Thank you! (And to others who have replied.) I agree; I think that there are people who don't understand that my work is work, that it's calculated, that it's dealing with issues that aren't personal. I don't know if one short post/essay can modify this, but I hope so.
- alan On Wed, 25 May 2011, Joel Weishaus wrote: > Alan; > > Thank you for this. > It was much needed. > > -Joel > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Alan Sondheim" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 1:40 AM > Subject: [NetBehaviour] Mis/take (self-interrogation) > > > > > Mis/take > > Above all, my work is philosophical. It insists not on the letter of > philosophy, but on its dissemination contamination, of and through media. > It insists on the visual as always already ikonic, inscription as present > and concrete. It insists on the final grounds of unutterable pain and > death and the cipher that exists, not as replacement, but as fool's > errand. > > The mistake is to read my work otherwise, as neurosis or autobiography; > the latter is always lies, fabrications and the narratology of the > predicate, and the former is no better or worse than anyone else's, > certainly nothing that structures the text. If my text is a symptom, it is > a symptom of the well, not the hospital, and of a deliberate abject that > refuses concealment or conciliation. > > When I write what I might consider codework, the issues exist, not in a > traditional reading of the surface, but in the production of a forest of > signs that ground the surface as residue, hardly symbolic, but abject > debris of the future anterior of the written. I am always aware of this, > this structure and its motility, in every 'literary' text I write; I am > more concerned with this level than that of the surface, which seems a > production in the sense that a play may be a production, but is a playing > as well, with or without the theater. > > In other words, the forest of signs are trees, im/plants, physiology. > > In other words, the signs are signposts. > > When I write a text on mathematics, it is not an exercise, but through 0 > and 1, a penetration among analogic and digital discourses, an entangle- > ment refusing an unraveling. To the Borromean knot I oppose the plate > trick of braids rotating through 720 degrees of 3-space, deeper melding of > structures than meets the eye, or rather structures that meet the eye only > dynamically and not at all through a laid n-dimensional diagram with time > as afterthought. Not a formal exercise, however defined but the concrete > movement of organisms through space, taking up time, proceeding. > > In this regard my motion capture work is not an exercise in topology or > choreography, but a philosophical investigation into the topology of the > body, opposed or adjunct to a topography which is thereby rendered > political or environmental, not to mention medical, within and without a > phenomenology of pain and pleasure. > > My characters, Julu, Jennifer, Alan, Nikuko, are actants in Heideggerian > drama among MOOs, talkers, and other virtual worlds. They stand for > nothing and do not stand-in; they are ikonic, one might say abject, on the > order of a thud or philosophical gesture. This is especially true of Alan > Dojoji or Julu Twine, who have inherited what Nikuko originally proffered > in MOOs or internet relay chat. > > I cannot force a reader to apprehend the philosophical content of my work > - what I see as the heart of what I do, but I can say that anything else, > anything bypassing or ignoring that, is a form of misrecognition that > mistakes my circumstances for a world or word or ward, or rather attempts > to interpret the world or my vision of it, through my (personal) circum- > stances which are known to varying degrees, as usual for all of us and > among us. This is in direct opposition to how I think the world, what I > grapple with: the ultimate alienness of a existence that can only be > hinted it - surfaces, for example, skewed within liquid architectures of > virtual worlds, or languaging decoded to the point of abject exhaustion, > where non-sense borders on truth's frenzy in the face of an unknown. > > The world is an unknown; knowledge is always already on the bring of > annihilation, catastrophic; it cannot decode its own hunger or power; it > cannot exist without extraneous and useless style. All mistakes are to > assume otherwise, but it is only through mistakes, miss-takes, that > anything is acknowledged or apprehended. Decoding is endless; multi- > verses fill incomprehensible gaps; it is within the diacritical that any > progress at all is made. The chasm I acknowledge is the chasm within all > of us; the flesh that falls apart here is the same as elsewhere. It is the > philosophical that is the obvious beyond of religion; it gives the remnant > a voice, and is itself the remnant of voice. The 0-1 brackets nothing. > Murmur escapes the wall. Beyond neither 0 nor 1 is the murmur. > > But it is philosophy, in the guise of philosophy, and hopefully, in the > midst of the noise of my endless klein bottles of texts, this is what > comes through - not a philosophy of axiomatics or foundations, not a > philosophy of absolutes or technophilias, but a philosophy constantly > under erasure - an erasure in which, it turns out, the flesh is scraped > raw, without an emergent. Synergy only goes so far, and only inso-far as > one might deterritorialize the world, which means nothing, reduces to the > ashes of the grave, the cries of the wounded, the anonymities of the > leading-to-slaughters, all on the levels of histories under erasure as > well. > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > == email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ webpage http://www.alansondheim.org music archive: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ra.txt == _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
