reading diary (10 jul 13)

Cox:

Busch – art as knowledge production, commodification of that as art as commodity slinks back into the background…

art as research is interesting to me, because of the appeal/seduction of the meta.  as a different form of knowledge (would like to hear more about her notion of Foucault’s notion of knowledge as power esp. in relation to this; particularly, less about ‘…showing the invisible, than showing the invisibility of the visible in the invisible.’); intermediary zone, the impossible.

Holert – the old question ‘is it art’ being replaced with ‘is it research’ ; art needing autonomy, developing its own epistemology

Lesage – a theme here (as in the last) that works of art, works of art as knowledge-productions in themselves, will come to create the definitions toward which we can build an ontology (wc?) of how art research operates within an inter- trans-disciplinary context.

what is the bolognia accord? (i can google, of course, but i’m curious to hear what it is without the pomp&circ.)

Steyerl–aesthetics of resistance — peter weiss (same one who wrote marat/sade?) — this needs a second read; very very useful.

Bowdidge:

For these readings, I’m reconstructing my idea of form, and have my best questions when walking in Berlin…some of these are more useful than others, but only because I’m applying them to my own self-centered fixations of my own project, all of them are useful.  The question about how to present my thesis, what form, and what can I do to push the limits of those forms in order to present the work I want to present, has been eluding me; mostly because of a problem in context, in how to understand the questions in a way that is useful (again).  These readings have made that useful, or, at the very least, made the usefulness apparent as something that is on its way… so, some quotes and questions…

Consider a musician

raising a finger during a piece of music and saying ‘that is high-C’.5 This is an example of a spatio-temporal gesture of pointing to an intangible ‘object’. In these examples we see not only the logical limitations, but the extent to which the phenomenally substantiating gesture can encompass metaphorical ‘pointing’.

QUESTION of how to translate this into writing and viewing video (and live performance), where is the space where the high c is communicated, when it’s not something as effable as a note (is a note effable?)  (c-able, haha)

Of greater consequence is the identification of fully-visual concepts. These do not require conventionalised representational grammars such as engineering drawing to facilitate their interpretation. They are unusual because they can be reliably interpreted by contextual reading. They demonstrate fuzzy boundaried concepts and generality. As a result, they expose the inability of ostensive definition to function normatively

Biggs vr

I GET THIS I THINK–QUESTION HERE OF COURSE IS THE NOTION OF ‘RELIABLY INTERPRETED’ BUT I THINK THAT KIND OF QUESTIONING IN THIS CASE WOULD JUST GIVE ME A HEADACHE…LANGUAGE IS IMPERFECT BLABLA YES WE KNOW THAT IT IS INCOMPLETE…

Three principal types of experiential knowledge are identified: explicit, tacit and ineffable. Explicit content is expressed linguistically. Tacit content has an experiential component that cannot be efficiently expressed linguistically. Ineffable content cannot be expressed linguistically. It would therefore be necessary to prove that practice-based research only generates ineffable content in order to substantiate the argument that practice-based research necessarily demands non-linguistic modes of argument and communication. This idea is rejected.

GOOD.

We can translate the problem of experiential content into one of representation.

YES, I LIKE THIS VERY MUCH.  I WANT TO TALK ABOUT METAPHORS AND ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT METAPHORS.  I WONDER IF WE CAN ONLY FIND VALUE IN OUR WORK AS CREATING METAPHORS IF WE FIND THAT REALITY, OR LANGUAGE, IS STRUCTURED THROUGH METAPHOR, IN WHICH CASE, WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING ALTERNATE MAPS, AND ARE EXCITED TO SHOW THE MAPS TO SOMEONE ELSE IN HOPES THAT THEY KNOW WHAT WE DO WHEN THEY SEE THEM…

The fact that experiential content is represented by experiential feeling is actually an advantage. A representation is some sort of translation where we step away from what we are trying to conceptualise and describe it in an alternative form, for example a landscape painting allows us to see connections that may be less apparent when confronted by the actual landscape itself. Because we have accepted the possibility of representation we can accept alternative representations.

THIS IS EXCITING TO ME, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE THE NOTION OF EXPERIENTIAL CONTENT UNPACKED.

His distinction is between knowing-how and knowing-that. (Gilbert Ryle)

YES.

Ineffable knowledge cannot be put into words. Experiential feelings are ineffable; but in practice-based research we are concentrating on experiential content, and because experiential content is only represented by feelings it is not a necessaryconsequence that practice-based research is ineffable.

Biggs lfe

OK I LIKE THIS BUT I AM ALMOST LOST, ALMOST THERE AND ALMOST LOST.  EXAMPLES OF EXPERIENTIAL CONTENT?

“Where does the legitimation come from?”

YES

Picasso painting is not showing what I was looking for but what I found.

Into. Through. For.

YES ALL OF THIS YES.

Freyling

In arts and humanities, both questions and answers, both issues and how they are addressed, are more volatile. They are what I would describe as ‘culturally determined’

The issue of what constitutes ‘the solution that works’ depends on the perception of the nature of the question by the audience

Biggs solution

THIS IS HUGE, AND RELIES ON THE QUESTION OF WHETHER OR NOT THE NATURE OF THE AUDIENCE IS SOMETHING I CAN POSSIBLY IDENTIFY.  THE U.K. SYSTEM, OR MY DOS, OR PEOPLE WHO TAUGHT ME WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER OR THE ONE I LOVE OR ETC…?  ITS FOR A SYSTEM, A UNIVERSITY SYSTEM, OF COURSE, AND ALL OF THE OTHERS, BUT HOW TO DEFINE THAT OR EVEN UNDERSTAND IT…CAN WE PERFORM FOR A CULTURE WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND (I.E., POLISH-IRISH-AMERICAN PERFORMING WRITING AND PERFORMANCE FOR U.K. SCHOLARS)

Estevez:

I read these texts, and most texts, really, like walking in a new city. Or a familiar city for the very first time all over again. The pace is constantly shifting, and I try to avoid writing anything down until later, because when I’m writing I’m missing the experience entirely, even though I know that if I don’t record something it might go away forever. That’s kind of all right. The small details that seem to suggest little worlds that are trying to open, I make little notes, and put them somewhere that I’ll find later. What I remember without writing becomes a ground zero of impressions, ground zero in the sense that it’s a base, but I understand the base is already filtered through my own interpretation, because I’m always getting into impossible knots when I forget that these things are filtered through my interpretation.

Peace Pilgrim, I’ve worked in a dozen bookstores and sold a few dozen copies of her book. The people buying it always had this interesting spark in their eye, they’d seen something and wanted to keep seeing. I’m not entirely sure why, maybe it’s because I’ve been thinking about seeing a lot lately, but reading her words, it struck me as enormously visual. This idea of being, a methodology of being in the world, that leads to this radical (rooted) path, comes from an inner vision (oju inu) that is enormously compassionate. What strikes me here is that in her case, the inner vision isn’t one that’s helping her to cope with the world out there, but one that’s refreshed by it, constantly, so that it’s a system that is always feeding itself. I’m thinking about those mystic insights that start off interestingly enough, but then fade away in a little time, when it becomes apparent that notions like “we are all one” are not at the forefront of everyone’s mind (thinking specifically about Arizona politics, for starters). But her method/methodology is one where there is a loop that is constantly affirming the sense that people are decent at their core.

I’m terribly impressed at how little she is concerned with whether or not she might seem crazy. This kind of faith at the core, one that is really at odds with the usual structures that make people behave so cautiously, is terribly interesting to me. It seems radical in that particular country (in those particular places), in that particular time, and I wonder about a city like Berlin, where it seems to me that the bar that dictates aberrant (sic) behavior is considerably higher. And I would like to think that a cultural core that has gone through devastating genocides would be more prone to permissiveness, and that’s not the case at all where I live, at least not yet, and I think about this a lot…and have questions about this…because the politics of difference here does not seem to be yielding in any direction, and I wonder about what kinds of actions are possible, ones that don’t have inherent dangers. And I can’t help but think about privilege along all the categorical lines (I will be considered a fool, or ignored, in worst case scenarios, for public art actions, and maybe even come close to physical danger, but that line, physical threat, is further away for some than for others….)

I think at the heart of these, my initial impressions, relate to the idea of how our thought determines reality, that attitude is everything, coupled with this Marxist cynicism that point of view is easier to manipulate when one is not living at variance because of want or class gender race etc.

–the walking guide is useful, I don’t have questions about it, just looking forward to this, and interested in how this is changing my mind about what I think is possible in art residency, (suddenly more grant opportunities seem open). 

Borges: I really want to hear about why this is included in these readings, before I say why it worked so well for me. Ok I’ll tell you first. The city, this city, Berlin, New York, Phoenix, is a complicated text. In one part there is a historical awareness that is very sure of itself, the place where the descendants of the victors read and write epic poems about themselves. And over here, under the ground, is something that contains everything. We don’t know who we are, and the roots are under the ground, and those have been transplanted from somewhere else. This small thing that contains everything, is contained somewhere here, and it’s a replica of something else somewhere else.

Dérive: this is interesting especially when taken in with Borges’ Aleph, moving into a sphere where the political and the metaphysical mix. I can’t quite articulate how they fit, but they do….thinking of the dèrive in relation to Phoenix, this becomes a city that feels suddenly very different, but it’s impossible to have the time to try it out before I leave. But the wedge in thought is there. I’m terribly curious how it will be in Berlin (a city I love and hardly know). Vs how it will be here when I get back home.
Also I remember when I first started riding a motorcycle about six years ago, and how this changed the city entirely. Might be what Debord is talking about. Knowing a city by the temperature and the smell gives contours that you can’t necessarily see. This is where there are tortillas and detergent from Mèxico. This felt like a Deleuzian line of flight, an escape route thru which I could always see something else that is already always there. And I also think about Foucault’s haptic & optic.
Lockwood:

Lorde p 7: she mentions black women & black men having a joint set of defenses & joint vulnerabilities /& the only other community with this kind of system is the Jewish community. Unpack? I’m not sure how that works.

“…rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression.” (This articulates what a lot of writers are trying to say right now; which points out a very disturbing idea here, that her ideas are applicable to contemporary rape culture <does anyone miss the time when Peter was the first Tosh we thought about?>and that the power dynamics very similar to what they were in the last generation).

“…caught between the racism of white women and homophobia of their sisters.”
“But our future survival is predicated upon our ability to relate within equality.” (Only difference allowable in public discourse is that between women and men, and we need more acknowledgment of more difference, in discourse that does not come from the oppressor )

Kant studies 1 starry heavens above and 2 moral laws within. Relating geography and anthropology.
Rousseau nature out of nature, l homme naturale et l homme de l homme, out of nature is when language becomes necessary.
–this essay is excellent, and useful. It’s convincing power is all in the beginning, what Kant does with Rousseau, but the subsequent proof is a micro history of the intellectual construction of racism, which is still central, like an elephant in the living room, to public discourse on race (particularly in the conservative parts of the US, from my experience and observation, I don’t know how this works in the EU and am looking forward to learning).

…”we became centered in our own experiences…”
Decolonization and unsettling the Euro bias in post colonial thought are very exciting ideas for me. My knee jerk response to some of these ideas is, ah so Deleuze’s deterritorialization is out because he is French (and an analysis of why my knees would jerk in such a defensive way would tell about my own colonized mind–it is colonized, I know,because I have Polish and Irish ancestors, live in a part of the world that has been historically Navajo and Hopi longer than Spanish, but I speak English, haha); but I also wonder how it might be possible to link African influence to continental philosophy, or if that’s missing the point entirely?
Negritude and Garvey and tracing a European lineage (Paris and Harlem) is entirely fascinating, in this regard, and already I am reconnecting dots in my head about these stories, genealogies of diaspora and migration…
Fong Ling.

“…my practice explores the notion that one performs in order to ‘disappear.’ ”
Auslander: theatrical. Staged for the camera. Documentary staged for the audience and then the camera.
“‘authenticity’ fluctuates in the interpretive gap…” Drawing vs video as reproduction of the event.

This is very exciting to me, for a number of reasons. I’ve worked as an artist model in a number of classroom and studio situations, and the politics of subject and object are very interesting to me. Because of the question of nudity, which still seems terribly packed, unresolved. Nudity is just another layer in the equation, but it’s the layer that brings the gender politics into focus, it seems to me.

I have been in uncomfortable situations, where I’ve been dating the older sister of one of the high school students I’m modeling for, or trying to pinch my thigh surreptitiously, to keep from nodding off because the Vicodin was making me sleepy (I cut off the end of my thumb a few years ago and spent the better part of two years after taking drugs for the pain). And these situations keep inspiring this yet undone performance, where the artist model is also the art teacher, so there’s a naked figure in the center of the room, yelling at the students. I don’t know if it would read to anyone but me.

And I’ve done performance work where I’ve been nude and the collaborators have not, and the ideas for this may have been interesting once (male nude instead of female to shift the gaze, undoing some performance art tropes where a central male artist surrounds himself with women willing to be naked when he’s just half naked), but what disturbed me the most was a comment my ex once made, when I was presenting my work at a conference in New Orleans: she said that the last thing I did seemed to her like just another version of me getting naked in front of some nubile young partner.

It was terrible to hear, because it was true. The other things were also true, shifting the gaze and asking questions about power, etc., but what she said hit a nerve to where I started doing work without partners for awhile, and tried to unpack the question for myself. I don’t have an ultimate notion, finally, of what’s possible in this situation, except to keep thinking about gender, reading about gender, and be willing to be judged for being naked or not naked. However. What’s most interesting to me about work that questions gender and power is here in the video, the model taking video of the artist. Having read and taught from Blocker and Jones, the subject and object relation is the most fascinating construction in art theory, because it speaks to gender, race, class, phenomenology, linguistics, and African magic. All of my favorite things.

I have a hundred questions then that cannot be articulated. And some that can be. Mostly they run along the lines of things like: how to convince the daughters of the next generation that the power of the gaze is still determining structures of relations, and that revealing the mechanisms of power doesn’t diminish it, but makes it more accessible (or renders it subject to resistance)?