[-empyre-] Control Anita Berber Sebastian Droste

[Alan Sondheim]

Control Anita Berber Sebastian Droste


99[[]][[

999 < control sequences >

http://www.alansondheim.org/AnitaDroste.mp4 thinking
through the empyre list among other things, silence
and mourning, butoh, sexuality, the slightest gesture,
those which cannot be named, suffering and repetition

thing I can about Anita Berber. I identify with the _lunge._

Nightmares
throat
skeleton
throat Anita Berber
skeleton Anita Berber

Droste and Berber in rehearsal
by the hairs of Droste and Berber
cut off from the bodies of Droste and Berber
a framework where Berber first sadly languished
the hairs of Droste and Berber were tangled sadly
among them the  memories of Droste and Berber
performance-fix, cure and cognac, despair,
Anita Berber nightrance nakedance in
dawndusk morning, mourning, 'I am as pale as moonsilver.'
dawndusk morning, mourning, 'I am as pale as moonsilver.'
by the hairs of Droste and Berber
cut off from the bodies of Droste and Berber
a framework where Berber first sadly languished
the hairs of Droste and Berber were tangled sadly
among the reels where memories of Droste and Berber
and nothing remains but fear, and the slightest scent

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[-empyre-] Monika Weiss -- Shrouds, 2012-2013 (as addendum to Lamentation)

[Monika Weiss]

From a text I wrote about my current ongoing this year project "Shrouds".

Do cities remember? Maps of cities are flat, yet their histories contain 
vertical strata of events. Where in the topography and consciousness of a city 
can we locate its memory? Maps of the Polish city Zielona Góra depict an empty 
unmarked rectangular area located on Wrocławska Street, across from the Focus 
Park shopping mall. Located centrally within the city this area looks 
abandoned, being composed mostly of broken masonry and wood debris. Inquiries 
to citizens of Zielona Góra indicate that many of them do not know the history 
of this abandoned area, including those who grew up near the site.

Invited by a local museum to propose a project, I arrived to Zielona Góra 
(Gruenberg) knowing of the past history of the unmarked yet centrally located 
ruined site. On June 9th this year I flew on a small airplane to film this 
territory and its surroundings. The flight marked the beginning of my new 
project that will eventually develop into a film and a multi-layered dialogue 
with the citizens of Zielona Góra. During the Second World War the site was a 
forced labor camp, which later became a concentration camp designated primarily 
for Jewish women. The camp was developed on the site of the German wool 
factory, Deutsche Wollenwaren Manufaktur AG, which supplied the German war 
machine with military clothing.  (It has since been converted to a shopping 
mall.)  During the war about 1,000 young women worked there as seamstresses and 
eventually became prisoners of the concentration camp complex governed by KZ 
Groß-Rosen.  Towards the very end of the war the prisoners were sent on one of 
the most tragic of the forced Death Marches where many of them died.

Looking down from the airplane we see well-kept buildings surrounding the ruins 
of the former camp, as though it were an open yet forgotten wound in the body 
of the center of the city. During the performative phase of the project, I 
invited a group of young women from Zielona Góra to spend some time in silence 
on the site of the camp, wearing black scarfs which later were taken off and 
left behind amongst the ruins. Their presence evoked the absence of the 
prisoners.   In the dual video projection installation at the BWA, (an 
exhibition that initiated the project in June), the faces of these young women 
look towards us in silence. In another part of the projection we observe a 
torso of a woman wrapping bandages onto her naked chest in a slow, fragile 
gesture of defense, or perhaps caress. Her body stands for our common body, 
anonymous as if it were a membrane between the self and the external world. 
Awareness of our marginality becomes elevated into the realm of meaning through 
our brief encounter with memory and history.

“Shrouds” considers aspects of public memory and amnesia in the construction of 
the space of a city and its urban planning. As part of this project, citizens 
of Zielona Góra are invited to propose how we choose to remember, (or not) the 
women prisoners who perished there, and how this fulfilled the goals of a 
systematic destruction of an entire population. Over the course of this year 
citizens of Zielona Gora are also invited to respond to a questionnaire in 
order to propose their own ideas for the development of the area, whether as a 
site of commemoration, or through other forms of dialogue. Earlier this year, 
after over 50 years of gradual decay and abandonment, the site has been sold by 
the city's officials to an undisclosed developer. Yet the larger debate in 
Zielona Gora, a dialogue about the site of the former camp and about the city's 
memory and amnesia, as well as about the meaning of citizenship and 
response-ability shall continue, to some extend, thanks to "Shrouds".



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Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Alan Sondheim]

Ana, thank you for this and for the site. I've spent some time with it; as 
with Monika's work, it's overwhelming.


I have never had these experiences; I've been shot at, but from a 
distance. My own grief is sourceless in a sense, and selfish.


I do understand about the silence. And the amnesia of cities, which is why 
it is so important that New York has been recognizing its own history of 
slavery and draft riots, and why the African Burial Ground National 
Monument in lower Manhattan is so important; I always sent my students to 
the site.


- Alan


On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Ana Vald?s wrote:


The nearest I was from a massgrave was Jenin, 2002, people were eerie
silent around the hole wich was Palestine's ground zero. Under the
hole were dismembered people, restaurantes blown in pieces, ashes,
bones, lonely shoes.
I wrote some texts from there, http://www.this.is/jenin

In the total mourning people were silent and the silence were heavier
than any shouting...
Ana

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:26 PM, Alan Sondheim  wrote:


mourning, lament, are acts, they're intended, they're cultural expressions -
as long as one can mourn...

but what happens when mourning, lament, end, not through desire
but because the unspeakable becomes manifest - i think this is
where celan comes in for example, or the spaces in jabes' books
with the words themselves removed -




On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Ana Vald?s wrote:


I think mourning and lament are related to the ceremonies of the
death. When I did my research as anthropologist I travelled to Mexico
and did a fieldwork in Yucatan, the old Maya empire. Their funerary
pyramids, specially in Palenque, were very similar to the Egyptian
pyramids. Many scenes painted in Palenque's walls were about death,
mourning, ceremonies to placate the wrath of the gods. The gods mourn
as well, the Greek gods mourned lost sons, dead sons, lost wives. I
think mourning and the act of mourning is a very healthy state, when
the repressed grief comes ut and is shouted or cried.
Ana

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Monika Weiss 
wrote:


yes, if I understood you correctly Maria, you say that I am not trying to
work with grief over ones own complicity or remorse. I am more invested
in
the notion and symbolic power as well as real experience of communal
grief
-- this is what oppressive systems fear most -- the symbolic "power" of
the
connecting tissue of our emotions but not those on individual level alone

On Oct 4, 2012, at 6:41 PM, Maria Damon wrote:

Yes, when I mentioned Lamentations, I meant the Hebrew Bible. Old.
Grieving
for ones city, ones polis, ones people. Also, it seems that this is *not*
where you were going, Monika, a sense of grief over ones own possible
complicity, real or imagined... remorse.

On 10/4/12 5:55 PM, Monika Weiss wrote:

While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such as
Martha
Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great respect for her)
--
what I am working towards is a connection with the older, before now,
before
any specific time, lamentation. My dancer actually took me to Wender's
film
about Pina Baush last Spring, and while aware of her name I never really
knew of this work until quite recently (maybe even Alan mentioned her to
me
a long time ago) but it took a person whose body literally inhabited my
work
'Sustenazo (Lament II)' to "discover" this work and a feeling of
connection.

Monika

On Oct 4, 2012, at 4:05 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:


which "Lamentations" are you refering to? (not Martha Graham's
Lamentation?)


Book of Lamentations in English

All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the
obdurate
that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example of my
mother
shortly before her death, when she had been anesthetized to alleviate her
suffering in the hospice. The silence is also the silence at the heart of
the signifier; the signifier is both suture and broken suture, covering
and
dis/covering pain, naming it for those who are suffering, who can no
longer
hear the name, who are no longer with us, coffin or not - when my father
died, there were issues at the cemetary about the burial of ashes.

- Alan





Alan schreibt:



public lament and gardening


On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:


Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway
in

order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which

lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as
in

Lamentations?



Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations

seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes

overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think

this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other

hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?

In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an

outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manip

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Ana Valdés]

The nearest I was from a massgrave was Jenin, 2002, people were eerie
silent around the hole wich was Palestine's ground zero. Under the
hole were dismembered people, restaurantes blown in pieces, ashes,
bones, lonely shoes.
I wrote some texts from there, http://www.this.is/jenin

In the total mourning people were silent and the silence were heavier
than any shouting...
Ana

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:26 PM, Alan Sondheim  wrote:
>
> mourning, lament, are acts, they're intended, they're cultural expressions -
> as long as one can mourn...
>
> but what happens when mourning, lament, end, not through desire
> but because the unspeakable becomes manifest - i think this is
> where celan comes in for example, or the spaces in jabes' books
> with the words themselves removed -
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Ana Vald?s wrote:
>
>> I think mourning and lament are related to the ceremonies of the
>> death. When I did my research as anthropologist I travelled to Mexico
>> and did a fieldwork in Yucatan, the old Maya empire. Their funerary
>> pyramids, specially in Palenque, were very similar to the Egyptian
>> pyramids. Many scenes painted in Palenque's walls were about death,
>> mourning, ceremonies to placate the wrath of the gods. The gods mourn
>> as well, the Greek gods mourned lost sons, dead sons, lost wives. I
>> think mourning and the act of mourning is a very healthy state, when
>> the repressed grief comes ut and is shouted or cried.
>> Ana
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Monika Weiss 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> yes, if I understood you correctly Maria, you say that I am not trying to
>>> work with grief over ones own complicity or remorse. I am more invested
>>> in
>>> the notion and symbolic power as well as real experience of communal
>>> grief
>>> -- this is what oppressive systems fear most -- the symbolic "power" of
>>> the
>>> connecting tissue of our emotions but not those on individual level alone
>>>
>>> On Oct 4, 2012, at 6:41 PM, Maria Damon wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes, when I mentioned Lamentations, I meant the Hebrew Bible. Old.
>>> Grieving
>>> for ones city, ones polis, ones people. Also, it seems that this is *not*
>>> where you were going, Monika, a sense of grief over ones own possible
>>> complicity, real or imagined... remorse.
>>>
>>> On 10/4/12 5:55 PM, Monika Weiss wrote:
>>>
>>> While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such as
>>> Martha
>>> Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great respect for her)
>>> --
>>> what I am working towards is a connection with the older, before now,
>>> before
>>> any specific time, lamentation. My dancer actually took me to Wender's
>>> film
>>> about Pina Baush last Spring, and while aware of her name I never really
>>> knew of this work until quite recently (maybe even Alan mentioned her to
>>> me
>>> a long time ago) but it took a person whose body literally inhabited my
>>> work
>>> 'Sustenazo (Lament II)' to "discover" this work and a feeling of
>>> connection.
>>>
>>> Monika
>>>
>>> On Oct 4, 2012, at 4:05 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> which "Lamentations" are you refering to? (not Martha Graham's
>>> Lamentation?)
>>>
>>>
>>> Book of Lamentations in English
>>>
>>> All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the
>>> obdurate
>>> that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example of my
>>> mother
>>> shortly before her death, when she had been anesthetized to alleviate her
>>> suffering in the hospice. The silence is also the silence at the heart of
>>> the signifier; the signifier is both suture and broken suture, covering
>>> and
>>> dis/covering pain, naming it for those who are suffering, who can no
>>> longer
>>> hear the name, who are no longer with us, coffin or not - when my father
>>> died, there were issues at the cemetary about the burial of ashes.
>>>
>>> - Alan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Alan schreibt:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> public lament and gardening
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway
>>> in
>>>
>>> order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
>>>
>>> lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as
>>> in
>>>
>>> Lamentations?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
>>>
>>> seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
>>>
>>> overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
>>>
>>> this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
>>>
>>> hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
>>>
>>> In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
>>>
>>> outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
>>>
>>> from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
>>>
>>> (see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Alan Sondheim]

mourning, lament, are acts, they're intended, they're cultural 
expressions - as long as one can mourn...


but what happens when mourning, lament, end, not through desire
but because the unspeakable becomes manifest - i think this is
where celan comes in for example, or the spaces in jabes' books
with the words themselves removed -



On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Ana Vald?s wrote:


I think mourning and lament are related to the ceremonies of the
death. When I did my research as anthropologist I travelled to Mexico
and did a fieldwork in Yucatan, the old Maya empire. Their funerary
pyramids, specially in Palenque, were very similar to the Egyptian
pyramids. Many scenes painted in Palenque's walls were about death,
mourning, ceremonies to placate the wrath of the gods. The gods mourn
as well, the Greek gods mourned lost sons, dead sons, lost wives. I
think mourning and the act of mourning is a very healthy state, when
the repressed grief comes ut and is shouted or cried.
Ana

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Monika Weiss  wrote:

yes, if I understood you correctly Maria, you say that I am not trying to
work with grief over ones own complicity or remorse. I am more invested in
the notion and symbolic power as well as real experience of communal grief
-- this is what oppressive systems fear most -- the symbolic "power" of the
connecting tissue of our emotions but not those on individual level alone

On Oct 4, 2012, at 6:41 PM, Maria Damon wrote:

Yes, when I mentioned Lamentations, I meant the Hebrew Bible. Old. Grieving
for ones city, ones polis, ones people. Also, it seems that this is *not*
where you were going, Monika, a sense of grief over ones own possible
complicity, real or imagined... remorse.

On 10/4/12 5:55 PM, Monika Weiss wrote:

While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such as Martha
Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great respect for her) --
what I am working towards is a connection with the older, before now, before
any specific time, lamentation. My dancer actually took me to Wender's film
about Pina Baush last Spring, and while aware of her name I never really
knew of this work until quite recently (maybe even Alan mentioned her to me
a long time ago) but it took a person whose body literally inhabited my work
'Sustenazo (Lament II)' to "discover" this work and a feeling of connection.

Monika

On Oct 4, 2012, at 4:05 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:


which "Lamentations" are you refering to? (not Martha Graham's Lamentation?)


Book of Lamentations in English

All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the obdurate
that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example of my mother
shortly before her death, when she had been anesthetized to alleviate her
suffering in the hospice. The silence is also the silence at the heart of
the signifier; the signifier is both suture and broken suture, covering and
dis/covering pain, naming it for those who are suffering, who can no longer
hear the name, who are no longer with us, coffin or not - when my father
died, there were issues at the cemetary about the burial of ashes.

- Alan





Alan schreibt:



public lament and gardening


On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:


Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in

order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which

lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in

Lamentations?



Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations

seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes

overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think

this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other

hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?

In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an

outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but

from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus

(see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have

less content than its representations, and certainly its representations

in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate

and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.


___

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http://www.subtle.net/empyre


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M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
456 Broome Street, 4
New York, NY 10013
Phone: 212-226-6736
Mobile: 646-660-2809
www.monika-weiss.com
gnie...@monika-weiss.com

M o n i k a   W e i s s
Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Washington University in St. Louis
Campus Box 1031
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130
mwe...@samfox.wustl.edu
http://samfoxschool.wustl.e

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Ana Valdés]

I think mourning and lament are related to the ceremonies of the
death. When I did my research as anthropologist I travelled to Mexico
and did a fieldwork in Yucatan, the old Maya empire. Their funerary
pyramids, specially in Palenque, were very similar to the Egyptian
pyramids. Many scenes painted in Palenque's walls were about death,
mourning, ceremonies to placate the wrath of the gods. The gods mourn
as well, the Greek gods mourned lost sons, dead sons, lost wives. I
think mourning and the act of mourning is a very healthy state, when
the repressed grief comes ut and is shouted or cried.
Ana

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Monika Weiss  wrote:
> yes, if I understood you correctly Maria, you say that I am not trying to
> work with grief over ones own complicity or remorse. I am more invested in
> the notion and symbolic power as well as real experience of communal grief
> -- this is what oppressive systems fear most -- the symbolic "power" of the
> connecting tissue of our emotions but not those on individual level alone
>
> On Oct 4, 2012, at 6:41 PM, Maria Damon wrote:
>
> Yes, when I mentioned Lamentations, I meant the Hebrew Bible. Old. Grieving
> for ones city, ones polis, ones people. Also, it seems that this is *not*
> where you were going, Monika, a sense of grief over ones own possible
> complicity, real or imagined... remorse.
>
> On 10/4/12 5:55 PM, Monika Weiss wrote:
>
> While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such as Martha
> Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great respect for her) --
> what I am working towards is a connection with the older, before now, before
> any specific time, lamentation. My dancer actually took me to Wender's film
> about Pina Baush last Spring, and while aware of her name I never really
> knew of this work until quite recently (maybe even Alan mentioned her to me
> a long time ago) but it took a person whose body literally inhabited my work
> 'Sustenazo (Lament II)' to "discover" this work and a feeling of connection.
>
> Monika
>
> On Oct 4, 2012, at 4:05 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>
>
> which "Lamentations" are you refering to? (not Martha Graham's Lamentation?)
>
>
> Book of Lamentations in English
>
> All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the obdurate
> that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example of my mother
> shortly before her death, when she had been anesthetized to alleviate her
> suffering in the hospice. The silence is also the silence at the heart of
> the signifier; the signifier is both suture and broken suture, covering and
> dis/covering pain, naming it for those who are suffering, who can no longer
> hear the name, who are no longer with us, coffin or not - when my father
> died, there were issues at the cemetary about the burial of ashes.
>
> - Alan
>
>
>
>
>
> Alan schreibt:
>
>
>
> public lament and gardening
>
>
> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
>
>
> Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
>
> order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
>
> lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
>
> Lamentations?
>
>
>
> Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
>
> seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
>
> overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
>
> this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
>
> hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
>
> In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
>
> outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
>
> from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
>
> (see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
>
> less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
>
> in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
>
> and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.
>
>
> ___
>
> empyre forum
>
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
> 456 Broome Street, 4
> New York, NY 10013
> Phone: 212-226-6736
> Mobile: 646-660-2809
> www.monika-weiss.com
> gnie...@monika-weiss.com
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s
> Assistant Professor
> Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
> Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
> Washington University in St. Louis
> Campus Box 1031
> One Brookings Drive
> St. Louis, MO 63130
> mwe...@samfox.wustl.edu
> http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Monika Weiss]

yes, if I understood you correctly Maria, you say that I am not trying to work 
with grief over ones own complicity or remorse. I am more invested in the 
notion and symbolic power as well as real experience of communal grief -- this 
is what oppressive systems fear most -- the symbolic "power" of the connecting 
tissue of our emotions but not those on individual level alone
On Oct 4, 2012, at 6:41 PM, Maria Damon wrote:

> Yes, when I mentioned Lamentations, I meant the Hebrew Bible. Old. Grieving 
> for ones city, ones polis, ones people. Also, it seems that this is *not* 
> where you were going, Monika, a sense of grief over ones own possible 
> complicity, real or imagined... remorse.
> 
> On 10/4/12 5:55 PM, Monika Weiss wrote:
>> While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such as Martha 
>> Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great respect for her) -- 
>> what I am working towards is a connection with the older, before now, before 
>> any specific time, lamentation. My dancer actually took me to Wender's film 
>> about Pina Baush last Spring, and while aware of her name I never really 
>> knew of this work until quite recently (maybe even Alan mentioned her to me 
>> a long time ago) but it took a person whose body literally inhabited my work 
>> 'Sustenazo (Lament II)' to "discover" this work and a feeling of connection.
>> 
>> Monika
>> 
>> On Oct 4, 2012, at 4:05 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>> 
>>> 
 which "Lamentations" are you refering to? (not Martha Graham's 
 Lamentation?) 
>>> 
>>> Book of Lamentations in English
>>> 
>>> All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the obdurate 
>>> that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example of my 
>>> mother shortly before her death, when she had been anesthetized to 
>>> alleviate her suffering in the hospice. The silence is also the silence at 
>>> the heart of the signifier; the signifier is both suture and broken suture, 
>>> covering and dis/covering pain, naming it for those who are suffering, who 
>>> can no longer hear the name, who are no longer with us, coffin or not - 
>>> when my father died, there were issues at the cemetary about the burial of 
>>> ashes.
>>> 
>>> - Alan
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
 
 Alan schreibt:
 
 
 public lament and gardening
 
 On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
 
> Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway 
> in
> order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
> lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
> Lamentations?
> 
 
 Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
 seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
 overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
 this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
 hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
 In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
 outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
 from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
 (see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
 less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
 in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
 and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.
 
 ___
 empyre forum
 empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
 http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>> 
>>> ___
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
>> 456 Broome Street, 4
>> New York, NY 10013
>> Phone: 212-226-6736
>> Mobile: 646-660-2809
>> www.monika-weiss.com
>> gnie...@monika-weiss.com 
>> 
>> M o n i k a   W e i s s
>> Assistant Professor
>> Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
>> Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts  
>> Washington University in St. Louis 
>> Campus Box 1031 
>> One Brookings Drive 
>> St. Louis, MO 63130 
>> mwe...@samfox.wustl.edu
>> http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
456 Broome Street, 4
New York, NY 10013
Phone: 212-226-6736
Mobile: 646-660-2809
www.monika-weiss.com
gnie...@monika-weiss.com 

M o n i k a   W e i s s
Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts  
Washington University in St. Lou

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Maria Damon]

Yes, when I mentioned Lamentations, I meant the Hebrew Bible. Old. 
Grieving for ones city, ones polis, ones people. Also, it seems that 
this is *not* where you were going, Monika, a sense of grief over ones 
own possible complicity, real or imagined... remorse.


On 10/4/12 5:55 PM, Monika Weiss wrote:
While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such 
as Martha Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great 
respect for her) -- what I am working towards is a connection with the 
older, before now, before any specific time, lamentation. My dancer 
actually took me to Wender's film about Pina Baush last Spring, and 
while aware of her name I never really knew of this work until quite 
recently (maybe even Alan mentioned her to me a long time ago) but it 
took a person whose body literally inhabited my work 'Sustenazo 
(Lament II)' to "discover" this work and a feeling of connection.


Monika

On Oct 4, 2012, at 4:05 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:



which "Lamentations" are you refering to? (not Martha Graham's 
Lamentation?)


Book of Lamentations in English

All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the 
obdurate that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for 
example of my mother shortly before her death, when she had been 
anesthetized to alleviate her suffering in the hospice. The silence 
is also the silence at the heart of the signifier; the signifier is 
both suture and broken suture, covering and dis/covering pain, naming 
it for those who are suffering, who can no longer hear the name, who 
are no longer with us, coffin or not - when my father died, there 
were issues at the cemetary about the burial of ashes.


- Alan






Alan schreibt:


public lament and gardening

On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:

Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking 
anyway in

order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
lamentation is also critique as well as community 
self-constitution, as in

Lamentations?



Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I 
think

this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
(see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.

___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au 
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au 
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
456 Broome Street, 4
New York, NY 10013
Phone: 212-226-6736
Mobile: 646-660-2809
www.monika-weiss.com 
gnie...@monika-weiss.com 

M o n i k a   W e i s s
Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Washington University in St. Louis
Campus Box 1031
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130
mwe...@samfox.wustl.edu 
http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss








___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Monika Weiss]

While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such as Martha 
Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great respect for her) -- what 
I am working towards is a connection with the older, before now, before any 
specific time, lamentation. My dancer actually took me to Wender's film about 
Pina Baush last Spring, and while aware of her name I never really knew of this 
work until quite recently (maybe even Alan mentioned her to me a long time ago) 
but it took a person whose body literally inhabited my work 'Sustenazo (Lament 
II)' to "discover" this work and a feeling of connection.

Monika

On Oct 4, 2012, at 4:05 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:

> 
>> which "Lamentations" are you refering to? (not Martha Graham's Lamentation?) 
> 
> Book of Lamentations in English
> 
> All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the obdurate 
> that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example of my mother 
> shortly before her death, when she had been anesthetized to alleviate her 
> suffering in the hospice. The silence is also the silence at the heart of the 
> signifier; the signifier is both suture and broken suture, covering and 
> dis/covering pain, naming it for those who are suffering, who can no longer 
> hear the name, who are no longer with us, coffin or not - when my father 
> died, there were issues at the cemetary about the burial of ashes.
> 
> - Alan
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Alan schreibt:
>> 
>> 
>> public lament and gardening
>> 
>> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
>> 
>>> Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
>>> order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
>>> lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
>>> Lamentations?
>>> 
>> 
>> Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
>> seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
>> overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
>> this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
>> hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
>> In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
>> outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
>> from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
>> (see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
>> less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
>> in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
>> and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.
>> 
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
456 Broome Street, 4
New York, NY 10013
Phone: 212-226-6736
Mobile: 646-660-2809
www.monika-weiss.com
gnie...@monika-weiss.com 

M o n i k a   W e i s s
Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts  
Washington University in St. Louis 
Campus Box 1031 
One Brookings Drive 
St. Louis, MO 63130 
mwe...@samfox.wustl.edu
http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss






___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Alan Sondheim]

which "Lamentations" are you refering to? 
(not Martha Graham's Lamentation?) 



Book of Lamentations in English

All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the 
obdurate that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example 
of my mother shortly before her death, when she had been anesthetized to 
alleviate her suffering in the hospice. The silence is also the silence at 
the heart of the signifier; the signifier is both suture and broken 
suture, covering and dis/covering pain, naming it for those who are 
suffering, who can no longer hear the name, who are no longer with us, 
coffin or not - when my father died, there were issues at the cemetary 
about the burial of ashes.


- Alan






Alan schreibt:


public lament and gardening

On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:


Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
Lamentations?



Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
(see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.

___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] On Pain and affect in the Virtual.

[Monika Weiss]

Alan,

I like what you wrote about the "kernel of silence". Lament is etymologically 
related to the non-verbal expression, so it's about a loss of language and a 
loss of ability to name, to understand. 

I will look at other posts later tonight. 


Monika


On Oct 4, 2012, at 10:26 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote:

> 
> Hi Patrick,
> 
> This brings up a few things for me. I don't think emotions are true or false 
> re: your last paragraph. Their meaning however relies on cultural context, 
> particularly in relation to the Burden piece; cartoon violence is so basic to 
> animation that I don't think I would have had much of a reaction to the 
> shooting either if I hadn't known Burden's piece and Burden for that matter.
> 
> Your video I think is powerful because the music sutures it together; the 
> symbolic and camera movements require interpretation which the music and its 
> sadness take to another level altogether. It reminds me of Guy Maddin's The 
> Saddest Music in the World.
> 
> I'm not sure about the clean division the article grants to various emotional 
> plateaus or conglomerates (not sure what word to use here). Certainly anguish 
> and lamentation both involve a degree of silence in the midst of the world, 
> silence, that is, in relation to ordinary language; ululations, culturally 
> determined to some extent, seem to have a kernel of silence.
> 
> - Alan, fuzzy this morning, another sleepless night
> 
> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Lichty, Patrick wrote:
> 
>> I like the conversation that is going on so far, but where I'd like to 
>> reengage a key topic is that of hte virtual in regards to these concepts of 
>> embodiment (pain, suffering, affect seem to be of the body, and the mind as 
>> embodied consciousness).
>> 
>> This has to do with why I engage in virtual performance at all.  When I 
>> talked to Eva and Franco Mattes about their upcoming "Synthetic 
>> Performances" in 2006, around the time Jeremy Turner wanted me to be part of 
>> the founding group of Second Front, I had already done a lot of performance 
>> art, primarily with existing NYC FLUXUS members and Guillermo Gomez-Pena.  I 
>> thought the idea was absurd, as I used to joke about SL-sex as "retinal", 
>> and my conceptions of performance were about its roots as a reaction against 
>> the dematerialization of the bject from Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 
>> 60's, using the body of the last bastion of immediacy.
>> 
>> 50 performances later, after laughter and anger and ejections from servers, 
>> I have found a Massumian relation to virtual embodiment. As Eric Shouse 
>> talks about three levels of engagement "Feeling, Emotion Affect": 
>> http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php As I understand 
>> Massumi and Shouse, affect relates to precognitive reactions at the most 
>> basic level from which come the other effects.  The one thin I have come to 
>> believe, at least in my consciousness, is that when you remove the body, 
>> what remains is affect, which then produces the other effects, not through 
>> immediacy, but through associations such as empathy, sympathy, projection, 
>> and mirroring.  When Scott Kildall reenacted Burden's "Shoot" in Second 
>> Life, I could only flinch to see the "cartoon" (Abramovic) gunshot and 
>> associate it with Burden.  I had a gut reaction, could imagine the cartoon 
>> pain, but had I not known the original Burden piece, I would not have 
>> imagined the immediate, embodied pain.
>> 
>> This is why I find Alan, Sandy, and Azure's work so overwhelming at times.  
>> They are a tornado of affects that evoke associative responses to the 
>> semiotic eroticism, suffering, anger, pain.  Sometimes I can't even watch 
>> it, btu then that is the case with some people with my work. This is also 
>> more testimony to the idea of affective relation to the virtual.
>> 
>> In regards to pain and suffering, I submit a performance I did solo for the 
>> Odyssey Performance Festival in 2010.  It was called Dido's Lament, and I 
>> was clad in many signifiers of anguish and torment.  I was Cicciolina, who 
>> went through a hellish divorce with Jeff Koons, clad in a tunic with the 
>> crimson gash of Prometheus, impaled by the arrows of St. Sebastian.  At the 
>> time, I was in great anguish from a break with a lover, and I proceeded to 
>> pour signifiers on the bed (after the myth of Dido) like symbols of love, 
>> family, and belonging, to which I set the lot on fire, impaled Cicciolina on 
>> the bed, and launched nuclear weapons onto the bed.  My Facebook responses 
>> to the piece were very emotional, which I merely state as success of the 
>> piece.  But as I write this, I wonder about whether emotion is true in the 
>> virtual, if perhaps from mirroring/empathy/association, or whether I remain 
>> in the position of the virtual being purely affective, and subsequent 
>> effects being derivat ive. I find the whole lot deeply problematic, and why 
>> it interests me greatly. Submi

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Monika Weiss]

Thank you Patricia that means a lot.

Monika
On Oct 4, 2012, at 11:17 AM, Clough, Patricia wrote:

> Oh  I agree   the sounds  are exquisite   touching me.Patricia 
> 
> 
> From: empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au 
> [empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Johannes Birringer 
> [johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 2:39 PM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
> 
> Dear all
> 
> thank you Monika for your text/introduction to your understanding of the 
> system of lament, and "public lament as performative and political act in 
> public domain"
> -- this is richly evocative and will have to go back to your writing after 
> looking at some of your work (the slides, and the films or film excerpts you 
> include on
> http://www.streamingmuseum.org/content/monika-weiss/
> I am listening to the sound now, of two of your videos.  I was struck, 
> entering the site, to also find your reference to Cage's silence.
> on first viewing/listening, your visual-sonic work has quite a mesmerizing 
> quality.  I am just responding now, without thinking, to my listening, and
> also watching the face(s) of the women in your films. (this listening is now 
> private, at a screen, in the dark of my room). so no public lament this.
> But you stage these works in public galleries or spaces, and they are visited 
> by the "public". how then does such work function in an art context?
> can it become a ritualizing space?
> 
> but i shall look forward to reading more concisely (see below) your position, 
> also in regard to the questions already brought up by Alan, when in his last 
> post he  speaks of
> the "overwhelming suffering of the world," stating that he does "not know how 
> to accommodate all of this".  This followed the conversation about
> pain, torture, memory begun by Ana.
> 
> This accommodation will concern us, in the coming days, i am sure.
> 
> Monika, could you expand a little on your reference to Zygmunt Baumann's idea 
> of "gardening" .
> What idea is this?
> 
> And Ana, I began to delve into your longer text on the migration from torture.
> It is a very complex and fascinating text, and i agree with Alan that the 
> "clickable words" are a rather amazing intrusion function of the website.
> 
> I clicked "perfume"
> 
>>> We did not find any results for perfume.
> Search tips:
>Ensure words are spelled correctly.
>Try rephrasing keywords or using synonyms.
>Try less specific keywords.
> Make your queries as concise as possible.
>>> 
> 
> 
> with regards
> Johannes Birringer
> dap-lab
> 
> Monika schreibt:
> 
>>> 
> Interesting question below from Alan about the nature of video as a catalyst 
> for memory, pain and lament and later I would like to expand that part of our 
> discussion towards the performative and the circular in terms of the 
> relationships between cinematic mirroring and lament as well as pain. Just 
> briefly for now -- about torture. I am more preoccupied with torture 
> inflicted by governments, institutions and systems that often hide their 
> violence -- as you know only recently in my city of origins, Warsaw, a CIA 
> compound was found in which "suspected terrorists" were kept for a number of 
> years and tortured by US forces, without any real knowledge amongst the civil 
> part of the Polish government. There are thousands of examples of course. 
> Massive, systematic pain and torture systems, the ones that are pre-designed 
> by others, "enlightened", designed by those who are in power or who represent 
> structures of power and hegemony not because of hate, anger or any other 
> emotion but becau
> se of fulfilling some abstracted and pragmatic goal, akin to Zygmunt 
> Baumann's idea of "gardening" .
>>> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
456 Broome Street, 4
New York, NY 10013
Phone: 212-226-6736
Mobile: 646-660-2809
www.monika-weiss.com
gnie...@monika-weiss.com 

M o n i k a   W e i s s
Assistant Professor
Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts  
Washington University in St. Louis 
Campus Box 1031 
One Brookings Drive 
St. Louis, MO 63130 
mwe...@samfox.wustl.edu
http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss






___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Monika Weiss]

Dear Johannes,

I think a lot of the interest in the visceral experience, in the choreographed 
language of gestures and the language of stillness, almost-silence --arrive to 
me from music - Thomas Mann wrote in 1943, as he was working on Doctor Faustus, 
that at the turn of the century, when music understood itself as music, it also 
understood itself as lamentation. There is a lot of research done around the 
origins of the form of Lament in music and in poetry (such as M. Alexiou) and 
the consensus seems to be that it came from a dialogue, most likely an imagined 
conversation with the dead or with their tomb. There is something powerful in 
this consideration, if we were to agree with Mann, that music, and by 
extension, all art, is lyrical, and it mourns.

What I have been developing though is a sort of machina memoralis where 
individual loss is merged with the loss on the scale of a genocide. What I take 
from music is the rhythm, its ability to permeate matter, at least in the way 
our body receives it, and the polyphony of voices. What I also always need are 
the stains and fractures of the real lived experience. Sometimes through life 
presence and communal gesture (such as lying down and leaving marks and traces 
together with other passersby as a drawing landscape, which I then film and 
edit into a new universe), or through an archive/presence of actual objects 
related to an event and their traces that accompany the filmed, silent gestures 
and the sound evocations. 

Your question about how it all functions is not an easy one but it's not 
impossible to answer. What comes to mind is that the work always exists in the 
context of the site and the context of one's life work, even one's writing. the 
projects I did in Dresden, New York. Potsdam, Warsaw or now Santiago -- and 
many other places -- the past are inscribed in the body of the city, so this 
forms one level of context. The prolonged moment, the experience of the 
passerby (I don't like the word "viewers" or "audience" and I always insist on 
"experiencer"), offers a possibility of a dialogue, the ABA, a return and 
circularity between presences. It happened to me many times that people, even 
very young people, would come to me and say  "I came yesterday and I decided to 
come back today to see it again" and there are those who come back many times 
or stay for a very long time in the space of the project... 

To be continued...

Monika
On Oct 4, 2012, at 1:14 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:

> 
> which "Lamentations" are you refering to? 
> (not Martha Graham's Lamentation?) The lament of nation-building
> 
> I'd be interested in this idea of the critique of the ritual and the 
> community self-restitution,
> and also in a review how lament becomes a gesture (in performance and 
> film/filmed performance/then in stilled photograph)
> of witnessing and what Monika describes as "witnessing and enunciation  
> sequenced to non-linear time[with] compose[d] sound from testimonies, 
> recitations, laments, the environment..."
> I was interested in the staging of lament, Monika, and how it loses all aura 
> (in Benjamin's writing on something that may have been originary or original) 
> thereby, or retains some?, and how people today, 
> perhaps, are divesting themselves of having to witness ageing, decrepitude, 
> decay, catatonia, living absence, death. 
> 
> Not sure, i know many folks, in the old village, who are care takers and who 
> are
> witnessing the disappearance of loved ones, the sliding away, in pain or 
> tranced, stilled pain (medicated), but Yoko Ishiguro, a Japanese performance 
> artist who studied at my school, recently staged
> her symbolic passing outside the library, had herself placed and buried in a 
> coffin and transmitted all that action through the network to test whether 
> the net would be a kind or tomb archive for later generations to look back to 
> Yoko's death at the foot of the library and how would the data be preserved? 
> Yoko told me she was reacting to the crass commodification of death she 
> observed, with funeral trade shows and, for example, the Japanese 
> cyber-burial companies which invite the dead to be “buried” on the website so 
> that you can visit there online.She saw this commodification in the 
> Benjamin sense of raising questions about "work: (art) in the era of 
> technical reproducibility.
> 
> So my question (this is before Alan and Sandy's dense textdialiogue about the 
> signifier of pain arrived, which i have not been able to translate) was still 
> to Monika to try to describe how she sees her work function, and what effect 
> is produced, and how the audience is drawn into the long circle or not. And 
> can there ever be audience in lamentation/mourning? 
> 
> 
> (PS.  i personally have no problems with weeds (as weeds), i love them in my 
> garden and tend to them, and they are migrants too, some weeds have travel 
> from far but i didn't know there were wee

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Monika Weiss]

I wish I was there to witness it...

I think collective catharsis could be the very foundation of the political 
community of citizens.

On Oct 4, 2012, at 1:51 PM, Ana Valdés wrote:

> For me the lament is a kind of collective catharsis, as the mourning
> itself. I has been in Palestine several times and see and listened to
> the collective mourning of the women when some of their relatives or
> friends are killed or buried, a kind of powerful roaring, not the
> claiming not the whinning but the power of a repressed cry or
> shouting.
> Ana
> 
> On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Johannes Birringer
>  wrote:
>> 
>> which "Lamentations" are you refering to?
>> (not Martha Graham's Lamentation?) The lament of nation-building
>> 
>> I'd be interested in this idea of the critique of the ritual and the 
>> community self-restitution,
>> and also in a review how lament becomes a gesture (in performance and 
>> film/filmed performance/then in stilled photograph)
>> of witnessing and what Monika describes as "witnessing and enunciation  
>> sequenced to non-linear time[with] compose[d] sound from testimonies, 
>> recitations, laments, the environment..."
>> I was interested in the staging of lament, Monika, and how it loses all aura 
>> (in Benjamin's writing on something that may have been originary or 
>> original) thereby, or retains some?, and how people today,
>> perhaps, are divesting themselves of having to witness ageing, decrepitude, 
>> decay, catatonia, living absence, death.
>> 
>> Not sure, i know many folks, in the old village, who are care takers and who 
>> are
>> witnessing the disappearance of loved ones, the sliding away, in pain or 
>> tranced, stilled pain (medicated), but Yoko Ishiguro, a Japanese performance 
>> artist who studied at my school, recently staged
>> her symbolic passing outside the library, had herself placed and buried in a 
>> coffin and transmitted all that action through the network to test whether 
>> the net would be a kind or tomb archive for later generations to look back 
>> to Yoko's death at the foot of the library and how would the data be 
>> preserved? Yoko told me she was reacting to the crass commodification of 
>> death she observed, with funeral trade shows and, for example, the Japanese 
>> cyber-burial companies which invite the dead to be "buried" on the website 
>> so that you can visit there online.She saw this commodification in 
>> the Benjamin sense of raising questions about "work: (art) in the era of 
>> technical reproducibility.
>> 
>> So my question (this is before Alan and Sandy's dense textdialiogue about 
>> the signifier of pain arrived, which i have not been able to translate) was 
>> still to Monika to try to describe how she sees her work function, and what 
>> effect is produced, and how the audience is drawn into the long circle or 
>> not. And can there ever be audience in lamentation/mourning?
>> 
>> 
>> (PS.  i personally have no problems with weeds (as weeds), i love them in my 
>> garden and tend to them, and they are migrants too, some weeds have travel 
>> from far but i didn't know there were weeds, some one has to point out. that 
>> must be the signifier. I had never thought of them in the sense of homo 
>> sacer. This astonished me, Monika, that you mention Agamben,  after 
>> "Nowoczesność i Zaglada".   thank you for responding to my query, and in 
>> think Alan's answer is not quite responding to Bauman's critical analysis of 
>> the garden society, and what the writing may also have to tell us about 
>> politics of integration or assimilation of impairment, otherness.
>> 
>> respectfully
>> Johannes Birringer
>> 
>> 
>> Alan schreibt:
>> 
>> 
>> public lament and gardening
>> 
>> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
>> 
>>> Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
>>> order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
>>> lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
>>> Lamentations?
>>> 
>> 
>> Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
>> seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
>> overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
>> this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
>> hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
>> In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
>> outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
>> from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
>> (see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
>> less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
>> in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
>> and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.
>> 
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lis

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Ana Valdés]

For me the lament is a kind of collective catharsis, as the mourning
itself. I has been in Palestine several times and see and listened to
the collective mourning of the women when some of their relatives or
friends are killed or buried, a kind of powerful roaring, not the
claiming not the whinning but the power of a repressed cry or
shouting.
Ana

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Johannes Birringer
 wrote:
>
> which "Lamentations" are you refering to?
> (not Martha Graham's Lamentation?) The lament of nation-building
>
> I'd be interested in this idea of the critique of the ritual and the 
> community self-restitution,
> and also in a review how lament becomes a gesture (in performance and 
> film/filmed performance/then in stilled photograph)
> of witnessing and what Monika describes as "witnessing and enunciation  
> sequenced to non-linear time[with] compose[d] sound from testimonies, 
> recitations, laments, the environment..."
> I was interested in the staging of lament, Monika, and how it loses all aura 
> (in Benjamin's writing on something that may have been originary or original) 
> thereby, or retains some?, and how people today,
> perhaps, are divesting themselves of having to witness ageing, decrepitude, 
> decay, catatonia, living absence, death.
>
> Not sure, i know many folks, in the old village, who are care takers and who 
> are
> witnessing the disappearance of loved ones, the sliding away, in pain or 
> tranced, stilled pain (medicated), but Yoko Ishiguro, a Japanese performance 
> artist who studied at my school, recently staged
> her symbolic passing outside the library, had herself placed and buried in a 
> coffin and transmitted all that action through the network to test whether 
> the net would be a kind or tomb archive for later generations to look back to 
> Yoko's death at the foot of the library and how would the data be preserved? 
> Yoko told me she was reacting to the crass commodification of death she 
> observed, with funeral trade shows and, for example, the Japanese 
> cyber-burial companies which invite the dead to be "buried" on the website so 
> that you can visit there online.She saw this commodification in the 
> Benjamin sense of raising questions about "work: (art) in the era of 
> technical reproducibility.
>
> So my question (this is before Alan and Sandy's dense textdialiogue about the 
> signifier of pain arrived, which i have not been able to translate) was still 
> to Monika to try to describe how she sees her work function, and what effect 
> is produced, and how the audience is drawn into the long circle or not. And 
> can there ever be audience in lamentation/mourning?
>
>
> (PS.  i personally have no problems with weeds (as weeds), i love them in my 
> garden and tend to them, and they are migrants too, some weeds have travel 
> from far but i didn't know there were weeds, some one has to point out. that 
> must be the signifier. I had never thought of them in the sense of homo 
> sacer. This astonished me, Monika, that you mention Agamben,  after 
> "Nowoczesność i Zaglada".   thank you for responding to my query, and in 
> think Alan's answer is not quite responding to Bauman's critical analysis of 
> the garden society, and what the writing may also have to tell us about 
> politics of integration or assimilation of impairment, otherness.
>
> respectfully
> Johannes Birringer
>
>
> Alan schreibt:
>
>
>  public lament and gardening
>
> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
>
>> Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
>> order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
>> lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
>> Lamentations?
>>
>
> Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
> seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
> overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
> this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
> hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
> In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
> outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
> from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
> (see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
> less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
> in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
> and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre



-- 
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http://maraya.tumblr.com/
http://www.twitter.com/caravia158
http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/
http://www.scoop.it/t/

Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Johannes Birringer]

which "Lamentations" are you refering to? 
(not Martha Graham's Lamentation?) The lament of nation-building

I'd be interested in this idea of the critique of the ritual and the community 
self-restitution,
and also in a review how lament becomes a gesture (in performance and 
film/filmed performance/then in stilled photograph)
of witnessing and what Monika describes as "witnessing and enunciation  
sequenced to non-linear time[with] compose[d] sound from testimonies, 
recitations, laments, the environment..."
I was interested in the staging of lament, Monika, and how it loses all aura 
(in Benjamin's writing on something that may have been originary or original) 
thereby, or retains some?, and how people today, 
perhaps, are divesting themselves of having to witness ageing, decrepitude, 
decay, catatonia, living absence, death. 

Not sure, i know many folks, in the old village, who are care takers and who are
witnessing the disappearance of loved ones, the sliding away, in pain or 
tranced, stilled pain (medicated), but Yoko Ishiguro, a Japanese performance 
artist who studied at my school, recently staged
her symbolic passing outside the library, had herself placed and buried in a 
coffin and transmitted all that action through the network to test whether the 
net would be a kind or tomb archive for later generations to look back to 
Yoko's death at the foot of the library and how would the data be preserved? 
Yoko told me she was reacting to the crass commodification of death she 
observed, with funeral trade shows and, for example, the Japanese cyber-burial 
companies which invite the dead to be “buried” on the website so that you can 
visit there online.She saw this commodification in the Benjamin sense 
of raising questions about "work: (art) in the era of technical reproducibility.

So my question (this is before Alan and Sandy's dense textdialiogue about the 
signifier of pain arrived, which i have not been able to translate) was still 
to Monika to try to describe how she sees her work function, and what effect is 
produced, and how the audience is drawn into the long circle or not. And can 
there ever be audience in lamentation/mourning? 


(PS.  i personally have no problems with weeds (as weeds), i love them in my 
garden and tend to them, and they are migrants too, some weeds have travel from 
far but i didn't know there were weeds, some one has to point out. that must be 
the signifier. I had never thought of them in the sense of homo sacer. This 
astonished me, Monika, that you mention Agamben,  after "Nowoczesność i 
Zaglada".   thank you for responding to my query, and in think Alan's answer is 
not quite responding to Bauman's critical analysis of the garden society, and 
what the writing may also have to tell us about politics of integration or 
assimilation of impairment, otherness.   

respectfully
Johannes Birringer


Alan schreibt:


 public lament and gardening

On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:

> Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
> order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
> lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
> Lamentations?
>

Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
(see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.

___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Clough, Patricia]

Oh  I agree   the sounds  are exquisite   touching me.Patricia 


From: empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au 
[empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Johannes Birringer 
[johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 2:39 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

Dear all

thank you Monika for your text/introduction to your understanding of the system 
of lament, and "public lament as performative and political act in public 
domain"
-- this is richly evocative and will have to go back to your writing after 
looking at some of your work (the slides, and the films or film excerpts you 
include on
http://www.streamingmuseum.org/content/monika-weiss/
I am listening to the sound now, of two of your videos.  I was struck, entering 
the site, to also find your reference to Cage's silence.
on first viewing/listening, your visual-sonic work has quite a mesmerizing 
quality.  I am just responding now, without thinking, to my listening, and
also watching the face(s) of the women in your films. (this listening is now 
private, at a screen, in the dark of my room). so no public lament this.
But you stage these works in public galleries or spaces, and they are visited 
by the "public". how then does such work function in an art context?
can it become a ritualizing space?

but i shall look forward to reading more concisely (see below) your position, 
also in regard to the questions already brought up by Alan, when in his last 
post he  speaks of
the "overwhelming suffering of the world," stating that he does "not know how 
to accommodate all of this".  This followed the conversation about
pain, torture, memory begun by Ana.

This accommodation will concern us, in the coming days, i am sure.

Monika, could you expand a little on your reference to Zygmunt Baumann's idea 
of "gardening" .
What idea is this?

And Ana, I began to delve into your longer text on the migration from torture.
It is a very complex and fascinating text, and i agree with Alan that the 
"clickable words" are a rather amazing intrusion function of the website.

I clicked "perfume"

>>We did not find any results for perfume.
Search tips:
Ensure words are spelled correctly.
Try rephrasing keywords or using synonyms.
Try less specific keywords.
Make your queries as concise as possible.
>>


with regards
Johannes Birringer
dap-lab

Monika schreibt:

>>
Interesting question below from Alan about the nature of video as a catalyst 
for memory, pain and lament and later I would like to expand that part of our 
discussion towards the performative and the circular in terms of the 
relationships between cinematic mirroring and lament as well as pain. Just 
briefly for now -- about torture. I am more preoccupied with torture inflicted 
by governments, institutions and systems that often hide their violence -- as 
you know only recently in my city of origins, Warsaw, a CIA compound was found 
in which "suspected terrorists" were kept for a number of years and tortured by 
US forces, without any real knowledge amongst the civil part of the Polish 
government. There are thousands of examples of course. Massive, systematic pain 
and torture systems, the ones that are pre-designed by others, "enlightened", 
designed by those who are in power or who represent structures of power and 
hegemony not because of hate, anger or any other emotion but becau
 se of fulfilling some abstracted and pragmatic goal, akin to Zygmunt Baumann's 
idea of "gardening" .
>>






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___
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Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening

[Alan Sondheim]

On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:


Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
Lamentations?



Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations 
seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes 
overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think 
this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other 
hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought? 
In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an 
outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but 
from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus 
(see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have 
less content than its representations, and certainly its representations 
in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate 
and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.


- Alan, foggier, apologies
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Re: [-empyre-] On Pain and affect in the Virtual.

[Alan Sondheim]

Hi Patrick,

This brings up a few things for me. I don't think emotions are true or 
false re: your last paragraph. Their meaning however relies on cultural 
context, particularly in relation to the Burden piece; cartoon violence is 
so basic to animation that I don't think I would have had much of a 
reaction to the shooting either if I hadn't known Burden's piece and 
Burden for that matter.


Your video I think is powerful because the music sutures it together; the 
symbolic and camera movements require interpretation which the music and 
its sadness take to another level altogether. It reminds me of Guy 
Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World.


I'm not sure about the clean division the article grants to various 
emotional plateaus or conglomerates (not sure what word to use here). 
Certainly anguish and lamentation both involve a degree of silence in the 
midst of the world, silence, that is, in relation to ordinary language; 
ululations, culturally determined to some extent, seem to have a kernel of 
silence.


- Alan, fuzzy this morning, another sleepless night

On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Lichty, Patrick wrote:

I like the conversation that is going on so far, but where I'd like to 
reengage a key topic is that of hte virtual in regards to these concepts 
of embodiment (pain, suffering, affect seem to be of the body, and the 
mind as embodied consciousness).


This has to do with why I engage in virtual performance at all.  When I 
talked to Eva and Franco Mattes about their upcoming "Synthetic 
Performances" in 2006, around the time Jeremy Turner wanted me to be 
part of the founding group of Second Front, I had already done a lot of 
performance art, primarily with existing NYC FLUXUS members and 
Guillermo Gomez-Pena.  I thought the idea was absurd, as I used to joke 
about SL-sex as "retinal", and my conceptions of performance were about 
its roots as a reaction against the dematerialization of the bject from 
Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 60's, using the body of the last 
bastion of immediacy.


50 performances later, after laughter and anger and ejections from 
servers, I have found a Massumian relation to virtual embodiment. As 
Eric Shouse talks about three levels of engagement "Feeling, Emotion 
Affect": http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php As I 
understand Massumi and Shouse, affect relates to precognitive reactions 
at the most basic level from which come the other effects.  The one thin 
I have come to believe, at least in my consciousness, is that when you 
remove the body, what remains is affect, which then produces the other 
effects, not through immediacy, but through associations such as 
empathy, sympathy, projection, and mirroring.  When Scott Kildall 
reenacted Burden's "Shoot" in Second Life, I could only flinch to see 
the "cartoon" (Abramovic) gunshot and associate it with Burden.  I had a 
gut reaction, could imagine the cartoon pain, but had I not known the 
original Burden piece, I would not have imagined the immediate, embodied 
pain.


This is why I find Alan, Sandy, and Azure's work so overwhelming at 
times.  They are a tornado of affects that evoke associative responses 
to the semiotic eroticism, suffering, anger, pain.  Sometimes I can't 
even watch it, btu then that is the case with some people with my work. 
This is also more testimony to the idea of affective relation to the 
virtual.


In regards to pain and suffering, I submit a performance I did solo for 
the Odyssey Performance Festival in 2010.  It was called Dido's Lament, 
and I was clad in many signifiers of anguish and torment.  I was 
Cicciolina, who went through a hellish divorce with Jeff Koons, clad in 
a tunic with the crimson gash of Prometheus, impaled by the arrows of 
St. Sebastian.  At the time, I was in great anguish from a break with a 
lover, and I proceeded to pour signifiers on the bed (after the myth of 
Dido) like symbols of love, family, and belonging, to which I set the 
lot on fire, impaled Cicciolina on the bed, and launched nuclear weapons 
onto the bed.  My Facebook responses to the piece were very emotional, 
which I merely state as success of the piece.  But as I write this, I 
wonder about whether emotion is true in the virtual, if perhaps from 
mirroring/empathy/association, or whether I remain in the position of 
the virtual being purely affective, and subsequent effects being derivat 
ive. I find the whole lot deeply problematic, and why it interests me 
greatly. Submitted for your consideration: Dido's Lament: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN1LG7YVPzY 
___ empyre forum 
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre




___
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[-empyre-] On Pain and affect in the Virtual.

[Lichty, Patrick]

I like the conversation that is going on so far, but where I'd like to reengage 
a key topic is that of hte virtual in regards to these concepts of embodiment 
(pain, suffering, affect seem to be of the body, and the mind as embodied 
consciousness). 

This has to do with why I engage in virtual performance at all.  When I talked 
to Eva and Franco Mattes about their upcoming "Synthetic Performances" in 2006, 
around the time Jeremy Turner wanted me to be part of the founding group of 
Second Front, I had already done a lot of performance art, primarily with 
existing NYC FLUXUS members and Guillermo Gomez-Pena.  I thought the idea was 
absurd, as I used to joke about SL-sex as "retinal", and my conceptions of 
performance were about its roots as a reaction against the dematerialization of 
the bject from Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 60's, using the body of the 
last bastion of immediacy. 

50 performances later, after laughter and anger and ejections from servers, I 
have found a Massumian relation to virtual embodiment. As Eric Shouse talks 
about three levels of engagement "Feeling, Emotion Affect":
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php
As I understand Massumi and Shouse, affect relates to precognitive reactions at 
the most basic level from which come the other effects.  The one thin I have 
come to believe, at least in my consciousness, is that when you remove the 
body, what remains is affect, which then produces the other effects, not 
through immediacy, but through associations such as empathy, sympathy, 
projection, and mirroring.  When Scott Kildall reenacted Burden's "Shoot" in 
Second Life, I could only flinch to see the "cartoon" (Abramovic) gunshot and 
associate it with Burden.  I had a gut reaction, could imagine the cartoon 
pain, but had I not known the original Burden piece, I would not have imagined 
the immediate, embodied pain.

This is why I find Alan, Sandy, and Azure's work so overwhelming at times.  
They are a tornado of affects that evoke associative responses to the semiotic 
eroticism, suffering, anger, pain.  Sometimes I can't even watch it, btu then 
that is the case with some people with my work.  This is also more testimony to 
the idea of affective relation to the virtual.

In regards to pain and suffering, I submit a performance I did solo for the 
Odyssey Performance Festival in 2010.  It was called Dido's Lament, and I was 
clad in many signifiers of anguish and torment.  I was Cicciolina, who went 
through a hellish divorce with Jeff Koons, clad in a tunic with the crimson 
gash of Prometheus, impaled by the arrows of St. Sebastian.  At the time, I was 
in great anguish from a break with a lover, and I proceeded to pour signifiers 
on the bed (after the myth of Dido) like symbols of love, family, and 
belonging, to which I set the lot on fire, impaled Cicciolina on the bed, and 
launched nuclear weapons onto the bed.  My Facebook responses to the piece were 
very emotional, which I merely state as success of the piece.  But as I write 
this, I wonder about whether emotion is true in the virtual, if perhaps from 
mirroring/empathy/association, or whether I remain in the position of the 
virtual being purely affective, and subsequent effects being derivat
 ive. I find the whole lot deeply problematic, and why it interests me greatly.
Submitted for your consideration:
Dido's Lament:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN1LG7YVPzY 
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

[-empyre-] On (severe) Pain Part 1 (dialog between Sandy Baldwin and Alan Sondheim)

[Charles Baldwin]

On (severe) Pain (dialog between Sandy Baldwin and Alan Sondheim)

In relation to pain: Inexpressibility occurs because of the difficulty of 
expressing interior states that might not have a clearcut symptomology (as 
thirst does, for example) - and also because severe pain derails speech and 
language and thought, as the internalized horizon of the flesh is muted or 
screams in abeyance. All of this touches on the _pain of the signifier_ and its 
inexpressible relation to death.  (Alan)

:::

I really like your phrase "pain of the signifier" in that final installment on 
unprintability. I'm not sure how we think about it, however. On the one hand, 
pain is all that the signifier negates and forecloses. So, there's a numbness 
to the signifier, an anaesthesia. On the other hand, the signifier in the place 
of pain, as a kind of bad suture, a bandaid. On the third hand, is the real 
gamble, the crying or trembling of the signifier, in its negation, trembling 
with the world that it is holding off. How to show this? Or is it simply what 
shows up?  (Sandy)

:::

Hi Sandy, doesn't pain negate and foreclose the signifier? The pain of the 
signifier for me is the pain of the _incision_ accompanying inscription; the 
world simultaneously expands and narrows. In Buddhism, I'd imagine (I'm fuzzy 
at the moment) all signifiers equal and empty; suffering and attachment imbues 
distinction with intentionality, capture. The signifier's sharp; the numbness 
is what's created in the act of distinction. So the signifier's x^-x, that 
stuff I wrote about a while back about the intersection of a set and its 
complement relativized in relation to the 'content' of the set; if x = apple, 
then 0-sub-apple is the intersection of x^-x. So classically this is very 
sharp, 'smeared' out in the real via abjection. The signifier is not in the 
place of pain except for the observer; for the person undergoing (severe) pain, 
there is no place at all: that's the numbness. The signifier's the report; the 
distance between the report and the pain is also painful...

Could you elaborate on the third hand? Not sure I understand  (Alan)

:::

I'd say I was thinking about the signifier as something read, as an object that 
I read into. Whereas I see in your reply the signifier as something I write. In 
the case of the reader, of myself as reader of the signifier of pain, the 
incision is for you, the pain is yours. This fact makes pain *your pain*, makes 
it witnessed, validated for me by that big other. The signifier is communicated 
and read. You and I share in the signifier of pain. I would say it is beyond 
reading or non-reading to realize that the emptiness of all signifiers. Every 
reading fictionalizes this, tells a story of it, but it is only in non-reading 
that I really approach the alterity of your pain. So, I agree that for the 
person undergoing the pain there is no place; I would go further: it is this 
inarticulate boundary that concerns me. The signifier of pain as your pain - 
can I feel this? Only as reversibility, as my pain (which in a Cartesian sense 
I would see as like your pain)? As reader or receiver,
  I can push reading to impossible limits. I can strip everything away from the 
report of the pain, every connotation, every signification, to the point where 
I touch at the incised flesh of the signifier and find the continuous flesh of 
the world, the great surface where we all feel. And here it is no longer your 
pain / my pain. Here signification is a kind of perturbation, wherein pain and 
pleasure blur and float, pleasurepain.

Or - and this may not be an alternative but a supplementary dimension - reading 
your pain must be already framed, consensually, as they say of communicational 
domains. There must be pain before and beyond, which is to say, beyond 
otherness, beyond the ultimate fact that the signifier is a structural fact in 
the communication circuit. (The validation, the implication of the big other I 
wrote of above. (In communication, the price of signification is that it is 
always the others pain I read, never yours, and the other's pain I write, never 
mine.) I think, I think the beyond where "I feel your pain" no longer is 
determined by the symbolics of intersubjective communication is Levinas' 
"beyond being," or also, I think, these are the encounters that Lingis writes 
of. This phrase "I feel your pain" implies such a beyond. I mean: I must feel 
your pain even in the absence of the signifier (and it will be absent, it is 
absent). Impossibly so, since pain is always pain for you, for the 
 one incised. I must feel impossible pain. (I would say this
relates to love as well.) Not sure I'm going anywhere.  (Sandy)

:::

Hi Sandy, this is certainly useful for me. I'd say when you say 'the signifier 
as something read,' it's a perception, an incision, that you're making; with 
severe pain, there is no signifier for me at all, not even incision; I'm 
emptied of it, even to the extent that "I f