aBstraction:

It is interesting to observe how real the object remains, in spite of all abstractions.














quote : Paul Klee
images : Charlie Chaplin

Sat, Jun 5, 2010  Permanent link

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T. S. Eliot on Experience & Paradox

Every experience

is

a

paradox

in that it means to be absolute,

and

yet

is

relative ;

in that it somehow always goes beyond itself,

and

yet

never

escapes

itself.





T. S. Eliot

Wed, Jun 2, 2010  Permanent link

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Deleuze diFFerence & Hockney coLLage

The intense world of differences, in which we find the reason behind qualities and the being of the sensible, is precisely the object of a superior empiricism. This empiricism teaches us a strange ‘reason’, that of the multiple, chaos and difference (nomadic distributions, crowned anarchies).

It is always differences which resemble one another, which are analogous, opposed or identical: difference is behind everything, but behind difference there is nothing.

Every object, every thing, must see its own identity swallowed up in difference, each being no more than a difference between differences

We know that modern art tends to realise these conditions: in this sense it becomes a veritable theatre of metamorphoses and permutations. A theatre where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (Ariadne has hung herself). The work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become ‘experience’, transcendental empiricism or science of the sensible.






* Gilles Deleuze outlining "transcendental empiricism" in "Difference and Repetition".
* David Hockney photographic collages.

Tue, May 25, 2010  Permanent link

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Another Kind of Take5

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (장영혜중공업) is a Seoul-based Web art group consisting of Marc Voge (U.S.A.) and Young-hae Chang (Korea).

Their work, presented in 14 languages, is characterized by text-based animation composed in Adobe Flash that is highly synchronized to a musical score that is often original and typically jazz.

Their pieces are characterized by speed, references to film, concrete poetry, etc. Their work is sometimes called digital literature or net art, but there is no consensus.


you can watch their work: ALL FALL DOWN based on the famous Take5 tune.

Thu, May 13, 2010  Permanent link

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Transmutation (?)

because things are the way they are,
things will not stay the way they are.




Bertolt Brecht











* from Wikipedia: The "Alabama Song" (also known as "Whisky Bar" or "Moon over Alabama" or "Moon of Alabama") was originally published in Bertolt Brecht's Hauspostille (1927). It was set to music by Kurt Weill for the 1927 "Songspiel" Mahagonny and used again in Weill's and Brecht's 1930 opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. In the latter, it is performed by the character Jenny and her fellow prostitutes in the first act. Musically it contains elements of foxtrot, blues and advanced soprano coloraturas.
The lyrics for the "Alabama Song" are in English (albeit specifically idiosyncratic English) and are performed in that language even when the opera is performed in its original German.

Tue, May 4, 2010  Permanent link

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FM2030 optimism one & radical revolution
Project: Polytopia

Not only is the spirit of our age changing, growing more optimistic. Our
ideologies and action programs are also evolving, becoming more global, more
cosmic. Social, economic, and political systems of the past are increasingly
obsolete. They are less and less relevant to new conditions rapidly brought on
by the loosening of authoritarianism at all levels of all societies, the death
of god, the increasing strength and fluidity of the ego, the humanization and
convergence of mankind, modern contraception, common markets, international
economics, international politics, communication satellites, nuclear energy,
electronics, lasers, space travel, biologic control of life ...

Never before has our condition undergone as basic and total a restructuring
as it is today, and therefore never have our social institutions and ideologies been as deeply challenged and rendered irrelevant. This applies even to the most radical ideologies.
We still consider radical or revolutionary any movement seeking to overthrow the social, economic, or political status quo. We fail to see that today a far more transcendent and cosmic revolution is going on all around us challenging far more basic status quos.
This is so obvious that most people still do not grasp it, preferring instead to go on with all that is familiar. Even radicalism must remain familiar. Even the radical has difficulty accepting the new radicalisms. This is also why many people will react resentfully - yes, resentfully -
when one day soon they wil be told that they can enjoy eternal life.

People can cope with the old "radicalism" that seeks to overthrow a government, a religious establishment, or an economic system. This is familar radicalism. It can be coped with. But this new radicalism of our age that is altering our very situation in Time and Space - this is too emotionally threatening, too monumental to cope with. It is a revolution in an entirely
New Order of Things, introducing a new set of cosmic premises. It demands a total psychological and social reorientation.
In the light of our revolutionary situation in Time-Space all the radicalisms of the past are now conservative. So too are democracy, socialism, liberalism, New Left. They too were progressive movements in an Old Order of Things. What do quibblings between nations, races, ideologies now mean? They are irrelevant, insignificant.
In the light of our cosmic and biologic revolutions all violent uprisings are also now child's play. Those who still resort to violence for whatever cause are no longer revolutionary. They are romantics, their methods archaic, their contributions negligible.





There was a time when the revolutionary gave his life to undo wrongs or generate changes. In those slow-moving times this supreme sacrifice was often the most effective way of making a dent in the granitelike status quo. Moreover the militant who was prepared to risk his life for a cause was often sure of a life after death. The leader said, "Give your life for our cause and you will go to heaven. The gods will reward you."
What can the leader today promise? Give your life for what? To overthrow tyranny? To undo oppression and injustice? Is there a tyranny or an injustice greater than death? Death itself is the end of freedom, the end of progress. Today more than ever before, life - life itself - has become too valuable, too full of promise and potential to squander for any cause. "Give me liberty or give me death." Two hundred years ago this may have had some logic; today it is a sure sign of stupidity. If the leaders want to "fight the enemy to the last drop of blood", let
them do it. Don't drag in the blood of others. "Hell No, We Won't Go", is the rallying cry of today's revolutionary. He is too aware of the fantastic potentials of life - this life here and now - to want to die on some stinking battlefield of causes.

The real revolutionary of today fights a different battle. He wants to be alive in the year 2050 and in the year 20,000 and the year 2,000,000. Is there anything more radical than this determination? Intellectuals who still romanticize guerrillas and violent revolutions are
themselves far from the scene of violence. Militance may impress a girl friend, but it is no longer revolutionary.
Who are the new revolutionaries of our times? They are the geneticists, bilogists, physicists, cryonologists, biotechnologists, nuclear scientists, cosmologists, astrophysicists, radio astronomers, cosmonauts, social scientists, youth corps volunteers, internationalists, humanists, science-fiction writers, normative thinkers, inventors ...
They and others are revolutionizing the human condition in a fundamental way. Their achievements and goals go far beyond the most radical ideologies of the Old Order.


A totally new set of premises and goals are now emerging:
* We are no longer content with simply building shelters for the homeless, better houses, towns, and cities. We are on the way to eliminating the very concept of fixed shelters, homes, towns. We do not want to remain rooted or spacebound but space-free.

* We can no longer settle for better family life, more compatible marriages, more enlightened parent-child relations. We are on our way to dispensing with the very institution of family. We will settle for nothing less than the total elimination of neuroses, insecurities, and competitiveness which such inherently exclusivist systems such as family, clan, group, nation invariably engender.

* We are no longer content to simply refine the capitalist and socialist sytems. We recognize existing trends towards increasing automation, cashless economies, international economics, etc. But we will not settle for anything short of the complete elimination of money and labor.

* We are no longer content to simply strive for increasing democracy or government by the proletariat. All this is now too modest. We want instant universal participation that will do away with the very institution of government.

* We can never again be even content with civil rights, human rights, the right to self-determination. These rights by themselves are also no longer enough. We now want cosmic rights. We want the freedom to roam the universe. We want nothing less than the right to determine our own evolution. We want the right to live forever - to succeed with our revolution against death itself. So long as we have not overthrown the tyranny of death, all mankind belongs to the Third World, all mankind is proletarian.


As revolutionaries in a rapidly expanding world we concede nothing, accept
no despair, believe in no ultimate mysteries, abide by no absolute truths,
adhere to no eternal values, to no ultimate goals, consider no human problems
irreversible, nothing unattainable - not even dimensions beyond Time and
Space.







extracted from Toward New Ideologies the final chapter of F.M. Esfandiary's Optimism One (1970)
paintings of Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

Mon, May 3, 2010  Permanent link

Sent to project: Polytopia

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We know no-thing but the Connections ..

In a lecture in 1933 Wittgenstein gave his students the following picture of his work and of his philosophical method:

There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads. So I suggest repetition as a means of surveying the connections.









text : Ludwig Wittgenstein
image : Syncopath, Beijing, 2009.
videos : YouTube - Beijing - Summer Palace where street calligraphers go on drawing with water brushes all day long since the quotations they write are drying the moment they write them.

Fri, Apr 30, 2010  Permanent link

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Death Penalty (?)

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
Albert Camus

Crime is redeemed by remorse, but not by a blow of the axe or slipknot. Blood has to be washed by tears but not by blood.»
Victor Hugo

We oppose the death penalty not just for what it does to those guilty of heinous crimes, but for what it does to all of us: it offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life.»
Most Rev. Joseph A. Fiorenza, President, National Conference of Catholic Bishops / U.S. Catholic Conference, 1999.

Capital punishment is not about deterrence. That is a fig leaf we attach to our desire to punish. Capital punishment, like all acts of revenge, is about control, about the need to reclaim control from someone who has taken it from us.»
Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People".

I believe that as long as one is alive there is the possibility to change and redress whatever wrong one has done.
Criminals, people who commit crimes, usually society rejects these people. They are also part of society. Give them some form of punishment to say they were wrong, but show them they are part of society and can change. Show them compassion.»
His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, Spiritual Leader of Tibet, (4) Times of Oman, 4/9/2005.

I call upon Roman Catholics, other Christians, and all people of conscience within these beautiful Allegheny Mountains to oppose the use of capital punishment in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States. Let us not join with those who encourage an atmosphere of vengeance and retribution in our nation.»
Most Reverend Joseph V. Adamec, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown

May the bad not kill the good,
Nor the good kill the bad
I am a poet, without any bias,
I say without doubt or hesitation
There are no good assassins.»
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), Chilean writer, Nobel Prize winner (Literature).

«Distrust all men whose impulse to punish is powerful.»
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher.

And so to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honour, and peace, until the Gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.»
George Bernard Shaw.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.»
Voltaire

One should look at consolidating the right to life instead of imposing the death penalty, which has a very poor recognised effect in deterring crimes.»
Ashraf Qazi, Special Representative of the U.N., opposing the resumption of executions in Iraq, BBC News, 8/20/2005.

The death sentence is a barbaric act. I hope the whole of the United States will follow Governor Ryan's example in commuting the death sentence. The death penalty is a reflection of the animal instinct still in human beings.
Nelson Mandela, former South African President, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.»
Mahatma Ghandi.

Can the state, which represents the whole of society and has the duty of protecting society, fulfill that duty by lowering itself to the level of the murderer, and treating him as he treated others? The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process. And I believe that future generations, throughout the world, will come to agree. The U.N. does not support death penalty. In all the courts we have set up (U.N. officials) have not included death penalty.
Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations.

This law should not have been necessary because no civilized, mature society would ever entertain the possibility of executing anybody who was mentally retarded.
Ernie Chambers, State Senator, Nebraska,

Til the infallibility of human judgement shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.
Marquis de Sade



Brassens_Gare au gorille
Uploaded by kitsch. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

Sat, Apr 3, 2010  Permanent link

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a Skeptic.

I

am

too

much

of

skeptic

to

deny

the

possibility

of

anything.










Quote : T.H.Huxley
image : unknown
video : "White Cat Black Cat", Emir Kusturitza, music by Goran Bregovic

Tue, Mar 30, 2010  Permanent link

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borges & i

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.


I do not know which of us has written this page.







text: Jorge Luis Borges
video: syncopath

Sat, Mar 13, 2010  Permanent link

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