April First is a truly underrated holiday.
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Monday, March 31, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Metacommentary: revisting the I
After further consideration I've certainly decided that a strict journalistic I is incredibly boring; there is nothing truly interesting to do with that body of language, and it's a flat and ineffectual voice in which to discuss events. It was an interesting thought process, but no. It borders on an affront to my aesthetics, so i'm over it.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Sidenote: Whitney Biennial
Right now @ the Whitney Biennial 18 out of 81 artists are associated with CalArts.
Fantastic!
Fantastic!
metacommentary: the I
With this particular blog I'm interested in exploring the typical norms of blogging, or the act when it isn't largely for personal consumption. What I keep encountering in my posting, or pondering of posting, is this line that seems to exist between the public and private spheres. The role of the author in a typical current events/culture blog can range from simply regurgitating straight facts and articles, to an ongoing opinions column with little reference to the outside media. Somewhere on the more conservative side of that continuum is what is interesting to me at the moment.
But, where does the border region exist? I come from a writing tradition that engages heavily with the author's subjectivity, both through playing with personal languages and through utter negation of an author's presence. The I is comfortably present within many blogs, but it's a very formal and detached journalistic I.
I have to admit that there is also, for me, the presence of a subtle self-consciousness that arises from the fact that I am a woman. Self-reflection & non-linear insertion as opposed to a more distant self-reflexivity occurring in the serving of facts, are elements often associated with "feminine writing." And historically this is a way of engaging with language that is less valued in male-dominated circles.
Point:
It's interesting to navigate these terrains. Fresh topographies can bring out the most generative (internal)discourses.
But, where does the border region exist? I come from a writing tradition that engages heavily with the author's subjectivity, both through playing with personal languages and through utter negation of an author's presence. The I is comfortably present within many blogs, but it's a very formal and detached journalistic I.
I have to admit that there is also, for me, the presence of a subtle self-consciousness that arises from the fact that I am a woman. Self-reflection & non-linear insertion as opposed to a more distant self-reflexivity occurring in the serving of facts, are elements often associated with "feminine writing." And historically this is a way of engaging with language that is less valued in male-dominated circles.
Point:
It's interesting to navigate these terrains. Fresh topographies can bring out the most generative (internal)discourses.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Everything's better in French
Perhaps one of the biggest ways overlapping cultures influence each other over time is through the assimilation of each other's words. About 40% of English is derived from French. (This along with the Norman conquest in 1066 are my favorite things to think about when confronted with Francophobia.)
The French government is working hard to single out English words that have seeped into French culture (le mail, le spam, le cowboy) and then replace them with truly French words. The post linked below offers a nice little discussion of this initiative, the French language, and the realities intersecting it past and present. Personally, I got a nice little chuckle at the part describing how tact is originally from French.
It's a long post, but really worth the investment:
Charles Bremner on the eve of International Day of the French-speaking World.
The French government is working hard to single out English words that have seeped into French culture (le mail, le spam, le cowboy) and then replace them with truly French words. The post linked below offers a nice little discussion of this initiative, the French language, and the realities intersecting it past and present. Personally, I got a nice little chuckle at the part describing how tact is originally from French.
It's a long post, but really worth the investment:
Charles Bremner on the eve of International Day of the French-speaking World.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The total blunder that is our presence in Iraq
From the NYT, yet another example of the Bush administration's complete inability to think things through (poor Colin Powell...):
Fateful choice on Iraq Army Bypassed Debate
Fateful choice on Iraq Army Bypassed Debate
Dubai's "The World"
This is an interesting time of transition for us as we move towards greater and greater acceptance of the fact that the planet is no longer so pleased with us, and the inevitable global spanking we're going to receive has already begun. I truly believe (and I think there are many with me on this) that a complete restructuring of the ways in which we interact with our environment is absolutely necessary right now.
"The World" off the coast of Dubai is a real estate development of an amazing magnitude; it's made up of 300 artificial islands that together form the shape of the world map. The developers have taken open water, piled a bunch of rock and sand on top of each other until land stands above the water, and then they reinforce the perimeters. The rhetorical games Nakheel, the project's developer, is playing on the topic of environmental impact are almost funny, claiming that they are in fact helping the marine life of the area. More space for coral reefs to develop? What is going to happen to all these new reefs when the islands and all their waterfront propery are populated by the world's richest people? An article in The Economist poses a great questions:
And focusing on what goes on under the water risks ignor[ing] a bigger question:
where is all the fresh water for this paradise coming from? Dubai is famous for a number of things; not among them is a plentiful supply of water. So where do they get water for the swimming pools, spas, gardens, dishwashers and hotel laundries? Most of it comes from desalination plants, which expend a lot of energy and release plenty of carbon dioxide.
Brilliant. It's wonderful that there are now more people choosing the bike over the car, and buying their food more consciously. But, severe ecological negligence like The World project must stop. Nakheel (and those who benefit from them) is like an ostrich with its head in the sand. With government/scientific reports popping up everyday warning of impending global water shortages, building another island oasis off the coast of the Arabian Desert is the last thing we need to be doing.
"The World" off the coast of Dubai is a real estate development of an amazing magnitude; it's made up of 300 artificial islands that together form the shape of the world map. The developers have taken open water, piled a bunch of rock and sand on top of each other until land stands above the water, and then they reinforce the perimeters. The rhetorical games Nakheel, the project's developer, is playing on the topic of environmental impact are almost funny, claiming that they are in fact helping the marine life of the area. More space for coral reefs to develop? What is going to happen to all these new reefs when the islands and all their waterfront propery are populated by the world's richest people? An article in The Economist poses a great questions:
And focusing on what goes on under the water risks ignor[ing] a bigger question:
where is all the fresh water for this paradise coming from? Dubai is famous for a number of things; not among them is a plentiful supply of water. So where do they get water for the swimming pools, spas, gardens, dishwashers and hotel laundries? Most of it comes from desalination plants, which expend a lot of energy and release plenty of carbon dioxide.
Brilliant. It's wonderful that there are now more people choosing the bike over the car, and buying their food more consciously. But, severe ecological negligence like The World project must stop. Nakheel (and those who benefit from them) is like an ostrich with its head in the sand. With government/scientific reports popping up everyday warning of impending global water shortages, building another island oasis off the coast of the Arabian Desert is the last thing we need to be doing.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Quick! Prepare the hemlock...
Thanks to Ron Silliman's blog I've happened upon two interesting tidbits from The Toronto Star.
First, the director of the Leo Baeck Jewish Day school in Toronto was found to have graphic poems on his personal website (oh no!), and the parents of these k-8 students want him sacked. The more enlightened of the bunch say it's not about the existence of the pieces, it's that he chose to put them out into the public sphere.
Second, the naughty poems article built on the precedent of drama going down at Ryerson University where a freshman moderated (but did not originally start) a Facebook study group for his chemistry class. Specific homework tips passed about the group by its various members, according to the university, counts as cheating so they want to expel the group's moderator. The focus on the group, in practice, was not giving others final solutions to problems, but to brainstorm approaches to the problems. Which brings me to today's analogy du jour...
social networking sites : my generation(and on) : :
rock 'n roll : the BabyBoomers
Their rules are shifty, they challenge many social norms...and they lead to sex&drugs? They're an opportunity for dark characters to get their hands on our virginal youth. They're obviously the devil's playground.
The issue of the educator and his poems is a tricky one. I understand it could be disturbing to be the parent of a 6 year old and then see poems about sex and murder written by the person in charge of your kid's education, but it's completely unreasonable to expect someone to censor their creative work because they also work at a school. The argument that he should have known better than to put them out in public raises issues of ownership of private spaces. Do these parents own who this Prashker guy is outside of school? Do they own the personas he portrays in the metaverse? Why does visceral expression mean you're automatically unfit to deal with kids? All of these things also seem to be dependent on the assumption that a human being is a stable and coherent self. It's hard to accept that maybe the really nice and genuine guy who waves at you when you come to pick up your progeny is also the guy who wrote misogynistic murder scenes, and that those two elements really can live together in a single person in a totally healthy and organic way.
These are questions that often pass through my mind as someone who wants to teach and as someone who also writes "challenging" work. It's actions like those of these parents that keeps a lot of artists relegated to some kind of fringe status in the "productive world." If you engage with certain ideas/discourses on a regular basis and dare to not shamefully hide it away, you pose a threat to the very stability of society(?) You're unsuitable to be around the young? For some, simply unsuitable.
First, the director of the Leo Baeck Jewish Day school in Toronto was found to have graphic poems on his personal website (oh no!), and the parents of these k-8 students want him sacked. The more enlightened of the bunch say it's not about the existence of the pieces, it's that he chose to put them out into the public sphere.
Second, the naughty poems article built on the precedent of drama going down at Ryerson University where a freshman moderated (but did not originally start) a Facebook study group for his chemistry class. Specific homework tips passed about the group by its various members, according to the university, counts as cheating so they want to expel the group's moderator. The focus on the group, in practice, was not giving others final solutions to problems, but to brainstorm approaches to the problems. Which brings me to today's analogy du jour...
social networking sites : my generation(and on) : :
rock 'n roll : the BabyBoomers
Their rules are shifty, they challenge many social norms...and they lead to sex&drugs? They're an opportunity for dark characters to get their hands on our virginal youth. They're obviously the devil's playground.
The issue of the educator and his poems is a tricky one. I understand it could be disturbing to be the parent of a 6 year old and then see poems about sex and murder written by the person in charge of your kid's education, but it's completely unreasonable to expect someone to censor their creative work because they also work at a school. The argument that he should have known better than to put them out in public raises issues of ownership of private spaces. Do these parents own who this Prashker guy is outside of school? Do they own the personas he portrays in the metaverse? Why does visceral expression mean you're automatically unfit to deal with kids? All of these things also seem to be dependent on the assumption that a human being is a stable and coherent self. It's hard to accept that maybe the really nice and genuine guy who waves at you when you come to pick up your progeny is also the guy who wrote misogynistic murder scenes, and that those two elements really can live together in a single person in a totally healthy and organic way.
These are questions that often pass through my mind as someone who wants to teach and as someone who also writes "challenging" work. It's actions like those of these parents that keeps a lot of artists relegated to some kind of fringe status in the "productive world." If you engage with certain ideas/discourses on a regular basis and dare to not shamefully hide it away, you pose a threat to the very stability of society(?) You're unsuitable to be around the young? For some, simply unsuitable.
Trapped in the ring.
I was in a workshop a few days ago, and the drone of pointless comments being bounced around the table pushed me out of my seat and floating off into space. After visiting several possible scenarios of the small events of the next few months, making a mental list of items to Ebay, and a few not-so-deep thoughts on the history of pen construction, my awareness phased back in to the conversation right as someone said, "...one ring..." I had zero idea what the topic was, I can't even say that I was certain we were still talking about the same person's work, but being still half off somewhere in the ether, i jumped in without missing a beat and said aloud, "to rule them all, one ring to find them..."
Everyone froze in silence; I didn't finish the line. (really the messed up part of this story is that there were only two people in a room of 15 who vaguely got the reference. The Rings are straight up canonical; what kind of writers are these people?)
The point?
The point is that the infiltration of media into the meta regions of my un/conscious mind is something that never ceases to amaze me. That my brain will trigger mouth muscles and chest muscles, will pair symbols with semantic content to expel a series of sounds that somehow compliment another set of sounds...all done absent of conscious will, it's a little disconcerting.
Our interactions with the world (whatever that is) are increasingly mediated by devices. But, direct interfacing seems less culturally dangerous than all the things announcing little soundbytes into the air, flashing messages at us as we pass by. It is the repeated passive consumption of letting Fellowship of the Ring play in the background while working/cleaning/sewing that allowed my brain to spit out the corresponding part simply at the mention of "one ring," with essentially no conscious thought or choice around it. We are biological creatures (mostly), and it's amazing just how mutable that makes us.
Everyone froze in silence; I didn't finish the line. (really the messed up part of this story is that there were only two people in a room of 15 who vaguely got the reference. The Rings are straight up canonical; what kind of writers are these people?)
The point?
The point is that the infiltration of media into the meta regions of my un/conscious mind is something that never ceases to amaze me. That my brain will trigger mouth muscles and chest muscles, will pair symbols with semantic content to expel a series of sounds that somehow compliment another set of sounds...all done absent of conscious will, it's a little disconcerting.
Our interactions with the world (whatever that is) are increasingly mediated by devices. But, direct interfacing seems less culturally dangerous than all the things announcing little soundbytes into the air, flashing messages at us as we pass by. It is the repeated passive consumption of letting Fellowship of the Ring play in the background while working/cleaning/sewing that allowed my brain to spit out the corresponding part simply at the mention of "one ring," with essentially no conscious thought or choice around it. We are biological creatures (mostly), and it's amazing just how mutable that makes us.
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