Tag: Art
FormingFictionForming
Empathy
the sounds of the shapes of what’s sounding in me….
a story or writing that seems to be growing/assembling by slow accretion…
“To touch in the between of words”
Fiery, Luminous, Scary – Erin Manning
The above is a snapshot from a participatory art project entitled “Folds to Infinity” – you can further investigate here. The verbal link is to an article by Erin Manning that reflects on some possible interactions and responses participatory art and movement enable or frustrate. As I read this article, with its focus on space-time relations such as event-spaces, materials, sound, rooms, fields etc., I could not help but be curious about the shared space-time relational field of texts, pages, pixels, blogsites and wonder about the more-than that authors/designers/readers/viewers compose – co-create – in these pages we invent each day. The will toward participation that affects any work’s unfolding. The design of our syntax and placement of images, types of terms and content of pictures all go toward constraining our viewer/reader participations towards meanings prefigured in our compositions. And yet, I would wager that the majority of us hope for our creations to be participated-with, engaged, even co-created with the sensing minds of those these spaces open up. “Spacetimes of relation are never neutral. They are fiery, luminous, scary.” I am hoping for ways and words and ways with words that allow, perhaps even create, spacetimes of relation that facilitate the more-than possibilities each engagement with them have potential of.
erin and others certainly activate the seeming “folds to infinity” of the matter in my cranium.
The more things change…
Wanted to plug a new Youtube channel I’m following…
Writing comes naturally…
For those of you intrigued by yesterday’s article about writing as a technology – here I’ll attempt to balance it with another fascinating article supposedly providing an “opposing view” to Walter Ong, et. al.
Drawing, Writing and Calligraphy by Tim Ingold
what do you think?
Is writing “technological” artifice natural or unnatural?
I’ll tell my thoughts in time…
Influence : Fragments from the Introduction : “Nothing is quite as real as nothing”
I am currently reading Samuel Beckett: Anatomy of a Literary Revolution by Pascale Casanova, introduced by Terry Eagleton
Beckett has always been a favorite of mine – for economy, humor, profundity, examination and exploration. The following exemplify elements of this – quotations from simply the Introduction (by Eagleton) of this study…
“His work, in short, presents us with the scandal of a literature which no longer depends on a philosophy of the subject”
“every sentence of his writing keeps faith with our sense of powerlessness”
“nothing is quite as real as nothing”
“sublimity includes that which is barely visible as well as the immense and immeasurable, since both are equally ungraspable”
“there is no more truly historical phenomenon in art than form – which is quite as much saturated in social signification as so-called content”
Beckett presents “questions addressed by texts to themselves, queries about their own procedures and conditions of possibility”
“clear-eyed attempts at an exact formulation of the inarticulable…the extreme scrupulousness with which it sculpts the void”
“writing itself becomes for Beckett the very signifier of the failure which so gripped his imagination”
“places the very impediment to writing at the center of his writing, transforming the question of failure into the very form of his art, telling incessantly of the failure to tell”
Thanks Samuel.
Awarding Influence
1. award, n. c1386
…A decision after examination, a judicial sentence, esp. that of an arbitrator or umpire; the document embodying it….
2. award, v.1 c1386
…To examine a matter and adjudicate upon its merits; to decide, determine, after consideration or deliberation.
1. influence, n. c1374
The action or fact of flowing in; inflowing, inflow, influx: said of the action of water and other fluids, and of immaterial things conceived of as flowing in. Also concr. flowing matter.
2. influence, v. 1658
…trans. To exert influence upon, to affect by influence….
Etymology: < French influence (13th cent. in Hatzfeld & Darmesteter) emanation from the stars (also inflow of water; affluence)…
(Oxford English Dictionary)
In the first place, I thank you Madeline Scribes for honoring me with this blogging award – I would think that any blogger is happy to hear that they have influence somewhere, somehow. As concerns its meaning – its effect in ongoing flow – I am thinking that our passing these awards along through the blogosphere is an aspect of recognizing that the world around us matters – that what we encounter continuously throughout our days effects the flow of them. To award such influence must mean that, upon consideration, deliberation, we consider that influence to be of benefit or merit to the flow of our lives. To diminish the function and roles of these eminently reusable and transferable images by querying the authority, justification, compensation or some other arbitrary criteria of significance or import seems to me to miss the point and ideologically dismiss their networked purposes and potentials. I am very honored and very thankful for the effort and gift of recognition and assessment.
That being said – all of these awards (as with any gift) bring responsibilities…This particular badge indicates:
THE QUESTIONS:
1. What makes you happiest?
developing attachment with my wife and children; inquiring and creating new knowledge.
2. Do you love mountains or oceans more?
mountains
3. What has been a special moment in 2013?
reading has provided millions of them
4. What is your favorite quote?
Today?: “I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”
― Marlene Dietrich
5. Do you like yourself?
sometimes
6. Do you stay up until midnight on New Years’ Eve?
rarely
7. Is there something you wish could be done ASAP?
global peace and cooperation
8. What is/was your favorite class in school?
philosophy/social science courses
9. What musical instruments do you / have you try/tried to play?
piano, saxophone, organ, drums, trumpet, harmonica, guitar, voice
10. Anything you wished you would have learned earlier?
the world’s complexity and the constancy of change
11. Do you like to do crafts, drawing or painting?
the effort extends and challenges me uniquely
And, given the reflective caveat above (that ALL we encounter influences us), I pass the award along to these fellow bloggers –
2 Things in absence of composition
My maker-wheels or whatever complex machinery sometimes con-fuses to generate documents of creative writing are apparently on the fritz. In lieu of some relatively originary textual flow (idiosyncratic dip into the semiotic waters of the resource of language) I forward along a poem that stands out to me from this weeks’ readings, and a plea that interest-piqued readers immerse themselves in a particular book regarding our co-creation and involvement with the rest of the world and one another…
First, the poem – from Bob Hicok‘s “Elegy Owed” – a fine collection:
and second a plug for a compelling study by Ian Hodder – “Entangled: An Archaeology of the relationships between humans and things”
Life in Relation to Art
My super-wife (http://lifeinrelationtoart.wordpress.com/) strikes again – a triptych selected for exhibition opening this Friday at City Arts – Wichita, KS. Come participate if you can – a varietous juried show! Congrats love!
https://www.facebook.com/WichitaCityArts
http://www.downtownwichita.org/have_fun-first_final_friday.php
And finally…poems
I recognize that I hunger for poetry – periodically I canvas new poetry books and the old on my shelves to be STRUCK – to be wakened – charged – re-membered – into some leaping alive sensibility awareness delight sorrow grief ecstasy – that the vividness and risk of well-made poems incite…
for me, anyway.
Thus, the Bolano. A beginning.
Thus, returning to Nooteboom, a certainty.
Thus, the new arrivals shelf – Wichita Public Library.
and then…today…BOOM.
Bob Hicok, tested favorite, “new arrival,” Elegy Owed
the jump-start.
the activation.
something like recognition and instigation at once.
what poetry does.
and having no idea where to begin to share it with you
to recommend
to commend to you
I’ll just offer the opening poem:
and the closer…
Good-bye
and to tell you that everything in between is every bit as good
and some even better….
Good-bye
Small white church at the edge of my yard.
A bell will ring in a few hours.
People who believe in eternity will sing.
I’ll hear an emotion resembling the sea from over a hill.
One time I sat with my back to the church to give their singing
to my spine, there’s a brown llama you can watch
while you do this in a field if you’d like to try.
I don’t think even calendars believe in eternity.
Beyond the church is a trail that leads to a bassinet in a tree.
Someone put it there when the oak and sky were young.
I’m afraid to climb the tree.
That I’ll find bones inside.
That they’ll be mine.
I want to be with my wife forever but not as we are.
She’ll become a bear, I a season: Kodiak, spring.
Part of loving bagpipes haunting the gloaming is knowing
the bloodsinging will stop.
Beyond the church I pulled a hammer from the river.
What were you building, I asked its rust, from water and without nails?
This is where I get self-conscious about language,
words are love affairs or séances or harpoons, there isn’t a sentence
that isn’t a plea.
This is where I don’t care that I’m half wrong when I say everything
is made entirely of light.
This is where my wife and I hold hands.
Over there is where our shadows do a better job.
– Bob Hicok, Elegy Owed
All my Words are Silent 