Well a grand opening for a grand trip. I can't quite say that the great Empire is here, though it certainly derived from this spot, and the cobble stones now seem to blend perfectly with the LCD flat screen monitors that cover the fancy facades like Time's Square. Too many bags, and as I'm sure Steph will note, the attendant that fell down in the plane.
There is a small competition going on as to who is the most professional traveler. A point tally system such as not having a pen you lose a point, operating two luggage bags at once plus two points, having to take a cab--minus 1 point and about 36 pounds (yikes).
Anyway, we meet the Elsewhere London crew tomorrow at a place called The Approach. will be nice to see everyone. Saw some bad art school art tonight--hopefully are going to see some interesting art tomorrow.
Things I'm thinking about and wanted to note: a city co-exists with the displacement of Being which is in fact a being-with as a matter of discourse (a singular individual thus defined by always already in community)--thus originary and plural- a being in the world which is the meaning in communication about/with being/consciousness according to Nancy---what does this mean? Simply the city is a space of displacement and as Foucault would carry it out, the City becomes a model for the State (town square is to the capital as a police is to the Army) and in that manner the city becomes the displacement, the place holder of the State.
What to do with these thoughts? I'm beginning to work out questions of play and alternative discourse between people that moves beyond or displaces identity toward a communication in the imaginary.
More later
PS. Non of my cloths were dry when I packed so I can't help likening this trip to leaving egypt---having to pack cloths that had yet to rise!
Collections amass within and beside themselves, at the edges of each periphery like so many a-tonal fragments propagating like fractals. The collection of knowledge adds to each species an inner and outer link to its common mass, simultaniously self-referencing itself and editing itself, vortexes within explosions. The collection of knowledge, only references its necessity for more, alludes to its addictive side without embracing it fully and thus produces a tolerence that weighs down the sole, and for those who begin the quest at the question of the sole as an addicted fiend spinning in the patterns of its own life, finds the "only," an all too well distrubuted thing. But the collection of sheer massivity stung or struck or sent into the abyss and frenzy by the possibles of an "art of possibilities " (a post-concept concept in that it is not logocentrically oriented toward an internal or external continuity) gives shape to the fragments as a pattern of arrangement and organization, reason and recognition. The person creating within is captured by the organism which they recognize in the too personal, personal, the hyper-personal that cannot escape its own being a factor of an invention and intervention by the creator and the context construction within which the creator is working and playing. The multiple possibilities, collected from the scattered duality of being without and within, are not "only," like some found object discovered, an object uncovered in an archeology, an object related to a memory, a tactile, visual, linguistic experience, but an object moved from place to place--"What have you been up to? We're just moving things around"--that constant location and dislocation, here and there as an interrupting trajectories of thought, idea, intent, an interruption at the very fabric of inside and outside---a free radical of space--that scoop up the 2D past and presents it in a projected future all awhile watching tumbling piles of happenstance overturn the very boxes that contain them.
#Finger Clipping#
A functioning and thriving Press
#10 4:00 PM
Last night's engagement tested the new function of Elsewhere's Press Office. The morning began with a revelation produced by editor in Chief noop that allowed for the development and implementation of a stage of events. Visitors upon arrival were issued a ticket at the store, upon which, a ticket number was written. Patrons proceeded into the hallway after their bags were thouroughly checked with an elephant wand that squeaks. Having recieved the document the people recieved no further instructions, and heading down the hallway, turned the corner toward 608 as 606 was evidently blocked (ROAD CLOSED). The motion, designed to pass into 608 was countered by a boarder patrol officer working for the station. No uniforms were worn, yet this patrol officer was easily identified by her sharpie drawn mustache and a gun.
Side note conversation (Second floor landing, Carolyn, Pritika, and George): "wouldn't it be interesting if people, guys or girls, tattooed mustaches above their lips so that they would need to shave to show it off"---then this morning I read this from Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, "In the thirties balance of power thinking was still quite strong, the diplomats were all down with Balkanosis, spies with foreign hybrid names lurked in all the stations of the Ottoman rump, code messages in a dozen Slavic tongues were being tattooed on bare upper lips over which the operatives then grew mustaches, to be shaved off only by authorized crypto officers and skin then grafted over the messages by the firms' plastic surgeons...their lips were palimpsests of secret flesh, scarred and unnaturally white, by which they all knew each other."
This marauder signaled people to halt, looking for the validation of their ticket and the signing of proper papers. Once hey had given their name, email address, street address and phone number, on which was assigned another number which corresponded directly to the number listed as a photograph on the camera.
This blog has run long, I started it two hours ago and have lost my way along the way.
I'll end it here and post it now...but I want to wish you all well.
-love ya mean it.
We have hit a new pace and the jumble is beginning to settle. Cohesive encounters have since passed and everyone is in the turmoil that is production process in phasical containers. People are stratified upon indistinguishable levels of reflection, work and desires, diversified small groups identified as larger people. No one has gotten drunk yet which might be why we are all askew. There are some here who I would be quite pleased to know drunkly--some parts steady in other parts frantic. It is hard to feel out the altitude of the pathways. I've begun to spin in the ile thought I sense the rising line echoing a standing plateau, set apart from its own alignment of developing fluctuations in smaller, internal intervals. As of now there is a great sea of boyies without any larger ships docking. Elsewhere is in a phase that soon I might find my opportunity to retreat to the upstairs archive. As yet I am down here having just finished a massive orientation. There are some things here that I am strongly drawn to, but there is little response that is appropriate. The test of patience is one that knaws on all bones and treats. I await the arrival of some old faces that will implement a return to certain dynasties. Happily, everyone has a place in the linage and everyone is inserting their place into the space. Well here is an image to keep all the glancers happy.
June first marked the official kickoff to Elsewhere's Artist Conversation Series, an 18 week series of artist talks, performances, screenings, etc. Sarah Witt gave her live performance to a crowd of about 25 people which was comfortably enjoying the event. It was quite a success I thought, the whole evening. The work became a fantastic exploration of failure, a design or opportunity to fail based around the artistic engagement with a technical process. In some sense the work explored the two sides of praxis/practice, the technical and scientific engagement with knowledge and human capacity versus the artistic presence and exploration of such ideas in and of themselves outside the production possibilities of human capacity. Of course ask and you shall receive, and while flying was never accomplished, failure was in an electromagnetic melt down that caused digitized quirks in the video screening when the camera was placed too close to the tv. I found myself at the center of the mess, not sure whether to keep showing the video or cut it off, and after a desperate back stage plea I cut off the video and entered Witt, flustered and pissed off, angry, humiliated, saddened. I forget what exactly she said to the audience but it was heartfelt and hysterical. The audience laughed with her as she expressed her humiliation and pain, anger, and frustration at the inability to show her work. Backstage she cursed and was mortified, trapped in the Aqwherium tent fuddling with a costume change that was necessitated by the sudden technical failure. After fielding a few questions about the work the situation was being worked out and the video was shown, making the whole thing look like an intended piece.
We were discussing that night what it is to set oneself up for the opportunity of failure and Sarah's relation with the space and the multiple personalities that she was exploring. One of the thoughts that I came to during the discussion was the notion of the immensity of visual information and possible knowledge that is immediately present in the space. The overwhelming nature of information and possibilities as they present themselves to artists is daunting for sure, and the process of acclimation, of overcoming that which one intends with the experience as it arises and provides itself for artistic insight offers an opportunity to look beside oneself at their own production and process tasks and see how it is that they make decisions. Choice shares a stage at all times with failure. As we limit whatever it is we have to chose from the act of determination directs the flow of ideas away from multiple possibles as they arrange themselves outside the realm of distinction. Collection then becomes a primary objective, the opening up and presenting to oneself multiple possibles. One question from the audience was to what extent the flying character and the Witt character were related, and Sarah said plainly that they were not, that she had grown fascinated over her time here with multiple choices and options and had the desire to merge and present even though they sprang from different sources. This conjunction was admirable and thorough, conjoining concepts and approaches, multiple characters and evidences for art making, object collecting, etc.
Failure exposes an end outside of design, an end that is unexpected or unintended, a collapse of hypothesis, a disproof. The failure of the performance, the moment in which the work collapsed brought a sudden and unexpected end, a sharing of another character, that is, Sarah herself, but within a context that when revealed through the successful showing made the unintended interruption appear to be part of the show. We met three characters and not just two as one supposed, and so instead the technical failure forced an artistic opening up, a true disclosure that was necessary to complete the circular structure. The girl "sarah" freaking out in the video about her own silliness was made public in the costume of Washing with Witt in relation to a failure of the overall performance. In the end all worked out and my suggestion for Sarah's next impossible feat was to pursue x-ray vision.
Perhaps this performance will expose the nothingness and truth beneath her skin, as that which is at all moments a character of her self, and an identity that makes up the audience upon which she feeds.
--thank you Sarah.
It has just been recalled to me that i must speak about the visibility of insides and outsides. If i pass a threshold and then in glancing forward notice the terrain is different and from this judgment of a memory (joined with a perception or premonition) come to a conclusion, or rather a reaction, then I might begin to notice the differences between my present stance and that of the memory that I hold with myself. Thus I become divided in the sense that I don't recognize the currency of my own self, that is I've exchanged with what I was by placing it in the comparison of what I am, which fades away as fast as I can count. Oh the time does pass when you stair up at the ceiling. The steps seem to come from the ceiling more often than not, but this is in fact only the comparison of the present or apparent with the remembered or recalled. How could that which I see, colored by how I project myself from the past, not constitute the more brightly colored pair (remembrance and the self).
Does it seem viable to detach oneself from the visible which is never manifest solely in the present. To detach the self from the perception of the present still leaves the invisible which I am by fact of not being solely the present presence and being instead the partially visible which is reflection upon or reflection of the past. If the partially visible is reflection, that is, the recollection of ones self as part of a situation that has passed, and that partially visible is the past part of the present, then how can we move forwardly into the invisible? The invisible is akin to an unconscious but at that point the sign and signifiers have been set afloat and recollection is already involved. One is already looking for the invisible at this point and thus it has pointers whether or not they hold any relevance or accuracy.
What stands before me this day? I need to finish sorting the press office, however I am severely limited by the amount of things and the amount of space. For example I have a large sewed sign and a underwriter diploma, each in a frame, that must be placed around somewhere. I wonder if its time for the press office to go up with the Times. I should look into this. I could take wire and run from it a sort of clamp that will hook to the top and bottom of a magazine with paper clip.
There is always an intercepting line that coincides with two parallel lines and feeds from one over the other until the moment comes that the interception is to take a place, the position determined by the indeterminate aspects along the vector, an uncertainty manifest in the condition or the situation of the interception. "There," the position vis a vis the lines become apparent in the motion of a convergence. Do we place a stake of remembrance and allow the narrative of a history represent itself as it rolls forward or allow the moment to pass into its possibles and continue to roll forward without mark, to become another intercepting line of alternative parallel dimensions?
Today I was forwarded a letter that my uncle sent to his Toyota dealer as a political protest. I have very little to comment on here or judgment to make. But I would like to reprint the letter here alongside a series of scans that I made of an old G.I. Joe advertisement I found in Elsewhere. If you see no relationship between the letter and the pictures thats fine, there really isn't one except that they both deal with commercialism and American idealism.
Dear Mr. Rice:
I had my oil changed yesterday and noticed the Citgo Label that is used as a reminder of my next oil change. This disturbed me very much and is the basis for this email. I would like to first of all tell you that I have personally purchased two Toyotas from your dealership and referred my daughter who has purchased two Toyotas from your wonderful salesman Tom Sawyer. I have been very satisfied with the cars and with the service that is provided until I saw the Citgo label. It is my understanding that Citgo is the name used to sell Venezuelan oil in the US. Venezuela is a country run by the Dictator Hugo Chavez. Recently he appeared before the UN and made very childish and unprofessional comments and gestures about President Bush. Representative Charlie Rangel, D-NY was even critical of this Dictator coming to the US and saying the things that he said and has repeated on numerous occasions. This Dictator has become friends with the President of Iran, Ahmadinejad who has threatened to wipe Israel off the face of this earth. Another one of his friends is the Cuban Dictator Castro. These three men are evil people and desire the destruction of our Government. I feel strongly that companies and individual citizens should not conduct business with our enemies.
I am writing to you in the hopes that you will change your supplier away from Citgo. I personally will not have my oil changed at your dealership and will definitely consider not buying any more vehicles from your company as long as you purchase oil from the Dictator Chavez.
I am sending this email in good faith in the hopes that you were not aware of the facts that I have presented to you. I would appreciate the courtesy of a response as soon as possible. Thank you
Sidney Gray
Car barked at me, she frowned and followed up with a good gulp. The sickly snail curled helplessly around her palm. "Squissh" said sickly, and that was all he knew to say. The after effect was less shocking than everyone had thought and so she shifted her hand restlessly as if holding a cognac. Sickly began to snooze and laid his soft head against the curl of her finger joints. "Sickly," she declared, plopping herself on the curb and closing her eyes for a moment of exhausted recollection. "I can't help but feel that the shadows are closing in around me and that the weekend fell right into the week, and I never see that happening but his time I did see it and I don't know what that means." She closed her eyes again and recollected once more. Sickly yawned and nestled his slimy head against her skin. "Sickly, we are going to do something today. Not like yesterday when we did something about the day before, or last week when we failed to do something the day after that, but today we'll do something about tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow and we'll do something about all the todays that ever were." She didn't stand up. Today's action needed none of the bravado that most actions need when they declare their intentions with very excitable adverbs. Today's action happened calmly, it refused even the hint of a threshold or passage, a change in terrain or a differentiation in causeways. Today's action would be the most imperceptable it could be and that way it was sure to last well into tomorrow's yesterday without being detected. "Detection is the worst thing for an action because then it becomes reaction and then I find myself no longer in today, let alone tomorrow, and I have to deal with yesterday over and over." She smiled at sickly who was always peaceful upon her palm. She gently stroked the back of his shell and breathed onto his antenna causing them to retract and bristle sweetly. "Squissh" said sickly, streching his neck and slowly moving to the tip of her finger where he looked over the edge and down at the pavement several feet below. "Squish...Squish...squish." She laughed and set off to the toy shop where Edger was working in the stock room...
The optometrist awoke with his ears tacky with wax. The night before, just as he was contemplating the line between wakefulness and dawn, and before the forgotten moment that tallied all his day's activities and lulled him to sleep, he had lodged in his mind an unexceptional nugget of remembrance. There, like a lump of coal, the fascinating object of memory proclaimed its existence in the form of a chart. In his lengthy years as a professional he had held his eye to many an other and stared into their sinewy depths at optical illusions and detach tissues and retinas, but this thought was drawn in bright overlays and transparency sheets and arrows and words. Everything he saw was entirely text book, a bit glanced at in the first year of his residency at the Saint Mont Claire Hospital in Halifax. But the words, tiny and angular, pointing with abbreviated correspondence to the picture, were unlike what he had ever seen before though they arrived from a not so forgotten, yet never so easily remembered space in his mind. First he thought he was reading a foreign language, a chart drawn from a medical encyclopedia he had picked up in a flee market in Portugal. But as e looked closer he discovered the words were in fact made of tiny pictures, each a small depiction of the thing itself to which it was signifying. Retina spelled out in tiny diagrams of eyes, ocular film, little wisps of lines each showing a variation of some degenerative disorder. In his memory before his mind he turned the words on their sides, the little diagrams retaining their form as the meanings their congregation displayed passing into an even lesser known gibberish. The optometrist shook this vision from himself just as a linear lash of wind took his curtain and curled it into a wound knot beside the bed frame.
He rose from bed, first his first foot hit the floor then his second. He reached for his glasses and found them upon the bedside table where he had left them, just to the right of the magazine that had slipped from beneath the lamp where it had been propped. By now the sun was fully fresh and the cool air had begun to compete with the warm air rising to fill the atmosphere. He rubbed his eyes. Climbing from bed the toothbrush by the water basin hastened his morning ritual. After dressing and eating he made his way down the four flights of stairs counting the third railing as he slid his arm along its frame. He made his way to the office, just about noon, and there he arrived in time for his first appointment.
The optometrist shared a wall and a filing cabinet with a podiatrist. The arrangement, struck many years ago, was by now quite unnecessary. Each man had since developed quite an extensive profession with many more clients than that first four draw filling cabinet could possibly suit, and yet despite the wings that had been added to the building, the multiple cabinets and draws, rooms for surgery and examination, the filing cabinets had remained where they were, placed equidistant to the main receptionist desk of each other's office, on the optometrists wall, just three meters from the door that behind which was another door, behind which was the podiatrists office. Both doors were kept locked after business hours, and the first person to arrive in the morning would open their side and await the second person to arrive to open his side. Directly opposite the filing cabinet, on the podiatrists side of the wall, was a small glass cabinet with a collection of dentures and fossilized teeth, a museum like display with shiny brass tags explaining the prehistorical origins of each specimen.
