Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
dear Alan, Ana, and all I am very sorry if I tried, unsuccessfully, to combine a great respect for the seriousness of the issues raised here, the lived experience reported here by you Ana in memory of the time of incarceration and torture, and for example Alan when you talk about the dying of your mother, and when you, Ana talk about your re-immigration to a less 'glamorous' southern city, Montevideo, and the artwork shared with us here, like Alan's haunting homage to Barber and Droste, and the poem you write to it, so if i tried to combine that with a sense of weary irony, and a glance at some questions raised by the work that I am trying to understand as gestural (Monika's). I found your video not dis/tracting at all, Alan, but on the contrary. I thought that was obvious, sorry if it wasn't. in fact these historical traces now mingling with the discussion (of the thin lines you speak about, at historical moments in the last century, already evoked with bitter ambivalence, perhaps, in Monika's reference to Zygmunt Bauman's garden state) are important for the interrogation of contexts I propose. Re: garden state; i found a very critical text on Bauman, and pondered it. If you like to read it: http://shaunbest.tripod.com/id11.html with regards Johannes [Alan schreibt] On Fri, 5 Oct 2012, Johannes Birringer wrote: [strangely I am trying to re-read them while watching Alan's machinima on Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste, now that is a very strange dis/traction to the 1920s and the queering of Berlin's underground performance, cabaret and film scene) Those performances were incredibly complex, and spoke to issues of suffering, addictions, and death, as you know; I don't see this as a distraction any more than any other past history is. These people - I'd include Valeska Gert - were walking a very thin edge, and some of them escaped and some didn't; some escaped themselves and some didn't. So here are performances that are recorded at best in film and with Berber hardly that - yet through text and images, they're uncanny. Why wouldn't empathy or affect work through video etc.? I've seen video from films shot at safaris for example which still haunt me, as well as Martha Stewart's video she made for PETA, which I assigned students (yes, it's _that_ Martha Stewart). My own work (which you'd probably find a distraction here) is very much concerned with these issues online - that was the basis of my Eyebeam residency. Grave matters here this week. After Alan, may I also dis/tract you by passing on to you a brief message just received from Argentine friend asking me about the camera work in Madrid during recent public unrest and protests, when drones?/surveillance helicopters? flew over the city, like angels, taking a look at the wounding? - Alan ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
I think I am here trying to discuss with myself the value of my memory. It took me 32 years to write the book about the time on jail about torture and my own story. But before these book I wrote and published nine other books, fiction, short stories, two novels. In none of those books I adressed my own life or what happened me. I was shy and didn't know if my personal tale was of literary value. When you rea Primo Levi's or Viktor Frankl or Dostoievskis Memoir from a cellarfloor or Mandelstam's description of his time in Siberia or Kertesz book about Auschwitz, all other tales seem to bleach and pale. But I travelled to Palestine for first time in the year 2001 and when I was asked why should a Latinamerican live in Sweden, so far from the city I was born, I answered with the explanation of the jail and the exile. And almost every Palestine I met had own stories about their own jail or the time in prison or some relative in prison just now. The common of our fate gave me the distance and the tools to write about my own experience, not with the aim to resalt my own but with the humble goal to make literature of those memories, to rise them from the testimonial level to the literary level. And that's the common denominator we share, I think, our griefs and pains and sadness are collective and there are the ones making us part of the same specie. Ana On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk wrote: dear Alan, Ana, and all I am very sorry if I tried, unsuccessfully, to combine a great respect for the seriousness of the issues raised here, the lived experience reported here by you Ana in memory of the time of incarceration and torture, and for example Alan when you talk about the dying of your mother, and when you, Ana talk about your re-immigration to a less 'glamorous' southern city, Montevideo, and the artwork shared with us here, like Alan's haunting homage to Barber and Droste, and the poem you write to it, so if i tried to combine that with a sense of weary irony, and a glance at some questions raised by the work that I am trying to understand as gestural (Monika's). I found your video not dis/tracting at all, Alan, but on the contrary. I thought that was obvious, sorry if it wasn't. in fact these historical traces now mingling with the discussion (of the thin lines you speak about, at historical moments in the last century, already evoked with bitter ambivalence, perhaps, in Monika's reference to Zygmunt Bauman's garden state) are important for the interrogation of contexts I propose. Re: garden state; i found a very critical text on Bauman, and pondered it. If you like to read it: http://shaunbest.tripod.com/id11.html with regards Johannes [Alan schreibt] On Fri, 5 Oct 2012, Johannes Birringer wrote: [strangely I am trying to re-read them while watching Alan's machinima on Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste, now that is a very strange dis/traction to the 1920s and the queering of Berlin's underground performance, cabaret and film scene) Those performances were incredibly complex, and spoke to issues of suffering, addictions, and death, as you know; I don't see this as a distraction any more than any other past history is. These people - I'd include Valeska Gert - were walking a very thin edge, and some of them escaped and some didn't; some escaped themselves and some didn't. So here are performances that are recorded at best in film and with Berber hardly that - yet through text and images, they're uncanny. Why wouldn't empathy or affect work through video etc.? I've seen video from films shot at safaris for example which still haunt me, as well as Martha Stewart's video she made for PETA, which I assigned students (yes, it's _that_ Martha Stewart). My own work (which you'd probably find a distraction here) is very much concerned with these issues online - that was the basis of my Eyebeam residency. Grave matters here this week. After Alan, may I also dis/tract you by passing on to you a brief message just received from Argentine friend asking me about the camera work in Madrid during recent public unrest and protests, when drones?/surveillance helicopters? flew over the city, like angels, taking a look at the wounding? - Alan ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- http://writings-escrituras.tumblr.com/ 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/literary-exiles/ http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/ http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0 http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/ cell Sweden +4670-3213370 cell Uruguay +598-99470758 When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,
Re: [-empyre-] 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. - Alan, foggier, apologies ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
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 johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk 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 -- http://writings-escrituras.tumblr.com/ 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/literary-exiles/ http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
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 johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk 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 -- http://writings-escrituras.tumblr.com/ http://maraya.tumblr.com/
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
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-] public lament and gardening
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
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 mailto:empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au mailto: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 http://www.monika-weiss.com gnie...@monika-weiss.com mailto: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 mailto: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
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. 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
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 gnie...@monika-weiss.com 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 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
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 gnie...@monika-weiss.com 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
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
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 sondh...@panix.com 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 gnie...@monika-weiss.com 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
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
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 sondh...@panix.com 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 gnie...@monika-weiss.com 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
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
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
Dear Johannes, as I wrote in my answer to Alan, I am sad I don't have a clue how to avoid these ads in my text, I guess this is the prize to pay for a free digital hosting :( I am now poor as a mouse :) moved back from the First World with all it's glamour to the non glamorous and poor Third World. It means I can't afford to pay any fee for a more fancy add free hosting :( But as I said Amazon still sell back copies of the book where the text is included, the Garden of the Alphabet, published by Serpent's Tail in London and New York. Best regards to all of you Ana On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk wrote: 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 -- http://writings-escrituras.tumblr.com/ 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/literary-exiles/ http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/ http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0 http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/ cell Sweden +4670-3213370 cell Uruguay +598-99470758 When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return. — Leonardo da Vinci ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
Hi Ana, I had the same feeling and wrote about it to Alan By the way, can't wait to hear more from you as part of this discussion. Monika Sent from my iPad On Oct 3, 2012, at 2:13 PM, Ana Valdés agora...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Johannes, as I wrote in my answer to Alan, I am sad I don't have a clue how to avoid these ads in my text, I guess this is the prize to pay for a free digital hosting :( I am now poor as a mouse :) moved back from the First World with all it's glamour to the non glamorous and poor Third World. It means I can't afford to pay any fee for a more fancy add free hosting :( But as I said Amazon still sell back copies of the book where the text is included, the Garden of the Alphabet, published by Serpent's Tail in London and New York. Best regards to all of you Ana On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk wrote: 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 -- http://writings-escrituras.tumblr.com/ 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/literary-exiles/ http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/ http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0 http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/ cell Sweden +4670-3213370 cell Uruguay +598-99470758 When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return. — Leonardo da Vinci ___
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
Dear Johannes and all, Zygmunt Bauman's concept of garden is mentioned by him in his Modernity and Holocaust - which actually reads better in Polish, Nowoczesność i Zaglada. I often talk about it in my own writings because it feels still very important today. The idea is that we are like gardeners, we make decisions such as mass-scale industrialized genocides as based on the desire for progress and of creating a beautiful design. He talks about getting rid of weeds not because we might hate them but because we believe they are useless of or the design we are planning, design of the world. More importantly he extends Arendt' assumptions about the danger of contemporary divorcing function and goal - the notion that others make decisions for us and we are basically only responsible for the immediate act or process that is our job. His claim is to return to some nine of, new but nevertheless morality which rests on our ability to think independently... My take on this that it basically calls for our citizenship and active response-ability ann to Levinas. I will continue this thought tonight - unfortunately now have to go back to meetings with my grads. More later and thank you Johannes for your notes, Monika Sent from my iPad On Oct 3, 2012, at 1:39 PM, Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk wrote: 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
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
HI Monika I checked the links you post and they were stunning beautiful, as the cry of the mourners in the Greek tragedies. By the way a group of Uruguayan former political prisoners, many of them my former comrades, put together a beatiful piece called Antigona Oriental. It was a contrast between their texts and the text of the Greek tragedy and it worked perfect. The old crimes and the new shapes, but as Allan said probably Humanity has lived with torture and mayhem since Man (and Woman) were born. I think we deal different with pain and each one of us choose it's own strategy and have his own array of tools to do that. For me is writing for others is painting, for others dancing, etc. Ana On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Monika Weiss gnie...@monika-weiss.com wrote: Hi Ana, I had the same feeling and wrote about it to Alan By the way, can't wait to hear more from you as part of this discussion. Monika Sent from my iPad On Oct 3, 2012, at 2:13 PM, Ana Valdés agora...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Johannes, as I wrote in my answer to Alan, I am sad I don't have a clue how to avoid these ads in my text, I guess this is the prize to pay for a free digital hosting :( I am now poor as a mouse :) moved back from the First World with all it's glamour to the non glamorous and poor Third World. It means I can't afford to pay any fee for a more fancy add free hosting :( But as I said Amazon still sell back copies of the book where the text is included, the Garden of the Alphabet, published by Serpent's Tail in London and New York. Best regards to all of you Ana On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk wrote: 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
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
Re - weeds - terms like 'weeds' and 'pests' and 'vermin' are very problematic - they reflect only the speaker, not the spoken-for who often is placed in the position of a Lyotardian differend, unable to speak, blotted out. Whenever I hear them, I cringe... == blog: http://nikuko.blogspot.com/ (main blog) email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552 music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ current text http://www.alansondheim.org/rp.txt == ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] public lament and gardening
In Bauman's writing the weeds are what Agamben, and to some extend Zizek, call Homo Sacer (such as G. Agamben Remnats of Holocaust and Zizek's Violence). The idea of silencing is very important to me, which is also related to disappearing, to making disappear. Lament, which otherwise we could call the communal citizenry, the true citizenship, this is response to the language of silencing power. Lament, lying down (refusing to march like soldiers) are present in my work to somehow direct or connect with this inter-connective tissue that firms itself when we are following our ability to respond, response-ability [The silencing (milczenie) is like book burning -- you can burn Celan, but his work will never burn completely, just like silencing of the voices of those killed and tortured will always leave a stains, like stains on texts of Goethe, like stains of tortured in Guantanamo, shining on our hands as we speak here and now] On Oct 3, 2012, at 9:34 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote: Re - weeds - terms like 'weeds' and 'pests' and 'vermin' are very problematic - they reflect only the speaker, not the spoken-for who often is placed in the position of a Lyotardian differend, unable to speak, blotted out. Whenever I hear them, I cringe... == blog: http://nikuko.blogspot.com/ (main blog) email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552 music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ current text http://www.alansondheim.org/rp.txt == ___ 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
Thank you Ana for those words. I would love to know more about the Antigona Oriental. p.s. Yes, we have lived through torture since time immemorial but with the Declaration of Human Rights and other international institutions, we had hopes for progress in that area. So, I don't subscribe to the idea that what was there once, is therefore explained today. the problem with the law and its ability to constitute law, and therefore, to go outside of itself, such as was the case with the concentration camps, and such as is the case today thanks to patriot act etc. otherwise under the umbrella of emergency. But there is a deeper underlying notion of right that certain powers have, like during Feudalism, the self-assigned right to inflict law upon others, including pain and torture, for the sake of higher goals or security. On Oct 3, 2012, at 6:35 PM, Ana Valdés wrote: HI Monika I checked the links you post and they were stunning beautiful, as the cry of the mourners in the Greek tragedies. By the way a group of Uruguayan former political prisoners, many of them my former comrades, put together a beatiful piece called Antigona Oriental. It was a contrast between their texts and the text of the Greek tragedy and it worked perfect. The old crimes and the new shapes, but as Allan said probably Humanity has lived with torture and mayhem since Man (and Woman) were born. I think we deal different with pain and each one of us choose it's own strategy and have his own array of tools to do that. For me is writing for others is painting, for others dancing, etc. Ana On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Monika Weiss gnie...@monika-weiss.com wrote: Hi Ana, I had the same feeling and wrote about it to Alan By the way, can't wait to hear more from you as part of this discussion. Monika Sent from my iPad On Oct 3, 2012, at 2:13 PM, Ana Valdés agora...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Johannes, as I wrote in my answer to Alan, I am sad I don't have a clue how to avoid these ads in my text, I guess this is the prize to pay for a free digital hosting :( I am now poor as a mouse :) moved back from the First World with all it's glamour to the non glamorous and poor Third World. It means I can't afford to pay any fee for a more fancy add free hosting :( But as I said Amazon still sell back copies of the book where the text is included, the Garden of the Alphabet, published by Serpent's Tail in London and New York. Best regards to all of you Ana On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 3:39 PM, Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk wrote: 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
