Re: [-empyre-] authors and authority :.
Hi All This is my first iPad email, sent from London on the way to Paris, which in some undefined way seems appropriate. JeanB provokes responses that put him in a determining position in this discussion, which is, in a way, a good strategy, if a little in conflict with his take. I say this not only because I think it is true, but also because it relates to what I want to say- I'm sure you won't take it personally, JeanB! Taking up what Lorna said at the end of her post, the issue of how you negotiate institutions is gendered (or sexed, as I prefer to say, as it's an embodied term) This applies at the level of theory and of practice: at the former because, as a woman in patriarchal institutions, I am a subaltern Subject, as is Lorna in getting Making Senses together; and at the latter, that of practice, because one lacks the kind of credibility so taken for granted by male colleagues that it is invisible (ideological in the sense once current in more politically aware days). This makes the act of foregoing certain privileges adhering to power signify differently. The Mallarmeen Subject is highly equivocal (equi/vocal), which is one reason why he is a male practitioner of ecriture feminine (the auto text changed ecriture to scripture! And I haven't figured out the iPad accents yet). JeanB, you a partly right in your interpretation of the ways Mallarme anticipates the web, but there is much more to it than allowing space for the reader in the generation of meaning, which would not really be distinct from any readerly text in Barthes' sense. It's about the operation of the Subject in the syntax, and other aspects of the poetics (including temporality and the erosion of word-boundaries. These are central to what John and I are experimenting with. There's more, but I am out of time for now All the best penny Sent from my iPad On Oct 15, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Lorna Collins lp...@cam.ac.uk wrote: Dear Jean-Baptise, dear all, JB, I want to make a very brief comment on your message, about my experience of organising this event. We -- I suppose you could say that we have formed a royal we, which in this instance refers to the committee of people who have organised the second colloquium at Cambridge. This is not intentionally separated or hierarchical royal We. We have not wanted to close ourselves to a small group, on the contrary we are constitutively open, but in order to organise this event we have had to communicate between a small amount of (eight) people in order to make it happen. These people were not 'chosen' but volunteered at a meeting, and we formed a natural committee. One of the purposes of the second colloquium is to set up the next event in this series. We will open the floor to see who wants to be involved in organising an event like this. How can we organise an event without forming a smaller grouping of people, and asigning different tasks to different people? And JB, how can we organise this event in a way that challenges the authority of the institutions? We have found ourselves continually challenged by the institutions and we try to new find ways of communicating with those in authority. This is not a deconstructive or destructive intention -- we need to communicate with the institutions, in a language that can open and redistribute their hierarchy. We do not want to incite an aggressive revolution, but, rather, we try to explain to the institutions how their system and authority can be challenged and an alternative suggested, in this way, and we discuss how to make things make sense and then change. 'In this way' -- what is this what? What is the alternative? How do we make things make sense and then change? These are the very questions that we will be discussing and experimenting with at the colloquium. At the first colloquium in Cambridge, on the day we found that we could use artistic performance to open and invigorate the protocol and system that governed the institution that housed us; this opened the day to all who participated. Our creativity and collaboration made a new kind of sense, which we went on to publish (forthcoming, with Peter Lang, Making Sense 1). Most of all this was not about the names or their authority, it was the way that art can open an interface for difference, it doesn't matter who or where you are, the process of creating an artwork, and the process of encountering an artwork creates a free space. I realise that I can't say something like that without receiving a hoard of critical questions from the large group of people who subscribe to Empyre, which is quite scary. But I genuinely believe that the 'we' of Making Sense, which is laid open to all of Empyre during this debate, is creating something really important. JB you ask: are we ready to abandon what constitutes current political space, especially authority and control of curation of experimental endeavours ? I would say that this
[-empyre-] Week two on Contextualizing Making Sense
*It has been tremendously helpful for me to lurk the past couple of days to get a better sense of what so many of you already accomplished during the Cambridge Making Sense event. Tim and are are looking forward to leaving for Paris in just a couple of days. At this time I'd like to introduce four new participants in this week's discussion of Making Sense: Frank O'Cain, Rebekah Samkuel, Cristina Bonilla, and Xena Lee. I welcome them to empyre and hope that they will tell us a bit about their work in relationship to Making Sense. Renate* * * *Frank O’Cain* was born in San Diego, California, and studied at the Art Students League of New York under Vaclav Vytlacil. O’Cain has had solo shows at Purdue University; the Miriam Perlman Gallery, Chicago; the Miriam Perlman Gallery, Flint, Michigan; the Princeton Art Association; Levitan Gallery I and II, New York City; the Saginaw Art Museum; the Ella Sharp Museum, Jackson, Mississippi; Northern Illinois University; and the Theano Stahelin Kunstsalon, Zurich, Switzerland. He has participated in group and solo shows at DDB Gallery, New York City; Gallery Korea, New York City; Yale University; the Centre Pompidou; and Gen-Paul Gallery, Paris, France. His work is represented by a number of private collectors; the collection of the White Building, University of Michigan; the Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana; and in the Saginaw Art Museum. He is currently an instructor at the Art Students League of New York and has presented at Yale University and the Centre Pompidou. *Rebekah Samkuel* was a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. Her works have been shown in group shows in Germany, France, Chicago, and New York. She likes the solitude of her studio and to search for deeper levels in her work. In her words: “Art is as old as the human race. Why the need to express in pigment, volume, line and stone? And dance, music and drama? Others buy and sell or choose to be warriors and tillers of the earth. It is a mystery. I am a painter. My soul seeks both inspiration and liberation in art. Art allows me to escape the crude reality of contemporary life where we find the masses ruling and mediocrity reigning. Although I seek the refinement and beauty in life, the themes in my work are the disturbing pathos of the aftermath of the battle, the ancient battles; the struggle between darkness and light. I do search for an understanding. I am a warrior.” *Cristina Bonilla* has had solo exhibitions at the Galerie d’Art du Parc, Galerie Lieu Ouest and the Galerie d’Art d’Outremont in Montreal and at the Southampton Cultural Center in New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, the Sandra Goldie Gallery and the Gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts of Montreal. As part of her artistic practice, she also teaches and lectures to painters, collectors and general audiences, to help them understand the visual reality that is at the core of painting. This has included adult education courses at the City University of New York and Southampton College, New York City gallery tours and visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was public liaison at the Dia Art Foundation’s Dan Flavin Institute and was awarded the First Grand Prize of Contemporary Painting by la Peau de l’Ours, an association of Montreal collectors. She currently mentors professional painters in the United States and Canada in small critique groups. *Xéna Lee* seeks an expression that utters the unpronounceable, giving shape to the formless. As poetry reveals aspects of truth that are inaccessible to discursive prose, she believes that visual art, like music or dance, can go further to touch upon experiences that cannot be expressed in words. There are moments in life when we catch glimpses of intrinsic truth, when we seem to reach into the depths of reality. These moments of fundamental wisdom and sublime joy are what she strives to capture in her paintings. In contrast to the fleeting nature of these moments, expression of them comes only from continuous cultivation and development of the human spirit. For these reasons, Xéna studied physics, literature, medicine, psychiatry, theology, and anthropology, to understand better the human condition, while she apprenticed after modern master Frank O’Cain to develop her artistic vision. She showed in numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1995, including in New York (SoHo and Chelsea), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Tonneins-Unet and Paris), Italy (Modena), Spain (Barcelona), and Qatar (Doha). Additional influences include her East Asian heritage, martial arts training, travels to Africa, and participation in social movements to promote justice and peace. Most recently, she has been exploring projects across disciplines, including painting the backdrop for SYREN Modern Dance and serving as visual-artist-in-residence for the Lincoln Center group Ensemble du Monde in New York
Re: [-empyre-] authors and authority :.
It's been incredibly interesting to read this weekend's posts in the midst of our conference on Global Aesthetics (streamed live all day today 9-6Eastern Standard Time, http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/ ) as interntational artists, curators, and theoreticians have been meeting to figure out ways to 'make sense' together by crossing the discourses of their practices and media, marked by the intense differentiations of their subject positions and geopolitical orientations. Last night, Bruno Bosteels delivered a plenary lecture by positioning Rancière's Mallarmeen subject as the pivot of colonial thought and practice, but one that Bosteels suggestes is not easily escapable, even from within the context of the Latin American context of the art practice of Guillermo Kuitca who he discussed. I'll look forward to elaborating on this in Paris with those comine in person for Making Sense. Best, Tim Hi All This is my first iPad email, sent from London on the way to Paris, which in some undefined way seems appropriate. JeanB provokes responses that put him in a determining position in this discussion, which is, in a way, a good strategy, if a little in conflict with his take. I say this not only because I think it is true, but also because it relates to what I want to say- I'm sure you won't take it personally, JeanB! Taking up what Lorna said at the end of her post, the issue of how you negotiate institutions is gendered (or sexed, as I prefer to say, as it's an embodied term) This applies at the level of theory and of practice: at the former because, as a woman in patriarchal institutions, I am a subaltern Subject, as is Lorna in getting Making Senses together; and at the latter, that of practice, because one lacks the kind of credibility so taken for granted by male colleagues that it is invisible (ideological in the sense once current in more politically aware days). This makes the act of foregoing certain privileges adhering to power signify differently. The Mallarmeen Subject is highly equivocal (equi/vocal), which is one reason why he is a male practitioner of ecriture feminine (the auto text changed ecriture to scripture! And I haven't figured out the iPad accents yet). JeanB, you a partly right in your interpretation of the ways Mallarme anticipates the web, but there is much more to it than allowing space for the reader in the generation of meaning, which would not really be distinct from any readerly text in Barthes' sense. It's about the operation of the Subject in the syntax, and other aspects of the poetics (including temporality and the erosion of word-boundaries. These are central to what John and I are experimenting with. There's more, but I am out of time for now All the best penny Sent from my iPad On Oct 15, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Lorna Collins lp...@cam.ac.uk wrote: Dear Jean-Baptise, dear all, JB, I want to make a very brief comment on your message, about my experience of organising this event. We -- I suppose you could say that we have formed a royal we, which in this instance refers to the committee of people who have organised the second colloquium at Cambridge. This is not intentionally separated or hierarchical royal We. We have not wanted to close ourselves to a small group, on the contrary we are constitutively open, but in order to organise this event we have had to communicate between a small amount of (eight) people in order to make it happen. These people were not 'chosen' but volunteered at a meeting, and we formed a natural committee. One of the purposes of the second colloquium is to set up the next event in this series. We will open the floor to see who wants to be involved in organising an event like this. How can we organise an event without forming a smaller grouping of people, and asigning different tasks to different people? And JB, how can we organise this event in a way that challenges the authority of the institutions? We have found ourselves continually challenged by the institutions and we try to new find ways of communicating with those in authority. This is not a deconstructive or destructive intention -- we need to communicate with the institutions, in a language that can open and redistribute their hierarchy. We do not want to incite an aggressive revolution, but, rather, we try to explain to the institutions how their system and authority can be challenged and an alternative suggested, in this way, and we discuss how to make things make sense and then change. 'In this way' -- what is this what? What is the alternative? How do we make things make sense and then change? These are the very questions that we will be discussing and experimenting with at the colloquium. At the first colloquium in Cambridge, on the day we found that we could use artistic performance to open and invigorate the protocol and system that governed the institution that housed us; this opened the
Re: [-empyre-] authors and authority :.
Hello Penny, Le 16 oct. 10 à 13:15, Penny Florence a écrit : Hi All This is my first iPad email, sent from London on the way to Paris, which in some undefined way seems appropriate. JeanB provokes responses that put him in a determining position in this discussion, which is, in a way, a good strategy, if a little in conflict with his take. I say this not only because I think it is true, but also because it relates to what I want to say- I'm sure you won't take it personally, JeanB! No pb :] Taking up what Lorna said at the end of her post, the issue of how you negotiate institutions is gendered (or sexed, as I prefer to say, as it's an embodied term) This applies at the level of theory and of practice: at the former because, as a woman in patriarchal institutions, I am a subaltern Subject, as is Lorna in getting Making Senses together; and at the latter, that of practice, because one lacks the kind of credibility so taken for granted by male colleagues that it is invisible (ideological in the sense once current in more politically aware days). This makes the act of foregoing certain privileges adhering to power signify differently. You are of course right to remind the patriarchal (literal and symbolic) organisation of these institutions. I totally agree on the importance to try to change this by being present in institutions and try new things. I was more thinking the proposal from an intellectual point of view not situated in a specific timeline. Reality as you so importantly tell it, imposes negotiations, scaffolding, and in the case of art+(human)sciences, breaching - à la Garfinkel. As I read through emails, I understand that there are some cultural commonalities in the participant network of these two events, mainly a global agreement on certain socio-anthropological challenges such as the renewed question of (post)feminism, sociocolonialism, human- science epistemology, critics and star-system. I would need like all of you more time to think about these topics. My posture now privileges (as a pyrrhonian experiment) face to face interaction since I believe emails (and to an extreme perspective maybe) written discourse (publications, books, and their author/ity) fail in creating an emotional body needed to absorb/dampen/relativise the shock created by any encounter with the Other, what/who:ever it/she/he is. So don't hesitate to contact me next time you're in Paris (i can unfortunately not being with you this time since I am abroad). The Mallarmeen Subject is highly equivocal (equi/vocal), which is one reason why he is a male practitioner of ecriture feminine (the auto text changed ecriture to scripture! And I haven't figured out the iPad accents yet). That's very interesting. My lecture of your project was very superficial, reading only the top of the words (mailing-list syndrom) and I agree more now on your choice and tactics for this event. This is actually fascinating for me to understand more and more everyday the power of art/narratives when it comes to inspire action in reality, to turn fiction (artefacts, technology) into social experience. The nature of the link between both remains still hard to understand to me... Fiction/Reality is still a dualism (like Mind/ Matter, TheoryofMind/EcologicalPerception, Abstraction/ SituatedCognition, etc) as dense and complex than in the hard sciences when it comes to understand or explain it :)) JeanB, you a partly right in your interpretation of the ways Mallarme anticipates the web, but there is much more to it than allowing space for the reader in the generation of meaning, which would not really be distinct from any readerly text in Barthes' sense. or in Eco's Opera Aperta.., on this topic cf the seminar of Jean-Louis Weissberg on the Critical history of the notion of 'interactivity' . Some fragments in english here http://www.omnsh.org/spip.php?article64 from the original publication here http://www.editions-hyx.com/boutique_us/fiche_produit.cfm?ref=ISBN2910385AAAtype=7code_lg=lg_usnum=0 It's about the operation of the Subject in the syntax, and other aspects of the poetics (including temporality and the erosion of word-boundaries. These are central to what John and I are experimenting with. There's more, but I am out of time for now All the best Sure, have a good time in Paris! Cheers, Jb penny Sent from my iPad On Oct 15, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Lorna Collins lp...@cam.ac.uk wrote: Dear Jean-Baptise, dear all, JB, I want to make a very brief comment on your message, about my experience of organising this event. We -- I suppose you could say that we have formed a royal we, which in this instance refers to the committee of people who have organised the second colloquium at Cambridge. This is not intentionally separated or hierarchical royal We. We have not wanted to close ourselves to a small group, on the contrary we are
