——
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.
on iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter, eyh
Who made this? asks the naive moment.
My first stir of thought has been to think of making.
The idea of making is the first and most human of ideas.
“To explain” is never anything more than to describe a way of making: it is merely to remake in thought.
—- from Paul Valéry, “Man and Sea Shell,” in The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 117.
Posted by 丫 | reply »a closed door that leaves us guessing
A Closed Door That Leaves Us Guessing
Pedro Costa
1. Masamichi Matsumoto is the director of Athénée Français Cultural Center, and Kazuyuki Yano is the chief of YIDFF (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival) Tokyo Office.
First, I wanted to thank a few people –- this is going to be a bit like the Oscars, but that’s how it is. I wanted just to say thanks to my mother, to Mr. Yano and to Mr. Matsumoto, because they are the two most important people for me, at least for some time now. (1) They’ve given me a good reason for something that I’ve felt –- that perhaps I’ve loved Japan and didn’t know it. Just as in the cinema, we must meet people, real people, in flesh and blood, to believe in this love. Of course, I thank all the others in the very lovely brochure that you have published, and which gives me great pleasure and honour. All of this is to say that I thank those who I know now and didn’t know before, and that has something to do with what I’d like to say to you today, tomorrow, and the day after – simply, that we can know things through the cinema. Like me, for example, I loved Japan and I knew some things about Japan, without ever having been here before now.
I knew the Japan of films, above all of the three directors most well known in Europe –- namely, Mizoguchi, Ozu and Naruse. I knew Japan through them, these who are dead, who are of another time, but I loved it already, at a distance – and that also is very important in the cinema, to love at a distance. There were things in Japan that I’d never seen in the films of Ozu or Mizoguchi or Naruse, and that I continue not to see in Japan. Here, I launch into a rather complicated subject, for there are things that these directors, or the other great directors I don’t know, hid from me, aspects of Japan that they didn’t show me. Today I’m in Japan and I still don’t see them. That is to say, sometimes in the cinema, it’s just as important not to see, to hide, as it is to show. The cinema is perhaps more a question of concentrating our gaze, our vision of things. That’s what great directors, like these three Japanese, are doing. They are not showing Japan –- they’re condensing something. Instead of scattering your mind, your heart and your senses, they’re concentrating your vision. That’s what I’m always saying: the cinema is made for concentrating our vision. To concentrate means also to hide. It’s a cliché to say that Japan is like the films of Ozu, and the history of Japan is the same as in the historical films of Mizoguchi. Now I understand and I sense Japan better (it’s the same thing: to understand is to feel and to feel is to understand). For example (and you must not laugh now), I have the impression that I don’t see pregnant women on the streets in Japan, and I understand that after having seen the films of Ozu. I know what it means not to see a pregnant woman on the streets of Tokyo. In Ozu’s films, he gives us cues to understand that it’s hidden. That is to say, Ozu prepared me to see this absence of pregnant women. So, sometimes a director who is very much a realist, working almost in a documentary mode like Ozu, sometimes he makes films also to hide something. There’s a secret somewhere in his films, and to assert certain things he must hide others. Maybe it’s necessary to step a bit outside of Japan, because what I’m about to say could make you uncomfortable, I don’t know … but for me, the true Japanese documentaries are by Ozu. All the people I know in Japan, all my Japanese friends, I knew before, through the films of Ozu. What I’ve just said, Ozu has written in his journal. He says: ‘I’ve never made up a character. In my films, I make copies of my friends.’
Posted by lucio | Comments Off“the spirit of recession”
“… it was a rare moment when the course of the world seemingly revealed itself on our streets. history became available as an experience in the here and now, through the uncanny alignment of the local and the national, both of which expressed this new course in a negative light - that is to say, as the experience of the way we are being impotently dragged along in its wake, regardless of our own will and power of resistance. that feeling of forces over our head, pushing the course of the world onward like blind and unavoidable fate, would not feel so blind and unavoidable if not for the fact that these forces expressed themselves through us. they speak in attitudes and forms of thinking that compel from within an elective affinity that not only accepts these forces as right but more acutely as natural to the ways of the world.
..
in the interest of self-interest i had to understand the ways in which the social conditions were shifting, either to get in or out of their way. yet the more i understood those conditions, the more i felt like i was being conditioned by them, so that over the course of surviving, i reproduced, rather than resisting, the impulses that were aligned with the forces throwing an entire epoch into a state of petrified unrest.
but what are you supposed to do?
self-preservation is the only game, in any town. because even if you don’t play, it doesn’t mean you can’t get played. the urge to join the game is strong, and not necessarily because everybody wants to win, but because nobody has the luxury of losing.
..
the speculative form of revelation that unveils the seemingly inevitable course and consequence of a society progressing over time by virtue of an unending conflict that pits itself against its own best, which is to say human interest, has an illustrious name in the history of ideas. it is called spirit.
..
a recession is more than an economic and social phenomenon that must be endured. it holds within itself a kern of unreason that promises to release it from the constraints of rationality so that new possibilities can come about in its use and meaning. that unreason is its religiosity. for the other definition of recession has to do with the church. namely, the time after church service, when the clergy departs and the people who make up the congregation are left to themselves. as the church authorities leave a hymn is sang. that is called the recessional. and it is here in the act of leaving and singing that the idea of a recession gains its transformative potential–for a church without authority is blessed indeed. the end of the service announces the beginning of another kind of time. no more commands for sacrifice and expression of faith, no more sermons from the book of progress, no more exchange of prayers. time holds no more duties and returns to the people a sense of being neither guaranteed nor determined; an inner composition unburdened by the anxiety of influence, and which finds its own shape only when power recedes. this is the time when thoughts turn away from authority that captures their attention, from above and from within, and towards the radical demands of life after church. the recessional marks the moment of this turning. it is the emphatic image of time shaped by the invisible currents of something both passing and coming. it acts like a lyrical farewell and charges the entire space with the anticipation of new tidings that only real endings can bring.
..
the spirit is a bone, the philosopher hegel once declared. to find the courage to say the very last words and to make them sing like the recessional to the very last service - this is what i call art. and then to master the strength to stay on firm, not leave and endure through spirit - this is what i call the creative act today.”
paul chan, the spirit of recession, public art fund speech originally recorded by WPS1, New York, April 2008
you can listen to the whole speech here. please do.
Posted by f | more »a picture emerges
serres & latour, conversations on science, culture and time
Posted by toby | reply »the inside and the outside and the secret of the fear of the fear
“It is true, part of us has disappeared, but reality itself remains. The fact that, today, we can say that the geography of the outside has changed, that the outside no longer exists, that we are all enclosed within, means that, at the same time, the outside is everywhere. But we should have to be able to divide the division to recover what is left.
It is a trap we accept and that maintains the fiction of ‘this totality’ which paralyzes us as much as it amputates a part of us. And thus we are not, not even sentimentally, without strength and courage in our zeal to maintain a worrying normality which we have not really chosen.
(…) this is the reason why what we can still recover no longer concerns ourselves but our remains; I believe this is the only hope we have for simply making use of our lives. For we can no longer separate ourselves from what is incrusted within us. We can no longer lose ourselves, because we are already almost no longer here. However, we can try to abandon ourselves there where we are shattered in a thousand pieces and perhaps recover our outside. and i am not in a position to say whether, in this case, the form does not come anymore than it leaves.” (alejandra riera, enquiry into the/our outside)
(reading through old notebooks, looking for things to hold on to, lines becoming blurry, the summer dissolving in front of our eyes..)
Posted by f | reply »a summer in pieces
…i think you are the one i have been waiting for. maybe i am your missing piece
but i am not missing a piece. there is no place you would fit
that is too bad. i was hoping that perhaps i could roll with you…
you cannot roll with me, but perhaps you can roll by yourself
by myself? a missing piece cannot roll by itself
have you ever tried?
(from the missing piece meets the big o, by shel silverstein)
Posted by toby | reply »whatever singularities (hurrah for you and me and you and you and you)
Whatever singularities cannot form a societas within a society of the spectacle because they do not possess any identity to vindicate or any social bond whereby to seek recognition. …The threat the state is not willing to come to terms with is precisely the fact that the unrepresentable should exist and form a community without either presuppositions or conditions of belonging (just like Cantor’s inconsistent multiplicity). The whatever singularity—-this singularity that wants to take possession of belonging itself as well as of its own being-into-language, and that thus declines any identity and any condition of belonging—-is the new, nonsubjective, and socially inconsistent protagonist of the coming politics.
–from “Marginal Notes on Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle“, Giorgio Agamben
Posted by 丫 | more »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 »for severality, on fragility 1
To sustain fragility, a stamp on the box or the curiosity of half-opened contents. She says it is a trauma, beyond or prior to event, infliction in mere seconds or unconscious years, is p(h)ys(ch)ical.
He shudders in late afternoon half-sun. Sometimes, somewhere else and longing to be repeated, never repeated, she recoils, not horror. Those prickling sparks of the nerves they call falling asleep, …i’m exhausted.
Fragility means that you might find yourself not on the subjective level (coming, pre-, before you), we are partial to (one another) and we are partial (a many subjectivities). The pieces lay strewn and ambitious! What is already fragmented can beg a prism-like movement, sometimes slight twisting of the wrist to open a new light, from Levinas’ very first illumination (but in the refusal of darkness).
Once we saw three at once, a tunnel lining an enormous thundering sky, and we drove through them all.
—-not a means to an object, we pass through what passes through us. Fragility, the broken glass after the break, under but begging the open, makes transparent without needing to be seen. But it is not concealment as such (those chatting at the bar simply do not notice), nor a state to induce fascination (stillness, displacing life) so much as laying bare, not bare or just being there, in the middle of an ongoing process. The prolongation of fragility is not a state of being, but may find itself in the invisible inconsistencies of ritual, the anticipation or the suspension of an event. Its fascinance can never be an isolated moment, for it can only exist in relation to the other, as cause or affect or the relinquishing notion of wanting to be part of all of you. That longing, whether in pain or love, is more real that real itself, for it is the realm of the possible-not-yet.
Fucking phantasy! I owe you one.
1 Martin Hielscher, Hiroaki Kanai, Sean Smith, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, Pierre Huyghe, Bracha Ettinger
Posted by 丫 | reply »11:36:38 | 没有，飞机要进入雷区了，我要关机了，等会再和你们聊。 No. The airplane is about to enter a thunder zone. I have to turn the machine off. I’ll chat with you again later.
5月13日地震抢救现场上午直播群里的一个记者在地震抢救现场给我们上午做的直播 QQ instant messenger relay from netizen 绮梦, meaning Pleasant Dream, in the accompaniment of the entourage of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on the morning of May 13:
10:07:29 | 现场简直不能看了 The scene is unbearable to watch
10:08:33 | 年过花甲的总理已经哭得不成样子了 The grey-haired premier is crying his eyes out
10:10:16 | 刚刚挖开的地方又塌方了 The location that was just excavated has just collapsed once more
10:11:24 | 这倒霉天气还在下雨，现在一线的军人已经被下达死命令，必须冒雨解救 It is still raining in this rotten weather. The frontline soldiers have been given a must-do order to make the rescue in the rain
10:11:30 | 我就在现场 I am at the scene
10:11:56 | 我现在是在都江堰市 I am presently in Dujiangyan city
10:13:24 | 交通已经瘫痪了，人员和物资很难运进去 Traffic has been paralyzed so that it is hard to get personnel and material in
10:13:47 | 汶川现在还不让我们去 Wenchuan won’t let us go there right now
10:15:21 | 汶川的交通完全封闭了，现场到底怎么样我不知道，不过早上总理指示军队不管有多大代价，必须进城 All traffic to Wenchuan has been stopped. I don’t know what it is like out there. But the Premier gave an directive to the army to enter the city at any price
10:16:03 | 倒霉天气在下雨，飞机几次都不能降落，伞兵马上就要起飞了 It is still raining in this rotten weather. The airplanes are unable to land after several failed attempts. The paratroopers are about to take off
10:17:36 | 飞机在汶川空投物资了 The airplanes are dropping material into Wenchuan
10:20:06 | 被压在废墟下的300多学生现在很危险啊，刚才一次的营救又失败了，现在总理在现场组织再次营救。 The more than 300 students trapped underneath the rubble are in great danger. The last rescue attempt failed again. The Premier is organizing another rescue right now
10:20:47 | 啊 总理摔到了， The Premier just tripped and fell down
10:21:35 | 照片我正在传给北京，不经过审核的是不允许发布的 I am transmitting the photo to Beijing. But it can’t be distributed until it has been approved
10:22:21 | 我和几个同行现在开了9台电脑，同时在传消息 I and several colleaglues are running nine computers to send information out
10:22:37 | 这个QQ在关键时候传的真慢 This QQ thing is really slow in the most critical moments
10:23:39 | 突击队又上了 The special forces have moved in again
10:25:04 | 如果你现在看见老爷子的样子，你马上就会哭的 If you can see Grandpa Wen now, you would cry immediately
10:26:40 | 老爷子的手臂受伤出血了，他把要给他包扎的医务人员推开了 Grandpa’s arm is bleeding. He just shoved aside the medical aide who wants to give him bandage
10:27:09 | 好消息，发现一名学生了 Good news, a student has been found
10:28:00 | 总理跑到塌方点了，在帮忙呢 The Premier has gone over to the collapse point to help
10:28:13 | 向峨乡中学 Xiangexiang Middle School
10:28:33 | 拖出来了，医生在抢救 The student has been pulled out and the doctors are providing treatment
10:28:56 | 部队上来的人还不是很多 Not a lot of army soldiers have arrived
10:29:07 | 交通太困难 Transportation is too hard
10:29:42 | 现在还不一定，这个看样子看活着，吊瓶氧气都挂上了 It is still uncertain but this one appears to be alive. They are using IV drips and oxygen
10:31:06 | 啊，又塌了 Oh, another collapse
10:31:28 | 突击队一个人被埋进去了 A member of the special forces has been buried
10:32:40 | 等等，我到前面看看 Wait, let me move up and take a look
10:36:24 | 我回来了，抢救出来了 I am back. He has been rescued.
10:37:16 | 最新消息，彭州被困的10万群众危险！！！ Latest news: the 100,000 trapped in Pengzhou are in danger!!!
10:38:49 | 由于大雨的影响，工程兵几次架桥失败，附近已经出现泥石流迹象，电话直接是叫通总理的，情况很危险！！！ Due to the heavy rains, the engineers have failed several times to erect a new bridge. There are signs of mudslides in the surrounding area. The telephone call was put through directly to the Premier. The situation is very dangerous!!!
10:39:19 | 由于桥梁倒塌，彭州市10万群众被堵在山中，救灾人员和物资无法运入。已经出现泥石流迹象 Due to a collapsed bridge, the 100,000 people of Pengzhou are trapped up in the mountain. The rescue personnel and material cannot enter. There are signs of mudslides.
10:41:11 | 总理电话里大喊，我不管你们怎么样，我只要这10万群众脱险，这是命令。他把电话摔了 The Premier is screaming into the telephone: “I don’t care what you have to do. I want those 100,000 people out of danger. That is an order.” Then he slammed the phone down
10:41:33 | 头一次看见老爷子这么厉害 This is the first time that I have seen the old man react so strongly
10:41:54 | 汶川现在还没通知去，估计情况不是很好 Wenchuan has not notified us to go there yet. The situation is probably not very good
10:42:16 | 我现在在通讯帐篷里 I am in the communications tent
10:43:54 | 汶川最新消息，雨开始小了，空投物资已经扔下去了，空降兵已经在外围机场登机了 The latest news from Wenchuan is that the rain has lessened and the material are being air-dropped. The paratroopers are boarding the planes at the outlying airport
10:45:19 | 现在所有的国外记者都在关注号称中国最精锐的特种部队首次公开亮相 All the overseas reporters are paying attention to the first public appearance of China’s best elite troops
10:46:50 | 总理现在和登机部队领导说话 The Premier said, “I have only one thing to say. The people have been feeding you, so you see what you can do.”
11:11:00 | 总理说，我就一句话，是人民在养你们，你们自己看着办。 Hi, I am right now in a military helicopter. I am nervous because this is the first time that I have been in such an airplane
11:12:51 | 我现在在直升机上，估计一个小时后就到什肪了 I am in the helicopter. I estimate that I will arrive at Shitang in one hour’s time
11:34:40 | 最新消息，汶川的映秀、漩口、卧龙三镇通讯信号很弱，至今也无法联系。估计三镇有将近两万多人被困，余震不断，大雨连绵，情况非常严峻，由于能见度太差，无法判断准确情况。总参命令，当空降部队到达汶川上空时，如果条件不允许，就不惜代价强行伞降！ Latest news, the signals from Yingxiu, Xuankou and Wolong towns are very weak, and no communication has been made so far. It is estimated that almost 20,000 people are trapped in those three towns. The aftershocks are continuing. The situation is very grim. Since visibility is too poor, it is difficult to assess the situation. The Command Headquarters has issued the order to the paratroopers that even if the conditions do not permit, they will parachute down no matter what the price is!
11:36:38 | 没有，飞机要进入雷区了，我要关机了，等会再和你们聊。 No. The airplane is about to enter a thunder zone. I have to turn the machine off. I’ll chat with you again later.
13:44:33 | 我来了，让各位着急了 Here I come. Sorry to leave you waiting
13:45:12 | 我现在是在什邡化工厂，这里的情况比预想的要好 I am at the Shitang Chemical Factory. The situation is better than anticipated
13:45:42 | 抢救工作正在顺利有序的展开 The rescue work is going on in an orderly fashion
13:46:49 | 汶川还没消息，空降部队已经快抵达了 No news from Wenchuan. The paratroopers are about to arrive
13:47:20 | 总理中午到德阳了，听说那里情况不是很好 The Premier arrived in Deyang at noon. I heard that the situation there is not very good
13:50:56 | 都江堰方面的最新消息，中午这两个小时，已经抢救出60多名孩子 The latest news from Dujiangyan. More than 60 children have been rescued during the two hours since noon
13:51:25 | 照片不经过审查是不允许随便发布的，这是纪律 Photos that have not been approved are not to be distributed. Those are the disciplinary rules
13:53:58 | 因为雨很大，泥石流和塌方事件越来越多，情况很糟糕 Due to the heavy rains, there are more and more incidents of mudslides and collapses. The situation is very bad
13:57:38 | 彭州的架桥部队进展顺利，有望在最短时间完工并救出被困的10万群众 The bridge engineer corps are doing well in Pengzhou. There is hope to rescue the trapped 100,000 people in the shortest time
13:59:41 | 成都军区特种侦察大队以徒步越野方式向汶川开进，希望能够成功并指引空降部队空投 The Chengdu Military District special scout corps is traversing the wilderness towards Wenchuan. It is hoped that they can succeed and direct the parachute drop.
[以上内容转载自钱烈宪博客，帖子的标题是“温受伤了”。据说是一位网名“绮梦”的新闻从业人员13号从现场发回的消息。我们无法证实其真实性，仅供大家参考。英文是为东南西北博客翻译的。The transcript above has been translated into English by Roland Soong of EastSouthNorthWest from the blog of Raymond Zhou, who reprinted the text from another blog posting titled "Wen injured". Raymond titled his blog post "What moved me most". Thank you to a for the initial relay.]
Posted by 丫 | more »strangers (to ourselves)
from paolo virno, the grammar of the multitude
