Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 167, Issue 2

[Elizabeth Wijaya]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Kate: "What fascinates me here is the intersection of multiple temporal
vectors: A personal, phenomenological experience of passage, a continuous
reassessment of authoritative historical narratives and momentous
encounters with seemingly universal timescales that go beyond human
experience. Works of art allow us viewers to variously “inhabit” these
temporal vectors by focusing experience on a specific set of aesthetic
conditions."

Yes, I'm very interested in the multiple temporalities intertwined within
cinematic duration. What does this mean for the relation between the
duration of the film and that of the world? In my current book project,
"Luminous Flesh, Haunted Futures: The Visible and Invisible World of
Chinese Cinemas," I argue that in *The Visible and the Invisible,*
Merleau-Ponty extends his charismatic intertwining of the flesh of the
world to the duration of time. In the unfinished work, there's a line "past
and present are Ineinander [intertwining], each enveloping enveloped, and
that itself is the flesh." Merleau-Ponty gives multiple references to the
duration of the past, expressed in terms of  light and world, for example,
the enigmatic note "Rays of Past/ of world."  I extend Merleau-Ponty's
question "Where are we to put the limit between the body and the world,
since the world is flesh?" to the perforated limits between the flesh of
the world and the cinematic flash of the world. Rather than cinema being a
delayed representation of a past moment or a given reality, it can then be
read as a virtualisation of time that is not any less real.

I'm inspired by the scene from Tsai Ming Liang's *Goodbye, Dragon Inn *
(2003)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHMxMJ6qkOU (43 second mark here)

In the scene of the rays and shadows of the cinematic world of King
Hu's *Dragon
Inn *(1967)  falling on the skin of the Ticket Lady that forms the
cinematic world enacted within Fuhe Grand Theater, that is then screened
for the audience of *Goodbye, Dragon In*n, who are themselves embedded
within the flesh of the world—what we see then is an amplification of not
only philosophy in motion but also the materialisation of a fleshly
duration.



On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 8:56 PM Kate Brettkelly 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> 1. Maybe there is also such a thing as mountain time that's inhabited and
> experienced differently by people attracted to mountains for the
> sublime/universal time or as in Chiang's film, for the duration of survival
> 2. In this case, duration itself might be running still and flowing deep
> but not in the sense of 'movement' or 'perspectival depth.'
>
> With respect to Liz’s contributions, I’m so pleased this conversation has
> touched on the work of Hou Hsiao Hsien - a filmmaker whose lengthy,
> durational scenes has inspired my own research.
>
> What fascinates me here is the intersection of multiple temporal vectors:
> A personal, phenomenological experience of passage, a continuous
> reassessment of authoritative historical narratives and momentous
> encounters with seemingly universal timescales that go beyond human
> experience. Works of art allow us viewers to variously “inhabit” these
> temporal vectors by focusing experience on a specific set of aesthetic
> conditions.
>
> The NZ-based art collective Local Time have achieve this by focusing
> aesthetic experience on the act of drinking water. They serve exhibition
> visitors glasses of fresh spring water drawn from the Horotiu stream – a
> significant historical resource for indigenous Maori peoples of Auckland –
> that has been paved over and now runs beneath the roads of Auckland’s
> central business district. Local Time approach this as a gesture of
> hospitality, but I’m wondering if visual arts such as this offer a special
> means of implicating viewers/experiencers in durational passages that are
> ‘unknown’ to them. Is there such thing as subversive experience of
> duration? How might this relate to the survival of subjugated histories and
> natural phenomena that have been “paved over” by dominant ideologies? So
> many thoughts!
>
> - Kate
>
> On Thu, 8 Nov 2018 at 15:00, Timothy Conway Murray 
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Elizabeth Wijaya wrote  "On Kate's point on deep time and the danger of
>> obscuring/forgetting
>> historical subjugation and social inequality,  maybe there is also such a
>> thing as mountain time that's inhabited and experienced differently by
>> people attracted to mountains for the sublime/universal time or as in
>> Chiang's film, for the duration of survival."
>>
>> Something I've been discussing with artists and students over the past
>> couple of months are the traversals and transversals of duration as
>> cross-inhabited by differing populations and by differing epistemologies.
>> While nature frequently has been figured vis à vis the "sublime" or the

Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 167, Issue 2

[Kate Brettkelly]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--1. Maybe there is also such a thing as mountain time that's inhabited and
experienced differently by people attracted to mountains for the
sublime/universal time or as in Chiang's film, for the duration of survival
2. In this case, duration itself might be running still and flowing deep
but not in the sense of 'movement' or 'perspectival depth.'

With respect to Liz’s contributions, I’m so pleased this conversation has
touched on the work of Hou Hsiao Hsien - a filmmaker whose lengthy,
durational scenes has inspired my own research.

What fascinates me here is the intersection of multiple temporal vectors: A
personal, phenomenological experience of passage, a continuous reassessment
of authoritative historical narratives and momentous encounters with
seemingly universal timescales that go beyond human experience. Works of
art allow us viewers to variously “inhabit” these temporal vectors by
focusing experience on a specific set of aesthetic conditions.

The NZ-based art collective Local Time have achieve this by focusing
aesthetic experience on the act of drinking water. They serve exhibition
visitors glasses of fresh spring water drawn from the Horotiu stream – a
significant historical resource for indigenous Maori peoples of Auckland –
that has been paved over and now runs beneath the roads of Auckland’s
central business district. Local Time approach this as a gesture of
hospitality, but I’m wondering if visual arts such as this offer a special
means of implicating viewers/experiencers in durational passages that are
‘unknown’ to them. Is there such thing as subversive experience of
duration? How might this relate to the survival of subjugated histories and
natural phenomena that have been “paved over” by dominant ideologies? So
many thoughts!

- Kate

On Thu, 8 Nov 2018 at 15:00, Timothy Conway Murray  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Elizabeth Wijaya wrote  "On Kate's point on deep time and the danger of
> obscuring/forgetting
> historical subjugation and social inequality,  maybe there is also such a
> thing as mountain time that's inhabited and experienced differently by
> people attracted to mountains for the sublime/universal time or as in
> Chiang's film, for the duration of survival."
>
> Something I've been discussing with artists and students over the past
> couple of months are the traversals and transversals of duration as
> cross-inhabited by differing populations and by differing epistemologies.
> While nature frequently has been figured vis à vis the "sublime" or the
> "universal," its understanding remains contingent on the populations
> inhabiting it.  Just as "understanding" itself carries the footprint of
> historically fraught philosophical traditions.  For Liz's cinematic
> characters, habitation runs contrary to the inhibitions of constrained
> passage and labor.  Flight itself is both liberatory and terroristic
> depending on whether the look goes backward or forward.  But in this case,
> the artistic engine still might remain to be tied to "projection" in
> relation to "distance" or "distancing."  I'm wondering whether this isn't a
> peculiarly cinematic condition, one that signals the historical discussion
> of the gaze in all of its complexities.  Might Chiang's cinematography and
> still off something different?
>
> Along the lines of plastic arts, I'm also wondering whether the
> counter-to-deep time of indigenous art might not signal something different
> both in apparatus and epistemology? In this case, duration itself might be
> running still and flowing deep but not in the sense of 'movement' or
> 'perspectival depth.'  Just a thought provoked by Kate and Liz's posts.
>
> Tim
>
> Timothy Murray
> Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, CCA Biennial
> http://cca.cornell.edu
> Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
> http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu 
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
>
> B-1 West Sibley Hall
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York 14853
>
>
>
> On 11/7/18, 1:16 PM, "empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
> behalf of Elizabeth Wijaya"  on behalf of ew...@cornell.edu> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 167, Issue 2

[Stirling Newberry]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--> Along the lines of plastic arts, I'm also wondering whether the
counter-to-deep time of indigenous art might not signal something different
both in apparatus and epistemology?

The space also has differing viewpoints, as does every individual viewer.
Art in situ is, too some extent, illusory.

On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 9:00 PM Timothy Conway Murray 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Elizabeth Wijaya wrote  "On Kate's point on deep time and the danger of
> obscuring/forgetting
> historical subjugation and social inequality,  maybe there is also such a
> thing as mountain time that's inhabited and experienced differently by
> people attracted to mountains for the sublime/universal time or as in
> Chiang's film, for the duration of survival."
>
> Something I've been discussing with artists and students over the past
> couple of months are the traversals and transversals of duration as
> cross-inhabited by differing populations and by differing epistemologies.
> While nature frequently has been figured vis à vis the "sublime" or the
> "universal," its understanding remains contingent on the populations
> inhabiting it.  Just as "understanding" itself carries the footprint of
> historically fraught philosophical traditions.  For Liz's cinematic
> characters, habitation runs contrary to the inhibitions of constrained
> passage and labor.  Flight itself is both liberatory and terroristic
> depending on whether the look goes backward or forward.  But in this case,
> the artistic engine still might remain to be tied to "projection" in
> relation to "distance" or "distancing."  I'm wondering whether this isn't a
> peculiarly cinematic condition, one that signals the historical discussion
> of the gaze in all of its complexities.  Might Chiang's cinematography and
> still off something different?
>
> Along the lines of plastic arts, I'm also wondering whether the
> counter-to-deep time of indigenous art might not signal something different
> both in apparatus and epistemology? In this case, duration itself might be
> running still and flowing deep but not in the sense of 'movement' or
> 'perspectival depth.'  Just a thought provoked by Kate and Liz's posts.
>
> Tim
>
> Timothy Murray
> Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, CCA Biennial
> http://cca.cornell.edu
> Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
> http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu 
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
>
> B-1 West Sibley Hall
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York 14853
>
>
>
> On 11/7/18, 1:16 PM, "empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
> behalf of Elizabeth Wijaya"  on behalf of ew...@cornell.edu> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 167, Issue 2

[Timothy Conway Murray]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Elizabeth Wijaya wrote  "On Kate's point on deep time and the danger of 
obscuring/forgetting
historical subjugation and social inequality,  maybe there is also such a
thing as mountain time that's inhabited and experienced differently by
people attracted to mountains for the sublime/universal time or as in
Chiang's film, for the duration of survival."

Something I've been discussing with artists and students over the past couple 
of months are the traversals and transversals of duration as cross-inhabited by 
differing populations and by differing epistemologies.  While nature frequently 
has been figured vis à vis the "sublime" or the "universal," its understanding 
remains contingent on the populations inhabiting it.  Just as "understanding" 
itself carries the footprint of historically fraught philosophical traditions.  
For Liz's cinematic characters, habitation runs contrary to the inhibitions of 
constrained passage and labor.  Flight itself is both liberatory and 
terroristic depending on whether the look goes backward or forward.  But in 
this case, the artistic engine still might remain to be tied to "projection" in 
relation to "distance" or "distancing."  I'm wondering whether this isn't a 
peculiarly cinematic condition, one that signals the historical discussion of 
the gaze in all of its complexities.  Might Chiang's cinematography and still 
off something different?  

Along the lines of plastic arts, I'm also wondering whether the counter-to-deep 
time of indigenous art might not signal something different both in apparatus 
and epistemology? In this case, duration itself might be running still and 
flowing deep but not in the sense of 'movement' or 'perspectival depth.'  Just 
a thought provoked by Kate and Liz's posts.

Tim

Timothy Murray
Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, CCA Biennial
http://cca.cornell.edu
Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art 
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu 
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
 
B-1 West Sibley Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
 
 

On 11/7/18, 1:16 PM, "empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of 
Elizabeth Wijaya"  wrote:

--empyre- soft-skinned space--

___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 167, Issue 2

[Elizabeth Wijaya]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thank you Tim for the introduction!

Today, my experience of time was:
seasonal—watching the snow fall with inward panic outside my Minneapolis
apartment window;
 political—compressed into the anxiety of election time unrolling according
to its official dates and schedules (8pm!8pm!);
cinematic/virtual—watching an online screener of a VR film "Only the
Mountains Remain" by Singapore/Taiwan director Chiang Wei Liang  using HTC
technology

I work primarily with film-festival oriented narrative shorts and features
and lower-budget documentary films. I wonder if budget has to do with how
there are so many more films with apocalyptic imagination than of the *longue
durée *since those cinematic imaginations of earlier, earlier times often
take the form of re-enacments block busters. But of course, cinematic deep
time doesn't have to be the enactment of the very long ago but as with
Tim's example of  Smithson's "Earth Art" exhibition, it could be that the
salt is part of unequal institutional histories.

In  "Only the Mountains Remain," the mountains of Yilan County in
northeastern Taiwan become part of the attempt to escape state power and
unfair guest worker immigration schemes.
http://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/programme/films/detail/1989?r=en It
premieres later this month as part of an omnibus executive produced by Hou
Hsiao Hsien. Beginning with an ID check gone wrong, in a 30-minute long
take that goes from dusk to evening, an illegal and pregnant Thai domestic
worker, an Indonesian driver, and a water ghost drive up a misty mountain
road to escape a police chase.The spectator's point of view is placed
between the front and back seat of the car, so you can turn your head to
choose to watch the driver, the ghost, the woman or the passing mountains
outside the window—so in the words of Tim's exhibition, the film is about
the passage to survival. The mountains of  Taiwan have and still attract
"Runaway" or "Unaccounted for" migrant workers to hide and live in order to
escape the harsh conditions without returning to the country they came
from. On Kate's point on deep time and the danger of obscuring/forgetting
historical subjugation and social inequality,  maybe there is also such a
thing as mountain time that's inhabited and experienced differently by
people attracted to mountains for the sublime/universal time or as in
Chiang's film, for the duration of survival.

Looking forward to this month's discussion!

Liz


On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 7:00 PM 
wrote:

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> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>1. deep time and indigenous peoples (Timothy Conway Murray)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2018 14:36:07 +
> From: Timothy Conway Murray 
> To: soft_skinned_space 
> Subject: [-empyre-] deep time and indigenous peoples
> Message-ID: <8c08d111-96fb-4413-96f2-db0206c1c...@cornell.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> kate.brettke...@gmail.com> wrote: "But looking more critically at this
> artistic interest in deep time, I have
> wondered whether it risks the presumption of an absolute, universal frame
> of reference. Does it presuppose a primordial time that is rather
> conveniently indifferent to histories of social inequality and subjugation?
> More pointedly, when we celebrate the deep time of earth, do we actively
> overlook the durations and experiences of indigenous peoples?""
>
> Thank you Kate for opening up the month with this important warning.  We
> live down the road in Upstate New York from the GAYOGOH?:N? or the Cayuga
> Nation which has been fighting in the courts to retrieve part of its lands
> at the top of Cayuga Lake.  Cornell University is situated on Cayuga
> homelands.  Since the Cayuga's never signed a nineteenth-century "treaty"
> with the US giving them 'nationhood,'" their efforts to reclaim just a
> small section of their land for a formal territory has been rebuffed by the
> courts.One of our guests this month, Jolene Rickard, will be discussing
> her work to articulate and preserve the cultural heritage of the Cayugas, a
> project which will culminate in the commission of a new Cayuga sculpture.
>
> Your post also reminds me of another work by Smithson, his salt sculptures
> created for the 1969 Cornell University "Earth Art" exhibition (
>