berlin: ‘That war took place in a vacuum. There are no witnesses. And in this situation everything is possible. All the bad things you could imagine are possible.’ And that is why the representation is so vital, because the truth about the war cannot be grasped that easily. ‘In every war the principle applies that the truth is the first thing to be sacrificed.’ Both sides use all they have in order to create their own version of reality.

When Steyrel went to a demonstration against the Iraq war as a camera person, she unintentionally got involved in propaganda, through the appropriation of her own image. The director of the camera team who was filming the protest knew about her film project.

He suddenly took over the camera and asked her to put a flag around

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We should remember that what is missing from the mainstream media about Kurdistan is that all the crimes that the PKK itself committed against the Kurds are unknown and unheard. We never hear about all their unfair treatments against the Kurds, their executions, and war crimes. It is important to be aware of the power of images and the realities they create within their contexts. * ‘November a new reactionary form of terror has taken over which abruptly breaks with the tradition of October. Now we are in the period of November. In November the former heroes become madmen and die in extra-legal execution somewhere on a dirty roadside. Andreas’ death was known to us in early November.’

After her death, Andrea was honored by Kurds as an ‘immortal revolutionary’. They started to use one shot of her face, from the Martial arts movie, as a revolutionary pin-up, on the banners and posters used in their protests. Andrea’s image traveled around the globe, passed from hand to hand, copied and reproduced by printing presses, video recorders, and the internet. Her image became an unfamiliar kind of icon, from being a hero in a feminist martial arts movie to the point that she was proclaimed a martyr for the Kurdish cause.

After all her investigation, Steyrel concludes that on a metaphorical level, the pose and the role Andrea took in their amateur movie later became her actual life. What if Andrea Wolf took her character so seriously that she was no longer happy with the symbolic action?

What if she had decided to become the image that was made of her?

To become the hero, to not be fiction anymore. These are the questions we don’t know the answers to, and the movie finishes like that.

‘In 1983 we made a feminist martial arts film and Andrea Wolf was its glamorous star. Then, this amateur fiction film suddenly turns into a document. Now, some of these documents have turned back into fiction. And this fiction tells us only one truth.

The truth is only in fiction Andrea disappeared into the sunset.

The truth is that only in fiction I have died for my ideas.

Only in fiction have women become stronger than men.

Only in fiction were German weapons not used against the Kurdish population.

Not even in fiction are the heroes innocent.

And only in fiction does the good ultimately prevail.’

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Bibliography Elkins, James. Why Art Cannot be Taught. University of Illinois, 2001.

Bishop, Claire. Radical Museology. Koenig Books, 2013.

Retallack, Joan. The Poethical Wager. University of California, 2003.

Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. W.W. Norton, 2019.

Johnson, Barbara. “Melville’s Fist. The Execution of Billy Budd.” Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 18, No. 4, Johns Hopkins, 1979.

Montaigne, Michel de. “Of the Uncertainty of Our Judgement.” The Essays, Everyman’s Library, 2003 (1580).

Rajchman, John. Aberrant Movements: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Semiotext(e), 2017.

Moten, Fred and Stefano Harney. The Undercommons. Fugitive Planning and Black Study.

Autonomedia, 2013.

Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust. Penguin Books, 2001.

Woolf, Virginia. “Street Haunting.” Street Haunting and Other Essays, Vintage, 2014.

Garcia, Tristan. The Life Intense. A Modern Obsession, Edinburgh Press, 2018.

Ahmed, Sara. What’s the Use? Duke Press, 2019.

Schulman, Sarah. Conflict is not Abuse. Arsenal Press, 2008.

Barthes, Roland. The Neutral, Columbia University Press, 2007.

Filmography Michelangelo Antonioni, Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (2004), 15 mins Jem Cohen, Museum Hours (2012), 90 mins Solange Knowles, When I get Home (2019), 60 mins Marianne Lambert, I Don’t Belong Anywhere: Le cinéma de Chantal Akerman (2015), 67 mins Maria Lassnig, Selfportrait (1971), 5 mins Terrence Malick, Badlands (1974), 90 mins The Otolith Group, Medium Earth (2013) & Anathema (2011), ±100 mins Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo Matteo (1965), 60 mins Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), 90 mins Hito Steyerl, November (2004), 30 mins Astra Taylor, Examined Life (2008), 90 mins

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Givone, Sergio. Historia de la Estética. Tecnos, 1990.

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259

Contributors

This publication was written and edited by:

Elisa Cuesta Fernández Shardenia Felicia Omid Kheirabadi Xenia Oline Keskikangs Klein Haevan Lee Renata Mirón Eva van Ooijen

260

Contributors

Clara Palli Eleonora Johanna Remmen Balint Revesz Emily Stevenhagen Rosa vanWalbeek Thijs Witty

261

Hashtag Index #academic p.26, 30, 54, 144, 224, 228 #academicfiction p.120 #abolition p.120 #abuse p.140 #acceleration p.172 #accelerationism p.154 #activist p.30 #aesthetics p. 14 #ajaccio p.74 #analysis p.96 #anew p.196 #animate p.246 #aristocracy p. 16 #atmosphere p.108 #awareness p.26 #beauty p.22 #believe p.108, 236 #benignity p.44 #bible p.236 #biography p.154 #historicalbiography p.144 #blood/menstruation p.208 #books p.230 #borges p.54 #bourgeoisnow p.164 #bufferzone p.240 #callin/call out p.198 #capitalism p.58, 168, 224 #chiasmus p.72, 78 #choreography p.84 #clinamen p.46 #chance p.80 #communication p.218, 246 #complexity p.118 #conflict p.240 #codependence p.246 #constellation p.26 #constrainment p.44 #contemporary p.46 #conversation p.202 #craft p.62 #crowd/collective p.126 #cyrcle p.68 #democracy p.14 #desperation p.72

#dialogue p.28, 44, 56 #dancing p.42 #deleuze p. 104, 108 #deviance p.124 #deterritorialization p.106 #diary p.208 #difference p.118 #doingnothing p.42 #doubting p.92 #electricityorenergy p172 #embodiment p.34 #endings p.78 #escapism p.134 #essay p.14, 22, 24, 28, 34, 46, 52, 56, 58, 68, 82, 96, 104, 106, 136, 172, 188, 190, 198, 210, 184, 230, 236 #lyricalessay p.88, 126, 166, 192, 246 #narrativeessay p.92 #narrative p.44, 80 #narration p.196 #existence p.92, 168 #existentialism p.48 #exclusion p.54 #exoticism p.16, 74 #experience p.56 #experiencial p.126 #family p.152, 190 #non-nuclearfamily p.210 #fascism p.144 #feminism p.188, 198 #fiction p.16, 44, 48, 74, 124, 128, 140, 164, 168, 234 #fictionalessay p.120 #narrativefiction p. 170 #fluidity p.234 #fragments p.198, 228 #fragmentarythinking p.228 #freedom p.134 #freedomofchoice p.58 #friendship p.202 #functionality p.30 #gender p.188 #glancing p.152 #growing p.166 #degrowth p.154

#history p.82 #hormones p.208 #horse p.84 #house p.192 #illusion p.58 #individualism p.144 #instagram p.248 #instructionmanual p.84 #intensity p.176 #intentionality p.24 #internalisation p.140 #interpretation p.82 #intimacy p.202 #joke p.84 #journey p.248 #kinship p.210 #language p.190 #lesbianism p.128 #letter p.118, 218 #library p.230 #life p.126 #jetsetlife p.48 #lifedeadagency p.110 #WingsforLife p.224 #liquidity p.48 #line p.68 #love p.190, 202, 218, 236 #machinesorappliances p.172 #masochism p.140 #materialism p.136 #meanings p.72, 88 #birthofmeaning p.228 #memory p.80, 136, 166 #metaphor p.80 #monologue p.218 #multiplicity p.88 #museum 28, 36 #challengethemuseumcollection p.22 #mybody p.166 #nature p.192 #ninism p.242 #non-place p.138 #normativity p.124 #object p.192 #ocean p.48

#onion p.106 #outside p.138 #ownership p.192 #pain p.140, 168 #parasite p.52 #Paris p.16 #perversion p.104 #philosophy p.240 #physicalculture p.14 #poetry p.62, 78, 84, 118 #experimentalpoetic p.110 #persianpoetry p.16 #poem p.72, 108, 134, 236 #postcolonialism p.190 #prejudice p.96 #presentism p.170 #prose p.150, 152 #lyricalprose p.242 #shortprosaicthing p.248 #publicspaces p.138 #queer p.188, 198 #queerness p.56, 184 #new-wave-of-queer p.198 #queer-critical p.198 #redbull p.224 #reading p.96 #reality p.36, 240 #récit p.196 #remembrance p.170 #representation p.36 #review p.36, 64, 98, 160, 178, 212, 250 #revolt p.44 #rhizome p.68 #roses p.128 #climbingrose p.208 #seasons p.208 #sex p.128 #sexuality p.188 #shortideas p.138 #shortstory p.42, 172 #sitting p.244 #slanderer p.134 #stone p.88 #stranger p.52 #study p.120

#subject p.246 #sublime p.196 #subtleradicalism p.150 #teaching p.24 #unteachable p.34 #un-learning p.26 #thinking p.92 #tonguetwister p.84 #tradition p.124 #trans p.184 #transcendentalism p.144 #travels p.74 #timetravels p.62 #university p.120 #upbringings p.236 #utopia p.30 #vagrancy p.42 #visualisation p.24 #vividness p.248 #walk p.134 #walkingart p.154 #wandering p.52, 136 #waywardness p.34 #wordgames p.74 , 84 #worldmaking p.62 #writing p.228