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SEPTEMBER 2001


SATURDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2001

Time is On Our Side

29 August 2001. Tom and I at Blake's grave.

The complete poetry and prose of William Blake (Erdman, 1988).

"Intricate labyrinths of Times and Spaces unknown..."


SUNDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2001

Got ten hours sleep last night. Ten hours can make all the difference in the world.

The rag-tag beginnings of a list of references for the DasArts block.

Speaking of theatrical re-enactments and the use of drugs in performance, Adrian mentions the Wooster Group's 1984 production 'LSD (Just the High Points...)'. A recent interview with Kate Valk contains a synopsis of the piece:

"LSD (Just the High Points...) begins with a row of men reading from notable counterculture books of the 1950s, ranging from Aldous Huxley to William S. Burroughs.

"Then the table becomes the setting for an amphetamine-paced performance of excerpts of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, making explicit the play's McCarthy-hearings allegory -- only, because Miller would not allow them to use his play, a member of the Wooster Group wrote a disguised text that references 1950s suburbia but matches Miller's verbal rhythms precisely. In this section the women of the troupe come out in Puritan dress, including Kate Valk in blackface as the maid, Tituba.

"The cast then meticulously re-creates a rehearsal of the previous sequence that they did while tripping on acid. It's chaotic and giddy, and features Valk spinning around while pulling a tie tightly around her neck, trying to make herself faint (as Tituba does in The Crucible).

"Finally, Valk becomes a Cuban/Mexican dancer (wearing a sombrero and a painted-on mustachio) while other performers recite portions of a debate between G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary, culminating in a member of the debate's audience describing how he was shot in the face with a shotgun by someone tripping on LSD. The debate's moderator asks Leary how he feels; the last words spoken in the production are Leary's reply: 'I feel very sad.'"

On the quantum physics front a short piece of fiction by quantum computationalist David Deutsch.


MONDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 2001

Dear A.

Apropos your discussion the other evening with T. -- over dance, good and bad, and the possibility to achieve transference into the other, into the dance/dancer -- have you ever read Von Kleist's essay On the Marionette Theatre?

-- P.

P.S. I know it's a small detail but one of the things that I found unsettling (ie. I didn't like) about Michael Laub's "Total Masala Slammer" (seen 31 August 2001) was his 'graceless' use of non-diegetic rather than diegetic sound (non-diegetic: sound coming from a source outside of the story space -- in this case music which emerged from speakers to the side of the stage) especially considering Laub had amply stocked his stage with singers, a video projection screen and a Indian tabla player. What was he thinking? Or (by doing this) was it his intention to 'shred' even further an already (in my opinion) superficial and fragmented spectacle?


TUESDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER 2001

Mantra: "What? Me worried? Hah!"

Howard Landman's translations of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus.

Just in... Tom warns: "Those Rilke Translations are Really Dire!"

"I hope I'm not about to be rude about a friend of yours, but those Rilke translations are really dire. Not only is the scansion shot to hell, but in some cases he actually gets the basic meaning wrong -- i.e. straight up makes a mistake of comprehension. I really don't mean to be snooty, and translating is a very difficult exercise (I tried translating a few of those same Sonnets a few years back), but ow! Maybe there's another online set you could link to if you're linking from the DasArts list. They're such important poems."

Surfer beware...


WEDNESDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 2001

Dear Jalal,

Things are moving right along with the preparations for Block 15. We've arranged for a sensory deprivation tank (aka a 'floatation tank' -- a device pioneered by John Lilly) to be installed at DasArts for the duration of the block and it looks like we've managed to arrange a stay in a large cave in Belgium for the first couple of days (in order to watch Orpheus films underground). The curriculum is about 2/3 finalized (but not entirely complete -- I'm still talking to some people), see: Event Horizon Program (for the version containing the confirmed tutor's bios) and Event Horizon Program Details (for the version containing (some of) the tutor proposals).

You'll notice I've scheduled you for 3 weeks rather than the 4 originally planned. This given our last correspondence (gives you a bit more free time)... I've included -- for the moment -- your CalArts syllabus but perhaps we should think about modifying this for the situation here (or completely changing it).

As we agreed in Beirut, it would be useful to concentrate on a single theme per week (the four we decided upon in Beirut: (1) Overturns, (2) Freezing, (3) The Labyrinth, (4) 'Every Name In History is I') therefore I wonder -- after you've taken a look at the detailed curriculum I've linked to above -- whether you want to simply remove one of the original four themes or make larger changes (choose new themes), given also that after a series of discussions with the other tutors and the DasArts staff I'm beginning to see a number of emergent 'aspects' in the whole program, namely: (A) the relation of the 'Event Horizon' to trauma (theory, especially the notion that one may be traumatised by an absolutely benign (but in some sense 'unknowable') event such as the picking up of a glass of water, or even -- who knows? -- traumatised by an event yet to occur, a 'future event'); (B) minatures as 'doubles'; (C) light and shadow (I've been corresponding with a number of quantum physicists about the possibility of their working with the participants); (D) (the entering and leaving) of Altered States; and (E) reenactments, both in the sense of a sustained inquiry (the partipants will be asked to keep a journal covering the 50 days of the block) and in the sense of Eternal Recurrence (as in, for example, your own essay: You Said "Stay", So I Stayed).

So it would be great if we could have 3 themes for the 3 weeks, with a question or goal for the end of each week. The whole period now being somewhat less intense than we originally talked about (no pressure cooker), with enough time for people to reflect, work on their own or in small groups, and most importantly, spend time in the tank (the altered state).

What do you think?

Something else: I've been looking at the possibility of inviting one or two guests to (practically) augment your workshops. Such as an artist who works with light (Patrick Bokanowski?) and/or an artist who works with minatures and/or puppets (are you familiar with the work of Stuart Sherman?)

Kind regards,

-- Paul

PS. At a meeting yesterday we decided to order 20+ copies of (Vampires), one for each of the 12 participants and one for each guest lecturer or tutor. The relevant passages from Over-Sensitity and Forthcoming we'll photocopy for the participants.

FYI: I'm enclosing an article from Adrian Heathfield, one of the other tutors.


THURSDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER 2001

Forthcoming...


FRIDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 2001

Forthcoming...


SATURDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER 2001

Everything you wanted to know about Paul Perry but were afraid to ask.


SUNDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER 2001

Last night: Tim Etchells and Annemie Vanackere at the 'White Monkey'.

In Amsterdam Ronald van Tienhoven showed the film program he put together for the opening of his curatorial project: The Münchhausen Syndrome. Included was Stan Brackhage's 'The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes', an extraordinary and demanding film, which definitely needs to be approached with caution. (But at the same time: how much caution? How much should one know before looking at this film? And if warned (as I was): 'Who will warn us of the warning?' -- as the film is -- to my mind -- much less (at least I didn't faint) and much more horrifying than I expected.)

The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes is a silent film. But from whence comes that silence?

Louis Schwartz in Seeing Absence: Traversing the Documentary Phantasy by The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (Repeating here what was included in this 18.07.01 entry):

"The themes of the corpse and the image are also developed in Maurice Blanchot's "Two Versions of the Imaginary." Blanchot's essay argues that "The cadaver is its own image" because both the cadaver and the image continue to "affrim things in their disappearance." By making a film which depict the cadaver Brakhage creates a sort of mise-en-abyme, an image of an image."

Associations: Vanitas paintings, Tibetan sky funerals.


MONDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER 2001

Is nothing sacred?

No.


TUESDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2001

Piecemeal Observations Around an Atrocity

The first intimation that something has gone wrong: Foto Nivo Schweitzer, Haarlemmerdijk. On our way to our appointment at Koan Float, DasArt's production manager Mark Jansen and I briefly stop at a camera store on the Haarlemmerdijk so that I can pick up a bag I've ordered. As we're already a bit late, Mark waits outside next to my bike. Inside, at the counter, a girl is standing and watching a television image of smoke pouring out of a skyscraper. She says a plane has hit 'Twin Towers.' I say, "That's not Twin Towers that's the World Trade Center." I pay for the bag and go outside and tell Mark -- thinking there's been an accident with a small plane. As we ride away the just glimpsed television image carries about the same impact as the Leica R4 body which the store has been using as an ashtray. (I say something about it to the girl. She says it's been there for years and admits that she finds it disturbing too.)

Koan Float, Herengracht. Mark and I spend 45 blissful minutes floating. Afterwards we observe that the tanks are not soundproofed and that we will need to pay attention to this fact at DasArts.

Beurs van Berlage. I leave Mark and ride a few blocks to the Beurs to attend the Amsterdamse Kunstprijzen awards ceremony which Rogério has designed. I enter to find the ceremony is already in progress so I stay at the back of the hall. Fred Imklaar arrives and asks if I'd heard that the World Trade Center has collapsed and that the Pentagon has been hit by an aircraft. I stare at him for a moment. My mind blanks and then starts to race. Rogério sees me and walks over from behind the control panels. He tells me that they had considered cancelling the entire program but decided to continue and keep it short.

Beurs van Berlage. I'm trying to concentrate on the works being presented as the name 'Bin Laden' passes through my head. I grimly recall how I posted a picture of this man a few days ago (context: Tom McCarthy asked in his interview about the name of this site) and wonder whether or not it would be prudent to go home and immediately remove it. ATTENTION! I sincerely hope that it is clear to you who read this that alamut is just a name, that alamut.com is a project by an artist and that this site is in every way a 'Bastion of Peace and Information'. Okay?

Beurs van Berlage. The mayor of Amsterdam is one of the people handing out prizes on stage. His cell phone rings. He steps back and quietly takes the call.

Beurs van Berlage. The ceremony is over. I decide to go home. Gabrielle asks me several times if I will go home and watch T.V. (She's insistent. I have a reputation for not watching T.V.) I assure her that I will.

On the train home I call Jente to ask if she's heard. I suddenly discover that I have forgotten my coat at Koan Float. I call Koan Float and they promise to put it aside for me.

At home. For the first time in years I don't connect my powerbook to check my email. Instead I listen to the voice messages on the answering machine. Renee Turner calling from Rotterdam: "Just wanted to talk with another North American." Jouke Kleerebezem calling from Maastricht (with the sound of a television in the background): "Talk about an event horizon..." Ewan McNeil calling from Vancouver: "Have you seen the pictures Paul?" Pause. "Have you seen the fucking pictures?"

I plug in the T.V. and flip back and forth between CNN and BBC. I'm on the phone to Jente again as the network replays video footage of the second jet aircraft hitting the second tower of the World Trade Center. The image is zoomed in and in slow motion. As I watch I hear myself saying, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." over and over again.

I continue to watch as the hours pass. As much as I am struck by the phrase 'low tech - high concept' (and how quickly this phrase propagates across the net), as much as I am impressed by how the novelist Tom Clancy manages to liken terrorist attacks by Muslims to terrorist attacks by Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (and how clearly neither CNN nor the nation is pleased by this comparison), and as much as I am deeply affected by how some of the hijacked victims used their cell phones to call their loved ones (as they careened to their death), I am dismayed by all the political rhetoric. It is understandable, yes. But it is also sad and frightening.


WEDNESDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER 2001

Well I admit television does have its use. But after a full day of watching I find myself returning to individuals and their weblogs.

From Grant Barrett's World New York (via Judith):

"Now the Europeans can never say, 'You wouldn't know what it's like to be bombed...' We now know."

From Paul Ford's Ftrain:

"The buildings symbolized global finance, but like every NYC skyscraper, most of the people in the tower were middle-class, serving the needs of relatively few very rich. Sikh programmers and Asian financiers worked there, with thousands of Black and White Americans in thousands of different roles, and a mix of everyone else. Hundreds of companies and thousands of people, a mix of skins, all with photo nametags around their necks so they could be identified by various security and administrative systems; those laminated nametags will be used, I'm sure, to sort the bodies."

Steven Baum's Ethel the Blogger (via both Ray and Nina) publishes stories rhetoric busters which we're unlikely to see this week on CNN:

From Steven's notes on the Stern Gang:

"By appointing Shamir Foreign Minister, Prime Minister Menachem Begin had selected the organiser of two famous assassinations: the killing of Lord Moyne, the British Minister representative in the Middle East, in 1944, and that of Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN's special Mediator on Palestine, in 1948. Shamir later went on to become prime minister."

From Steven's notes on Bin Laden:

"He received security training from the CIA itself, according to Middle Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian."

If you're not confused you're not paying attention. If you need to read Stephen's notes on Ariel Sharon's role as a terrorist and his role in the slaughers which took place in the Sabra and Shatilla camps in September 1982, click on the link and go there. I won't pull quote that here. Suffice it to say that like the atrocity, hypocrisy and finger pointing eternally recur and that it is oh-so-easy for each of us to spin language and point fingers, to move from complicity to criticism.


THURSDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2001

Listen to the weblogs. LISTEN TO THE WEBLOGS. (Or go look at Mighty Girl's edited compilation...)

I've seen this on a number of sites but it bears repeating here: 'An eye for an eye and the world will go blind.' (Mahatma Gandhi.)

Liquid Gnome (Yes I know his entry starts by mentioning alamut. I discovered the link by looking through my referer logs...):

"Truly, the most affecting portion of the news coverage was when ABC's Diane Sawyer held up a handful of reports and papers from the debris covering the streets and said: "These were all so important to someone 24 hours ago."


FRIDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2001

(DasArts Day 0 today.)

At times like these, when many people are searching for survivors and many more are searching for words, one remembers poetry, especially poetry from the past, poetry which -- strictly speaking -- was written upon other occasions but which now, today, seems written exclusively for this moment, this event, as if it has always been lying in wait.

I suppose re-accessibility is one of the great advantages of the art object, the poem, painting, sculpture etc., over the live performative arts and where the performance art piece, in its raw minimalism, distinguishes itself from a piece of theatre: while both are ephemeral the performance art piece is more re-accessible. I have to think of Ulay's comment to me the other day about how each of his early performances with Marina were performed only once, and in each case before an extremely small audience, yet many if not all these pieces live on as cultural signifiers and are instantly 'recallable'.

A phone conversation yesterday with R.T., brought to mind the following lines of Jalal Toufic's essay 'Every Name in History is I':

Every Name in History is I

"To fight the anonymity with which the war enemy is killed even by precision bombing, the soldier has to receive, from their state of being already dead, the calls of the unknown persons who will soon be murdered by him. Such a call is possible in the non-linear time of undeath. The Jacob Maker of David Blair's 'Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees' (1992) has to receive the call of the two Iraqui tank soldiers at whom he is shortly going to fire a missile during the Gulf War, and to whom he is invisible (whether because he is flying a Stealth fighter or because the radars of their unit have been blinded). In the state of undeath from which the call is sent, and in the state of death before dying in which it is received, one at times feels: every name in history is I. Every name in history is I is one way to fight the reduction to anonymity and generality. The sacrifice does not reside only in dying before dying to access such a call; but also in one's becoming oblivious and confused in the realm of the dead as to one's initial motives for dying before dying, one's gesture getting entangled in the generalized guilt of that state. As long as I, as dead, have not totally disintegrated into disparate blind shards of thoughts and affects functioning mostly according to displacement and pure association of sounds, figures, etc., I will try, through the most incredible contortions -- which are not felt as such since they are allowed by the non-linear time and the non-exclusive disjunction reigning in the realm of death or death-before-death -- to arrive at a semblance of justice, discovering that I, who will shortly kill, was a victim of the dead, was killed by them: it is because I, as Zoltan Abbassid, was murdered by them in 1919 that I Jacob Maker, will take revenge on them ("being dead, vengenance is my life") in 1991 by firing a missile at their tank..."

(Jalal Toufic, Forthcoming.)


SATURDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2001

I See No Sign of Cynicism

Public space. In the foyer of the Rotterdam Public Library a huge flat panel television has been set up. A crowd of unmoving, earnest faces stand watching CNN. I see no sign of cynicism. This shocks me.

Gorged, Glutted

Intelligence for individuals. Where do people go when they've had enough of CNN's 'America's New War' coverage? I find Stratfor.com's reporting and risk analysis as keen and penetrating as it was 2.5 years ago during the crisis in Kosovo.

A typical Stratfor 'Situation Report':

"Japan's securities watchdog, Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, announced Sept. 15 that it was investigating suspect trades occurring immediately before and after the terror attacks in the United States to see if any transactions were linked to Osama bin Laden, according to Japan Today. Such transactions could have reaped huge profits for people who knew of the attacks in advance and who speculated on a resulting fall in share prices."

Hijacking Clues may be Red Herrings.
Global Intelligence Cooperation Comes with Risks.

Later on in the Evening

Later on in the evening I catch bits of Merwin's 'Words from a Totem Animal' floating through my head. Yes please.

...

My eyes are waiting for me
in the dusk
they are still closed
they have been waiting a long time
and I am feeling my way toward them

...

I am going up stream
taking to the water from time to time
my marks dry off the stones before morning
the dark surface
strokes the night
above its way
There are no stars
there is no grief
I will never arrive
I stumble when I remember how it was
with one foot
one foot still in a name

...

Send me out into another life
lord because this one is growing faint
I do not think it goes all the way

(W. S. Merwin. The Carrier of Ladders. 1970.)


SUNDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 2001

Resuming our normal programming...

The Garden of Crossing Tiger Cubs

Plan of Ryoan-ji. Loraine Kuck, The World of the Japanese Garden, 1980.

"... I will never arrive..." As time amasses (heaps together) and accumulates (making one rich not in days old but days alive) one realises (no matter the rate one works) one will never get done -- the day will never have enough hours.

Such a 'crisis' demands a special form of existential reconciliation: (to paraphrase JK) 'I cherish my hesitation about what I should do next and what not.'

Quality is not a function of time.


MONDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 1.

Who will warn us about the warning?

(Jalal Toufic)

We tried to set out early

but after the vehicles were packed with our equipment, we discovered the ignition key to one the rented minibuses wouldn't turn. Thus our day began with a wait for the representative of the rental company to come -- who couldn't get the key turned either -- and a further wait for the two new vehicles to replace the bus (the company didn't have any more minibuses).

Repacked, we left Amsterdam and headed south. We made several stops along the way, once to use the toilets at McDonald's and get some drinks and food and several other times to ask the way. Did I mention that en route all four of our vehicles got viciously lost in the vicinity of Charlois? That we kept driving around Charlois in circles? We were lost but it almost seems as if we were engaged some sort of ceremonious circumambulation of Charlois...

Cf. Bram Stoker's Dracula:

"The carriage went at a hard pace along, then we made a complete turn and went along another straight road. It seemed to me that we were simply going over and over the same ground again; and so I took note of some salient point, and found that this was so."

But of course the worst of it was that we did not expect that it would take hours for us to drag carry the baskets of food, jugs of water, generator, cables, video projector, VCR, sleeping bags, ropes, extra clothing and climbing gear to the cave mouth. Just as we did not expect that the way would be so terribly steep, or that after the downpour began, so slippery and muddy. We didn't expect to get so soaked and cold and miserable before we even arrived at the point where we should start.

So we retreated (and this, in retrospect, was a very good decision) to spend the night in a Formula One Hotel near Brussels airport where we rested and reassembled as best we could. Here Mark and Nicola set up the video projector and all 16 of us crammed into one of the tiny rooms to rest our heads on each other's shoulders and watch Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus.

(In the parking lot Hans handed me a little gift: a bottle of Belgian beer called 'Sudden Death.' I don't drink beer so I asked him to give to someone else. Later he gave me the cap.)


TUESDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 2.

This morning, for a number of reasons (what were they again?) I felt compelled to change the sensible plan which we had all agreed upon last night, resulting in our fledgling group of 15 splitting into two groups, a group of 10 (who wanted to go back and try to descend the same cave but this time without equipment) and a group of 5 (who for their own reasons would not or could not do this, deciding instead to visit another cave), and then further (this obvious, but to the eye not quite so clear) into 15 groups of 1. When faced with a cave, everyone, it seems, has their own cave to descend (solving the question as to which group I joined).

My cave: I found it to be rather uncomfortable.

Thresholds and imaginary lines

(Jalal Toufic)

"... Hence caution is precaution (in altered states the same is the case with disposed and PRE-disposed, occupied and PRE-occupied, monition and PRE-monition. Maybe one becomes a sage when one no longer needs presages), in the sense that one must pre-forewarn (the fore is to recreate the aura that has been neuralized by fear) by guessing where the false threshold is and warning both about it and being fooled by the apparent threshold."

"... It is not a matter of experimenting until one trespasses beyond a threshold of no return; that can be achieved more or less easily (death, madness). One has to go beyond a threshold of no return, but only with the help of strategies of postponement, otherwise one may be moving into the worst of prisons..."

(Cf. STRESS AND OTHER BODILY PREMONITIONS. STOP.)

Scene: a dark cave. In the gloom we see a group of people huddled on a narrow ledge. One of them (A) is belaying a climbing rope upon which unseen figure (B) is descending (we only hear B's voice).

B: "I'm sorry, I can't do this. I'd like to come up now please."

A: "You can't come up."

B: (After a long pause) "Okay."

Block 15 group photo.


WEDNESDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 3.

The disaster takes care of everything.

(Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster.)

A staff meeting returns me to thinking in terms of two groups and two caves. My own postponement: the postponed shock, anger, irritation (the extreme irritability following the altered state: "... a form of impurity that endangers the metastable state that is allowing one to cross the threshold without a phase transition" -- J.T.) following the realisation that we asked for (for the whole group), were promised and had every reason to expect (from the organisation in Belgium, from ourselves) was not what we found...

While there were moments of great beauty

(In the black hole...)

Echo: "This is absolutely insane! How could they EVER have imagined that we could get all our equipment down here? That we could actually work and sleep here?"

(There can be no escape from a black hole but somehow one can pass it...)

Hans: "That wasn't a cave that was a hole in the ground..."


THURSDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 4.

Space is a practiced place.

(Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life.)

A day of presentations and briefings, including how to get from here to there (instructions for crossing the contaminated Westergasfabriek terrain in order to access DasArt's orphaned buildings), how to operate the floatation tank, my introduction to the 'two types of experience' (conventional and traumatic) and the first student presentations of the Orpheus story.


FRIDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 5.

The infinite accomplice, the infinite observer. Rein the photographer snaps photos of Dragan Klaic's seminar on 'the documentation of the artistic process' as I sit and listen and ponder the technological potential for documentation and pattern recognition and my own never-ending attraction-aversion to bookkeeping.

Three Alamut entries: 29.06.99 (The Factoid Project), 21.07.99 (Thought Train - Memory Train), 27.08.99 (Self Conscious Journalism).

Accomplice Observer

"The observer sees in the consciousness of the work not only a reflection of his own consciousness but also the reflection of the consciousness of the spectators present behind him, whom he hears and who he knows are observing what he, the exposed observer, is observing. Consciousnesses surround him. Exposing him. Competing, interfering, troubling, constraining, projective consciousnesses. He is doubly exposed: in front, to the work; behind, to the spectators. In fact, he is exposed not only doubly but trebly. Because he is also exposed to himself since his reflexive double has amalgamated with the consciousness of the spectators, in order perhaps to escape from his exposure or to evaluate the consciousnesses observing him, to know and to master his situation and to go beyond it in order to be able to observe in total sovereignty. His reflexive double has left the observer. It has rejoined the spectators and assimilated to them. Seated, the observer imagines his double standing behind him, busy observing. With the other observers, in a protective solitary anonymity, the observer standing at the periphery observes the exposed observer seated at the center. He observes himself being observed. Privately, he observes himself being observed. He would also like to be able to observe what himself, seated in front of him, is busy observing. But he cannot. Because immediacy is not there. Between the work to be observed and him, the observer in the background, a ridiculous actor has interposed himself, alienating the originating and original work by claiming to observe for himself and for the others."

Rémy Zaugg, The Observer.

Artistic consciousness: a back-and-forth movement between immersive complicity and immersive criticism, where one and one's double (and one's further multinyms: one's treble, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple etc.) vacillate between assisting and thwarting the artistic event. One never simply does (either as actor or as director -choreographer), one only helps (as assistent) or hinders (as witness).

Time is not linear (so Dragan, sitting at the head of the table, should be careful not to turn his head around like Orpheus and say, "When you look back after these 10 weeks...").

The fossil record (via Sarah's cave).


SATURDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2001

Something like this?

Sketch: Dolphin (mobile) with Bösendorfer 290SE.

Dolphin links:

  1. Message in a Context

  2. Have you ever given ketamine to a dolphin?

The Lobster Quadrille

"They were obliged to have him with them," the Mock Turtle said: "no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise."

"Wouldn't it really?" said Alice in a tone of great surprise.

"Of course not," said the Mock Turtle: "why, if a fish came to me, and told me he was going a journey, I should say, "With what porpoise?"


SUNDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2001

Self Repair

The crack: a fissure which would be constitutive of the self, or would reconstitute itself as the self, but not as the cracked self.

(Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster)


MONDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 6.

Ulay's Proposition.

Left: Hans Bryssinck, Nancy Mauro-Flude. Right: Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay), Mark Jansen, Leyna Papach.


TUESDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 7.

Immortality Suite

Send me out into another life
lord because this one is growing faint
I do not think it goes all the way

(W. S. Merwin)

[Aside to Rogério (with whom I was talking about the Merwin poem and my growing suspicion that this particular life is not going to be enough): you are right, things do change, 3 years ago I considered the prospect of life extension from a different perspective than I do today.]

How little deaths may 'solve' certain difficulties: Leyna Papach, reporting her 24 hour vipassana experience to Ulay and the rest of the group, described the difficulties she encountered as 'monsters' and then explained how she pushed them as far as she could, to the point of exhaustion, where she fell into a light sleep and assumingly allowed her sleeping 'self' take care of the rest, for when she awoke the monsters were gone.


WEDNESDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 8.

Frank's Proposition.

Heerko van der Kooij dropped by DasArts to speak with one of the IT (individual trajectory) students and to show me his latest Flash project, a splash page for the Groningen Platform for Architecture and City Planning which allows visitors a chance to re-design the city center.

Mirror exercises: Leyna Papach and Nicola Unger.

Freud writes: "Whenever my own ego does not appear in the content of the dream, but only some extraneous person, I may safely assume that my own ego lies concealed, by identification, behind this other person... On other occasions, when my own ego does appear in the dream, the situation in which it occurs may teach me that some other person lies concealed, by identification, behind my ego."

(Jalal Toufic, Through a Glass to encounter the already-there double (in the mind), from (Vampires) An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film)


THURSDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 9.

Away we go. A non-stop work session starting today at noon and ending tomorrow at noon (the second 24 hr session this week).

Perserverance furthers.

Thomas and Nienke at the 'Orpheus and Eurydice' station.


FRIDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 2001

DasArts Day 10.

My own (semi) sustained inquiry during the sustained inquiry of the last 24 hours consisted of photographing some of the improvisations done at the 'Orpheus and Eurydice' station. I've uploaded the first ten to this page. A second page will follow.


SATURDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2001

I've uploaded another page of photographs of the improvisations done at the 'Orpheus and Eurydice' station last Thursday and Friday. (I also decided the M.S. Merwin captions were a bad idea and so removed them.)


SUNDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 2001

Via Judith's link to a program of 'music of mourning and consolation' broadcast on WNYC New Sounds:-- Robert Oppenheimer's famous words after witnessing the first nuclear bomb test:

"We knew the world would not be the same.

"A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.

"I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita, Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I have become death the destroyer of worlds.'

"I suppose we all thought that one way or another."


August 2001



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