Hi Johannes, I do wish others would post on these topics as well; I always feel an odd distance on the Netbehaviour list, which I love, because I'm not in England, can't go and hear Marc for example. Oddly, I was in that Intimacy show myself and was asked for a text or the text in a sense, but what I had was a transcription, which I worked on, on the theoretical issues that formed part of the performance Sandy Baldwin and I did; that wasn't included in the volume and so I didn't get a copy. Somewhere I still have the intimacy.txt which is what I'd submitted.
I didn't move on from the issues which remain from me; I'm obsessive (to the detriment of many I think) about producing work, I always feel death over my shoulds so for example if I come up with an idea for music or Second Life I think, I must do this _now,_ there won't be a future time for it because there won't be a (my) future. And this happens daily; if I can't sleep, I produce text as I did with the atom text, thinking about gluons etc. last night and wondering how many times in the past twenty years I referenced them - and that led to culling and modifying the culling so that it produced an atom-like interconnected block of text and so it goes. I wouldn't have been able to sleep without that production. I'm always amazed at your writing, or with your writing, here and on empyre by the way, the kinds of engagement it calls for and the poetics it engenders, always open and always informative, carrying a kind of production or referencing production within it.. As far as Midland goes, the desert was empty for me, but I was of course well aware it was traversed by pipelines, wells, ecologies, transportation routes including wagon-train routes from a century before that (I remember when Azure and I came across the remnants of the Oregon Trail in a field in Wyoming), Native American lands and so forth. I do remember hearing that Dallas never had Native Americans in the area, which was considered too inhospitable - I don't know if that's true or not... - Alan On Fri, 22 Feb 2013, Johannes Birringer wrote: > > dear Alan > > oh, not at all, i think it was a small language misunderstanding. > I used the term "barely" in a temporal sense, reflecting on how and whether > this > radio, this netbehavior list, can be used for sustainable conversation, and > it obviously can, but I find it harder. > For me it felt that you had posted a very interesting and thoughtful response > to my comment > in the middle of the night, and even though I was writing back barely 14 > hours later > and a few times zones apart, it seemed as if our conversation about durational > performance and music, detuning and d?tourning, and collective or communal > playing duration, > had already passed/past its time, its due, it was gone, it seemed ages ago > that we met, we talked, and > that you regretted the lack of feedback on the "radio", the network, the > audiences. > > (It would interest me what others here think about reception, feedback, time, > reflection and critique, or do we often post our stuff > and hurry on to the next stuff we do, without pausing?) > > Alan you had already moved on to post the "scent of them" text, and your > comments on the sung lisu. > Aharon then added a personal detail, regarding Edinburgh, and that > interested me ?? the moments when our biographies > come into the picture for a tiny moment, and when you then mentioned your > sleeplessness, and that > this Palgrave book (?55, Amazon has it for ? 47) is too expensive, i had to > reflect for a moment on that > one too. > > Yes, that book (hardback) is too expensive, and I only have it because i am > in it and the publisher sent me a complimentary copy, > and after reading your text on dead music, i noted that you are cited > frequently in some chapters (regarding your dead avatars). > The book goes back to a festival, "Intimacy: Across Visceral and Digital > Performance," held in London in 2007, at which my company showed a dance work > and my design collaborator and I conducted a workshop on > sensing/sensortizing, and after the 2007 festival, the curators decided it > would be a nice > idea to do a book. Well, it just came out and so it only took 4 years. > > Now that is a strange time frame, four years, compared to how we post and > move on here, and that is why i enjoyed your reflections > on other times, your ride across the desert in 1987 after we all left Dallas, > and i agree with you (and then you contradict yourself), the desert is never > empty, > and oil cities (like Texarkana) don't rise out of nothing and descent into > nothing. Probably you were addressing a sense of history > and sedimentation, other purposes, within/against a sense of the wilding of > rich deserts. > (yes, Baudrillard's speculations are quite poor ideological smoke signals; > there is no Paris, Texas) > > In my next posting i will try and comment on a musical experience i had last > night, > and an instrument i saw in action that I enjoyed a lot, the santur. > > best > Johannes Birringer > > > > > > [Alan schreibt] > > Johannes, I'm glad you mentioned the Texas experience because I've seen > nothing else like it. I think the cities are around 400 miles apart, and > the rest is unbelievably emptied. But then I remember reading Baudrillard > on the emptiness of America and finding myself angry, since he assumed > that the desert is blank or void, ignoring the fact it's been home to > Native Americans and wildlife, that it was cultural, responds culturally, > just as much as 'comforting' cities might. It reminds me also of Herzog's > notion of the jungle which was also home and inhabited and cultural / > political, not a brutal or 'seething' nature. My words. Texas is > disruptive too because of the nature of the cities - I remember Marlis > Schmidt who was from Midland, an odd oil city rising out of nothing, > descending into nothing. I wonder if the Sahara is like that. > > I did read Sandy's essay in Chatzichristodoulou's book which I could never > afford, but Sandy sent me a copy, and Yes! > > So I just wrote John Cayley about seeing him in Providence and the news > came on about another John Cayley who just got charged for reckless > truck driving which killed a police officer. Strange. > > Anyway. If I barely replied, I probably did so under a stress medication - > I've been trying to go to sleep around midnight because of our current > stress of things, and Azure has to get up at 6:15 to get to work as a > part-time teaching assistant (there's a hiring freeze for full-tine > teachers here). So at 4:15 I may not have been all there, I probably woke > out of a nightmare (today's was about the Vietnam War). > > - Alan, > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > == email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552 music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ current text http://www.alansondheim.org/rt.txt == _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
