What happened to the world we knew
When we would dream and scheme
And while the time away
Yesterme yesteryou yesterday
Where did it go that yester glow
When we could feel
The wheel of life turn our way
Yesterme yesteryou yesterday
I had a dream so did you life
Was warm and love was true
14 kids who never followed the rules
Yester fools and now
Now it seems those yester dreams
Were just a cruel
And foolish game we used to play
Yesterme yesteryou yesterday
When I recall what we had
I feel lost I feel sad with nothing but
The memory of yester love and now
Now it seems those yester dreams
Were just a cruel
And foolish game we had to play
Yesterme yesteryou yesterday
Yesterme yesteryou yesterday
Sing with me
Yesterme yesteryou yesterday
One more time.....
You say 'played back live to the Great Hall'. Do you envisage the playback
to be on a college machine arranged by your dept. as a display, a private
machine to display or via wireless access? Obviously this has a bearing on
the BBG 2 end.
You said that the BBG2 venue cannot be changed, I assume that this due to
room bookings. We would need to know the actual times, as any changes would
have to be installed prior and then restored to the normal teaching
environment afterwards.
We will need written permission from your Head of Department as you are
wanting to set up a webcam in a public place.
If you would like to talk to me I am on 020 **. If I'm not at my
desk it will divert to my mobile.
Regards
Ian B
Ian Biss
Network Officer
ISC 115
Side note on Agamben and “The Coming Community”
1) as summarized by Michael Hardt (who translated it) in an interview about Multitude:
"(the coming community) not being based on belonging. He was experimenting with the notion of a non-identity way of thinking and making social organization. That too is the project of multitude. In philosophical terms, like Agamben, we are trying to displace the contradictory couple identity/difference and instead work with the common, singularity, and multiplicity.
But our notion of "not-yet" is really very simple. In addition to aluding to Bloch's notion of utopia, we merely want to emphasize that multitude is a project, a political project, that must be brought into existence through collective struggle."
2)From a philosophy website overview of Agamben (cant remember which one maybe princeton's??)
The Coming Community
-he develops the notion of “whatever singularities.”
- In taking up the problem of community, Agamben enters into a broader engagement with this concept by others such as Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy, and in the Anglo-American scene, Alphonso Lingis.
-broad aim of the engagement is to develop a conception of community that does not presuppose commonality or identity as a condition of belonging.
-Agamben’s conception of “whatever singularity” indicates a form of being that rejects any manifestation of identity or belonging and wholly appropriates being to itself, that is, in its own “being-in-language.” Whatever singularity allows for the formation of community without the affirmation of identity or “representable condition of belonging,” in nothing other than the “co-belonging” of singularities itself. Importantly though, this entails neither a mystical communion nor a nostalgic return to a Gemeinschaft that has been lost; instead, the coming community has never yet been. Interestingly, Agamben argues in this elliptical text that the community and politics of whatever singularity are heralded in the event of Tianenmen square, which he. He takes this event to indicate that the coming politics will not be a struggle between states, but, instead, a struggle between the state and humanity as such, insofar as it exists in itself without expropriation in identity.. Correlatively, the coming politics do not entail a sacralization of humanity, for the existence of whatever singularity is always irreparably abandoned to itself; as Agamben writes, ‘“The Irreparable is that things are just as they are, in this or that mode, consigned without remedy to their way of being. States of things are irreparable, whatever they may be: sad or happy, atrocious or blessed. How you are, how the world is—this is the irreparable....”(CC 90)
WHATEVER (singularity)
-amal
Fragments from the last meeting with Taru:
- The Inpoerative Community=
Less target led
Not based on an identity
Moving away from the core essence
-Interesting thing about failure is when omething comes out of it in a constructive way
-Agamben on community:
Doing away with ideas of the essential community and rethinking all other terms
-Negative Vibes
-Idea of fake utopia
-Circles etc undermining a hippy ideology
-calling squatting fake etc
-moving things fast (our community)
-microwaving intimacy
-the group has been testing out different modes of the intimate community
…following methods of intimacy, tracking methods/methodologies for creating community/intimacy
…exploring what comes out of these practices, whether they are forced, real, effective
-INOPERATIVE COMMUNITY concept can be a loose hook for us to frame and push our research further…
… should continue with our highly practical work method “EXPRESSION GIVES US A METHOD”
a “stammering” practice
stuttering, cut ups
- at the presentation we NEED TO DEMONSTRATE A CRITICAL ARMATURE
-statement
-presentation
-discussion
(the discussion is a vital part of the overall presentation and requires us to back up our presentation with ideas, concepts, methodologies)
q. Taru asked us:
How do you describe this work as a research?
What is the relationship between our practice and theory?
How can you describe your practice as a research method?
In order for us to answer her questions we will do a divination ritual/a mapping/a rearrangement, arrangement of our ideas, research, ephemera….
Her final words were: Keep on doing stuff, keep on reflecting
See you all tomorrow
BRING LOTS OF STUFF
-amal
Please find below the minutes of our last meeting.... ALL THINGS GO
Cristobal DRAWS THE TIME LINE
Our presentation everyone is 17th MArch
WE have the following thursdays to complete
THURS 28th FEB
THurs 6th MARCH
Thurs 13th MArch
between the last two dates we need to create THE STATEMENT
Cristobal begins the meeting with a quick summary of the miniature feedback we received from Pe and He.
They introduced the notion that maybe we are using the concept of NETWORK as a FORM OF CONTROL (I still think this is worth exploring and could be very interesting)
David suggests that this is because we are the only group that are looking inwards rather than outwards.
Liliana says that what we are about is introspection rather than extrospection but why is that about control?
Orianna reminds us that initially there were personalities within the group resistant to the idea of Network in the firstplace and so we began with the notion of network as a negative anyway. She then also suggests we are an ideological network rather than an a group investigating actual networks.
Liliana says that the way we work is very fre flowing one action to another and is very confused about why and how 'control' fits into what we are doing because it was all spontaneous...
Flavia suggests that maybe what they mean by control is that we are creating some kind of border around ourselves...
Andrea comments on how other groups showed a very finished end product not revealing how they came to be at this point. This illusion of a united front presenting an idea or concept related to networks without showing us how they came to this point is a defining feature of all the other groups. We have been discussing what a group/network means and trying to illustrate it in our presentation. (side point that came to mind while writing this: actually i think one other group is exposing their procces too... the one that is not really working as a group but as sub groups)
David said that other groups' presentations were annotated bibliographies, we went in a different direction...
Cristobal said how he was somewhat confused by the other groups... they allseemed to have an object of study and work together as a group. We dont work like that... the others all decided to present adn research on a field. we are different. There are blurred boundaries between our OBJET (A) OF RESEARCH and THE GROUP
He then drew the amazing diagram and I cannot recreate it here on the blog but it was 3 circles tha overlap, he called them The SYMBOLIC (CONCEPTS- community of the group, gift, intimacy etc) The REAL (ARCHIVE-dinner parties, videos, blog, ephemera, postcards) and THE IMAGINARY (PRESENTATION) asking HOW? Which Way?????
He then used the example of the suggested BOAT idea by Sophia as a way of illustrating a possible final presentation.... THE BOAT idea is an example of how we could maybe use one idea or one symbol that EMBODIES ALL THE THREE FIELDS OF Symbolic-real-imaginary / concept-archive-presentazione
He said we need to MAKE A STATEMENT
THE statement will reference the presentation itself as well as referencing the previous concepts and archive.
BUT to arrive at a simple thing it is like mathematics...
complexity arrives to simplicity...............
(then i made lots of drawings of boats and circles with Lacanian terminology on them)
(as a side note while writing i have to say publicly HOW IMPRESSED I AM BY CRISTOBAL--- isnt he great everyone??!! )
Lili and Sophia explain in detail the concept of the Boat for those who need more info please READ THE BLOG and previous posts...
Orianna voiced worries of us Pushing a Concept rather than GROUP INTERACTION
Cristobal stresses the need to decide to be PRACTICAL .... and for that we need one or two concepts...the boat for example is not enough by itself we need a conceptual thing to allow us to be free in relation to boat.
We cannot avoid the proccess, the conceptual.
Idea of Boat as crossing borders together, taking journeys and the interaction that the boat has on us.
Then we split into groups and came up with ideas.....
Group one:
How the group came to be a community....
moments of the community, dynamics, functions of the community
BOAT as already filled with meaning
maybe doing a workshop on the boat?
GRoup two:
Sleep-OVer
Gift
Our group as a love story: arguments, exchange, love letters, intimacy, dinner party as first date
Andrea: A romantic date between 13 people
David: Our first night together
Then my notes turn into something else and I guess I was too involved in the reality to continue documentation.........
There were some key words (by that i mean big scrawled out words) written at the end of my last page though:
NOTION OF COMMUNITY, NOTION OF GIFT
HOW can we show the group without being therapeutic
country walks
SElf-portrait, arrow self-portrait
not sure what that all means.
LOVE TO ALL MY PEEPS
especially BARNABY ADMAS. M. Barnaby ou-est vous???? Je besoin du vin et l'inspration.... Tu me MANQUES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
See y'all later,
Amal
(which by the way means hope for all you nonarab speakers out there and I would like to spread some esperanza, sprinkiling it like glitter dust on all your heads this fine morning so you all to have a little Hope and faith that we will make it through these difficult times TRIUMPHANT.... and more info on the namegame: "for fun and games, type my name in predictive text on your mobile phones and be in for a dirty surprise (please do this later on, not first thing in the morning, and only if you are not offended by horrible words)
]]>Clay Shirky + Brian Eno on the Power of Networks
17 March 2008
Everywhere we look, it seems, companies and organisations are trying to harness the alleged wisdom of crowds – the power of groups of people to come together through the internet and share with one another, work together, or take some kind of collective public action. One of the world’s leading experts on social and technological networking, Clay Shirky, Professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and the author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organising without Organisations, comes to the ICA to talk about how the idea of networks, and particularly online social networks, is changing everything around us.
Clay Shirky will be in conversation with Brian Eno, musician, artist and co-founder of the Long Now Foundation.
£10 / £9 Concessions / £8 ICA Members.
And Here is some info from the publisher on Clare Shirky's book...
A revelatory examination of how the wildfire-like spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill
A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists use the Internet and e-mail to bring offensive comments made by Trent Lott and Don Imus to a wide public and hound them from their positions. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade inspiration and instruction and showcase terrorist atrocities to the world, entirely online. A wide group of unrelated people swarms to a Web site about the theft of a cell phone and ultimately goads the New York City police to take action, leading to the culprit's arrest.
With accelerating velocity, our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. You don't have to have a MySpace page to know that the times they are a changin'. Hierarchical structures that exist to manage the work of groups are seeing their raisons d'être swiftly eroded by the rising technological tide. Business models are being destroyed, transformed, born at dizzying speeds, and the larger socialimpact is profound.
One of the culture's wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction is Clay Shirky, and Here Comes Everybody is his marvelous reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are. Like Lawrence Lessig on the effect of new technology on regimes of cultural creation, Shirky's assessment of the impact of new technology on the nature and use of groups is marvelously broad minded, lucid, and penetrating; it integrates the views of a number of other thinkers across a broad range of disciplines with his own pioneering work to provide a holistic framework for understanding the opportunities and the threats to the existing order that these new, spontaneous networks of social interaction represent. Wikinomics, yes, but also wikigovernment, wikiculture, wikievery imaginable interest group, including the far from savory. A revolution in social organization has commenced, and Clay Shirky is its brilliant chronicler.
]]>A Lovers' Tale
I haven't eaten for three days Nancy had said. I'm menstruating and I'm sick of the sight of you. Moreover I'm sick of this tiny apartment...there's no room: it's cramped and I'm cramped and a television is no substitute for a window. I can't see outside and I can't breathe the air, or see the sun she had complained.
Nancy missed the sun. She was from a part of Europe where the weather was usually glorious in the summer, and mild in the winter. How she hated the Northern climate where the winter days seemed microscopic and the nights intermidable and seemingly permanent. It played havoc with her mood, and worse with her digestive system.
I tightened the belt on my cotton robe with the silk outer edge. Nancy ran her finger over some salt grains on the kitchen table, licked her finger
"I'm supposed to be taking these salt pills, but..." she wrinkled her nose "they make me feel like throwing up"
I switched on the television, hoping for a diversion from the tone of the room, without putting my thoughts into words. Images of a forest filled the screen as a camera plunged through thick growth to focus in on a small animal.
"Urgh" Nancy sighed, "Boring. I'd rather swap places with a wild animal than watch it on telly. At least they get a chance to roam around...maybe even have a fuck once in a while."
The small fluffy grey couch shifted slightly under my discomfort, I exhaled noisily while Nancy picked up the remote control and switched channels, to one featuring an underweight young woman whose skin had stretched taught over her bones, like a lampshade.
I reached over the arm of the couch and picked up a bottle of Fanta orange drink, that had been there since the evening before.
I could think of nothing to say. Perhaps there was nothing to say. I felt miserable and irritated with the room. Nancy's prescence felt like an imposition, as if she were somehow surplus to requirements. She must have felt my thoughts as she abruptly got up from her chair and exited the box-like room through the small kitchen door just behind my position on the sofa.
"I'd like to be famous, you know" she parted with, "In another life I might get my chance you never know"
I could hear her conversation continue from the small space behind my head,
"I wouldn't still live with you, if I was. You're useless in bed since you've been taking those pills and my social life would get better, Marsha and Sheila reckon that too."
I could hear her rummaging through the rack of kitchen utensils and pans through the open door.
"Since you haven't been working, we haven't gone out at all. You're no fun. And we don't talk when we're in...I might as well be on my own..."
The tone in her voice was rising now, and I recognised the inevitability of what was about to come, yet even so had to resist the temptation to just turn the sound up on the telly, and drown out her nagging.
Suddenly her voice beame clearer as she left the kitchen, yet her words made no sense,
"So this is the last present I'm going to give you."
I tried to turn my body around, my neck stiff and still aching from the uncomfortable night of insomnia I had had the night before, my brain trying to make sense of the impossiblility of the prospect of a gift, when I caught a glimpse of the dull grey steel of the kitchen knife. Blunt, as most things in the apartment had been for a time, it nonetheless made a shattering, nervous, sound as Nancy brought its point down right at the top of my skull, splintering it, pushing the blade deep into my brain with an angry, menstrual force.
As she released her grip,the knife shuddered slightly as if experiencing its own sense of its coldness, and I felt a curious sense of singularity, as if I were alone and that the presence of Nancy were no longer there. Or at any rate, no longer bothering me.
At the same time the blood from the ruptured vessels, mixing with the grey matter from my brain pushed out through the wound and started to blossom in slow, rotating, coagulations.
I sat, still, embracing the silence of the television station which had paused. The flowering at the pinnacle of my skull continued, massing terribly, feverishly slowly into a scarlet orchid bloom. I was transfixed by erotic excitment, my skin prickily at the sensation of its slight rupture. Meanwhile the flicker from the set-slowed by the pause in transmission to a beacon pulse- mixed with the greying light reflected from the kitchen window and its counter surface onto the organic growth, now larger than my head, shining wetly... a vegetable carousel.
(Community of Lovers...February 2008)
IT IS NUMBER 325 BROCKLEY ROAD.
I'LL GO TALK TO THEM TONIGHT ON MY WAY HOME.
SO SORRY. WILL EMAIL AS WELL.
SOPHIA
As we decided this evening, there is a lot of work to do in the next weeks to prepare the final presentation for Monday 17th March at the Great Hall.
Before start 2 announcements:
-There is a presentation about the Isola Art Centre / Milan on next Thursday, 28th Feb, 12-2 pm (RHB 256).
- I am going abroad from Wed 27th of February till 5th of March to finish my field work. So, I will not be here next Thursday and may be if you have an extra session before Thursday 6th of March. I will talk with Taru (the tutor the came for our Tate Modern session) if she can attend the session on the 28th of February. I will let you know.
In relation with the final presentation.... These are the agreements:
-We will meet on next Tuesday 18:30 at Sophia’s place in Brockley. Sophia, please, sends us your address.
-We defined some tasks to work before the meeting in Sophia’s place.
1.
Nahareen, Amal and Liliana will work in what we can do on the weekend of the 6-9 of March. In this weekend we will produce the main material for the final presentation if is necessary. For example, to go to the country side to film a sleep over in a Pic-Nic. This is just an idea as an example. Basically, you have to propose possibility of a final project in relation of what we were talking today.
2.
Sophie and David will research about the Love’s Story.
3.
Andrea and Orianna will research about the meaning and philosophical discussion about the notion of GIFT.
4.
Flavia and Ella will research about the notion of CIRCLE, and its relation with recycle process.
5.
Midori will research about the notion of COMMUNITY.
6.
Sarah, Kegham and Barnaby, please feel free to join one of these topics.
Each one will have 7 minutes to present the work. Please bring material, photocopies, files. We have to be efficient.
The most important thing as a background for this tasks and research is that we will use the group (our community?) as the main force for the final project. There are many ways to understand why and how we define ourselves as a group, a network and a community. This decision is also an obstacle because is more difficult to create a limit while we are the object of study as a group. The possibility to approach these is infinite. In that sense, I do think that we should be very elegant in the way to resolve it for the final presentation. That’s why is important to take decisions in relation with concepts, etc…basically to clean our thoughts and the work itself.
As we talked this afternoon, there are three main fields: first, the potential concepts (intimacy, centrifuge, community, circle, gift, love and network). Second, the archive that makes visible the research (postcards, round, dinner party, blog, notes, maps, pictures, sound pieces and videos). Third, the field that is empty in this moment, because is the project to come. The latter is open and could take many ways, but is a third element that needs time, work and creativity. The final statement will explain all these.
The group should be able the answer in a simple and precise way: what is the group about?
So, listen, re-play this email if there are comments and proposals.
Amal, did you take notes of the session? Can you send to us a brief summary of the discussion, just the main points?..many thanks...
That's all
Sorry for the extension.
Have a nice weekend,
Cristóbal
]]>I've attached a photograph of 'river dance' a boat which is available for cruising the canals of the west midlands.
It'll be JUST LIKE HEART OF DARKNESS!
Aaaah!
....scroll to the right... and behold the circle...
i am not bored or anything!
As if by chance, or perhaps the workings of the networks of the beyond, several members of the group meet on the escalators at Clapham Common station. Luck and happiness and we walk towards Andrea's house.
One by One various members of Lab Group D walk through the big black gates into the warm candle light.
INT. ANDREAS. NIGHT
Nourishments are presented and laid onto the crystal table. Everyone gathers round making chitchat and nibbling elegantly. We are introduced to two new members of the group Rosie and Jazz. They are now essential players in the meeting.
Group disperses around the house.
Orianna and Sophia are cutting carrots in the kitchen.
Andrea intermittently makes tours of her abode while trying to find the corkscrew. When the elegant machine is revealed all the group marvel at its ingenuity.
Goblets of wine are filled then emptied and the cameras click and tapes record the conversation. The last member of the group to arrive is M. Barnaby, with a large crate of claret.
Remarks are made about how the group has finally made a dinner party. Tentative discussions begin about the presentation and are quickly dissolved by salsa dip, Midori's yummy rice and the smell of burning salad bowls.
David says that in Mexican culture the size of the hoop earrings indicates the sluttishness of the wearer. Andrea has large ones. She removes them and Barney wears them.
10.22pm With the profusion and consumption of reds and pinks on the dining table headed by Cristobal, it brings to mind a Warholian interpretation of The Last Supper; but in the words of Hayley Mills in the film Whistle Down The Wind - "thats not Jesus it's just a fella!"
After the extravagant meal of potato salad and Skittles on a plate we repair to the upstairs lounge where a projector is lit but not used, the record player is spinning but not playing and Kegham is absent but not forgotten. On that note, a seance is suggested and a phonecall made. We receive answers from Kegham, who is communicating from beyond the Mediteranean about Zars, the possiblity of resurrection and Nicholas Sarkosy.
Meanwhile, Orianna urges David to coax the cat from behind the couch using some sort of toy. All tries prove unsuccessful, until the idea of lying to the cat is tried. With (false) promises of lasagna and a world free of Mondays, the cat finally emerges from behind the couch.
Alas, while behind the couch the cat has ample opportunity to sample some Barney Wine which Sophia has unwittingly spilled and neglected to clean away.
Not used to these more bacchanalian pleasures, Rose (the cat) enters into a state of wild confusion... stumbling over her own feet she fell into Flavia's Lap
Rosie is not the only one in a state of wild confusion. So is Jazz. So are some of the group. This is the ideal moment to plan the presentation.
We contemplate the séance, the unknown, the beyond…
We ask ourselves: What were we thinking? And Will Kegham be at the presentation? To Postcard or not to Postcard?
FIN
]]>Tomorrow morning (10, 45 am) I have a meeting with one of my supervisors at Goldsmiths.
So, this time I can not attend to our meeting before the inter-media presentation.
It is not an ideal situation, but for me it is very difficult to have time for feedback of my research. Literary, I have to hunt my supervisors every time.
I sent by e-mail some of the pictures that I took in the last weeks.
Please, send an email/post here with the final agreements.
I do think that you are making a quite clear and strong work.
Good luck tomorrow,
Cristóbal
]]>EXT. WEEPING WILLOW. DAY
Meet outside the porta classroom and decide to sit under the weeping willow tree because it is sunny...(deceptively so)
Cristobal begins with a summary of what he thinks our group has done so far/is doing as we have to begin to work towards our presentation February 7th:
Mentions that so far "we have the following ideas, themes, projects:
Blog
Video, documentation
Circle ideas
Postcards
and that we are creating a map of some sort
-with the Sufi/centrifuge idea as the initial glue with an ongoing undercurrent of spiritualism
-with the random postcards
Cristobal suggests maybe we are
-the network of the unknown
-the network of the beyond
(alteregos, shadow groups etc)
-Roundtable, ROUND group
He also makes a suggestion of perhaps extending the idea of spirituality triggered by Andrea's story and the John Lennon quote and make a shrine/memorial to John Lennon inspired the idea of her story being about national interest and local myth and the relation between magic and science.
Example of Thomas Hirschorn and his shrines to people he likes
Creating a network of the invisible that are created through a practice"
After this Andrea goes to stand under the weeping willow and tells the group her story (please see email as I get scared writing it because I am alone and my room is scary).
She also talks about the rumour that WE ARE THE GROUP WITH THE WORST REPUTATION and suggests maybe making a film of having dinner and we stage a big fight and act like we all hate each other
Back to the story a quick summary of the main ideas....
The Road Past-Future link
holes in the road
Seance and Johnny Golding
She thought of US as a group as punctuating a time hole in Goldsmiths, as there are groups before us and after us and we as a group are the most important things about this project not anything else we do and the fact that "we are the most problematic group is the best thing we got going..."
Barnaby says, as he wears a beautiful white scarf round his head, that Andrea's summary of our group "fits us like a well tailored jacket"
Orianna talks about her recent reading of D&Gs Kafka and how as an avid letter writer himself Kafka described letter writing as a TOPOGRAPHY OF OBSTACLES which she thought related to our group and how we are working.... "the letters we are writing embody obstacles". She also introduced the idea of letters that arrive at their destiny and not their destined recipient (o please can you correct that? make a post about it???)
Andrea then reintroduced the concept that Tura pointed out to us the week before at the Tate trip about the way we created a 'QUICK INTIMACY' and with our new reputation as the WORST group it seemed a Paradox.
Ella said we are the group that is both in conflict but also most connected
Barnaby mentions a hole - the middle of the hole and that we can see we have a hole....(it sounds wrong writing it...) pradox between familiarity and conflict is about HOLES .... as we literally become close through the circles and hand holding we are making an EXPLORATION OF FEAR AND THE UNKNOWN. A Partial NonUMENT to the unknown.
Sophia says 'We are weird'
Ella says Obstacles are more authentic
Cristobal- Mentions that the major critique of presentations in the past is that they are usually 'being too safe' and that this is not the way to work. "The disagreement is the closer point between two bodies" a weakness that we share is actually strength,
Orianna: 'Why performance? Are there not any other vehicles?"
Someone says something about Alteregos makes us absent form the whole performance and maybe it is better if we dont.
PErformance is not honest... Intimacy and disagreement on the otherhand is.
Then discussed notion of not focussing on the others and just to look at ourselves...
Then we get cold and go batck to PORTAPOO
INT. Portapoo. Day
A bee sits on Midori's leg and we take pictures of it even though she is scared. But then we get rid of it and no one is hurt by the big hairy bony bee.
We split into groups A and B and come up with an idea for the presentation.
We then put it on the board and explained.
PLEASE SEE PHOTO OF BOARD...
Otherwise I will post a proper write up tomorrow..
Then we FREAK OUT and then we all decide to have a dinner party at Andrea's house which turned out to AMAZING
I did not document the freak out because I was also involved.... also I was not very attentive so it looks like there are only 4 characters in this play but actually lots of people said things and I didnt write it down BOO ME.
THANK YOU ANDREA you are lovely
and thank you everyone else because and I think we are the hottest group which i think counts for something, non?
PS sorry I posted this so late I forgot
See you tomorrow with GLUE POSTCARDS and some nice music???
x amal
FIN
]]>There is new information about the Lab intermediate presentation for the next week.
It will take place in room RHB144 on Thursday, 7th February, 2-5 pm. Each group have 40 minutes (20 minutes presentation, 20 minutes discussion).
There are two options of presentation:
1. A draft of the proposed of the project for March.
2. Present the research that have undertaken so far and relevant visual material as a reference to their ideas.
We are in the second option of presentation. So, apart from the post that we will send to the course. We have to define our 20 minutes tomorrow. The easy way would be a brief visual or audiovisual presentation with the most relevant concepts and discussion
of the last weeks. We can create a map or a diagram.
See you tomorrow,
Cristóbal
PS: As a reminder: public works (Andreas Lang and Kathrin Böhm) will present their work tomorrow, 3-5 pm (RHB 274).
]]>(continued in the group video section...all poetry Silvia Plath)
]]>Andrea has tracked the convergence of local mythology, national interest and personal history through a street full of holes in Blackburn. (See her email for the full story.)
Using ideas spoke about in the Johnny Gold lecture: holes, nodes and future time overlaying/enveloping and occurring simultaneously, Andrea thought to apply the same principles to our time and space and interactions in the lab.
In order to apply these principles Andrea suggests we think of the lab not as an end product. Her idea is that we and our container ARE the representations of this project. This way, every activity that does or doesn't occur, every thought spoken or silent and every general piece of detritus is documented and has value.
She says: "The crap we bring to the container i.e. food papers etc. All have a place without hierarchy. It becomes a 'momento mori' through sound recordings/film/debris/coats and bags left discarded and uncollected representing the process whilst absenting our physical selves- a nonument."
I think it is the clearest and most striking idea concerning our offering to the larger lab groupings i've heard thus far.
I hope some of you will feel the same.
Sophia
Here is a link I received from a forward... it is a bit random but the pictures made me think about our networks/diagrams ideas...
Learn Networking website
Also anyone up for organising our next meeting?? Maybe we can all reserve al least thursday daytime (from 11 instead of the old lecture) for us to do something before the main meeting... or maybe we can relocate somewhere for the 3-5?
any thoughts?
amal
]]>once we (everyone minus Kegham?) reassembled in the container, the first topic of discussion was what happened at the tate earlier that morning. re-cap: we met under the spider and just allowed the conversation to flow naturally while holding hands and walking in a circle-- not unlike our usual discussions, just moving. participants were generally pleased with what happened, and the ideas that were developed through this event.
members of the group who did participate wanted to know why people who did not attend did not attend. Flavia explained how the idea of hand holding in a public place makes her feel uncomfortable and seems like a hobby cult-- she simply has an aversion to these kind of activities.
we also discussed how the idea of a group experience / intimacy might be too forced or coming from a few dominant members. In the case of the tate event, it seemed like a few people were in the know while others had no idea what was happening. for some members of the group (Flavia and others), the postcard project was easier and less threatening because we could stay within our comfort zone.
Barnaby then brought up the reading by J E Nang about the idea of an inoperative community, especially the problematic of forming communities and the dynamics and struggle of the individual joining the group.
2. Communication
Cristobal observed that clear communication is not working at the moment for all members of the group. we now have a blog (which should be easy) and group email correspondence so if nobody complains about a specific group proposal, he (and others) will assume that everyone is in agreement (no objection is passive approval). Despite short notice, Cristobal shared how he chose to move a meeting in order to participate in the Tate group activity, because it was more important for him to keep his commitment to the group than to deal with his personal business that morning. he continued to say that individuals who do not attend are the ones who miss out.
some one else suggested that not every project we do has to have a deep metaphysical meaning-- perhaps just getting together and allowing something to flow out of it, is good too. But Flavia responded that she's not interested in (or used to) doing things just for the sake of togetherness. Liliana said that "this is school, not some randomness" and supported the idea that our group activities are like homework-- an obligatory part of the course we should not see as optional.
it was also suggested that if someone is absent (or silent?) for weeks, they are not in a position to object to what the group has decided. cristobal mentioned that critique is a form of resolution-- members have to share, and give an alternative if they are opposed to any group ideas. it's valuable for the whole group to hear everyone's perspective.
3. Neo Hippy / new age critique/ forced intimacy
some members of the group (Flavia, Ella, others?) critiqued the perceived new-agey, hand-holding flavor of our recent activities-- or method, while others (Liliana, Barnaby, more) don't see our endeavor as new-agey at all. Barnaby brought up the darker side of our discussion under the spider, especially our talk of diseases, wounds, bodily fluids-- and the fact that Ring around the Rosey refers to the plague and death. thus, it was proposed that our actions, in a sense, critique or flip the utopian ideas of the hippy movement-- and thus are not typical hippy endeavors. We don't really need to label ourselves, in fact, we should avoid labels, because different terms (and activities) have different meanings to different people and are not particularly useful.
some people continued to bemoan the "group therapy" feeling. yet others seemed to feel that "forced intimacy" is what we are supposed to be doing as a group. we could have chosen to remain cold and distant but instead our group chose to engage in family bonding experience-- we chose to make our group project a personal endeavor.
4. Next steps
amal suggested that andrea should present her idea (which only a few people have heard) to the whole group. (apparently it is not new agey, incorporates our themes and is brilliant). yet it was re-emphasized that our group's project must be integrated and should not be a collage of individuals ideas. it is an exploratory process and so none of us are in a position to say what the final project will be. still for the sake of the project, we agreed that we must think like individuals and not like a cult, even if we need to behave as a cohesive group. someone offered a piece of theory (barnaby?): one can only be a true individual when in a group.
5. Postcard presentation / alter ego continuation
david stood up and read the narrative we created by sending him timed and dated postcards with one sentence each. we then tossed around the idea of avatars and alter egos and decided to each send orianna a postcard written by our "other self" this week.
]]>
]]>"Writing to you, this delirium has beset me; my whole being shrinks, my suffering shrieks inside me, it tears me loose from myself in the same way I succeeded, when I bore you, in snatching you out from inside me. In this contorting, in this unseemliness, I resolve into a cry, not of love, rather of hate. I am twisted by anguish and by delight as well. But it is not love's delight, the only thing possessing me is rage. My rage brought you into the world., this rage which I realised yesterday as I was looking at you, that you were hearing. I do not love you, I remain alone, but you hear this lost cry, you will hear it incessantly, and until death takes me, I shall go on living in the same state. I shall live in the expectation of that other world where I will be in ecstasies of pleasure. I belong body and soul to that other world and so do you. I have absolutely no interest in this world where they scratch about, patiently waiting for death to enlighten them. As for me, it is the wind of death that sustains the life in me, I would cease to exist for you if for one instant you forgot that, for me it is the breath of pleasure. By pleasure I mean equivocal pleasure.
It is from Georges Bataille "My Mother" and is a letter from a mother to her young adult son.
I would point out how it links the spider, the text from the reader I mentioned in class (which is a discussion of Bataille, individuality and the group aesthetic, AND using post to communicate....but if I did you might think I was just being a clever cunt.
Bisous, Barnaby
]]>