[...]
future turns out to belong to hierarchies?
-human history is a narrative of contingencies, not necessities, of missed opportunities to follow different routes of development, not of a nonlinear succession of ways to convert energy, matter, and information into cultural products.
[...]
...................................
the gene tells the flesh: “you are a human” or “you are a...”
**the flesh does not know any organs, continues pulsing to its own rhythms
(how to understand) activities of processes in other spheres of reality
living creatures and their inorganic counterparts
(G. Simmons:) “the flow of energy and mineral nutrients through an ecosystem manifest themselves as actual animals and plants of a particular species.”
biomass = circulation of flesh
plants biting into the system of solar radiation---capturing its sugars
in a sense “higher” animals are just fancy decorations in an ecosystem
(decorative large predators)
ecosystem = succession of plant assemblages ==> stable states ==> climax
ecosystem = a blind groping from stable state to stable state in which each plant assemblage creates the conditions that stabilize the next one.
continental forest <--- stability {the capacity to maintain a state with relatively minor internal fluctuations}
islands <--- resilience {the capacity to absorb major external and internal fluctuations by switching between several alternative stable states}
cities interaction with microorganisms
medieval cities ---islands--> {-concentration of energies -low degree of species heterogeneity (mainly humans)}
medieval European towns ----> isolated islands {/heat /food-web /cultural}
cattle as storage devices
process of shortening and redirecting food chains
biomass ["natural” state] ---> cooked biomass ---> processed through the “civilizing” power of fire*
{raw =/= cooked} ==> legend/myth
--> the cultural materials that accumulated unconsciously, sorted out by the pressure of the parasites themselves---germs and humans formed a meshwork
food ~ flow of flesh
culture is not a completely separate sphere of reality, but instead mixes and blends with flows of organic (and even mineral) materials.
flow of genetic materials
gene / ecosystem
| \
homogeneous =/= heterogeneous
*genes tease out a form out of an active flesh
(genes ~) replicators began not only merely to exist, but to construct for themselves containers, vehicles for their continues existence.
-how these “replicators” created constructs out of flesh and bone ---> then how did ‘self’ emerged in this?
(layers)
genotype .../.../.../.../... phenotype
| | |
info coded | self organizing | adaptive traits
into genes | processes (stable) | of a plant / animal
human gene is variable du to: {1-ecosystem 2-taboos}
(ancient) migrations : vehicle for the mechanism of evolution that today is producing the greatest evolutionary effect, allowing the incorporation of new genes into established gene pools, enhancing intrapopulation and reducing interpopulation variability.
[leas normative and binding] to other cultures <-- culture --> to the same culture [central to society]
strata = reproductive niche
(niche : adjusted timing and quality)
hierarchy building = {-homogenization (by a sorting process) -consolidation (through coding into legal, religious, and other formal regulations)}
limits of bounded rationality (عقل معاش aghle ma'ash?)
(Bounded rationality is
df class='thdf'>the idea that | df> in
decision-making, rationality of in
divi
duals is limite
d by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their min
ds, an
d the
finite amount of time they have to make a
decision.)
--> df class='thdf'>for example | df> soil loss,
due to careless exploitation of the forests’ resources has been a constant threat to
urban centers throughout
history. most
urban civilization were able to pass their genes for only seventy generations before they ran out of soil
---> although some
material an
d energy flows can be “
socialize
d” (submitte
d to cultural control), in practice many are not.
(my
interest an
d work on
hayula is about
:) the creative
morphologies that have always resi
de
d outsi
de the (west versus east) homoestatic text of the self an
d other
...................................
contemporary US film
bestiary
<==
•EC comics --> popular weird fantasy, horror science fiction
•creepy magazine
•the twilight zone --> horror, science fiction, suspense, comedy
•film noir --> flawed character hero <== german expressinonist cinematography
•cryptozoology (adventure)
...................................
division's of life
-monolithic notion of the mind has been challanged by psychology and phenomenology
biology has been previously essentially
zoocentric
--> monolithic notion of the bo
dy
--> me
dically proper
animal bo
dy
=/= if we
zoom in the living canvas, organisms blen
d into a pointil
list lan
dscape in which each
dot of paint is also alive
--> symbiosis, gaia, prokaryotic sex (omnisexuality)
gaia
--> biosphere un
d un
derstoo
d not as environmental home but as bo
dy (physiological process)
bacterial omnisexuality
--> flui
d genetic transfers
= sexual
=/= unitary self assume
d in the
zoocentric mo
del
medieval microcosmic
correspondences among prokaryotic, eukaryotic, zoological and geophysiological (gaian) levels
--> holonomic continuum --> *a type of individuality that is spatially and temporally more inclusive* [-my research on ajayeb has been more tended on the temporal inclusivity]
==> (in new biology) chimerical body: hybrid of bacterial species --Sagan--> like that many headed beast, the microbeast of the animal cell combines into one entity bacteria that were originally freely living, self-sufficient and metabolically distinct
•when respirers entered and did not kill but, rather, were incorporated by larger anaerobic archaebacteria
•mitochondria are the descendants of bacteria that had be come lodged within the cells of animals and plants
bacteria ==> eukaryotic cell
(the fable of) [Spencer's] animal world as a “gladiator's show” --> evidence for parasitism and competition (~ social progress in 19th century)
the grass-green photosynthetic organelles of all plants may be the descendants of a single, wildly successful bacterium, now shackled, albeit gently, in its cytoplasmic prison
-Sagan
*all cells with nuclei (a unicellular amoeba or amultibillion-cell anaconda) <== orgiastic encounters (eating, infecting, engulfing, feeding on, having sex with and so on) among quite different types of bacteria*
(plant cell) chimera = protective anaerobic host cell + internally multiplying photosynthetic bacterium + respiring bacteria
metabolic waste product of the mutation ==> atmospheric oxygen --> catastrophic --> energetic catalyst --> ...
fermenting bacteria (like trolls or elves in a cosmic fairy tale) dwelling underground --> stromatolite
army of mutants that evolved in the aftermath of the oxygen infusion (the greatest pollution crisis the earth) ==> human beings
chimerical eukaryotic system:
*spirochete* [...] at the edge of larger cell, sites of leakage supplying a constant flow of food [...] renounced their former freedom of movement in order to permanently attach ==> a means of locomotion and food acquisition
•spirochete and mad talent, lyrical drive, (tubercle patients were orators or grandios liars)
[*]human bo
dy
: an architectonic compilation of millions of
agencies of
chimerical cells
eukaryotic cells leveling cytoplasmic calcium concentrations
==> [our
] calcium phosphate of bone (mineral infrastructure of our bo
dies)
:
because seawater concentrations of calcium are often four or
ders of magnitu
de higher than
[one in ten million
], ocean-
dwelling cells must exu
de calcium to avoi
d poisoning. in the full-fathome
d sea
di
d the bones of our
ancestors an
d the shells of their eukaryote relatives evolve. skeletons
dramatize an ancient waste, whispering a ghostly testimony to the useful
internalization of hazar
dous waste sites. this givesa goo
d in
dication of how life within the general economy evolves to
deactivate, sacrifice an
d eventually incorporate the
dangerous
excesses that accrue from its solar growth. -
Sagan
--> the bo
dy is multiple (even if orchestrate
d by vicis
situdes an
d the nee
d for harmony over evolutionary time
--> *nature is
chimerical through an
d through
*
intraorganismic genetic transfers
*health
= matter of maintaining an
ecology
=/= matter of
defen
ding a unity
*
[*]bo
dy
: ornately elaborate
d mosaic of microbes in various states of
symbiosis
the
fiction of the self
**self is not only corporal but corporate
**
-Sagan
telescopic
technologies
==> Earth as a living entity
d>~d>= gaia
: (a
species of noble lie) biosphere behaives as a bo
dy
-temperature, pH and the distribution of reactive gases have remained extraordinarily stable for hundreds of millions of years
animal bo
dy
--> expose
d to
natural selection
=/= living Earth
•gaian worldview
•animism
•native Americanism
•deep ecologism
--> inhabits the
responsive tissues of a planet-size
d complex organism
--threatening
--> into the muck of planetary personification New Age joy
[---> go to the latest go
dzilla film in
dustrial apologetics an
d ecological satanism
--> tales of human accountability
]
--> *biocentrism
* [of our time 2019
] d>~d>=> noble
fictions
cross-
disciplinary
science
mytho
poetic
atmospheric chemistry
earth
: organize
d, self-containe
d look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously
skille
d in han
dling the sun
-Lovelock
--depen
ding
--> on the forever unfinishe
d an
d eroticize
d nature of human
symbolization
gaia
<== narrative
integration of
cosmology an
d morality (
<-- can we
do without it
?)
eukaryote ma
de from prokaryotes an
d of the mesocosmic level of
animal an
d plant bo
d-ies ma
de from repro
ducing eukaryotes
(three billion years ago, the ol
dest type of sex on the planet
:)
bacterial omnisexuality
--> promiscuous
: not
delimiting sexual exchanges with
species barriers (
+ it nee
ds
interme
diaries such as plasmi
ds or viruses to
do so)
--> lateral transfer
omnisexuality
: a means of genetically “locking” together once-
diverse groups (of prokaryotes)
bacterial crow
ding
==> life on earth
en
do
symbiosis
: one organism swallow another without
di
gesting it
==> o
rigin of new
species
[<
=/= gra
dual accumulation of mutations
]
cancer
<== rampant multiplication of the occasionally vampiric mitochon
dria
bacteria's bo
dies are so genetically open, that the very concept of
species falsjfies their character as a unique life form
Sagan
this
zoological “I”
[is open to ra
dical revision
?]
model of zoocentrism: encased self
(?what are ajayeb) bestiary's aesthetic model of a difference (=/=? zoocentric model)
--Burgess--> interference patterns generated by a series of symbiotically living form ==> artist
as an organism's connections to the external envimnment grow, that environment becomes its body [=/= ds class="frds">Sinads>]
snail
snail whose house is carried on his back, the “case” of the “self” has been moved, through an incorporation of what once would have been called inanimate matters--organically worked and reworked
-subjective identities always already und ergoing active (de)composition
-(relations of) physiological identity and psychological subjectivity link up
Sagan trying to relativize that
zoocentric be
drock of “self”
...................................
political
chimeras
chiefs’ talk
fluent in a
verbal genre
formalize
d speeches
directe
d either to lea
ders of other groups (Southern Amazon in multiethnic an
d multi
lingual
system of Upper Xingu) or to their own people,
depen
ding on the context in which they are
delivere
d
--Guerreiro
--> both the chief an
d his au
dience are
symbolically constructe
d as “para
doxical” subjects characterize
d by contra
dictory pre
dicates
•*how uncertainty can enact an exchange of perspectives* (through which the identities of the group and the chief are produced)
(from a gift-theory perspective) chief
: donator of goo
ds an
d wor
ds, an
d a receiver of spouses
<-- unilateral
direction
==> “chieftaincy
کدخدايى: a place of nonexchange”
[~ signs are
deprive
d of their circulation value
+ reciprocity is
denie
d un
der the
demand that
society make visible the foun
dations of power, maintaining them un
der the control of the collective bo
dy
] --> ‘cre
ditor
position of chief’ woul
d imprison power an
d assume control of the place where it coul
d emerge
=/= society of the state
ritual polity
public rituals are the main motor of collective life /
@apass
![--> d
Ferdosi Shahname river water passing flow detour
[source: UCB] Ferdosi Shahname river water passing flow detour [source: UCB]](images/ajayeb/0060.jpg)
chieftaincy
<--> ritual
ritual con
densation
: the
simultaneous enactment of nominally contrary mo
des of
relationship
:
•affirmations of identity are at the same time testimonies of difference
•displays of authority are also demonstrations of subordination
•the presence of persons or other beings is at once corroborated and denied
•secrets are simultaneously dissimulated and revealed
•
==> combination of contra
dictions
==> distinctive context of
communication
ritual efficacy of images an
d objects
ritual
relation to mnemonic
technologies
relations between images an
d wor
ds
--Severi--> concept of
chimera helps (an in
digenous mo
de
?) in un
derstan
ding power an
d dealing with it
(
Severi an
d Lagrou
+ Guerreiro)
[*]chimera
: every image that, by
designating a p
lural being by means of a single re
presentation, mobilizes its invisible parts, by purely optical means or by a set of inferences
-chimerical image associates, in a single visual form, indexes from different beings (a bird and a human being, a serpent and a jaguar, a wolf and a sea lion etc.), provoking a projection by the eye, which gives rise to an image implying at the same time the presence of these different beings
-evokes something that is implicit or absent to the observer
-chimerical images present a specific link between iconic representation (by imitation and convention) and indexical indication (visual, tactile or other) of a presence whose mode of existence, especially mental, is not realized materially
--> game between
:
•perception d'>& projection
•iconic representation d'>& indexical indication
==> intensification (of the efficacy of
chimeric images)
: “capture the eye
= capture the
imagination”
+ demand that by projection
[the observer
] mentally “complete” the image
in
dexical signs have a
causal contiguity (spatiotemporal contiguity) with what they signify
ritual action and artistic creation --Severi--> synesthetic
(my lecture-performances? ~ chimeric image of chiefs’ talk [khotbe خطبه fluent at combining different aesthetic resources] -->) linguistic + extralinguistic media in ritual performance (working/producing visual + mental images)
--> combining of indexical signs in communication acts ==> poetry of identities-in-motion (capable of projecting complex images of a nonvisual kind)
[*]image: an abstract portrait of identity fashioned out of cumulating patterns of congruence across all manner of indexical signs--including visual ones--that addressees and audiences can imaginatively experience, like a hologram
(Silverstein > Guerreiro)
~~--> ***relation between poetics and the production of identities***
chimerical representation: an art of ambiguity
(Strauss's Amazonian ethnology -->) dualism in perpetual disequilibrium: centripetal forces of centralization + centrifugal forces of dispersion
@apass ==> “societies against the state”
complex relations between hierarchy and counterhierarchy
(--> ds class="frds scrmbld">Renands>'s notion of monologue)
[Clastres's model rooted in Western language ideology looking at Amerindian language:]
metahistorical bond between *power d'>& speech* cannot be conceived of separately
•state societies --> the word is a ‘right’ to power (that may be used to command)
•societies against the state --> the word is a ‘duty’ of the chief (an indigenous leader must be capable of offering society the words that it ‘demands’)
◾Amerindian chief: a voice preaching in the wilderness (literally says nothing, a repetition of “edifying discourse”) <-- his speech is not spoken in order to be listened to (~ ritualized act [=/= act of communication]) ==> chief's speech is transformed into pure value (d>~d>= poet's speech for whom words are values before they are signs) --> (for Clastres) language =/= violence: a facet of coercive power
denotative قوه تفکيک ()
predicative (Dickensian aspect)
referential (the efficacy of its context and meaning depends on something else)
enunciation (pragmatic) ==> effects on the enunciator + audience ~~Silverstein--> [*]politics: the dynamic arrangement and rearrangement of people as subjects within structures of actual and potential action of all sort --comprises--> poetics <== everything experienced as effective practice is formed semiotically (~ through sign)
*political oratory [=/= informing the content of a message] uses poetical resources that allow interlocutors to have their identities mutually constructed by means of indexical signs* (that connect the message's form to extralinguistic contextual facts) --> *message ascribes to me [=/= message describes my reality]*
ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Alice,Shariati">Alids>'s use of political oratory in the context of ordinary interactions with me --> i forgot that the symbolic procedures that separate ritual speech from ordinary interactions are not necessarily intended to mean something
-what was the pragmatic conditions that define the kind of ‘language game’ ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Alice,Shariati">Alids> was playing?
[*]formalization: reduction of combinatory and creative possibilities of language by the use of formulas, archaic vocabulary, syntactic and stylistic patterns {--> distancing the
discourse from its semantic content ==> attention to its context and performance ==> effects}
ritual action --Severi--> reflexivity: definition of its own meaning and effectiveness within the context of ritual communication
(@apass's) performative and poetic structure
[Guerreiro -->] chief = consanguine kin ابى d'>& potentially dangerous enemy [---> go to transference]
(chief's fellows's both as children d'>& prey)
ritual speech ==> ***complex enunciator*** [d>~d>= #feedback]
ambiguity of duality of gestural and verbal [==> exchange of perspectives (=/= exchange of words)] --?--> paradoxical construction of identities
+
chimerical representation --> presence of counterparts (of percepted fragmentary signs) to its audience
beautiful and strong body
serene and generous behavior
linguistic abilities (“made to discourse”)
(we are living with) mythical, aesthetic, and ritual elaboration
guiding them with “good speech”
pleasing them by sponsoring rituals
welcome messengers (“made in order to greet messengers”)
relational and possessive
(possessed form of) asymmetrical relationship between a denominated (individualized) person and an undifferentiated collective
agglutinate
enunciated in the same tone with no pauses to breath
+
expletive ah
+
set of particles
+
deictic ige (evidential [devaluating?] particle that indicates proximity, presence, or existence, fixed to the copula --> piece of advice?)
expletive and particles with no lexical element --> self-derogatory forms of speech (the “humbling effect”)
it's common for men to emit long high-pitche
d an
d melo
dic screams as soon as they wake up
==> to wake the whole village up with joy
present is nothing more than an impoverishe
d form of a previous age i
dealize
d as gran
diose
<-- (chief) to “work on his
children” like an
ancestor, he must state that he coul
d never
do so
*parallelism
*
enchainment of repeate
d verses an
d themes
==> the shaman is
symbolically i
dentifie
d as a para
doxical character (human
d'>& nonhuman, here
d'>& there, in the
present time
d'>& in the mythic time)
--> transfer properties from one being to another
(formal
=/=) ‘performative parallelism’ between the actual chief an
d those before him
==> attenuate
past d'>& present
-he speaks about ancestors, as an ancestor (using their language), and on ancestors’ behalf (since they are gone)
(antonymic affirmation of) “
past =/= present”
d>~d>=> shame in the
listeners
==> act as the ancient chiefs’ own
children
--Austin--> illocutionary force
==gives
==> capacity to perform an act in saying something
*hyperbole (contrast)
==> the au
dience coul
d be
aesthetically an
d morally compelle
d
to act in some way (perlocutionary acts)
that which had once been human (--> mythical human origin of the plant corn)
chief is weakened ==> people tend to be more egoistic --> “go crazy” + forget about their relatives = (the first step in) producing a witch
(Pir d>~d>= chief's) foundations of kinship = thinking about kin =/= forgetting kin :
•generating and raising children
•producing food
•avoiding witchcraft
==> fabrication of a collective body of kin
imperfections of the present + ideal of social life ==encourage==> people to behave like kin (<-- needs to be actively produced)
[we have to be carefull in art with performances of] words hold within them the positive moral and creative element of power; and contain meaningfulness, value, artistry and affective mass (--> carrying the weight of an order without appearing as such) =/= authoritarian discourse
@ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Singa">Ingads>
--> ***a brief moment, a world where the difference between chiefs (leader-like speaker, am i like that in my performance lectures?) and nonchiefs (listeners, his children) can be effective***
xxxxxx
...................................
theory (is either)
: *powerful
* (accounting for a limite
d number of features vali
d for a great number of cases)
{extensionally oriente
d, for example comparative or statistical analysis
} =/= *expressive
* (accounting for a great number of features belonging to a limite
d number of cases)
{intentionally oriente
d, for example clinical case stu
dies
}
extensional
--> generalizing
‘ethnography
==> re
duction of complexity’
=/= complexity is precisely what characterizes ethnography
counterintuitive
==give
==> re
presentation its psychological salience
the experience of
dreaming is full of counterintuitive re
presentations (rapi
dly forgotten)
counterintuitive context of ritual
communication
--> successful propagation of a re
presentation (
memorable)
for example re
citation of shamanistic chants
--construct
--> an acoustic mask
=/= convey meaningful message
for
religion (an
d marketing
?) culturally successful re
presentation
: *a counterintuitive re
presentation
formulate
d within counterintuitive con
ditions of
communication
*
}--Severi--> we nee
d a more expressive theory of cultural propagation (
<-- my try in telegram
bestiary text)
doctrinal (semantic
memory) an
d imagistic (episo
dic
memory)
religious mo
des
(how to better be un
derstan
d the contemporary art's
drive to)
*ritual
communication
* --> performe
d through both action
d'>& speech
•the context: establishment of a particular form of interaction (from a series of contradictory connotations, being two things at the same time --> symbolic transformation) ==construct==> a special identity of the participants
--> xxxx
جمع گرایانه syncretistic movement
@apass (use
d as an
instrument of resistance
?)
messianism
= intense propagation
+ para
doxical i
dentification
--> convert entire populations in a short amount of time
pragmatics of
communication
--> appearance of a para
doxical “I” personifie
d by the prophet
(warrior shaman messiah's) contra
dictory self-
de
finition
==able
==> enunciate para
doxical statements
--Severi--> to be faithful to the local tra
dition
Appache
--> op
position to
ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Christianson">Christiands>ity take the firm of conceptualizing
ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Christianson">Christiands>ity as a
different
religion
•absorbing but not understanding the elements (of ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Christianson">Christiands> religion) d>~d>= being impressed by story {<-- i do this in my artistic work but i don't ask for devotion or trust}
--> using typical
imagistic
methods, ritual of
dance
the ol
d man Arnol
d
chant (ritual
symbolism)
-->
•treat illness
•accompany rite of passage
•impart magical powers
-
(amerin
dian) shamanism
--> establishes a
metaphorical link, a set of analogies
d>~d>= mystical
relationships between ritual objects an
d living being
[--> construct its own truthuniverse, super
natural
dimension thought of a possible
world]
blee
ding pearl
parallelism
: (a
technique of) th
reading
verbal images together
[Severi's early
interpretation of
] tra
dition (woul
d nee
d to) preserve the text
+ instructions to use
--by
--> verbalizing them (store them in the chant)
Kuna
--> description of the
position of the speaker (“shaman is now seate
d there an
d is saying...”) characterizes the special kin
d of
communication (appropriate for ritual changing)
shaman
: novel
sort of
enunciator (len
ding his voice to other invisible beings
--> p
lural an
d contra
dictory i
dentity)
acoustic mask
: a reflexive means to
define the ritual i
dentity of the speaker
reflexive application of parallelism
(
@Isabel, how to make
community without becoming a cult
?)
use snake
--> capture the
imagination of the followers
==> authority
imagistic (iconic mo
de, sequence of aci
d)
+ doctrinal (
discursive mo
de, text, prayer)
= pragmatics context of
enunciation
==> messianistic
religion
both para
doxical
d'>& paralle
listic
new ways to be faithful...
...................................
exhibition-making an
d preventive conservation
--> inspection an
d ex
position
<-- (
different un
derstan
dings an
d use of)
*touch
= curatorial
*
professionalisation of curating
short-term e
ducation
cultural exchange
@apass fee
dback
: (terrain of) peer engagement
--> un
derstan
ding each other’s practices
e
ducation, research,
literacy, management,
networking, custo
dianship, au
dience
development
research (over
due)
relationship with intelligence
--✕--> **research
: a
dventure of charismas
**
...to be migratory (in thought, praxis,
community)
...subjectivities without a
heritage in criticality an
d art
constraint
: a source of self-abun
dance
--ds class="frds scrmbld">Renands>
--> suffering an
d risk
= opportunities to hybri
dize with life
curating
:
•nutrition and extension
•analysis and transplantation
•=/= content historicization
•=/= data
extraterritoriality
being collocate
d in all the whispers of the
world
wild pollination
artificial bree
ding
ds class="frds scrmbld">Renands>
: Institutional work carrie
d by a freelancer, a private in
divi
dual or a civil servant can improve the publicness of art. It gives confi
dence to the work of art in public service. This institutionality creates new tasks in art that can be sustaine
d by other practitioners.
@apass
...................................
publication of the miracle
[the miraculous in exhibitions
+ self-exhibiting miracles
]
ds class="frds scrmbld">Renands>'s
*exhibitionary
heritage
* of miracles
seeing (risk of sight)
--> passionate misun
derstan
ding, confusion, rejection
cultural engineering of
anthropology of
heritage
exhibitionary
heritage
: a scaf
folding that times, locates, an
d proliferates all that is exhibitionary (like a shower, or rainfall)
curatorial subjectivity
exhibitionary complex
•describe the problems of an exhibitionary heritage
•find solutions to artistic problems in the description of exhibitionary complexes
(the
df class='thdf'>bad idea of | df>
interpreting exhibitionary
heritage as an) exhibitionary solution to problems that are re
presente
d by the works of art
--> correlate artistic solutions with exhibitionary problems
}<--ds class="frds scrmbld">Renands>
-- consumes the links between art, exhibits, an
d curation
naturally an
d atheoretically
creation of art
<--✕--> birth of exhibition
(artistic problem
~/= exhibitionary problem)
...using the concepts an
d tools of exhibition
history
the
df class='thdf'>bad idea of | df> the artistic is conceive
d in exhibitions
d'>& the exhibitionary in artworks
postulate
matter in terms of
•errors
•questions
(not necessarily in terms of)
•exhibition
•artwork
exhibitionary
heritage of
•artistic practices --> the miracle in ideas/objects
•curatorial practices --> categories of the miracle
•exhibitionary practices --> the miraculous as datum of the world
miracle can be containe
d or can burst into the stu
dy of tra
ditions an
d trans
missions
miracle
= content
+ form
miraculous
--> surrogate me
dium of the artistic
(
ds class="frds scrmbld">Renands>
:) how a miracle can turn the hopeful perplexity surroun
ding Virgin Mary into the relentless exhibitionary
----> *the power of sug
gestion is curatorial
* --> materials can be rearrange
d (or other contents can be shaken off from them
according to the
demands of art
history)
flower showers
an auspicious beginning for a lasting
devotion
گلبرگ --> the petal applie
d to the bo
dy of the sick an
d invali
d, a sacre
d relic that is progressively
distant yet proliferative
problem of the exhibitionary
heritage
--ds class="frds scrmbld">Renands>
--> discursify that even miracles can be
interprete
d art
historically, that they are worthy of belief
Julia Scher (first two weeks of April (1-14.04) an
d last two weeks of June (14-30.06))
Marie-Luise
Angerer (last two weeks of June)
Luis Negrón van Grieken (free)
ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Christianson">Christiands> Sievers
Daniela Kinate
der
Davi
d Hahlbrock
Zilvinas Lilas
Matthias Müller
Phil Collins
Hei
de Hagebölling
Mischa Kuball
An
dreas Henrich
Ute Hörner
Peter Frie
drich Stephan
////////////////////
i am using these spaces basically as their potential for being a host for something else, rather than pointing their pure site
specificity.
my work has worke
d (for me
?) whenever it was an
intervention to/for its objecthoo
d as a being-in-art-form or for my own fantasies. the problem/
matter of exhibition.
the theoretical work woul
d base on
reading shyness as for a philosophical opening for the practical part of the
diploma that comes afterwar
d. By this way of
writing i operate myself, breaking free from the process of offering philosophical evi
dence.
•Maulwurfe in the Moschee (shit on the head looks like Turban(!), about action and taking the action and getting the call, over doing of anything, revenge program, revelation to other's transmission, talking about shit in a mosque, etc.)
•king lear in the Hochzeitssalon (space for speech act, ritual, marriage of daughters, etc.)
•islam intro in the Biologie Zentrum Uni Köln (hygiene in islam, work on memory relation to research, reciting Koran brings the dead as witness, etc.)
////////////////////
shyness is prescribe
d for woman, it exists in
religion as a female virtue
thinking in yoga posing (thinking, thanking), the thanking pose and the always thinking pose in yoga.
intervention is not always attacking the other-as-stupid, but rather how do you perform your intervention in that sense that is that YOU are stupid before the other
the moment of madness in encountering art, understanding has to go through that madness
i am going to have a smooth transition from my amazon project to my diplom, via animal talk?
--> ‘face’ in performance. (read Haraway, Levinas, Derrida)
face is linked to sensibility and vision in an intimate way. something that resists categorization, containment or comprehension, infinitely foreign. it is not the biological face. it is df class='thdf'>the idea of | df> infinity within oneself. this idea of infinity which the face encapsulates is for Levinas the key means by which thought is brought into relation with what goes beyond its capacity. and this is crucial in art and specifically in performance art for encountering something such as face, face of the performer or the face of the work. the face is perceived as something that resists possession or utilization. the face promotes a discourse when it invites me. (ranting against sober means of communication). the face to face situation founds language.
presence of the face coming from beyond the world , but committing me to human fraternity (Gemeinschaft) does not overwhelm me as a numinous essence arousing fear and trembling. to be in relationship while absolving oneself from this relation is ‘to speak’. the face always speaks directly and absolutely to me.
many late 20th century horror films feature a masked villain. the act of masking the face is not only metaphorical, but also has the terrifying effect of dehumanizing the villain. in herbert kelman's work on dehumanization, when the perception of a person “as an individual, independent and distinguishable from others, capable of making choices is denied, they no longer elicit compassion or other moral responses. the facelessness of the alien, swarms of ants, or other villains of pop culture.
for face look at facade too.
--> ‘provocation’ in performance. (read Haraway, Levinas)
--> ‘act’ in performance. (read grotowski)
what is to be: ‘completely natural and logical’. dealing with the discomfort of unreasonable presence on the stage. nonrepresentational aspects of performance
--> ‘teaching’ that is not rhetorics where the revelation of the other can take place (Avital, Levinas). teaching is synthesizing for someone else. what kind of communication is teaching involved?
the discourse inherent in the relation with the other is like or as a sermon.
--> ‘eyes’ threatening or seducing eyes of the performer (Rainer)
--> ‘ranting’ of the drunk in the face of the sober. disturbance of a continuity with attack with words.
--> ‘saying’, before it conjugates a verbal sign, is already an ethical gesture. saying is therefore already the proximity of one to the other, the commitment of an approach, the one for the other.
one saying enters into the service of the said, that is the thematization of being, purity of its intentions will be inevitably compromised. a saying that must be unsaid. a movement of thought that continues to resist collapsing into a settled expression, freedom from the cage of thematics. this mission (responsibility for the other) can be adequately expressed only through a certain impossible undoing of language. presenting a philosophical other is only possible when we generate a saying saying saying itself.
my performance talk: to situate my subjectivity linguistically (in a nonpresence and a nonplace). (?) (if the stakes are at situating myself, then the question is why?)
saying becomes totally exposed in its approach to the other. in limited social situations it creates risks of embarrassment or rebuttal and perhaps sounding psychotic. something that will strip away all protective layers, whether cultural or literal, from the body (of knowledge). it can also be masochistically painful for the subject. the absolute saying is a trauma, with vulnerability and passivity even is a bodily way, where the ethical being is: one penetrated by the other. (saying is ethical while said is juridical.)
--> ‘psychology’ not only what we do but why we do. the science that should be studied so much in art, specially in performance art. the how of human behavior, feelings and emotions.
the psychological space, the intermediary space of the ethical relation, shyness and commitment to the other. “i am infinitely more demanding of myself than of others”. (is this the realm of shyness being before god?)
--> ‘intelligence’ in the sense that what do i pay attention to and why, and what do i ignore and why, and how do i put it together. (synthesizing)
--> ‘cornered’ someone that is cornered ontologically. can not shy out of the corner.
--> ‘present’ of presence signifies nowness. The movement of time makes things present by making them now. What is the relation of this “making present” to the world? Is the movement of time ultimately to be traced to that of the world? On such a view, we take the successive nows that constitute time’s movement as a function of the world. Their origin is the successive impressions we receive from its objects. We, thus, come to affirm that nowness is the world’s presence to us in the impressions it leaves. Augustine gives the classic expression of this position when he writes: “It is in you, O my mind, that I measure time. ... What I measure is the impress produced in you by the things as they pass and [the impressions] abiding in you when they have passed."2 The impress is registered as the present now. We register the abiding impression left in the mind as the remembered now. If, however, we break the tie between presence and the world, we have to say that the impress is the result of our own activity. The impression that results in the now comes, in other words, not from the world, but from ourselves. It is a result of our affecting ourselves. In Derrida’s words, its origin is “the auto-affection” of consciousness.
--> ‘consciousness’ Since it involves the self-awareness that
demands self-
presence, the
question of
language expan
ds once again. In answering it, we must inquire into the
nature of consciousness.
--> ‘
veil’ un
veile
d. a sign of
difference, a kin
d of timi
dity
? is shyness same as
veil? is it a sheer projection
? are we (am i) sub
due
d?
--> ‘exhibitionist ambitions’ an
d i
dealize
d structures. the exhibitionist ambitions of these artists forswear all objective orientation. Their own uniqueness an
d gran
diosity is taken for grante
d. it is not open to
debate an
d nee
d not be foun
de
d in a structure
d manner that is accessible an
d comprehensible to one's powers of appraisal an
d ju
dgment. the re
presentatives of post
modernism a
dopt the sty
listic forms, themes an
d visual
material of their art from the boun
dless treasure trove of art
history so
readily accessible to
day.
depen
dence on what has al
ready been
formulate
d. the un
derlying tone of this art serves to flaunt an unparallele
d sense of superiority an
d gran
diose self-confi
dence. seen in many performance in this time too. (in my painting i have a rational point of view.) i
don't want to orient myself towar
ds ambitions, injecte
d by libi
dinal energy, of my gran
diose self-artist. of those, whose prime concern is to show their uniqueness fin
d themselves face
d with the
question: “what is to be
done
?”. I too, choose to refuse to pan
der to the
demands of innovation, style an
d integrity, but at the same time not to work myself up to gran
diose self-image of artistic omnipotence.
look at the theory of intelligence for
language an
d other kin
d of ‘enjoying’ the
nature, art or other structures.
how is the philosophy of the
sublime (quality of greatness) relate
d to the format of my talks
? if
my work is not an en
deavor on the philosophy of the
sublime then what is it
?
in this
writing i am not going to work in the forms of claims as
stages in a logical argument. my approach woul
d we unsubstantial to break free from the process of offering philosophical evi
dence...
mobilizing forces
scoring
system
op
position to shamanism in performance art, points in The Art of
Modernism -
Sandro Bocola, for critique on Beuys an
d Abramovich.
Face
d with objects an
d performances by Joseph Beuys, viewers are as baffle
d as they are by Marcel
Duchamp's Bottle Rack. They
do not know what is going on, are unable to relate what they see to any known
system an
d are left entirely to their own
devices, i.e. to their own emotional
responses, for all the goo
d that
does them. They feel
affecte
d, an
d have a vague an
d almost unwilling sense of being touche
d at a certain emotional
depth, but are unable to
interpret these feelings (isn't that the case with most art performances
?). Beuys celebrates complex an
d incomprehensible rituals before an astonishe
d au
dience. He subjects his person to
difficult tasks an
d appears to be making some kin
d of sacrifice in
doing so. Beuys, after all, wishes to heal. To ju
dge by his statements, he wishes to re
deem the German people an
d in
dee
d all of humankin
d from their
social evils, their petrifaction an
d impotence. In this sense, he transcen
ds the role of the artist. He sees his au
dience not, in the tra
ditional sense, as a free counterpart to whom he
presents a work (as form an
d expression of his own self), but as a
material to be forme
d. He appears as the people's tribune, as teacher, seer, healer an
d prophet, transforming the role of the artist into that of the shaman.
Kohut stresses that the effect of messianic an
d charismatic personalities is not necessarily
detrimental un
der all circumstances. At times of severe crisis, it is not the mo
destly self-
doubting type of personality that is nee
de
d (who generally makes up the lea
ding stratum in calmer times). In times of fear, the masses turn to a messianic or charismatic personality, not because above all they have recognize
d his abilities an
d competence, but because they feel that this lea
der will satisfy their nee
d to be imperturbably convince
d of being
right, or because they want to i
dentify with his strength an
d security.
(caution criticizing beuys an
d abramovic, you
don't know all about them. your criticism is certain aspect of their persona an
d performance face, in or
der to make your own point an
d argument. it is not to un
derstan
d their works. is this ok
?)
when i
deas fail, wor
ds come in very han
dy. (
Goethe?)
all
serious thinking is
interpersonal
? it is the key to how we think by challenging each other with our i
deas.
this is early, i shoul
d really give
lectures in 20 years.
intimacy
: first talking than thinking (maybe even taking it back), feeling an i
diot afterwar
d. When the saying is taken over by
rhetoric or maneuvering or calculation then the problem is persua
ding or proving, not intimacy. (intimate thoughts in Shakespear). running with strategy in conversing an
d conversation (winning a roun
d or winning an argument) is traceable back to power an
d coercion an
d its
discomforts an
d anxieties. the art that i am talking about shoul
d not win the conversation. (but why intimacy in the art project at all
?) by intimacy i fin
d a route to my true consciousness. in intimacy only there is the possibility for
love. not making the other/au
dience to think in a certain way, but exactly the op
posite, the performer has to loose the game of convincement or wit (in her work/form/performance).
shyness
: not the clinical term. i am talking about a shyness that is
deep in the character, a kin
d of trembling before the other.
the ethical
relation to the other, as always important, stakes are higher in performance
? the proximity of the art object, the
relation of the face to face
relationship between the speaker an
d the
listener, is the later container of ethical stake
?
not au
dience attention, but au
dience
imagination. not their reaction, but their
response. Usually a
response is a reply to a query not the result of a stimulus. Stimulus is an urgent vital process that acts to arouse action in shortest time. that time that is the price for thinking.
shakespear, the Everest of acting. Why performance/theater is not relate
d to thinking an
d is always setup for acting an
d action
? nee
d for
drama.
the event has happene
d off
stage, now we talk about it. Macbeth, unlike tarantino!
violence is
symbolize
d in many goo
d ol
d art. karaoke, etc.
violence is art-performance is exhibite
d...
the power of voice in islam, taboo of bo
dy.
no one is behea
de
d in the
history of islam. (
read tarikhe sakhtkoshi) contrast to French revolution.
i am not going to critique islam, i
don't know what it is, just let me perform it.
![--> d
stone energy field matter hayula story nunhuman agency
[source: Emanuel Swedenborg] stone energy field matter hayula story nunhuman agency [source: Emanuel Swedenborg]](images/ajayeb/0144.jpg)
who performs
? someone
doing something
?
what is the cure for shyness.
‘performing for the other’
silent coming an
d going of the feminine, (form of shyness
?)
when we sen
d the shyest as an ambassa
dor to re
present us.
It is a self-
defining
system of signs referring to signs.
a quiet
listener. we have yet no i
dea what is speak. how taking transforms the min
d that talks. con
ditions of thinking in
relation to talking, before or after the mouth that talks. thinking in other
languages. if intimacy is saying before thinking, how fits the acts of maulwurfe
?
work on shyness, I have to start (slowly) with what i (kin
d of) know.
“...Nu
dge
d on the s
cene as a kin
d of shivering being,
anxious an
d shy,..” (kafka, test)
There is the sug
gestion here, as in
Holderlin, that timi
dity might be a
dialect of stupi
dity. (Fin
ding no way of testing out of these subtle complicities, one falls asleep, exhauste
d by the
distress of proving one's most minimal merit.) (
Avital Ronell, The
Veils of Servility)
According to Silvan Tomkins, “shame operates only after
interest or enjoyment has been activate
d.”
as
Sedgwick has argue
d, for some people, an
d most often queer subjects, “shame is simply the first, an
d remains a permanent, structuring fact of i
dentity
: one that ... has its own, powerfully pro
ductive an
d powerfully
social
metaphoric possibilities.
the i
dea is that the performance that avows its performan
ceness acknowl
edges the
difficulty of fitting into roles, fin
ding i
dentities, an
d managing a self, especially a self vulnerable to the effects of stigma.
is there a queerness in me an
d my performance
? is shyness, they way i
do it, queer
?
turn the
spectator to the
reader.
does shame
intertwines with queer
?
this
affect an
d mo
de of performance (which normative euro American culture woul
d rather era
dicate) can be queere
d, twiste
d an
d turne
d into en
dless artful enactments.
queer, as experimental
linguistic re
presentational an
d political artistic performance.
shameless in my shyness. (at the level of
affect theory
?)
shyness
: looking otherwise an
d feeling
differently
to act shame
d of exactly that which he is ex
cited. (is this a queer subject
?)
queer is not iso
morphic with gay or lesbian or any other fixe
d i
dentity, rather, queerness un
does all i
dentities into an en
dless multiplicity an
d unbecoming. (liquefaction of any soli
dification)
queer seems to hinge much more ra
dically an
d explicitly on a person’s un
dertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception on a filiations.
In
dee
d, the performativity of both queer an
d shame can be reiterate
d differently; the subject can
disi
dentify from such
interpolations an
d re-
deploy the abjecting an
d/or
disciplining of the terms in unforeseen ways, which Warhol
di
d.
In surren
der the hea
d ben
ds an
d meets the heart. The hea
d that
does not ben
d has no value, an
d the hea
d that is stiff will have to ben
d sometime, either in surren
der or in shame. The hea
d that ben
ds in surren
der will never have to ben
d in shame. Shame accompanies arrogance. Shyness accompanies
Love. See how
children are en
dowe
d with shyness, that is
natural. Shyness is inherent. Shame is inflicte
d by
society an
d is acquire
d. Shame brings guilt an
d shyness a
dds to one
? beauty. Retain your shyness an
d drop your shame. (
?)
shame is simply the first an
d remains a permanent, structuring fact of i
dentity
: one that has its own, powerfully pro
ductive an
d powerfully
social
metaphoric possibilities.
deci
ding not to care how people thing (or feel
?), because those are the things i
don't want to change! (or i
don't think i shoul
d want to change) (warhol)
what
do i want to change
? just having fun with my stuff. can i
deci
de not to care what people think
? shyness...
in shame i wish to continue to look (or talk, or make or perform) an
d be looke
d at (or spoken to or seen in my performing of myself), but i also
do not wish to
do so. (Silvan Tomkins)
i am embarrasse
d to show the shy singing.
chronically embarrassing my self. (Aula
presentation, shy singing, ...)
on passivity, note for the reader: not to mistake it for endurance in this discourse. here we are talking about a philosophical term, in relation to the “being” and the “other”...
an architecture that tries to be modest, a performance that tries to be intimidating as much
as it can.
just in time shyness
what are the pitfalls and abysses of philosophical reflection on and with shyness?
what am i trying to shortcut?
was Socrates intruding in his punk philosopher, stopping people at back allies and perform philosophy. he doesn't hold back, he intrudes, tattooing the body of the other, questioning.
the problem of his project?
i am not shy in the work that i am trying to present publicly (?)
where am i shy?
posture of position or gesture
the moment you stand in front of the audience you stop being authentic.
when we listen to something very carefully and allow ourselves to be moved we can tune in ti=o the art work and absorb its methods. i have found myself moved when i allowed it, by the most childish and stupid works of arts.
open minded and eager to make connections
(jane jacob,) (1) community is spontaneous, the tissues of community are not something that can be planed, that they happen spontaneously. (2) and this only happens when you are at the local scale. so in this sense, design is suspect, because design is set to be post spontaneity.
find a way to think locally, and thinking about the city as a product of spontaneous interaction between people who are different. but the design can also make something that has a social character.
we perform an experiment to prove or disprove a hypothesis, we are working within a framework of a closed system, the original proposition governs our procedures and observations, at arriving at yes or no. but when performing the experiment we come across something unforeseen, or prompted by evidence to jump tracks and think about a different issue. then we are working within the framework of an open system. we move beyond yes or no to exploring something emergent, something whose elements was there but whose form was unknown to us. a fancy and careful way of saying “something new”, because it is new to our understanding.
William Empson
art results from overcrowding(?)
when one is responsive rather than assertive one can't imagine where one will end Up: thinking. this responsiveness is different than the state of being active or passive. a passivity that motivates and mobilizes the subject into places that are yet unknown to her/him.
Thinking, as Heidegger says, may be much the same as wandering. my lectures are like wandering.
someone who studies paradoxes, poetry and philosophy
(keeping what you know away from society, history and away from art, not to acknowledge what you have learn)
incompatibility between a particular love and a particular social arrangement for love.
when you play with others, not try to shine and not try to shy. (shyness is dangerous to society)
it is like being lynched by kukluksklan.
curios about somebody else rather than identifying with them.
i really learned how to work with people by learning how to keep people from killing each other in street.
if we are very sympathetic, saying “i know how you feel” is privileging solidarity: “we are all in this together”. but well we can't all be in this together in the same way, so what is it that we do together, despite this fact.
instead of the declaring voice “i believe this or that”, we can say “i would have though” or “perhaps” introducing a zone of ambiguity in people's relationship with each other you might get something social. subjunctive mood (konjuktiv) not only is to zusammenbinden the elements of semantic also to zusammenbinden the the people who are speaking in these terms.
cooperation is a rehearsal not a performance.
public real made of people who don't argue in behalf of their own interest but to think most disinterestedly.
my talks/works is about how we make sense of our environment, the network that we live in and the texts and discourses that we are reading and writing.
how shyness (even) look like? can we recognize it when we see it?
what is feeling comfortable in the presence of strangers? not verbally i mean, physically.
df class='thdf'>the notion of | df> being comfortable in the presence of difference. being physically comfortable in presence of the people who are not like yourself.
the subjunctive is the language that the shy uses naturally, which is one of the necessary elements of cooperation. in contrast to subjunctive speech, there is declarative speech is a form of declaration invites submission, and it invites submission because somebody else defines for you clearly what something is about. there is almost an erotic of that, they really now what they are on about, they really know who they are, and you become a spectator to their definiteness. giving yourself up to somebody who seems more defined and more purposive.
cooperation in islam is not a personal experience, it is something that is encoded in very strict ritual. it is not an act of choice. cooperation is not a duty but a desire.
my talk is a fancy and careful way of responding to the voices of other. the ones that are sounding in my ear. (inslam, shakespear, math, that girl in enghelab square, etc.). i am not good at immediate reaction, so i respond with a delay and a lot of playfulness and black holes that come in to be of the part of this, by this relationship to the Other, that is manifesting itself through the language of the Other (islam)
In my performative practice, I seek a way to approach thinking about things that arrests my curiosity. It is a form of commitment to what comes forward and calls for thinking, an attention before what I do not know. My Talks are fancy and careful responding to that otherness, to the voice or face that speaks to you from somewhere that you cannot yet locate. This call could be from a sadistic super-ego inside or Shakespeare or kleinen Maulwurf, der wissen wollte, wer ihm auf den Kopf gemacht hat.
i am not just interested in my own foundational metaphors.
is there an amateurishness at the intersection of art and philosophy that i am drawing?
what is amateur?
the fact that i am giving talks is very much related to the social culture around me, in Germany the culture has a taste to listen and there is an interest for speech. now i get it like in the case of warhol he is rethinking his surrounding culture which is dominated at that time by pop, media and celebrity. i am rethinking the academia and philosophy that is in relationship with the arts, my issues and interests are different than warhol for that matter. i am enthusiastic and extremely interested in the material that i am working with, and at the same time overthrown by it and i believe in it, in the same way that maybe warhol believed in pop culture and business.
the nightmare after performance
df class='thdf'>the notion of | df> skill in art, performance, life, work
trauma, in the experience of the trauma, the source mixes, and articulate in metaphors and hubric signifiers.
relationship between older works and performances, the issue of skill and technology.
it took 60 years after the developments in tempering metal, for barnors to learn new nigf techniques. this is common in the history of technology, that a tool appears before people know how to use it. do we know how we can use computers? when we master a technique, its uses are not immediatly clear.
getting interested in the wrong answer in the four answer question.
no skill develops without a good dose of curiosity. which enables us to think about what might be, rather than what is.
There is a half-remembered discussion of Sigmund Freud I read once in a book and which I have been paraphrasing regularly ever since. It said that for Freud dreams were a way of thinking by doing. You run, you cry, you kiss, you love, you cheat, you argue, you fall, you kill, you eat, you sing, you get lost, you travel back in time, you become somebody else – but you do it all in your head. You do it in your head and so it is thinking, just not a thinking we recognize as thinking. When I am dreaming I am composing thoughts in the way an artist composes a painting or a witch a potion – an assemblage made of bodies and places and actions. An embodied thinking, that is no less eloquent or extraordinary or transformative for being so.
...................................
...One can chat an
d gossip but it is forbi
dden to preach,
lecture or
instruct.”
Clau
dio Magris’ Micronismi
...................................
(butler)
the structure of a
ddress itself
although I
di
d not know in whose voice this person was speaking, whether the voice was his own or not, I
di
d feel that I was being a
ddresse
d.
To
respond to this a
ddress seems an important
obligation
during these times.
It is about a mo
de of
response that follows upon having been a
ddresse
d, a comportment towar
d the Other only after the Other has ma
de a
demand upon me, accuse
d me of a failing, or aske
d me to assume a
responsibility.
The structure of a
ddress is important for un
derstan
ding how moral
authority is intro
duce
d an
d sustaine
d if we accept not just that we a
ddress others when we speak, but that in some way we come to exist, as it were, in the moment of being a
ddresse
d, an
d something about our existence proves precarious when that a
ddress fails.
...the
demand that comes from elsewhere, sometimes a nameless elsewhere,...
We think of presi
dents as wiel
ding speech acts in willful ways, so when the
director of a university press, or the presi
dent of a university speaks, we expect to know what they are saying, an
d to whom they are speaking, an
d with what intent.
...perhaps we shoul
d think more
seriously about the
relation between mo
des of a
ddress an
d moral
authority. (also one of the issues in to
day's performance art)
narration is always ju
dgment
affective
intervention
why shoul
d i
listen to you
?
because i have a voice!
visual culture has different strand from lecture culture. people are able to express themselves with verbal signs long before they can draw anything, using visual sign (picture: a drawing by ds class="frds scrmbld">Hannods>). verbal language because of its easy everyday usage has become mundane and instrumental to communication, visual sign due to its learning curve and skillfulness belonged to the art domain.
...................................
transitive
verb constructions are the ones that require a
direct object in or
der to complete the meaning an
d to be grammatical. Use
d in theater, between
director an
d actor, by
communicating with
transitive
verbs actors can perform the
language of the
director.
my work embodies an
d communicates a
desire to
read (an
d write) texts
[steiner
]
in
Greek mythology the
poet an
d the seer are blin
d so that they may, by the antennae of speech, see further.
One thing is clear
: every
language-act has a temporal
determinant. No semantic form is timeless. When using a wor
d we wake into resonance, as it were, its entire previous
history. A text is embe
dde
d in
specific
historical time; it has what
linguists call a
diachronic structure. To
read fully is to restore all that one can of the imme
diacies of value an
d intent in which speech actually occurs.
The process of
diachronic
translation insi
de one’s own native tongue is so constant, we perform it so unawares, that we rarely pause either to note its formal intricacy or the
decisive part it plays in the very existence of civilization. By far the greatest mass of the
past as we experience it is a
verbal construct.
History is a speech-act, a selective use of the
past tense. Even substantive remains such as buil
dings an
d historical sites must be ‘
read,’ i.e. locate
d in a context of
verbal recognition an
d placement, before they assume real
presence.
...................................
(notes -
december 15, 2011)
•ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Robin,Robot,Robert,Robocop">Robds>ots making ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Robin,Robot,Robert,Robocop">Robds>ots
•what a robot wants (and how it wants it)
•cataloging computer generated stones smoke
•digital to digital convertor
•physical interaction (between a user and a media object, pressing a button, choosing a link, moving the body) versus psychological interaction (the psychological processes of filling-in, hypothesis forming, recall and identification, which are required for us to comprehend any text or image at all)
•Mechanical Monsters
•blown away roof
•Technology: the new nature
•-error and - horror(-terror)
•edge of the earth
•gold and dream, gold price and power law
•the story of the viewer
•fact and perspective (elucidation)
•love at first sight (digital)
•continual production of the new is what allows things to stay the same, (logic of the same)
•noise story
•the ‘content’ of any medium is always another medium (McLuhan)
•The mediation of religion through buildings
•start with metaphor and end with algebra
•a “model” is a system of objects (any kind of objects) that make all of the sentences in a theory true , where a “theory” is a list of sentences in a language.
•metaphors somehow mobilize the difference between the two domains
•arena of alienation
•Cut the Noise
•mirrors with (/without) memories
•substitutability
•optical appearances (mind ~ eye)
•Dioptrics (science of refraction), catoptrics (reflection),
•that could not be spoken of or represented, because it was empty of discourse and thus of meaning.
•innocence of the eye
•Poor Unfortunate Souls
•being useful, like a prison guard
•autopoetic (complex self-referential systems)
•to take up the motives from the external world
•will-less perception, “the pure eye of genius”
•bringing from the artificial world to the art world
•object oriented programming / subject oriented
•Observer, system and environment
•a system (designed) with a purpose of itself
•magnifying or light-collecting optical device
•social selfish
•un-computational
•gray area
•self-identity is bad visual system
•Vision requires instruments of vision; an optics is a politics of positioning. Instruments of vision mediate standpoints;
•Identity, including self-identity, does not produce science; critical positioning does, that is, objectivity
•docile body
•technological visioning (vector of secret texts, books within books, ancient curses, digital dreams, and medieval cyber-art)
•empty space left by theory and philosophy
•technical visioning
•Technology is never merely “used,” never merely instrumental. It is always ” incorporated” and “lived.”
•In his last paintings, such as the Bride of 1912, Duchamp both elaborated an iconography that combined mechanical and visceral forms and began to move away from any procedures that revealed the artist's hand to create “retinal” or “anecdotal” art.
lemon grass plant, marigold
ds class="frds scrmbld">Saeedds> 0012063108222
Tehran Wi Fi: 88 57 27 92
newer medium may be ‘nested’ inside of an older medium (or vice versa)
mental life (memory, imagination, fantasy, dreaming, perception, cognition) is mediated and is embodied in the whole range of material media… we not only think about media, we think in them (Mitchell)
The shock of new media is as old as the hills
Franz Reuleux described this correlation: the more primitive the technology, the less attuned the parts of the machine to each other, the greater the degree of play -- the more perfected the technology, the closer the fit, the less play between the individual parts.
(For Winnicott,) play is a psychological state where the boundaries between self and the world remain labile and fluid, (a state which is important not only for the development of the child, but with significant ramifications for human life and culture in general.)
Representation is a distinctive manner of imagining the real, and is a fundamental phenomenon upon which all culture rests.
Henri Lefebvre distinguishes Representations of space and Representational spaces . ... Representational spaces are “directly lived” through associated images and symbols which overlay physical space, making symbolic use of its objects.
the conceiving mind over the perceiving body (vision/touch)
touching was considered “a cruder scanning at close range,” and seeing “a more subtle touching at a distance.”
for Berkeley there is no such thing as visual perception of depth, and Condillac's statue effectively masters space with the help of movement and touch. The notion of vision as [Ouch is adequate to a field of knowledge whose contents are organized as stable positions within an extensive terrain.
•a technological gaze
•way of seeing (Derridean deconstructed)
•high-tech images
•artifact (cultural artifact, social)
•image of the or a body and its environment
•impossible subject-positioning, the codification of flesh, a visualization of scientific narratives and the aestheticization of information, all of which tell us about a longer line of cultural fantasies about information, code and technology. (Norah Campbell)
•Everything said is said by an observe (Maturana and Varela)
•framing the world
•virtual gaze (Baudrillard)
•achieve absolute vision, while seeing nothing.
•very much as real; human and technological, both
•i say this as someone who thinks that we are part of this digital world, but we are not necessarily subject to its terms
•splicing of direct and tactile human perception of reality with another reality, one that is mediated and technical
•the naration is not pure nor whole (why cyborg?)
•place of visibility (/ field of articulability)
•it is an aesthetic dream, dream of ismorphism between the discursive object and the visible object
•exteriorization of the body (relation between face / hand / tool )
•The “exact meeting place” of form, matter, tool, and hand is the touch(Henri Focillon)
•
////////////////////////
In this interconnection of embodied being and environing world, what happens in the interface is what is important.
--Don Ihde, Bodies in Technology
At first glance, strapped to the body of critters such as green turtles in Shark Bay, off Western Australia, humpback whales in the waters off southeast Alaska, and emperor penguins in Antarctica, a nifty miniature video camera is the central protagonist. Since the first overwrought seventeenth-century European discussions about the camera lucida and camera obscura, within technoculture the camera (the technological eye)seems to be the central object of both philosophical pretension and selfcertainty, on the one hand, and cultural skepticism and the authenticitydestroying powers of the artificial, on the other hand. The camera--that vault or arched chamber, that judge's chamber--moved from elite Latin to the vulgar, democratic idiom in the nineteenth century only as a consequence of a new technology called photography, or “light-writing.” A camera became a black-box with which to register pictures of the outside world in a representational, mentalist, and sunny semiotic economy, an analogy to the seeing eye in brainy, knowing man, for whom body and mind are suspicious strangers, if also near neighbors in the head. Nonetheless, no matter how gussied up with digitalized optical powers, the camera has never lost its job to function as a judge's chamber, in camera, within which the facts of the world--indeed, the critters of the world--are assayed by the standard of the visually convincing and, at least as important, the visually new and exciting.
... first we have to plough through some very predictable semiotic road blocks that try to limit us to a cartoonish epistemology about visual self-evidence and the lifeworlds of human-animal-technology compounds.
Gilbert stresses that nothing makes itself in the biological world, but rather reciprocal induction within and between always-in-process critters ramifies through space and time on both large and small scales in cascades of inter- and intra-action. In embryology, Gilbert calls this “interspecies epigenesis."43 Gilbert writes: “I think that the ideas that Lynn [Margulis] and I have are very similar; it's just that she was focusing on adults and I want to extend the concept (as I think the science allows it to be fully extended) to embryos. I believe that the embryonic co-construction of the physical bodies has many more implications because it means that we were ‘never’ individuals”
caring: becoming subject to the unsettling obligation of curiosity, which requires knowing more at the end of the day than at the beginning
//////////////
Nietzsche also said, at the very beginning of the second treatise of The Genealogy of Morals, that man is a promising animal, by which he meant, underlining those words, an animal that is permitted to make promises (das versprechen darf). Nature is said to have given itself the task of raising, bringing up, domesticating and “disciplining” (heranziichten) this animal that promises.
Microlandscapes:
the talk, also works df class='thdf'>the notion of | df> mirror stage and what does it mean for us and for the companien species that are entangled. what threads of meaning are taken apart by pulling on the thread of self reflection and self vision, what will gets account as nature for whom and when. the animal that is in charge of her own image is the representation of the universala man.
Appearance of eukaryotic cells around 2 billion years ago is probably the most significant event in the history of life on earth. It gave the creatures with DNA two important things: a nucleus that contained all the genetic materials and an interface to communicate with the world outside of the cell--a complex membrane--to talk with the materials alien to itself. Interface is a critical point of intersection between different life worlds, fields, or levels of organization. They are the areas in which social friction can be experienced and where diffusion of new technology is leading to structural discontinuities (which can be either positive or negative), the interface is where they will occur. The argent issue of interfaces in social interaction and flow between human animal, nonhumans, and computers is today becoming a zone of transition of ephemeral technologies, physical contact, socio-political boundaries, and metaphor-representation.
Since antiquity, representation has been the foundational concept of aesthetics and semiotics. In the modern era, it has also become a crucial concept in political theory. In a discussion of law and ethnography, Clifford ds class="frds scrmbld">Geertds>z calls into question the Western distinction between matters of fact and matters of value. “Facts and law we have perhaps everywhere; their polarization we perhaps have not.” ds class="frds scrmbld">Geertds>z's hermeneutic approach leads him to focus on the relation between the grounding of norms and the representation of fact. Therefore, he concludes, representation is a distinctive manner of imagining the real, and is a fundamental phenomenon upon which all culture rests.
The performance-talk is divided into three tangled narratives, one the social mode of traveling that includes the child--the opposite of the lonely masculine traveler--based on the real experience and a personal story in a trip to Amazon in Colombia with ds class="frds scrmbld">Karinds> Demuth and her three years old boy--ds class="frds scrmbld">Hannods>--, second a multi-headed reading of technologies of interfacing within computer culture and the worlds of other species, the meaning of inter-facing with the other, and third a visual representation of the highly technical images recorded by Kinect infrared 3D-scanner/motion-detector. The result of the visualization is a heavily glitchy image, which aims in the performance to link the spatial practice to the perceived and the representational spaces to the lived. Affirming the “unnaturalness” of the image makes it a transposition of universal means of communication--the language--that would like to provide a direct, unmediated, and accurate representation of the jungle.
The performance is an engagement with df class='thdf'>the notion of | df> companion species elaborated by Donna Haraway, in an experience of walking in a tropical jungle with a computer in one hand and in the other hand the hand of the human child. The work deals with questions of the other-space that is mentally filled with projections and projects. The recording of the walking in the rain forest --as spatial and sensual experience-- is thus dematerialized and has acquired a digital character. The dense and hot environment of the Amazon is replaced by an abstract graphic structure, thus bringing a new understanding of the locality of the walk. The noise and the randomness of the technical coloring the surface of the jungle provoke an aesthetic fascination, and an appropriation of the imposible image of the forest.
Traveling to the Amazon to experience its radical Otherness is a European tradition. It unintentional affirms the ideology of a “state of nature” that is prior to culture.
Lacan: i am led to regard the function of the mirror stage as a particular case of the function of the imago, which is to establish a relation between the organism and its reality - or, as they say, between the Innenwelt and the Umwelt.
This developement is experienced as temporal dialectic that decisively projects the function of the individual into history. the mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation - and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body image to a form of its totality that i shall call orthhopaedic - and, lastly, to df class='thdf'>the | df class='thdf'>assumption of | df>df> the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development. thus, to break out of the circle of the Innenwelt into the Umwelt generates the inexhaustible quadrature of the ego's verifications.
Electronic Reserve Text: from Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.
The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience
Delivered at the 16th International Congress of Psychoanalysis, Zurich, July 17, 1949
...................................
Flusser,
Gestures - beyon
d machines (
reading)
the project investigates the way in which
ds class="frds">Seifeeds> as an artist engages tactics of fiel
dwork,
embodiment an
d materiality (in a manner that reveals or instigates processes of knowing).
(In this moment of increasing stan
dar
dization an
d specialization regar
ding how people learn, art is a space for innovative thinking an
d experimentation outsi
de given frameworks.)
...our ability to share the experience of the habits of the
world that we
discover. (
Kohn)
...................................
Campbell on Harman's philosophy
(problem of) object-oriente
d ontology as
social theory
[insights of object-orientation mechanically applie
d to the
social by Harman, “im
materialism"
]
•innovative adaptation of phenomenology
•critique of how objects have been failed by philosophy
•insistence upon an aesthetic attitude of investigation
--but
-->
•object-oriented social theory lacks the rigor and imaginative potential to envision the ontology of the social
•the way object-oriented ontology is stuck in a no-man's-land of not-quite-nonhuman-not-quite-human
•as ooo enters social theory it commits a performative fallacy --> missing the fundamental starting point of social theory: ***objects come into the social world as expressions of (negotiated, perceptual, political, agentic) value*** [social theory is fundamentally predicated on the socius --> social theory is about the association between things =/= homogenous things]
}=/= Campbell's
*posthuman
relationism
*: another form that better un
derstan
ds the
abyssal point between the non-human an
d the human
(2007 conference) speculative realism {antipathy to “human-centred” intellectual traditions} d>~d>=> object-oriented ontology
(objectivity =/= obliqtivity)
Harman's immaterialism: realism without materialism : objects can only ever be captured obliquely
object-oriented ontology's development:
•characterised by a consistent lament for how post-Kantian philosophy in general (Continental philosophy in particular) has abandoned hope of describing objects as objects
•the real: absolute autonomy of objects (withdraw from subjects)
◦objects: sleeping giants holding their forces in reserve
•prefer the excess of the aesthetic over the reduction by the scientific (materialism's tendency to reduce objects to a primary substratum ==> rendering them susceptible to mathematical capture) --Campbell--> *aesthetic foundationalism* [==engender==> an attitudinal response to objects] (@apass, this is also a problem in artistic research):
◦aesthetic appreciation above the reduction of the phenomenon achieved by science --> “art (art criticism) is a style that gets us closer to the nature of objects” (+ bad df class='thdf'>example of | df> Clement Greenberg)
◦(to make the invisible deep conditions of objects perceivable) prioritize *allusive style* above *literal description*
•claims to post-phenomenological sovereignty
•over-mining approach to knowledge production =/= objects's surplus of reality
◦methodological approach which encounters objects as objects (=/= actor network theory's manner of focusing upon an object's effects) [+ bad df class='thdf'>example of | df> Dutch East India Company]--Campbell--> object-oriented social theory produces a rudimentary narrative with no discernible innovation on the level of:
◾objects --> the actors are recognisable companies, personalities, infrastructures
◾relations --> the major symbiotic moments are legal contracts, infrastructure and formative moments in a human's life
◾time --> there is standard chronology from birth to death, with emphasis on human-centric causes and effects
•“social theory = a mode of knowledge production” (=/= a decontextualised reflection of the world) ==> withdrawal: a psychological alibi, an aesthetic (=/= cognitive concept) ==stimulate==> an attitudinal response: humility [+ passivity?] in the face of overwhelming non-human existence [~ appeal ==produce==> a paternalistic-arrogant-instrumentalist attitude to the nonhuman =/= *appeal ==foster==> responsibility* (a norrnativity that withdrawal cannot) ---> go to Haraway + Campbell]
}=/= posthuman relationism: realists who draw on contemporary advances in disciplines like geology, biology, mathematics and neurology to make the case that non-human reality is not a sub-set of human reality -->
•commitment to an object-oriented realism (d>~d>= Harman)
•occupy an *anthropic* event horizon: their social analyses occur in the shifting, impossible ground hetween the human and the nonhuman (=/= Harman)
•dialectic of object **withdrawal + appeal** (=/= Harman's object withdrawal) ~ ***interaction between objective withdrawal d'>& subjective appeal***
(Moss) earth as making an appeal --Freud--> a demand for work
“when the attention of an experienced person is drawn to the child's state by this path of discharge, [the path of discharge] ... acquires a secondary function of the highest importance, that of cornmunicalion
--> initial helplessness of human beings is the primal source of all moral motives
(child's) creaming and kicking --> appeal (made by the earth) is a combination of demand + accusation
contemporary social theorists are turning towards objects
<==Bennett== object produce a ‘gestalt shift’ in perception
}==Tsing==> (amounts to) a political act <== (turning towards objects) requires us:
•to re-divide the world
•to re-prioritise matler(s)
•to create different causalities
•to follow new agencies
•to produce new spacetimes
•to interrupt the ‘mind-lulling presence of common sense’
}----> acknowledge the importance of traditional *social theory* in identifying gross inequalities + advocate a posthuman relationism that moves *from critique to production* ==> *new and surprising connections between modes of existence* (df class='thdf'>for example | df>)
•did the typical American diet play any role in engendering the widespread susceptibility to the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq?
•do sand storms make a difference to the spread of socalled sectarian violence?
•does mercury help enact autism?
•what if serious adoption practices for and by the elderly became common?
•what if nations that are worried about low birth rates (Denmark, Germany, Japan, Russia, white America, more) acknowledged that fear of immigrants is a big problem, and that racial purity projects and fantasies drive resurgent pronatalism?
posthuman: a mode of listening for the nonhuman + simultaneously acknowledging the impossibility of fully hearing it --> impossible position ==expand==> our range of socialities, causalities, temporalities and ethics because it contains the **stubborn anthropomorphic residual** within any ‘new’ theory of society
--> (not infinite) co-constitution of the social + the extra-social (vaccines d'>& markets, planetary systems d'>& telescopes, catastrophes d'>& laws, etc.)
feminist science studies *demand a normative responsibility* towards ontological inclusivity and humility
(now that there is no objective -->) interrogatives are object-makers
*strangeness (of nonhuman life) [acts as a guide] --> mobilising new prepositions of connection ==> to think differently about the social ==> new conceptions of society (as planetmate, messmate, natureculture, mindbody, thing-power, odd kin, etc.)
parallels drawn between theories of evolution d'>& theories of social change:
•Gould --> concept of punctuated equilibrium
•Serres --> ontology of the social as parasitism
•Hayles --> translation of epigenesis and technogenesis
•
{phenomenon of serial endosymbiosis theory <-- social theorists deploy this in the search for accounts of how change and creativity originate}--> (bio-econornic context) *symbiosis* has long been recognised as a theory which demonstrates the co-constitution of the social and the biological
=/= Darwinian story of: small variations, random mutation, long time scales, natural selection, fitness and incremental development:
•complexity derived by brute mechanical climbing from the base already built by the efforts of earlier climbing
•unit of change: the gene, or individual organism, the zoocentric, ‘big like us’ epistemic culture of both science and social science (=/= weird worldings of protists, archea, eukaryotes [Wertheim])
bacteriology ==> new organisms were often stemmed from profound and prolonged symbiotic relationships that have proven difficult to analyse =/= discrete
•traits are inherited outside of sexual dissemination (digestion, infection, donation, other complex forms of partnerning) --> consortia: amorphous symbiotic complexes (metabolic energetic networks) =/= organism: anatomically bounded objects (systems of information and exchange)
}==Margulis==> focus on how perceptual, political, social and scientific conditions precede objects: *objects = boundary-work*
--> differential speeds of change (sudden and unlikely mixes + slow and causal)
--> deconstruction of individuality
(co-constitutive bio-econornic-political-social context:)
**ideological contest between individualism and collectivism in political economy <==> intellectual development of symbiosis theory**
•socialist and anarchist concept of mutuellisme in the mid 1800
•Hobbesian-Malthusian-Darwinian bio-economic concept of struggle for existence in zero-sum games of all-against-all
•Kropotkin's symbiosis as evidence for the benefit of global cooperation towards the common good, the division of labour, protection of elements and interdependent organisation
•evolutionary theory used to champion individualism and the social policies of laissez faire
Campbell --> what Harman misses is the elementary starting point for sociologies of science: *that social science translates science* just as science translates “reality”
serial endosymbiosis theory ==>
d class="lstsrd">1. no theory of social change is going to be value-free (endosymbiosis is a process that is always already highly charged with rich metaphor, entailing a ‘host’ that is in an ‘exchange,’ ‘relation’ or ‘merger’ with a ‘guest’ --> a form of ‘living together’ that becomes ‘close’ over time)
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. extraordinary range and nature of these relations can act as strategies for other worldings (other ways of being with each other) --> important normative function [at the cataclysmic endings =/= catastrophic ending]
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. a way to think about temporalities (when a bacterium nestled into a simple cell, creating an intimacy that has lasted four billion years)
d>
d class="lstsrd">4. a template for unlikely intimacies
d>
Harman's philosophical monologue on social theoretical practice (which might yet be remedied by actual dialogue with social theorists) ==> performative fallacy (<-- common in artist writing)
@apass****
(Campbell asking) why has object-oriented ontology become such a popular force in other disciplines?
<== complex interplay between sociological + logical factors
+ rise of *para-academia*
@artist (in proliferation of artist writing)
****speculation = the alibi for a doctrine that wishes to spare itself the trouble of justification****
--> we need closer attention to rationality as the basis of judgement when we talk about speculation
--> we need to be more informed by (sciences) when we stretch relations to our rational outposts, without ignoring their appeals
...................................
posthumanism --> any discursive or bodily configuration that displaces the human, humanism, humanities --> (21st century) technology is the center of critical thought about culture and about nature
[*]posthumanism: a structure of feeling (sense of an era starts to be experienced in the social imagination --> social forms become more recognisable when we had some time to classify them, articulate them, theorize them)
(Williams > Campbell) structure of feeling
we can point to times in the past and say that as an X sensibility (they were romantics, enlightenment, postmodernism) =/= sensing here and now --> practical consciousness, a period at an embryonic stage, at the very edge of *semantic availability*
what structure of feeling is forming in the contemporary western world? --> posthumanism
(postbiological, postcorporal, cyborg existence, etc.)
to be human <--attack-- genomics, global finance, nature of social in virtual communities (telegram) ==> yet-to-be formalized paradigms of human experience
==> fracture the concept of legal self [legal theory (arbiter of human rights) --> concerned with what is to be human]
(taxonomies of the human species at its time -->) humanitas: legal term used in public in ancient Rome to distinguish Romans and Greeks from Barbarians
humans in persistent vegetative states
international trade of human organs
human genome project
xenotransplantation
technological unconscious
(tree of life replaced by) a model that:
•classifies species according to DNA
•disregards morphological type (how elements of body appear)
•reveals human to be a tiny subspecies in a mass of absolute diversity
classical philosophy --> scientized for a momden audience (by Descartes 17th century) --> special status of human <-- seen as a totally transparent, secular, scientific, liberal way of thinking about the world
humanism = a belief in progress (implicitly conceived as a technological instrumental profit-oriented) + technological masery over nature + ‘human =/= animal’ + therapeutic approach to scientific inquiry }<-- a 19th century anachronism --> deeply ingrained in contemporary self-consciousness and everyday common sense
human: hero of liberty <-- french in origin, political in purpose
August Comte --> the universe can only e understood when the scientific exploration of phenomena was separated from supernatural superstition =/= ajayeb
Campbell making the case --> humanism needs to be deconstructed (not in a blithe نرم وملایم postmodern discursive way, rather) the definitions of what it means to be human are of life-changing importance --> humanism's supposed universality and transparency masks the fact that it is *an inherited western relatively recent philosophical perspective of the world*
in consumer research --> human: culturally inflected, psychosocial producer of + produced by the market =/= human: a disembodied information-processor with a rationalistic indentity and a computatinoal approach to the market
--Campbell--> how can interpretative consumer research benefit from a perspective which acknowledges this ideology of humanism?
the term posthuman has been used to describe anything which extends human capcity --ironically--> something as ubiquitous banal ancient and human as *tool-use* could itself be described as posthuman (Hayles, Stiegler, Wills) ==> **posthuman is as ancient as the human itself** }--> [*]posthuman: (a radical recognition that) technological = *originary logic* + *ethical sensibility* (= a stepping-out [=/= coming-after] of the enclosure of what is only important and necessary to the human)
•a concept that draws attention to the cracks that have always existed in the water-light descriptions of the human
•the ethical and radical realisation that the human only comes into existence by the work of (organic + technological) nonhuman others
cyborg --> associated with liberatory modes of identity
**technology deconstructs everyday human experience of agency, free will, choice, self** @apass
21st century --> technology is the center of critical thought about culture and nature (--> df class='thdf'>that is why | df> it became organically part of my ajayeb research)--> *to think about technology in a manner which reflects its ubiquity, its deeper symbolic and aesthetic dimensions, the way in which it can radically chnage humanness and human-centered approaches
(humanistic epistemology ==>) mode of the human:
d class="lstsrd">1. information processor
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. cognitive subject
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. cultural subject
d>
posthuman mode:
d class="lstsrd">1. to widen the temporal range of research (deep future, deep past)
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. take the form of an ethical inquiry (where the human is no longer the center of the world)
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. to think about the ontology of technology
d>
d class="lstsrd">4. the relationship of the human and the nonhuman (sustainability)
d>
20th century --> gene
21st century --> posthuman (postgenetic metaphors)
robotic revolution + biotechnology revolution > agricultural revolution + industrial revolution + information revolution
(consumer research started to develop an outlook that) things are just as complex and social as people
•brand: entities that talk to and interact with other brands, entities that form relationships with humans
(lives that seem to exist in on the edges of simple humanist life:)
•*massive* life of market
•*excessive* life of the brnad image
•*virtual* life of Facebook
•
consumer research focuses on the ontological and epistemological givens of only the consumer
(Turkle theorizing) how consumers change through their relationship with the nonhuman
•children view certain objects in the world around them as having degrees of aliveness
•children who have grown up with computers do not experience a dichotomy between biological and computatinoal processes
•playing with a toy like transformers, the toy shifs from being machines to being robots to being animals --learning--> fluid boundaries between mechanism and flesh
•(the ontological stickiness of the) [*]computer: a mind that is not yet a mind, inanimate yet interactive, it does not think yet neither is it external to thought
(Menser + Aronowitz) television: a complex object constituted by and related to many fields (solid-state physics, politics, etc.)
Latour...
}--> (such way of theorizing ==> precondition of) an era where radically mew technologies produce entities as indefinable complex global (as the Human Genome project) biofuel supply-chains or climate change models [--> also cryptocurrencies, blockchain]
}--Campbell--> consumer researchers are creating new concepts and figurations in order to expand the borders of waht constitutes life [df class='thdf'>for example | df> “living-product” metaphor]
(the problem of the) [ontological division of] consumer =/= world of objects ==> (ideological move -->) privileges human : it is understood by the human, because the human (the only source of analytical attention) is the only thing doing the consuming, having the experience, making the meaning
figuration: new ways of taking account of the world =/= anthropomorphism
--Haraway--> practices that create *knots* of material-semiotic actors {<-- art does that? art's sometimes unreal figurations =/= **interpretative consumer research makes the most realistic figurations of this century**}@ds class="frds scrmbld">ds class="frds scrmbld">Chloeds>2ds>
the metaphors of our time:
•becoming (=/= being) <-- a shift towards a *process metaphysics*
•
(Parsons + Maclaren)
items of disposal (do not fail to exists, but rather they) are *moved along* to other spaces or politics and become other things
•becoming a precious antique
•becoming a water blockage
•becoming a source of marine death
•becoming a materially precious thing (in another part of the world)
•
--> **how things actually move, how they transition between many states**
--> *object = data about the object =/= tangible thing* <-- (transition) from thinking of object as the primary reality --to--> perceicing the object as data in computatinoal environments
==?==> (change of the nature of object ==>) radical shift in theorizing consumer behavior
posthumanism
•a key term in contemporary western postindustrial era
•a term htat has been used ti describe a highly technologized future existence
--variationally--> other stories (fables) about technology exists =/=
d class="lstsrd">1. the claim of (often monolithic) novelty of the historical moment in the west
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. that technology is a sterile instrument
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. that technology aids the human in his ascent to ever greater degrees of humanity
d>
(greek tradition -->) *to think deeply about technology, we have to think about its ontology*
•techno-sociology --> Latour
•ecological feminism --> Haraway
•post-Marxism --> Tiziana Terranova
•
•philosophy of tech --> Heidegger: the most dangerous thing we can do is to think of technology as something neutral --> we often make two ***intuitive ideological jumps of reason*** when we think of technology:
1. “technology = means to an end”
2. “technology is created by humans”
}<-- df class='thdf'>example of | df> anthropological truth (about technology) ~ it is a truth as it appears to human beings d'>& it is an *instrumental truth: truth aimed at getting things done or making things work* =/= [*]technology: the mode by which realities are brought into existence in the world (hervorbringen) {unconcealing ==> a concealment of another reality}= (process of) *poiesis = bring out + conceal*
-the greek word *techne = technology + art* derived from the term episteme (the ways in which one can know reality) ==> ****technology: a type of epistemology, a way of knowing****
}==Heidegger==> *technology needs to be understood beyond its instrumentalist humanist history* --Campbell--> *seeing technology historically as an ancient phenomenon*
technology thought of as something that comes from the west d'>& does something to other people in other placers <-- a framework (even well-intentioned) that denies both agency d'>& contemporaneity to the ‘other’
(-McQuire)
(we are told that)
•the era we exist in is the “information age”
•the world is “networked”
•marheting is “service-dominant”
--Campbell--> what realities do the terms “information” “network” “service-dominant” create, unconceal, conceal?
==> questions of:
-what is the consumer?
-the nature of consumer consciousness, knowledge, desire
*far from being a neutral uncomplicated relationship, consumers develop strategic behaviors for *coping with technology* that is paradoxial + fantastical + ideological + multidimensional
(-Konzinets)
•DIY technologies: forms of competence redefined + redistributed between hardware d'>& human
•technology d'>& identity interpolate each other
global debates of:
•fear of genetic determination
•nature of consciousness --> similarities and differences between computation and human being
•
--> intimately concerned with the status of humanness
1990s theories of gift-giving, possession, labour, self-concept =/= *cyber consumer* --> circulation of desire and commodities in environments that are so highly mediated and technological that it begins to generate behavior and situations that are quite foreign to existing thinking about that markets are and what consumers want
**technology: an active force that both consumes d'>& creates consumers**
(problem of) sustainability
d class="lstsrd">1. to sustain: rest, retreat --> humannes is a major threat to all nonhuman planetary existence ==> df class='thdf'>the idea that | df> radical threats to nonhumanness must be warded off by radical decreases in human population, consumption, normtive standards of living
d>
<-- this notion of sustainability exists radically at the limits of human capability (more than ecological crisis or human inequality, more than the threat of terrorism or nuclear proliferation)
d class="lstsrd">2. to sustain: to extend, strengthen --> df class='thdf'>the idea that | df> if we are not here then nothing on the planet has worth; if humans ado not exists, then the earth does not exists ==> our efforts of ecological sustainability are intrinsically human-centered [--(implicit attitude)--> prolonging humanness]==> ecological problem = crisis: an intense, short-lived episode in human history + it will be solved by high-technology solutions
d>
technology has co-evolved with being throughout billions of years --Hayles--> (myriad profound subtle ways) to make nature
--paradox--> *it is “human nature” to use technology + technology changes “human nature”*
--Campbell--> ***while not everything is technical, everything is technological***
*posthuman stance (strategically oriented towards deep future, pays attention to the lives of nonhuman others) gets ontological with technology*
...................................
McQuire
defining the
technological
--activate
--> the bor
der between
nature
d'>& culture
= (the heart of) what it means to be human
...................................
[title
]
system attic
...................................
(in
my work with
apass digital
designs, i have been trying to negotiate with
df class='thdf'>the notion of | df>)
*technological gaze
*
what new mo
des of subjectivity are filtere
d through
technological gaze
?
(
?how) high-tech images are cultural artifacts
technological gaze's
method to put its meaning together
:
d class="lstsrd">1. impossible subject-positioning
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. codification of flesh
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. visualization of scientific narrative
d>
d class="lstsrd">4. aestheticization of information
d>
(Maturana
+ Varela) everything sai
d is sai
d by an observer
=/= philosopher
marketing communication theory
[*]gaze: (a technical term for) the ways we visually consume images of people and places + the ways images are constructed to entertain d'>& encourage certain ways of seeing
•(using psychoanalysis) Mulvey's gaze: the way in which the camera acts as the eyes and ears of the spectator, presenting ways of framing the world (power-laden + not neutral position) ==> certain understanding of the world is assumed
•Shroeder --> gaze signifies a psychological relationship of power --> the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze [---> go to zoo]
how “human” ways of experiencing the world are gradually being integrated with non-human, technological ways of perceiving and understanding reality:
•Baudrillard --> virtual gaze
•Virilio --> automation of perception (war weaponry --> df class='thdf'>the idea that | df> in west we have technologies so advanced we achieve absolute vision)
•Balsamo --> cosmetic surgery (d>~d>= new visualization technologies) ==> new forms of dominance [---> go to Kardashians TV shows], *replacing the male gaze with a normative disembodied technical gaze
•Haraway --> technocratic gaze
•Strafford --> (starting in enlightenment) *automated spectralization* (in visual presentation of the world) --> the intention and purpose of the gaze became medicalized and technologized [---> go to cartography]
•
}--> (from technoscience to feminism) theorists have noticed a *splicing* of direct and tactile human perception of reality with another reality, one that is mediated and technical ==produce==> a new reality that negotiates the individual's knowledge of the universe in diverse and complex ways (<-- not catastrophic =/= Hörl)
(time of) intellectual and artist upheaval ==> new and surprising modes of imagining the human
1950s concept of cybernetics constituted a fundamental change in thinking about control, communication, information, life itself (+ new language of feedback, autopoiesis, cellular automata, neural net)
1990s
computers + information --> cybernetic theory: (stressed that) information patterns are more important in understanding organisms than materiality
*cybernetic view of the world --> information coded in pattern d'>& randomness =/= material absence d'>& presence*
•(both) human and technological = informational entities
•human = cyborg: (human conceived as) cybernetic organism
[?how] discourses (narratives + metaphors + symbols) of science and technology --Campbell--> use in advertisement to create meaning
**technological imagination --seize--> social imagination**
always reinforcing the *awesome power of technology to capture reality* (objectively + without any agenda)
•movie Fantastic Voyage 1966 <--Dijck-- fascination with envisioning the body from a different perspective
•status of foetus (float in black and white) <--Haraway-- meanings whose legitimacy comes from technological systems of perception
•[computer-generated images =/=?] camera-generated images <--Cartwright-- (paradox of) camera's role in capturing the real + camera's capacity to evoke emotion and present a sense of the unattainable d>~d>= (to appear to be at once) both *magical* d'>& *truthful* ==introduce==> new subjectivities into marketplace
mediation of visual phenomena through the eye of technology d>~d>=> new sets of truths (about the body, environment, etc.) --often--> a **disembodied technological gaze looks at the body**
a
dvertisement becomes more highly finishe
d,
excessively pro
duce
d, artificialize
d --> a
technological gaze is foun
d in the
discourse of a
dvertising
--> scientize
d d'>& technologize
d images celebrate a particular view of
***life as information
***
...................................
nature
= figures
+ stories + images (
d>~d>= topos, commonplace)
paying attention to
nature like a
child <-- Haraway
[*]trope: a verse
interpolate
d into a liturgical text
عبادات to embellish or amplify its meaning
language --> material-
semiotic flesh
liturgical possibilities of
nature
•ds class="frds scrmbld"nttrm="Christianson">Christiands> liturgical year
•Zaratusztrian nowruz
•star wars --?--> practice of turning tropes into worlds [--> war of imagess]
•war of words
•
(agonistic fiel
ds
:)
military combat
sexual
domination
security maintenance
market strategy
...................................
(
techniques of the observer - september 9, 2012)
•What is the relation between the dematerialized digital imagery of the present and the so-called age of mechanical reproduction?
•ongoing abstraction of vision - Problems of vision
•transformation in the makeup of vision
•history of art <-> history of perception?
•onlooker (Zuschauer)
•historically important functions of the human eye ==> medical, military, and police hierarchies
•Most of the historically important functions of the human eye are being supplanted by practices in which visual images no longer have any reference to the position of an observer in a “real,” optically perceived world.
•where abstract visual and linguistic elements coincide
•avoid mystifying it by recourse to technological explanations (this was my mistake!)
•an observer is more importantly one who sees within a prescribed set of possibilities, one who is embedded in a system of conventions and limitations.
•measurable in terms of objects and signs
•newly constituted human sciences in regulating and modifying the behavior of individuals.
•it was through these disciplines that the subject in a sense became visible
•passage from the geometrical optics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to physiological optics
•to expose the idiosyncrasies of the “normal” eye
•Retinal afterimages, peripheral vision, binocular vision, and thresholds of attention
•outcome of a complex remaking of the individual as observer into something calculable-and regularizable and of human vision into something measurable and thus, exchangeable.
•standardization of visual imagery
•in the amphitheatre / on the stage / in the Panoptic machine
•dissociation of touch from sight ==> “separation of the senses” and industrial remapping of the body in the nineteenth century
•unloosening of the eye from the network of referentiality incarnated in tactility ==> fitted for the tasks of “spectacular” consumption
•Perception for Benjamin was acutely temporal and kinetic;
•a mobile consumer of a ceaseless succession of illusory commodity-like Images.
•Machines are social before being technical
•desiring machines
•The paintings of J-B. Chardin are lodged within these same questions of knowledge and perception His still lifes, especially, are a last great presentation of the classical object in all its plenitude, before it is sundered irrevocably into exchangeable and ungrounded signifiers or into the painterly traces of an autonomous vision.
•that the very process of becoming tired was in fact perception. “When the eye fixes itself on a single color...
•the clear eye of the world
•The more Schopenhauer involved himself in the new collective knowledge of a fragmented body composed of separate organic systems, subject to the opacity of the sensory organs and dominated by involuntary reflex activity, the more intensely he sought to establish a visuality that escaped the demands of that body.
•the physiological makeup of the subject as the site on which the formation of representations occurs.
•Of these only the cerebrum, together with the sensory nerves attached to it, and the posterior spinal nerve fascicles are intended to take up the motives from the external world. All the other parts, on the other hand, are intended only to transmit the motives to the muscles in which the will directly manifests itself. (Schopenhauer)
•It is knowledge that Simultaneously provided techniques for the external control and domination of the human subject and was the emancipating ground for notions of subjective vision within modernist art theory and experimentation.
...................................
ba
d visual
systems
narcissism as a cultural practice (that also motivates an
d steers
technological inventions)
accelerationism
(Accelerationism may also refer more broa
dly, an
d usually pejoratively, to support for the
deepening of capitalism in the belief that this will hasten its self-
destructive ten
dencies an
d ultimately eventuate its collapse.)
Selfie
seems to me the perfect example for this sub
mission of the unconscious to the globalize
d machine
latest theoretical buzzwor
ds
control over the
interpretation of the
world
circulation of the global image machine
tree-ma
de paper
who are (not) allowe
d (not) to have a bo
dy
?
all forms of knowl
edge claims,
acting on the i
deological
doctrines of
dis
embodie
d scientific (cinematic) objectivity
all seem just effects of
delaye
d ren
der algorithms in the play of signifiers in a virtual force fiel
d
![--> mo
frog mouse crow lake human assemblage Kelile Demne
[source: lithographed editions of Anwār-i Suhaylī - Kalīlah wa Dimnah - 1261] frog mouse crow lake human assemblage Kelile Demne [source: lithographed editions of Anwār-i Suhaylī - Kalīlah wa Dimnah - 1261]](images/ajayeb/0120.jpg)
space of simulations
not giving up to the
paranoi
d science
fiction
getting to know the
world effectively by practising the
sciences
tools of
semiology
rhetorical
nature of truth
not Romantic nor modernist objects:
d class="lstsrd">1. infective vectors (microbes)
d>
d class="lstsrd">2. elementary particles (quarks)
d>
d class="lstsrd">3. biomolecular codes (genes)
d>
view of the relationship of body and language (the problem of metaphor)
those of us who would still like to talk about reality
[...]