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Research material from part of the PUBLIC project by Elaine W. Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga. Organized as a daily series of experiments, interventions and discourses, PUBLIC aims to examine the potentiality of latency and open spaces made possible in the relations between individuals and publics. Other activities are posted here. Some are open invitations to all, others are unannounced insertions in different locations throughout Berlin. PROGRAM - intitiative for art and architecture collaborations; 22 January - 1 February 2009.
sous les pavés, la plage
BEFORE AND DURING AND AFTER: Three days’ thought on media culture and artificial life
…as responsible human beings, we forget (Ha, seduction!). Were we unable to, every horror and every pain experienced as the newly born would retain itself, excruciating, just as every moment of laughter and joy, but we would never recover. The mirrors of Lacan are as inevitably linked to artificial life as self and world. And forgetfulness is not so much saying no as being able to say yes again. Are you ready to rule the world?
—-From a small text written, weaving writing experiment, flow. June 2008, Saas-Fee. Read the full essay [here]. Apologies for lack of page numbers for notes/references, please write if you need more.
Posted by 丫 | reply »他说女权
他说的，太… 什么的，所有小东西放了正好，我们每一个都有正好的位子。她的头发散了好看一点。 所有的东西之间都有点间隙，空间的，时间的。冬天也有花开。没想到云雪的天也开冷朗的一种黄色。这也意外的，突然在江边开始化妆。所有是上下文的。我们喝咖啡。换位子。聊。那个字是flaneur. 但不知道flaneur有没有包括女的。我们都有正好的位子吗？
冬天也有花开…
Posted by 丫 | reply »toward a theory of the designwork
not-yet-expired activity
[readings for Best Before; this is what we're up to; arnhem, boston and beijing in new york, August-October 2006]
“The separation between a thing and its environment cannot be absolutely definite and clear-cut; there is a passage by insensible gradations from the one to the other; the close solidarity which binds all the objects of the material universe, the perpetuality of their reciprocal actions and reactions, is sufficient to prove that they have not the precise limits which we attribute to them. Our perception outlines, so to speak, the form of their nucleus; it terminates them at the point where our possible action upon them ceases, where, consequently, they cease to interest our needs. Such is the primary and the most apparent operation of the perceiving mind: it marks out divisions in the continuity of the extended, simply following the suggestions of our requirements and the needs of practical life.” —from Matter and Memory, Bergson”We ought to think of the historical world according to this model. Why ask if history is made by men or by things, since it is obvious that human initiatives do not annul the weight of things, and the ‘force of things’ always acts through men? It is just this failure of analysis, when it tries to bring everything down to one level, which reveals history’s true milieu. There is no ‘last analysis,’ because there is a flesh of history in which (as in our own body) everything counts and has a bearing — the infrastructure, our idea of it, and above all the perpetual exchanges between the two in which the weight of things becomes a sign as well, thoughts become forces, and the balance of the two becomes events. It is asked, ‘Where is history made? Who makes it? What is this movement which traces out and leaves behind the figures of the wake?’ It is of the same order as the movement of Thought and Speech, and, in short, of the perceptible world’s explosion within us. Everywhere there are meanings, dimensions, and forms in excess of what each ’consciousness‘ could have produced, and yet it is men who speak and think and see. We are in the field of history as we are in the field of language or existence.”These transformations of private into public, of events into meditations, of thought into spoken words and spoken words into thought, this echo coming from everywhere makes it such that in speaking to others we also speak to ourselves, and speak of what exists. This swarming of words behind words, thoughts behind thoughts–this universal substitution is also a kind of stability.” —from Signs, Merleau-Ponty”Take, for example, a small drawer, which the carpenter has made for the convenience of some housefold. With the passage of time, the actual form of this drawer is surpassed by time itself and, after the decades and centuries have elapsed, it is as though time had become solidified and had assumed that form. A given small space, which was at first occupied by the object, is now occupied by solidified time. It has, in fact, become the incarnation of a certain form of spirit. —from Kinkakuji, Mishima
Posted by o | reply »it would be nice
right place to be
i like e’s room.when once i step into her room, i feel the flow of time changing.i feel how she is spending her own time, it’s very strong.a month ago, i asked her if i could take the pictures of her room. i wanted to memorise how the objects are placed.i think she takes enough time to look at the things around her and finds right way to deal with them.all objects in her room contain those time in their bodies.
17 february, after a cold bicycle ride, i taught her “msg”, oed teaches me
sturgeon’s Law Brit. /
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/, U.S. /strdnz l/ Forms: 19- Sturgeon’s Law, Sturgeon’s law. [Sturgeon (1918-85, born Edward Hamilton Waldo), U.S. science fiction writer + LAW n.1] A humorous aphorism which maintains that most of any body of published material, knowledge, etc., or (more generally) of everything is worthless: based on a statement by Sturgeon (see quot. 1958), usually later cited as ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’. Typically used of a specific medium, genre, etc., originally and esp. science fiction, and now freq. also of information to be found on the Internet. The aphorism was apparently first formulated in 1951 or 1952 at a lecture at New York University (letter to the O.E.D. from Fruma Klass, the wife of science fiction writer Phil Klass (‘William Tenn’), 5 Dec. 2001), and popularized at the 1953 WorldCon science fiction convention (see J. Gunn in N.Y. Rev. Sci. Fiction (1995) Sept. 20).
[1958 T. H. STURGEON in Venture Sci. Fiction Mar. 66/2 It is in this vein that I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against the attacks of people..whose conclusion was that ninety percent of s f is crud. The Revelation: Ninety percent of everything is crud. 1963 J. MERRIL in Proc. Chicon III 35, I think it was probably the final statement which sort of eliminates this discussion but we will go ahead with it anyhow and that was the memorable Sturgeon Law that 90 per cent of everything is crud; including, we regret to say, science fiction.] 1963 T. R. COGSWELL in Proc. Chicon III 38 Judy [Merril] mentioned Sturgeon’s Law; she was kind enough not to bring the new revisions which is that 9/10ths of all science fiction is bad enough to be written by Ted Cogswell. 1968 in T. Sturgeon Way Home (new printing) (preceding title-page), One exception to Sturgeon’s Law. Ted Sturgeon was once approached by a Sorehead who said, ‘Ninety percent of science fiction is crud.’ Sturgeon fixed him (good) with a steely glance, and replied: ‘Yes, ninety percent of everything is crud.’ 1977 Washington Post (Nexis) 29 Aug. B1 What we’re in for in movies and television is a deluge… If I may I’d like to quote (sci-fi writer Theodore) Sturgeon’s Law: ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’. Television seems to bear that out. 1984 Computer Magazines in net.flame (Usenet newsgroup) 3 Feb., Is anyone else disgusted with what is happening to the computer magazines? I realize that Sturgeon’s law is a strong force..but this is getting putrid! 1996 PC World (Nexis) Dec., ‘Ever heard of Sturgeon’s law?’ He shook his head. ‘“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” If that’s true of anything, it’s true of the Web. Ninety percent of everything on it isn’t even worth the time it takes to download’. …yes, just stuff.
Posted by 丫 | more »and then i realized, i only have four…
from top left: bedroom closet drawer, shoe cabinet drawer, bedside table top drawer, bedside table bottom drawer. more stuff. (i forgot the fridge drawer, it’s empty, i never use it).
what’s inside
from top left: desk central drawer, rolling cart third drawer, rolling cart fifth drawer, kitchen fourth drawer, rolling cart tenth drawer, rolling cart ninth drawer, rolling cart fourth drawer, kitchen sixth drawer, rolling cart sixth drawer, kitchen third drawer, desk bottom right drawer, bathroom drawer, rolling cart eightth drawer, bedside drawer, kitchen second drawer, rolling cart second drawer, rolling cart first drawer, kitchen fifth drawer, desk top right drawer, desk bottom left drawer, desk top left drawer, desk middle left drawer, desk middle right drawer, rolling cart seventh drawer. just stuff.
backpacking beginner
imagine it’s just hours to go. you will finally put on a 10kg backpack and go real backpacking in daocheng. so excited you want to carry everything with you. but where to start? anyone have a suggestion on packing?
more expensive DVDs
today there was a slight gasp to recognise the shop from the photograph she had shown me long ago; hiroyuki-san and she were working on a magazine for them, and i think it must have come out at some point, i think i saw it i am sorry if i don’t remember so well. but i did remember the image of the car coming out of the facade of the building, the plain cardboard brown textured cement type facade that looked like a compound. in real life today, i saw that they were rocks, a wall of rocks with a barbed wire-like fence over them, a bit scary, still looking like a compound. i had not wanted to go into any shops today, except the Saver’s because i needed to buy soap, but after the gasp i decided to go inside. a very nice bookshop. and the you like me book from jan family. right after a-chan had told me about it, maybe a few days ago (刚才？刚才？刚才是几分钟之前！几天不是刚才！！) －－her suggestion for www.janfamily.com. so yes, it does have something to do with this thing we are talking about, as what anyway says, ‘but i want to focus to the communication with people who is in front of us, public (not through the book). then it makes me think about shimabuku. maybe the way i want to work is something like janfamily and shimabuku. that’s what i thought laterly. my idea came up without thinking about them, but their works can be the examples of it…’ yes, so that link, and another, www.thingsthatfall.com, because at this moment we’ll let other people’s work say things for us, so much nicer that way. what is this all about? we try to make a communication, komuni kae shun, and i am also thinking very much about this relationship to commercialism, to product, the space between public good and private belonging, the relationships we have with eachother and the relationships we have with our things. i love everything that you do.
Posted by 丫 | reply »
