“Nothing subsists in a point, except for the simple exteriority of points in relation to each other. A point consists of nothing (it has no “inside”): it is merely relation to other points. There is no point of space nor point of time (as if it were a little particle of the one or the other), but space and time are the one-outside-the-other of punctuality itself. Thus punctiform space immediately opens time which goes from one point to the other – and time opens space as the truth of its trajectory (the point which is already not the one and not yet the other). The encounter of space and time: here-and-now.”
- from “The Technique of the Present“, by Jean-Luc Nancy
I found some sort correlation to this and the viewing of bodies in space as per Sim’s piece in front of the Tate, and thinking about identity as this punctiform being—-what it is, what we are or can be, as nothing more than a series of relations, identity as nothing more than a here-and-now…
Posted by e | reply »mr.tong’s house (vol.3)
OK, ok…here comes vol.3 of the report of Mr. Tong’s house…
i ’selected’ two rooms for mon and sim, here you go:
Interim report
Mon: Bedroom
Words and meaning
Macht mächt-ig macht-los
Power power-ful power-less
Pouvoir puiss-ant im-puiss-ant
Looking at those three languages translating the state of having power and not having power is quite intersting. in german ‘mächtig’ means being in power and ‘machtlos’ is lacking power. in english ‘powerful’ means literally ful of power, so there is a sense of container filling it. in french ‘puissant’ is more a being and not being since im of ‘impuissant’ stand for a negation of something. is it a BEING or a CONTAINER to be filled, do we LACK of it or are we just NOT it?
Posted by sim | more »alexander platz
i was for 24h in berlin, passing by, doing a blitzbesuch to the big german capital. and on my way from the hauptbahnhof where i left my lugguage to presnzlauerberg, i had to change at alexanderplatz. i went out of the subway and was standing in the rain on that big square where thousand and thousand of people pass by everyday and i was watching them circulate…
i observed their pass way. the square is quite big, there is a big shoping mal nex to the station, the fernsehturm next to it, a fountain in the middel, some little shops, some snack bars…
we move in the structure that are given from ,one place to the other. always in the most direct way?
Posted by sim | more »Südpol-Session
Posted by mon | more »
Karma International 2
Posted by mon | reply »
Karma International 1
I went last Thursday to Karma International’s Vernissage. It’s a nice gallery. It’s in Seefeld, fancy area from Zurich, close to the lake. I’d like to meet Marina (gallery manager) for a coffee next week. Any ideas what an exhibition/event for Overseas could be organised there?
Posted by mon | more »Mr.Tong’s House (Vol.2)
Mr. Tong’s house looks really nice when in the summer, with green little trees and lively decos dotted in his garden (courtyard). Must be fun to chat with the Tongs in the courtyard when there’s breeze and the moonlight… So dramatically romantic…
around new-old town
. .
a few of the places we visited on Monday… meeting Lily at the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Centre NGO (will be good research resource for us) …homes homes, the word on the street that real estate prices are going down for sales, but not for rentals (sitting on property, economic crisis, waiting waiting waiting) …using english to sneak around the real estate agent is cool! …nothing really suitable for the overseas project, but a few leads…
London, Feb 2009 resulting into shift of power
cesar is working currently on a project that is under the working title ‘open architecture’ that will result in a construction of a special boat, sailing over the atlantic. these are his two blogs: http://www.2012hopes.com/ and http://opensailing.net/. a very intersting project. so he talked a lot about his work and his visions and it turned out that a lot of the things were quite interferring with my interst in the courtyard project. key words of our work will be:
- shift of power/tension in a space
- self assembly
- brownian movement
- swarm
- meeting
we made an experiment in the entrance hall of the tate museum in london (participants: Mike Chan, Elpida Orfanidou, Simone Truong, Cesar Harada, thanks to you all), where we reacted with simple rules onto the visiters of the museum. unwillingly the visitors became performer and director of the choreography we where making. rules were, for example:
- when someone looks at something you look at it too
- when someone stops, you turn around yourself
- when someone crosses the space you try to intersect their pathway
- when a group of people cross you try to split the group in two, etc
underneath is another video of a program that cesar designed with a friend (hiromi ozaki) also studying at the royal college in london. on the right side you see a list of (in green) enviromental conditions like earthquake zones, dry zones, cold zones and (in red) the human conditions like epidemie. those items are all connected to a programm that transfers actual data onto this map. the little dots that move around are humans that react to the danger zones, like that they drift in the world around. well what a like about those two videos is that they actually show very similar things, how humans move in space reacting to their environment and unconsciously without sometimes knowing eachother, influencing eachother. i think in a smaller scale it will be in a community of a courtyard the same. so the upper keywords will be used in dance/movement in relationship to your own body, other bodies, the architecture or the further enviroment.
He Yufan & Jiang Jun
何雨繁(He Yufan): He graduated from the architecture department of Tsinghua University ( Note: this is the best in China! ) and he is now a freelance director and actor. He is 30 years old and has done 5 works since 2006. He was invited to the Netherlands for the Oerol Art Festival with his play “Oosterburen”, and to France with “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” as well as Hong Kong with “飞吧临流鸟飞吧”. He was just invited by the British national theatre to visit London in 2008. His play “8008″ which featuring the 80s generation in China was played along with other young directors’ works in the first Beijing Youth Theatre Festival in fall, 2008.
姜均(Jiang Jun) is 25 and she graduated from Beijing Dancing School. She started her career as an independent creator since 2004. She established the “Fan Troupe” in 2006 and has directed 4 works together with He thereafter. She has taken part in Julidans Art Festival in Holland, International Theatre Festival in Zurich, and many other festivals in Hamburg, Berlin, Salzberg and London. She was the co-director with He for their play “8008″.
An interview of them (in Chinese): http://www.u2lux.com/article/20080830/3722_2.html
Posted by sylvie | reply »forgetting the words
荃者所以在魚，得魚而忘荃(魚網)；蹄者所以在兔，得兔而忘蹄(兔置)。言者所以在意，得意而忘言；吾安得夫忘言之人而與之言哉?
Nets exist for catching fish; once a fish is caught, the net is forgotten. Traps exist for catching rabbits; once a rabbit is caught, the trap is forgotten. Words exist for expressing ideas; once the ideas are expressed, the words are forgotten. i would like to find someone who forgets words and have a talk with him!
– 庄子 Zhuangzi，《外務》”Waiwu”
“The real escapes language, or rather, and more serious still, language hides reality, because language immediately posits us inside the unilaterality of a point of view. I say this as opposed to that, I see things this way as opposed to that way. As soon as we speak, we are closed inside a partiality that makes us miss the essential communal dimension of things. The characteristic of language is to mark differences, that of discourse is to use languages to state an opinion, whereas lack of differentiation characterizes the Tao of reality.” (from Detour and Access, François Jullien)
Posted by e | reply »‘Overseas’: 24. February 2009, Züri-Plage, Gessnerallee Posted by mon | more »
Deaf/Special Education in Beijing
There are several special schools in Beijing that are built for deaf or blind children:
· 大兴区特教中心
· 平谷区特教中心
· 北京市第四聋人学
· 北京市第三聋人学校(北京市残疾人职业高中)
· 北京市第二聋人学校
· 北京西城人工耳蜗培训学校
· 北京市第一聋哑学校
Source: http://www.deafchina.com/edu/longyaxuexiao/index.html
Also, there’s an NGO which is sort of well-known called “红丹丹”: http://www.hongdd.china001.com/
Posted by sylvie | more »