AK's idea to use the smoke of a cigarette and the cigarette in the hikinuku scene detailed below in his post, is interesting and I would like to try out a corresponding use of same:
The 'pataphysical dance (formerly Aristotle dance... or perhaps simply 'triangles'...) will according to my tentative plans use a dry ice machine to emit smoke clouds from the corners of the stage.
A spectator looks at the screen at: the 4 triangle capes from above, with the UV light projecting (or flashing if we can't get use the UV bulb in the projector) a spiral motif onto the white capes, and smoke plumes spiralling into the scene from the 4 corners. A pseudo-alchemical ceremony, a spectacle too.
Then, the camera pans lower and the source of the smoke is revealed: an extremely large cigarette (prop) which is evidently a fake prop. Or, perhaps it is carried across the scene of the four dancers by a stage hand. (To some polite coughing would be too much)
The connection to the cigarette of the hikinuku is apparent: what is suggested poetically in that scene is distorted in the 'pataphysical. What is elegant in the hikinuku scene is made hyperbolic in the 'pataphysical. This potential relationship could set up nicely two points on a continuum which we are already exploring... the occident/orient, truth/untruth, recognition/exploitation (?)...
SH
Friday, 22 October 2010
CONGRATS CONAL RE: LUX!
Analysis of the Divine Word, LUX:
THE SIGN OF OSIRIS SLAIN! - T (NOT SHOWN)
THE SIGN OF ISIS IN MOURNING! - L
THE SIGN OF TYPHON AND APOPHIS! - V
THE SIGN OF OSIRIS RISEN! - X
LUX!
LET THE DIVINE LIGHT DESCEND!
THE SIGN OF OSIRIS SLAIN! - T (NOT SHOWN)
THE SIGN OF ISIS IN MOURNING! - L
THE SIGN OF TYPHON AND APOPHIS! - V
THE SIGN OF OSIRIS RISEN! - X
LUX!
LET THE DIVINE LIGHT DESCEND!
Simplified Hikinuki Dance (AK)
I hope you are all well. been mentioning bits of this to Conal, but wanted to pull it all together here. I think - based on time, etc, AND aesthetic considerations - I personally think that the simpler the Hikinuki section/series of images is the better. This would contrast with the more choreographed, ordered section that Simone has come up with.
1) In 'The Heron Maiden' the dance begins with Tamasuburo rising through the stage. I like this as a simple metaphor for the idea of something coming out of nothingness, of an emergent property appearing from the chaotic system, of subjectivity being born (this last point, in relation to the rending of the garment and the splitting of the subject).
2) The 'rising' could be achieved by the figure rising through the stage on some kind of deus et machina thingy - but this is impractical, expensive and time consuming. What about the figure rising before a static camera, the figure on some kind of see-saw that lifts him/her, and then possibly a final shot of them standing on the ground. Hey presto - done by editing?
3) Rather than hem the gauze garment - which would make them heavy - if we work on the pattern and get that right and just make them without a hem then we save time and weight and the gauze looks more diaphanous. Save a lot of time and unnecessary work, I feel.
4) We could paint the Lacanian diagrams onto naked torsos rather than print onto the gauze, or project the diagrams.
5) A small cut at the front and the back of the 'Lacan kimono' costume would mean that rather than pulling the garment off, in a traditional hikinuki fashion, we could rip it off the static dancer/person's body. I think this would look beautiful slowed down (same flowing speed that the subject rises initially in).
6) The 'dance' or action would then be:
i) Person rises in Lacan guaze kimono, possibly extends arms so the diagram can be projected.
ii) Kimono ripped off by 'stage hands', seen or not.
iii) Person walks backwards in a slightly supplicant pose, as the Heron Maiden does after her first hikinuki.
iv) The process begins again.
7th) And final point! I think we could set a date to practice make-up on Leanne, if she is still up for the Yoko section. I think that the text piece (me as Conal as me discussing elements of the process of making this peice) would work as a voice over for the Yoko 'performance'.
1) In 'The Heron Maiden' the dance begins with Tamasuburo rising through the stage. I like this as a simple metaphor for the idea of something coming out of nothingness, of an emergent property appearing from the chaotic system, of subjectivity being born (this last point, in relation to the rending of the garment and the splitting of the subject).
2) The 'rising' could be achieved by the figure rising through the stage on some kind of deus et machina thingy - but this is impractical, expensive and time consuming. What about the figure rising before a static camera, the figure on some kind of see-saw that lifts him/her, and then possibly a final shot of them standing on the ground. Hey presto - done by editing?
3) Rather than hem the gauze garment - which would make them heavy - if we work on the pattern and get that right and just make them without a hem then we save time and weight and the gauze looks more diaphanous. Save a lot of time and unnecessary work, I feel.
4) We could paint the Lacanian diagrams onto naked torsos rather than print onto the gauze, or project the diagrams.
5) A small cut at the front and the back of the 'Lacan kimono' costume would mean that rather than pulling the garment off, in a traditional hikinuki fashion, we could rip it off the static dancer/person's body. I think this would look beautiful slowed down (same flowing speed that the subject rises initially in).
6) The 'dance' or action would then be:
i) Person rises in Lacan guaze kimono, possibly extends arms so the diagram can be projected.
ii) Kimono ripped off by 'stage hands', seen or not.
iii) Person walks backwards in a slightly supplicant pose, as the Heron Maiden does after her first hikinuki.
iv) The process begins again.
7th) And final point! I think we could set a date to practice make-up on Leanne, if she is still up for the Yoko section. I think that the text piece (me as Conal as me discussing elements of the process of making this peice) would work as a voice over for the Yoko 'performance'.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Dazzling outfits- modelled by Simone!
James Clerk Maxwell, Tartan Ribbon, 1861
Simone said she wasn't up for it but I suggested a James Clerk Maxwell impersonator - he was a man of 30 when he took this photograph- the first colour photo- I could step in wearing all but the pictured bow . .
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
The air of the cold genius from Purcell's King Arthur
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsWJniZht1A&feature=related
I think if we end up with something like this we're onto a winner! MY favourite thing this hour is to open several browsers at once and let them compete..
I think if we end up with something like this we're onto a winner! MY favourite thing this hour is to open several browsers at once and let them compete..
Friday, 8 October 2010
Tamasaburo going to the Japonist bridge in Inversnaid to meet another version of - himself as Gerard Manley Hopkins.
This is an adaptation of the final scene of my second book. The book will never be finished in the usual sense. Not sure how or if we could use this. Its a parody of the voiceover from the Tamasaburo Kabuki plays/dances on youtube, and a parody of my own earlier style as a slightly romantic, blood and tears writer. Again, an avoidance of an 'immediate' expression, on my part. A parody of the search for artistic truth and origin.
-
Tamasaburo asked the way to the river whilst still on the boat, and was directed to the empty grey ash path in front of him. The sun had risen, but it was unseen, hidden behind a thick low covering of cloud that obliterated the peaks above. He thought the river would be close to the road, couldn’t imagine Hopkin’s in the difficult landscape, the scrawny poet-priest’s soutane slapping against him as he traversed the same bleak path a century before. The poet had come with a companion, a guide, Tamasaburo imagined, walking the road and distracting him, Hopkin’s not listening, smiling but internally appalled by the horror of the raw and seeping nature before him. And then the scene changing in the poet’s inscape, his perspective shifting as the dark, brumal groin in the landscape became a tabernacle, the river becoming biblical; an Edenic stream flowing from his feet.
Tamasaburo could hear the river in the distance, the sound of a constant exhalation, an increasing exultation as he moved towards the unseen source, the words from the poem he had written for the poet folded in his pocket, rising in his mind.
Come springtime my heart leaps,
as I go to view the flowers,
where, by mountain hamlets,
the valley river roars with a noise like rainfall,
drowning out the wind blowing through the pines.
There seemed no evidence of spring or him here yet, the season, like everything, still undecided, early spring or late autumn.
Adorn yourself and follow,
for their faces are made-up in colours, red, white and pink.
How enchanting! How enchanting!
Blossoms of just forteen days.
But no colour here, the black of his usual garb making Tamasaburo appear like a decaying black tree moving, unnatural, over the landscape. And then the copied, twisted and inverted words of his own poem, written on the back of the first, answering his own love letter.
Winter comes, my heart in hiding,
as I walk over the barren fields,
where, by mountain villages,
the river roars by with the sound of an unseen storm,
drowning the cruel wind that moans through the branches.
The falls had come into view and were nothing like how he desired them to be – a japonist Victorian iron parabola spanned the river, conquering the fast flowing water beneath, tidily channelling the chthonic tumult. He mounted the bridge and his eyes darted along the path on the other side until it appeared to end, suspended in mid air. It turned and fell sharply into an impenetrable screen of pine trees, where he stood, watching.
Tear your clothes and follow,
for their faces are made-up in black, white and grey.
How sad, how sad - the dying flowers of fourteen days.
I watch him emerge from the scrubland, his head darting and bobbing, the shadow of a white heron that I barely recognise as him. He is wearing a black mourning coat; his chest is covered in black cotton that parts the heavy wool covering, his legs wrapped in charcoal canvas. He cannot see me here. I watch him for half an hour as he paces back and forward over the bridge, unsure, lifting his head and tilting it back to look into the distance. Before he leaves he kneels on the bridge, facing away from me, and bends forward or leans back, I cannot tell, black folding into black, a ritual with no point. I see a white ball fall from his hand into the river; it hits the water and expands, a sheet of blank paper moving through the chaos. A poem for the river.
-
Tamasaburo asked the way to the river whilst still on the boat, and was directed to the empty grey ash path in front of him. The sun had risen, but it was unseen, hidden behind a thick low covering of cloud that obliterated the peaks above. He thought the river would be close to the road, couldn’t imagine Hopkin’s in the difficult landscape, the scrawny poet-priest’s soutane slapping against him as he traversed the same bleak path a century before. The poet had come with a companion, a guide, Tamasaburo imagined, walking the road and distracting him, Hopkin’s not listening, smiling but internally appalled by the horror of the raw and seeping nature before him. And then the scene changing in the poet’s inscape, his perspective shifting as the dark, brumal groin in the landscape became a tabernacle, the river becoming biblical; an Edenic stream flowing from his feet.
Tamasaburo could hear the river in the distance, the sound of a constant exhalation, an increasing exultation as he moved towards the unseen source, the words from the poem he had written for the poet folded in his pocket, rising in his mind.
Come springtime my heart leaps,
as I go to view the flowers,
where, by mountain hamlets,
the valley river roars with a noise like rainfall,
drowning out the wind blowing through the pines.
There seemed no evidence of spring or him here yet, the season, like everything, still undecided, early spring or late autumn.
Adorn yourself and follow,
for their faces are made-up in colours, red, white and pink.
How enchanting! How enchanting!
Blossoms of just forteen days.
But no colour here, the black of his usual garb making Tamasaburo appear like a decaying black tree moving, unnatural, over the landscape. And then the copied, twisted and inverted words of his own poem, written on the back of the first, answering his own love letter.
Winter comes, my heart in hiding,
as I walk over the barren fields,
where, by mountain villages,
the river roars by with the sound of an unseen storm,
drowning the cruel wind that moans through the branches.
The falls had come into view and were nothing like how he desired them to be – a japonist Victorian iron parabola spanned the river, conquering the fast flowing water beneath, tidily channelling the chthonic tumult. He mounted the bridge and his eyes darted along the path on the other side until it appeared to end, suspended in mid air. It turned and fell sharply into an impenetrable screen of pine trees, where he stood, watching.
Tear your clothes and follow,
for their faces are made-up in black, white and grey.
How sad, how sad - the dying flowers of fourteen days.
I watch him emerge from the scrubland, his head darting and bobbing, the shadow of a white heron that I barely recognise as him. He is wearing a black mourning coat; his chest is covered in black cotton that parts the heavy wool covering, his legs wrapped in charcoal canvas. He cannot see me here. I watch him for half an hour as he paces back and forward over the bridge, unsure, lifting his head and tilting it back to look into the distance. Before he leaves he kneels on the bridge, facing away from me, and bends forward or leans back, I cannot tell, black folding into black, a ritual with no point. I see a white ball fall from his hand into the river; it hits the water and expands, a sheet of blank paper moving through the chaos. A poem for the river.
Voice-Over Ideas
Going to work on this - mapping the flow of the research narrative through ebay, etc. It's based on the tone of some of Conal's text and spoken word pieces for his films. Me being him being me, I suppose. Means I can avoid 'expression', which I like. (AK)
She says she suffers from Yoko Syndrome.
It’s when French people go to Tokyo-old-Edo and start fainting.
Just fall to pieces.
I turned around and said to her – I thought that was Kristeva Syndrome.
No, she said.
No, that’s when rich French melancholic academics go to China in the 80s and have a China Crisis.
I just didn’t know what to say to her after that.
I mean.
Mmm.
No.
That’s a Glasgow Crisis.
Marry one of the Pastels.
Yip.
No the other one.
Big in Japan apparently.
She saw Bowie in Ziggie in a Kemp thing in the Citz in the 70s in drag in a Yamamoto Hikinuki Kimono dress, no, in the Barrowlands.
Neither either nor or Ono.
Yip.
Think Kemp’s ‘Onnagata’.
Whose elongated vowels?
Hmmm.
Yip.
She says she suffers from Yoko Syndrome.
It’s when French people go to Tokyo-old-Edo and start fainting.
Just fall to pieces.
I turned around and said to her – I thought that was Kristeva Syndrome.
No, she said.
No, that’s when rich French melancholic academics go to China in the 80s and have a China Crisis.
I just didn’t know what to say to her after that.
I mean.
Mmm.
No.
That’s a Glasgow Crisis.
Marry one of the Pastels.
Yip.
No the other one.
Big in Japan apparently.
She saw Bowie in Ziggie in a Kemp thing in the Citz in the 70s in drag in a Yamamoto Hikinuki Kimono dress, no, in the Barrowlands.
Neither either nor or Ono.
Yip.
Think Kemp’s ‘Onnagata’.
Whose elongated vowels?
Hmmm.
Yip.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Routine ideas
Pun intended!
The following is a concept for a (sequential for now) dance performance, which I hope will tickle your tonsils. I use many of the ideas discussed amongst us. I wish to work on some further ideas which Conal raised much earlier (see his post below) concerning filming techniques in relation to the dance aesthetics of repetition and sequential narrative. But I have come up with this tentative structure for the choreography. I describe the structure, then I pose some questions.
So:
Imagine a black screen.
4 dancers shown in bird's eye view stand together forming a circle - like my initial 'aristotle dance' set-up. They wear all-white capes, again, as described in the aristotle dance. So they look like 4 isoceles triangles whose points meet in the centre of the circle. (This mimics the way that the fortune teller origami looks.) They are standing on a black floor.
Gauze layers are added to each dancer according to the instruction of the fortune teller, which has the Lacanian glyphs and marks on it. So the dancers gradually become encumbered with layers of Lacanian gauze.
The dancers move in a circle to the rhythm of the fortune teller's fingers' movements, and they stop still when the fortune teller opens and the instruction then is carried out by stage hands dressed in all black, so as not to be seen.
(Where is the fortune teller origami displayed? In a split-screen section of the screen? As a semi-transparent overlay on top of the dancers? As a separate cut-away shot on its own? Is it a voice chanting a rhythm and announcing the fate?)
Once all the Lacanian glyphs have been added to the dancers' costumes, their rotation ceases - this could be to the sound of a percussive noise like a clap, or beat. They stand still.
Now the kick-flare gesture is performed by all 4 dancers. So we see the dancers' gauze layers billow, from above. The dancers cease the kick-flare, turn to face outwards and stop. now they will look like a white star from above.
The camera point of view changes now (cut-away) so that we see the first dancer (not sure if each is distinctively or uniformly costumed) straight-on, but we can also see the others standing adjacent.
The 1st dancer performs minute gestures similar to those of Tamasuburo's heron. Stage hands dressed in black carry out hikinuku: 3 costumes are removed. Because we are watching from front-on, we are able to see a costume under the gauze layers which hadn't been visible from the bird's eye view. So the gauze layers are removed, then the white cape, then the costume that is underneath but which we have now had glimpses of. It is then fully revealed. (what is it?)
When it too is finally removed, the dancer is dressed entirely in black and folds down into a crouching position so that it looks as if there is no one there, just a pile of folded materials.
Now the camera glides to the 2nd dancer. They carry out similar gestures as above, but different, and when their gauze then cape is removed their costume is revealed.
(again - what is it?) They too have this removed and then crouch down.
The camera moves to the third dancer - same as above.
The camera moves to the fourth dancer - who follows suit.
Nnow the camera cuts away to a bird's eye view. We see 4 piles of fabric in the centre of the black screen, presumably like four strange anemone flowers.
Immediately, this plays back in reverse.
When we see the start there needs to be some technical edit so we can insert a new film, but it ought to look invisibly spliced in. Imagine the four dancers in the circle as at the start, wearing the white capes. The capes are removed: seen from above, but then the camera view immediately shifts so that we see the dancers straight-on.
...
And there, I got stuck! Well, I took a tea break and then was distracted. I love the idea of the humoured procession with unwrapping of boxes to find the golden phallus, and I also did not include the great costumes made by Conal - I ran out of steam, but will continue later tonight.
The questions:
1) Do we choreograph individual short narratives, and then layer them/splice them/ etc in production? Or will some as I suggest above work with each other so we have maybe two or three longer sequences, which we can edit, rather than four or five sequences. Which could be too confusing for the viewer: unless we are making cognitive overload an outright point!
2) How do we film the origami fortune teller, if at all?
3) How do we bring in the use of visible text, if at all?
4) What sounds should we use? Will it be singing, speaking, instrumental, percussive etc?
5) How about using a giant, golden Greek F symbol i.e. Lacan's phallic symbol or do you deliberately want to bring in ribald sexual puns? Rather than obscure structuralist ones...!
6) Could there be a large golden penis-shaped phallus out of which jumps out a mountain troll? or white rabbit...
Yours: SH.
The following is a concept for a (sequential for now) dance performance, which I hope will tickle your tonsils. I use many of the ideas discussed amongst us. I wish to work on some further ideas which Conal raised much earlier (see his post below) concerning filming techniques in relation to the dance aesthetics of repetition and sequential narrative. But I have come up with this tentative structure for the choreography. I describe the structure, then I pose some questions.
So:
Imagine a black screen.
4 dancers shown in bird's eye view stand together forming a circle - like my initial 'aristotle dance' set-up. They wear all-white capes, again, as described in the aristotle dance. So they look like 4 isoceles triangles whose points meet in the centre of the circle. (This mimics the way that the fortune teller origami looks.) They are standing on a black floor.
Gauze layers are added to each dancer according to the instruction of the fortune teller, which has the Lacanian glyphs and marks on it. So the dancers gradually become encumbered with layers of Lacanian gauze.
The dancers move in a circle to the rhythm of the fortune teller's fingers' movements, and they stop still when the fortune teller opens and the instruction then is carried out by stage hands dressed in all black, so as not to be seen.
(Where is the fortune teller origami displayed? In a split-screen section of the screen? As a semi-transparent overlay on top of the dancers? As a separate cut-away shot on its own? Is it a voice chanting a rhythm and announcing the fate?)
Once all the Lacanian glyphs have been added to the dancers' costumes, their rotation ceases - this could be to the sound of a percussive noise like a clap, or beat. They stand still.
Now the kick-flare gesture is performed by all 4 dancers. So we see the dancers' gauze layers billow, from above. The dancers cease the kick-flare, turn to face outwards and stop. now they will look like a white star from above.
The camera point of view changes now (cut-away) so that we see the first dancer (not sure if each is distinctively or uniformly costumed) straight-on, but we can also see the others standing adjacent.
The 1st dancer performs minute gestures similar to those of Tamasuburo's heron. Stage hands dressed in black carry out hikinuku: 3 costumes are removed. Because we are watching from front-on, we are able to see a costume under the gauze layers which hadn't been visible from the bird's eye view. So the gauze layers are removed, then the white cape, then the costume that is underneath but which we have now had glimpses of. It is then fully revealed. (what is it?)
When it too is finally removed, the dancer is dressed entirely in black and folds down into a crouching position so that it looks as if there is no one there, just a pile of folded materials.
Now the camera glides to the 2nd dancer. They carry out similar gestures as above, but different, and when their gauze then cape is removed their costume is revealed.
(again - what is it?) They too have this removed and then crouch down.
The camera moves to the third dancer - same as above.
The camera moves to the fourth dancer - who follows suit.
Nnow the camera cuts away to a bird's eye view. We see 4 piles of fabric in the centre of the black screen, presumably like four strange anemone flowers.
Immediately, this plays back in reverse.
When we see the start there needs to be some technical edit so we can insert a new film, but it ought to look invisibly spliced in. Imagine the four dancers in the circle as at the start, wearing the white capes. The capes are removed: seen from above, but then the camera view immediately shifts so that we see the dancers straight-on.
...
And there, I got stuck! Well, I took a tea break and then was distracted. I love the idea of the humoured procession with unwrapping of boxes to find the golden phallus, and I also did not include the great costumes made by Conal - I ran out of steam, but will continue later tonight.
The questions:
1) Do we choreograph individual short narratives, and then layer them/splice them/ etc in production? Or will some as I suggest above work with each other so we have maybe two or three longer sequences, which we can edit, rather than four or five sequences. Which could be too confusing for the viewer: unless we are making cognitive overload an outright point!
2) How do we film the origami fortune teller, if at all?
3) How do we bring in the use of visible text, if at all?
4) What sounds should we use? Will it be singing, speaking, instrumental, percussive etc?
5) How about using a giant, golden Greek F symbol i.e. Lacan's phallic symbol or do you deliberately want to bring in ribald sexual puns? Rather than obscure structuralist ones...!
6) Could there be a large golden penis-shaped phallus out of which jumps out a mountain troll? or white rabbit...
Yours: SH.
Lacan's Four Discourses
I mentioned this a few days ago in the studio. Going to read the articles now.
http://www.lacan.com/zizfour.htm - primarily, the dicourse of the university.
http://www.lacan.com/hystericdiscf.htm - hysteria.
There are also the disocurses of 'the master' and 'the analyst'. Very interesting conception about how power and subjectivity work and stand in relation to language.
AK
http://www.lacan.com/zizfour.htm - primarily, the dicourse of the university.
http://www.lacan.com/hystericdiscf.htm - hysteria.
There are also the disocurses of 'the master' and 'the analyst'. Very interesting conception about how power and subjectivity work and stand in relation to language.
AK
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Monday, 6 September 2010
Clinamen and 'Pataphysics - The exception
Here are some links:
'Pataphysics - http://www.college-de-pataphysique.fr/presentation_en.html
Oulipo - http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/curator/poucel/intro.html
Clinamen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen
And this discusses the appropriation of the concept of the clinamen in late 20th century writing by philosophers/thinkers:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AD7w2L8EOv0C&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=the+birth+of+physics+michel+serres+clinamen&source=web&ots=rfZixqhJE_&sig=VyrhqbVTFuR_LIujJKuBE1Xym_A&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#v=onepage&q=the%20birth%20of%20physics%20michel%20serres%20clinamen&f=false
The Oulipian's definition of clinamen, taken from the book: Oulipo Compendium eds. Alistair Brotchie and Harry Mathews. Download the image to your desktop so that you can rotate it to read it - I have had problems tonight getting it up here. Bloody technology. Primitive functions!
Alfred Jarry - http://www.ralphmag.org/jarry.html
ADDITION: forgot to give some more information on Alfred Jarry... I will email you all a small number of PDFs - articles and reviews and poems, which ought to help provide some idea of who Alfred Jarry was and what his work was like.
My idea for the Greek masks - based on a statue depicting Demeter's daughter, Kore, whcih I found from looking for the Aristophanes' play: Thesmophoriazusae.. what do you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesmophoriazusae
NB: the play itself. I was reading about Aristophanes to educate myself a little about the history of dramatic comedy in Greece. This play is feminist to some extent and therefore politically interesting for being both a comedy and a feminist work. Who knows if it is good though... need to read it.
Finally, two links to info about Aristotle's logic:http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2n.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/
'Pataphysics - http://www.college-de-pataphysique.fr/presentation_en.html
Oulipo - http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/oulipo/feature-oulipo/curator/poucel/intro.html
Clinamen - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen
And this discusses the appropriation of the concept of the clinamen in late 20th century writing by philosophers/thinkers:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AD7w2L8EOv0C&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=the+birth+of+physics+michel+serres+clinamen&source=web&ots=rfZixqhJE_&sig=VyrhqbVTFuR_LIujJKuBE1Xym_A&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#v=onepage&q=the%20birth%20of%20physics%20michel%20serres%20clinamen&f=false
The Oulipian's definition of clinamen, taken from the book: Oulipo Compendium eds. Alistair Brotchie and Harry Mathews. Download the image to your desktop so that you can rotate it to read it - I have had problems tonight getting it up here. Bloody technology. Primitive functions!
Alfred Jarry - http://www.ralphmag.org/jarry.html
ADDITION: forgot to give some more information on Alfred Jarry... I will email you all a small number of PDFs - articles and reviews and poems, which ought to help provide some idea of who Alfred Jarry was and what his work was like.
My idea for the Greek masks - based on a statue depicting Demeter's daughter, Kore, whcih I found from looking for the Aristophanes' play: Thesmophoriazusae.. what do you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesmophoriazusae
NB: the play itself. I was reading about Aristophanes to educate myself a little about the history of dramatic comedy in Greece. This play is feminist to some extent and therefore politically interesting for being both a comedy and a feminist work. Who knows if it is good though... need to read it.
Finally, two links to info about Aristotle's logic:http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2n.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Sex on the Table - AK
I am primarily responding to the Lacanian diagrams as aesthetic forms – this may be because I am already very familiar with their intellectual meanings and connotations. That said, here’s my interp of the Table of Sexuation:
The phallic function is the castration performed by the symbolic. For Lacan, acting as a psychoanalyst-semiotician, this castration is language based - not based on the threat of the removal of a sexual organ, but the effects that language has on the subject, and the subsequent coded sexual activities of the sexed body. The castration or phallic function is related to Lacan's 'name-of-the-Father', or the 'No!' of the Father, that separates the child from the Mother, or rather, brings the child into phallically dominated or ordered language. The phallic function alienates the subject in language, forces one to loose or give up absolute access to jouissance - where pleasure and pain meet. Lacan argues that every child, whether 'biologically male or female', must accept castration (separation from the mother and the fantasy that he or she is all and fulfils her very need) in order to have different symbolic and sexual relationships around the phallus, as sexual beings. The symbolic phallus in language, therefore, is the signifier. As Lacan state in his paper 'The Signification of the Phallus': 'It is a signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified'. The idea of the symbolic phallic signifier as 'whole' is useful here, as it is wholly empty. The phallus can be thought of as the 'empty universal', the empty sign. As Lacan writes in 1973: 'It is the signifier which does not have a signified'. The castrating aspect of this symbolic phallic function then, is the laying down of the bar that guarantees contingency, over the subject - it bars the subject from absolute access to the life threatening Real, and underlines the impossibility of the subjects Absolute satiety. The phallus is a sham.
A bone of contention still remains within post-Lacanian feminist responses to the phallic function. It is argued for example that the phallus as privileged signifier is really only Freud's theory of the penis and any privileging of the penis continues to guarantee male domination. But, as I have noted, Lacan argues that no sexed subject owns the phallus, both all are symbolically 'castrated', i.e., born into language that separates them from the Whole (even although they may have different sexual organs). Derrida, in the other hand, argues that as a privileged signifier, the phallus acts as a transcendental guarantor of meaning in relation to logocentrism, creating a phallogocentric latent humanist universe. I would argue in a cursory way, that as an empty or quasi universal, or an historically and contingently constructed fallacy, the phallus is the illusory foundation of transcendental justifications. It is neither a positive or negative theology, it is a atopia, chora or tabernacle where meaning is created to be located - not innocently discovered. It must also be said that in his later career Lacan privileges the use of the object 'a' as a replacement or substitute for the term phallus - he could have easily used the letter 'X'.]
Now to the lower section of the table. On the side of the male, Lacan locates the Universal and Univeralising sign for the male barred subject: S (I can't draw a line through the S here, but there should be one). The male subject as a signifier is barred internally because he is barred from the Other, separated, split, as a subject thrust into language and it's inability to give the subject access to the Other. The barred subject represents alienation in language, the split brought about by the first empty master signifier - the 'No!' of the Father - that puts limitations on the child.
The arrow of fantasy that joins this sign to the letter 'a' - which is in Lacanian terminology the 'objet a' (a for 'autre'/other), demonstrates that the subject believes and fantasises fulfilment and the generation of desire via the part object or fetish object that can be found in the desirable partner - who is here, on the side of women. Remember, any subject can occupy any aspect of this equation. Because as Lacan argues, 'the sexual relationship does not exist' - there is no clear cut, unmediated relationship between the subjugated sexes - the male relates to the woman as a collection of desirable signifiers or 'objet a'. An aspect of her (not all of her) finds a certain pleasure in his relation to the phallus - the phallus being a signifier of lack and desire, which he has (as he stands in total relation to the castrating phallic function), and she is (in that she is his object of desire, 'a', that he feels will give him access to the Other). For the male to be in total relation to the phallic function means that his desire is limited by the incest taboo laid down by the father, and that to unanchor this would cause psychosis by foreclosing the 'Name-of-the-Father'.
On the side of the woman - facing this bared subject, is the subject or signifier of the barred Other: S(A) (line through the 'A'). This can be understood to mean that on the side of the woman, as part of the feminine structure, there is an aspect that relates to the barred subject; the fact that subjectivity is based on the barred Other. This means that the female is not entirely in the symbolic or ruled by language, but that that Otherness is barred and split. We can interpret this to mean that the Other, as Mother, as the unattainable Wholeness that is projected by the barred subject, is not as complete as that subject believes, she also desires and has jouissance beyond the signifier - a jouissance that castration and the phallic function forget. This signifier of the barred Other stands in fantastical relation to the conception of Woman as Whole, Universal, satiated and One. This is an impossible fantasy of Goddess-like omnipotence that counters the pathetic God-like position on the opposite side that aims at Universality. The woman, as a definite article of faith, does not exist. The singular definable woman that stands directly in relation to man, as his other, or as the other half that makes him whole is a myth. She is not One, as Irigary would tell us, she is many. The dream of symmetry that haunts masculinist fantasies of obliteration in the arms of the Mother is here fragmented and exposed. This is why Lacan uses the hyperbolic statement: 'The Woman does not exist.' The Woman is related to the phallic function, which appears on the side of the male here, which demonstrates that she cannot be qualified in relation to this function alone, but can desire it on the side of the masculine structure. The feminine structure proves that the phallic function has its limits, and that the signifier is not everything. The 'not all', or the 'not One' of the Woman is excessive - she says yes and no and yes or no to it's dominance. She evades Universal encapsulation due to the constitutive split that the bar over the Other offers her, a gateway if you will over and under the phallic economy of symbolisation. This leads to a supplementary not complementary jouissance, which is a jouissance that is behind, before and beyond - over and under the phallic function.
Hope this helps.
The phallic function is the castration performed by the symbolic. For Lacan, acting as a psychoanalyst-semiotician, this castration is language based - not based on the threat of the removal of a sexual organ, but the effects that language has on the subject, and the subsequent coded sexual activities of the sexed body. The castration or phallic function is related to Lacan's 'name-of-the-Father', or the 'No!' of the Father, that separates the child from the Mother, or rather, brings the child into phallically dominated or ordered language. The phallic function alienates the subject in language, forces one to loose or give up absolute access to jouissance - where pleasure and pain meet. Lacan argues that every child, whether 'biologically male or female', must accept castration (separation from the mother and the fantasy that he or she is all and fulfils her very need) in order to have different symbolic and sexual relationships around the phallus, as sexual beings. The symbolic phallus in language, therefore, is the signifier. As Lacan state in his paper 'The Signification of the Phallus': 'It is a signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified'. The idea of the symbolic phallic signifier as 'whole' is useful here, as it is wholly empty. The phallus can be thought of as the 'empty universal', the empty sign. As Lacan writes in 1973: 'It is the signifier which does not have a signified'. The castrating aspect of this symbolic phallic function then, is the laying down of the bar that guarantees contingency, over the subject - it bars the subject from absolute access to the life threatening Real, and underlines the impossibility of the subjects Absolute satiety. The phallus is a sham.
A bone of contention still remains within post-Lacanian feminist responses to the phallic function. It is argued for example that the phallus as privileged signifier is really only Freud's theory of the penis and any privileging of the penis continues to guarantee male domination. But, as I have noted, Lacan argues that no sexed subject owns the phallus, both all are symbolically 'castrated', i.e., born into language that separates them from the Whole (even although they may have different sexual organs). Derrida, in the other hand, argues that as a privileged signifier, the phallus acts as a transcendental guarantor of meaning in relation to logocentrism, creating a phallogocentric latent humanist universe. I would argue in a cursory way, that as an empty or quasi universal, or an historically and contingently constructed fallacy, the phallus is the illusory foundation of transcendental justifications. It is neither a positive or negative theology, it is a atopia, chora or tabernacle where meaning is created to be located - not innocently discovered. It must also be said that in his later career Lacan privileges the use of the object 'a' as a replacement or substitute for the term phallus - he could have easily used the letter 'X'.]
Now to the lower section of the table. On the side of the male, Lacan locates the Universal and Univeralising sign for the male barred subject: S (I can't draw a line through the S here, but there should be one). The male subject as a signifier is barred internally because he is barred from the Other, separated, split, as a subject thrust into language and it's inability to give the subject access to the Other. The barred subject represents alienation in language, the split brought about by the first empty master signifier - the 'No!' of the Father - that puts limitations on the child.
The arrow of fantasy that joins this sign to the letter 'a' - which is in Lacanian terminology the 'objet a' (a for 'autre'/other), demonstrates that the subject believes and fantasises fulfilment and the generation of desire via the part object or fetish object that can be found in the desirable partner - who is here, on the side of women. Remember, any subject can occupy any aspect of this equation. Because as Lacan argues, 'the sexual relationship does not exist' - there is no clear cut, unmediated relationship between the subjugated sexes - the male relates to the woman as a collection of desirable signifiers or 'objet a'. An aspect of her (not all of her) finds a certain pleasure in his relation to the phallus - the phallus being a signifier of lack and desire, which he has (as he stands in total relation to the castrating phallic function), and she is (in that she is his object of desire, 'a', that he feels will give him access to the Other). For the male to be in total relation to the phallic function means that his desire is limited by the incest taboo laid down by the father, and that to unanchor this would cause psychosis by foreclosing the 'Name-of-the-Father'.
On the side of the woman - facing this bared subject, is the subject or signifier of the barred Other: S(A) (line through the 'A'). This can be understood to mean that on the side of the woman, as part of the feminine structure, there is an aspect that relates to the barred subject; the fact that subjectivity is based on the barred Other. This means that the female is not entirely in the symbolic or ruled by language, but that that Otherness is barred and split. We can interpret this to mean that the Other, as Mother, as the unattainable Wholeness that is projected by the barred subject, is not as complete as that subject believes, she also desires and has jouissance beyond the signifier - a jouissance that castration and the phallic function forget. This signifier of the barred Other stands in fantastical relation to the conception of Woman as Whole, Universal, satiated and One. This is an impossible fantasy of Goddess-like omnipotence that counters the pathetic God-like position on the opposite side that aims at Universality. The woman, as a definite article of faith, does not exist. The singular definable woman that stands directly in relation to man, as his other, or as the other half that makes him whole is a myth. She is not One, as Irigary would tell us, she is many. The dream of symmetry that haunts masculinist fantasies of obliteration in the arms of the Mother is here fragmented and exposed. This is why Lacan uses the hyperbolic statement: 'The Woman does not exist.' The Woman is related to the phallic function, which appears on the side of the male here, which demonstrates that she cannot be qualified in relation to this function alone, but can desire it on the side of the masculine structure. The feminine structure proves that the phallic function has its limits, and that the signifier is not everything. The 'not all', or the 'not One' of the Woman is excessive - she says yes and no and yes or no to it's dominance. She evades Universal encapsulation due to the constitutive split that the bar over the Other offers her, a gateway if you will over and under the phallic economy of symbolisation. This leads to a supplementary not complementary jouissance, which is a jouissance that is behind, before and beyond - over and under the phallic function.
Hope this helps.
Excited...
...by all the posts. Looking and sounding fascinating and I'm looking forward to hearing about how these ideas will be realised. My initial thought and instinct is for us to make four short inter-related films, thematically or formally linked, but to always remember to try and keep the work simple and elegant. Conceptual complexity can manifest as formal confusion. My old friend Rachel (the dancer) is making all the right noises, and is very much into the kabuki stuff I showed and described to her.
Oh, and Annie Srinkle posted this on her facebook page: http://feminapotens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=57 We could maybe put some money together and submit a proposal?
AK
Oh, and Annie Srinkle posted this on her facebook page: http://feminapotens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=57 We could maybe put some money together and submit a proposal?
AK
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
Gamma Wear
Hi- Sorry this took so long to get up- That's a problem I have in more than one sense!
This is the prototype and also the spinning-kimono-for-sale-version as I like to call it.
Alec was saying about how they hang on a horizontal and I had thought i would like to keep one of each positive and negative as props. . .
I like how aristotle is coming back into this (heaven knows why!?) and am getting a loose script from what I'm reading here. Becoming in relation to language, the oulipo programme in relation to the table posted in July and Artistotle's clinamen.
I have written a few notes to Stina (Jens' girlfriend) who is a dancer and choroegrapher- ( I like leasing some out to see what comes back) and think it good to sketch these ideas out as well as to add to what I want to send to her- a sort of warm up and dance out and even if it takes recording ourselves start sketching this out because that process in itself could be really interesting and generative and is in keeping with the content. The table in my studio is a fabulous stage!!!
I also really like the overlaps and the sense of a tension in a duality or a twin duality where one is always the exception. This concept in intself and the relation between the one and the multitude or the
self and other and phallic movement/ the beginning of a movement re: clinamen in the formula is quite a fertile area.
I like the idea of perhaps there being two views of the movement between Lacan s image if I may call it that- front on (aristotle's from above) alternating to present inconsistencies- like Bruce Nauman's floor tiles. Or even formal ambiguities between a mechanisitic movement or framing and a more intuitive hand held action/ framing. And then something else- photos taken at regular intervals- sound or something that comes from the process- that's neither one or the other- a still of moving footage or an interplay between image and monologue. Or perhaps a big costume of the fortune teller controlled by for people that spits out commands to the dancers! If only because its a pleasant metaphor for the quadrologue . . .
The fate of the action seems to be an interesting channel- what will become of it- what is it for?
If movement is required- If the image can suggest or hold a movement?If the image is necessary to the action- what happens to the image after the action and other permutations . . .
I'm loving the flow- !
This is the prototype and also the spinning-kimono-for-sale-version as I like to call it.
Alec was saying about how they hang on a horizontal and I had thought i would like to keep one of each positive and negative as props. . .
I have written a few notes to Stina (Jens' girlfriend) who is a dancer and choroegrapher- ( I like leasing some out to see what comes back) and think it good to sketch these ideas out as well as to add to what I want to send to her- a sort of warm up and dance out and even if it takes recording ourselves start sketching this out because that process in itself could be really interesting and generative and is in keeping with the content. The table in my studio is a fabulous stage!!!
I also really like the overlaps and the sense of a tension in a duality or a twin duality where one is always the exception. This concept in intself and the relation between the one and the multitude or the
self and other and phallic movement/ the beginning of a movement re: clinamen in the formula is quite a fertile area.
I like the idea of perhaps there being two views of the movement between Lacan s image if I may call it that- front on (aristotle's from above) alternating to present inconsistencies- like Bruce Nauman's floor tiles. Or even formal ambiguities between a mechanisitic movement or framing and a more intuitive hand held action/ framing. And then something else- photos taken at regular intervals- sound or something that comes from the process- that's neither one or the other- a still of moving footage or an interplay between image and monologue. Or perhaps a big costume of the fortune teller controlled by for people that spits out commands to the dancers! If only because its a pleasant metaphor for the quadrologue . . .
The fate of the action seems to be an interesting channel- what will become of it- what is it for?
If movement is required- If the image can suggest or hold a movement?If the image is necessary to the action- what happens to the image after the action and other permutations . . .
I'm loving the flow- !
Postscript
Earlier, I wrote a long and garbled post. I've left it in place as I'll need to refer to it. A scrapbook entry. I did not want to gloss over (if you will pardon the expression) Lacan's formulae of sexuation, which you had suggested might be used in your costume designs. I wanted to understand what the formulae were and work through some inevitably reactive ideas of my own. What intrigued me the most was the concept of the exception. But I have been interested in this concept before, and in slightly different articulations of it. I have yet to take it as a subject of study and do something worthwhile with it. Anyway: it is part of my rough ideas here at the moment.
In AK's last post below, I am very interested in the idea elaborated about the individual's need to seek out a sovereign subject for themselves. The quotation from Beckett resonates. Yes.
I would like to be at a point by the end of this weekend where I have a clearer task set out. What I have been thinking about is very general, and this is a problem; there are connections to AK's ideas as written below and to the costumes, but I need to work on mine more. I also need to enter into a real conversation with you all as soon as we can, to find out your comments on what I wish to discuss, and vice versa no doubt.
SH
In AK's last post below, I am very interested in the idea elaborated about the individual's need to seek out a sovereign subject for themselves. The quotation from Beckett resonates. Yes.
I would like to be at a point by the end of this weekend where I have a clearer task set out. What I have been thinking about is very general, and this is a problem; there are connections to AK's ideas as written below and to the costumes, but I need to work on mine more. I also need to enter into a real conversation with you all as soon as we can, to find out your comments on what I wish to discuss, and vice versa no doubt.
SH
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Sketches 1
The dancer's costume of cloak and mask: perhaps the mask should be attached differently so that in the side view, the forehead of the mask's face would be in line with the back of the dancer's skull.
I have not designed ideas for the mask - these then are to demonstrate the configuration of the dancers.
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Getting in Form(ulae) (Edited)
Before I start, I wish to state that my mathematics is poor as is my Lacanian reading, so please bear with my exposition. (I welcome your Q & A!)
I was looking up descriptions of Lacan's formulae of sexuation when I came across an interesting wiki entry on a Lacanian encyclopedia:
http://nosubject.com/Formulas_of_Sexuation
The entry claims that Lacan based his formulae on Aristotelian logic, according to which propositions are categorised into four classes:
1. Universal affirmative
2. Universal negative
3. Particular affirmative
4. Particular negative
THIS MARKS THE POINT FROM WHERE I EDITED MY POST - notes to help me more than anyone else...
According to the author, modern logic requires that the universal affirmative necessitates the existence of a particular negative. This particular negative correlates to the exception to the Phallic function which is described by the first male formula, in the top left of the table. There exists an exception on the female side of the table (in the first and second female formulae), which the wiki defines in terms of phallic jouissance: not all of the woman's jouissance is phallic jouissance. The jouissance which exists outside of the symbolic order, i.e. language, is an exception.
The exception as a general concept is a thing that is unknown. In Lacan, according to the wiki source, there is 'at least one exception'. There can be numerous exceptions then. And indeed, it is only in enumeration that the exception is acknowledged: I suggest that this is because it is unknown, even unpredictable; a mystery, how could its potential wealth of 'qualities' be accommodated? So, all that can be said in the present moment is 'there has to be at least one exception'.
I take the liberty of interpreting (because I sure do not understand!) the exception as the metaphor for those things or those beings which are not The One i.e. The Man. (Although this is a gross misinterpretation of Lacan such that I ought to relinquish any reference to his ideas. But I wish to move out from Lacan and use his formulae as an example of the problems inherent in any human symbolic Law - the inherent failure of them).
Following this, I regret that it seems impossible to define a continuum of exceptions, which would mean that the exceptions are not merely accounted for, literally. It seems as if the very logic used to describe the exception is part of the problem. Or, this is the melancholy of language.
I focus then on the exception.
An image came to mind some time before I thought about the above, of a bird's eye view camera Point-Of-View looking down upon the backs of four dancers arranged in a circle where their heads meet in the centre, like a flower. I will post my sketches after this post. Do you know a playground game of fortune, where you fold paper (which has various answers written on it according to rules of the game) such that you need to use both your hands to manipulate the paper, like a puppeted paper flower? I had a memory of this form when I thought of the configuration of the four dancers. I found examples of it for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_fortune_teller
http://www.mathematische-basteleien.de/fortune_teller.htm
Well, the ideas of chance and fortune associated with this game and to some extent, with the concept of the exception, influenced my idea for a performance. See the sketch I suppose.. !
The four dancers represent the four predicates of Aristotelian logic and thus also Lacan's formulae (although he goes against the rules of formal logic in creating the 'not-all', according to the wiki author above). Together in formation they create a circular figure, which is the emergent quality (of systems theory). The emergent quality is, until it comes into being and becomes part of a system, unpredictable, indistinguishable, unquantifiable: just like the exception.
The dancers move around in a circle: one revolution, at which point one actor lifts its head so that from the camera's POV, we see a Greek-style comedy mask. The actor lowers its head, and the group dance one more revolution. Each actor raises its head once. Then there is one more revolution, and then a costume change: Underneath the costume is like a jigsaw in that each actor comprises one part of the image printed over their backs. They have no masks on now either. I thought that the costume underneath could be all black if the first costume is all white or vice versa.
I also thought that it could be interesting to see the actors/dancers at the beginning of the film in the C & A (!) Lacanian-Yamamotoan dresses. One actor seen face on in full-size wearing the dress, the other three standing directly behind so we cannot at first detect them. Then they move out and form the configuration necessary to begin the revolution(s) I describe above...
I am thinking overall, or perhaps feeling is more apt, of the tragedy of challenge and defiance which I wish to approach as graceful tragicomedy instead. This feeling was stimulated by contemplating the idea of refusing to exploit the revelation of knowledge and the metaphorical device of Hikinuku to explore this.
(SH)
I was looking up descriptions of Lacan's formulae of sexuation when I came across an interesting wiki entry on a Lacanian encyclopedia:
http://nosubject.com/Formulas_of_Sexuation
The entry claims that Lacan based his formulae on Aristotelian logic, according to which propositions are categorised into four classes:
1. Universal affirmative
2. Universal negative
3. Particular affirmative
4. Particular negative
THIS MARKS THE POINT FROM WHERE I EDITED MY POST - notes to help me more than anyone else...
According to the author, modern logic requires that the universal affirmative necessitates the existence of a particular negative. This particular negative correlates to the exception to the Phallic function which is described by the first male formula, in the top left of the table. There exists an exception on the female side of the table (in the first and second female formulae), which the wiki defines in terms of phallic jouissance: not all of the woman's jouissance is phallic jouissance. The jouissance which exists outside of the symbolic order, i.e. language, is an exception.
The exception as a general concept is a thing that is unknown. In Lacan, according to the wiki source, there is 'at least one exception'. There can be numerous exceptions then. And indeed, it is only in enumeration that the exception is acknowledged: I suggest that this is because it is unknown, even unpredictable; a mystery, how could its potential wealth of 'qualities' be accommodated? So, all that can be said in the present moment is 'there has to be at least one exception'.
I take the liberty of interpreting (because I sure do not understand!) the exception as the metaphor for those things or those beings which are not The One i.e. The Man. (Although this is a gross misinterpretation of Lacan such that I ought to relinquish any reference to his ideas. But I wish to move out from Lacan and use his formulae as an example of the problems inherent in any human symbolic Law - the inherent failure of them).
Following this, I regret that it seems impossible to define a continuum of exceptions, which would mean that the exceptions are not merely accounted for, literally. It seems as if the very logic used to describe the exception is part of the problem. Or, this is the melancholy of language.
I focus then on the exception.
An image came to mind some time before I thought about the above, of a bird's eye view camera Point-Of-View looking down upon the backs of four dancers arranged in a circle where their heads meet in the centre, like a flower. I will post my sketches after this post. Do you know a playground game of fortune, where you fold paper (which has various answers written on it according to rules of the game) such that you need to use both your hands to manipulate the paper, like a puppeted paper flower? I had a memory of this form when I thought of the configuration of the four dancers. I found examples of it for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_fortune_teller
http://www.mathematische-basteleien.de/fortune_teller.htm
Well, the ideas of chance and fortune associated with this game and to some extent, with the concept of the exception, influenced my idea for a performance. See the sketch I suppose.. !
The four dancers represent the four predicates of Aristotelian logic and thus also Lacan's formulae (although he goes against the rules of formal logic in creating the 'not-all', according to the wiki author above). Together in formation they create a circular figure, which is the emergent quality (of systems theory). The emergent quality is, until it comes into being and becomes part of a system, unpredictable, indistinguishable, unquantifiable: just like the exception.
The dancers move around in a circle: one revolution, at which point one actor lifts its head so that from the camera's POV, we see a Greek-style comedy mask. The actor lowers its head, and the group dance one more revolution. Each actor raises its head once. Then there is one more revolution, and then a costume change: Underneath the costume is like a jigsaw in that each actor comprises one part of the image printed over their backs. They have no masks on now either. I thought that the costume underneath could be all black if the first costume is all white or vice versa.
I also thought that it could be interesting to see the actors/dancers at the beginning of the film in the C & A (!) Lacanian-Yamamotoan dresses. One actor seen face on in full-size wearing the dress, the other three standing directly behind so we cannot at first detect them. Then they move out and form the configuration necessary to begin the revolution(s) I describe above...
I am thinking overall, or perhaps feeling is more apt, of the tragedy of challenge and defiance which I wish to approach as graceful tragicomedy instead. This feeling was stimulated by contemplating the idea of refusing to exploit the revelation of knowledge and the metaphorical device of Hikinuku to explore this.
(SH)
Thursday, 19 August 2010
Starting the ball rolling.
I had a wonderful day with Conal struggling with initial concepts and looking at great fabrics. We knocked about a few design ideas and have decided to crack on with an initial copy and reinterpretation of the Yamamoto dress.
I have written a few sentences. I think we should plant and finally harvest bits of text here, if you have any.
The dancer appears to disappear, objectifying him/herself before the viewer, disappearing in the role, transcendent, the opposite of acting.
We present an exorcism and a bodying-forth, an invocation and re-imagining of the battered corpse that is the body after its deconstruction.
In this work performance and performativity (so easily confused and conflated by the ignorant) are not so much integrated as finally discarded as concepts. They have served their purpose. The common-sense conclusions reached by those hysterically obsessed by these terms are laughably obvious. Any Nietzschean aphorism on the subject revealed in a sentence that which hordes of careerist academics could not express in libraries full of sexed-up doctoral thesis, un-read readers, fodder-anthologies and mini-paper journals.
In order to express her/himself, each subject must make a leap of madness (Nietzsche) as a leap of faith (Derrida). One must speak as a subject and the subject in order to give the illusion of a particular sovereign subjectivity. This is an impossibility and demonstrates the contingency of our claims to universality (to speak as 'one'). BUT THEY MUST BE MADE. All words and therefore actions are generated out of the constitutive lack within langauge; its failure, Beckett's 'I can't go on, I'll go on...'
The work could examine the reality of a body scared and weighed down by academic discourse, a de-centred, fragmented and split subjectivity in relation to ethics and aesthetics (united as style), using japonisme as the theatre to expose this relationship. What is sought is a stylistics of existence, an awareness and examination of the overlap between ethics and aesthetics, subject and object, which simultaneously generates art objects and artistic agency as unstable but beautiful precipitates.
(AK)
I have written a few sentences. I think we should plant and finally harvest bits of text here, if you have any.
The dancer appears to disappear, objectifying him/herself before the viewer, disappearing in the role, transcendent, the opposite of acting.
In this work performance and performativity (so easily confused and conflated by the ignorant) are not so much integrated as finally discarded as concepts. They have served their purpose. The common-sense conclusions reached by those hysterically obsessed by these terms are laughably obvious. Any Nietzschean aphorism on the subject revealed in a sentence that which hordes of careerist academics could not express in libraries full of sexed-up doctoral thesis, un-read readers, fodder-anthologies and mini-paper journals.
In order to express her/himself, each subject must make a leap of madness (Nietzsche) as a leap of faith (Derrida). One must speak as a subject and the subject in order to give the illusion of a particular sovereign subjectivity. This is an impossibility and demonstrates the contingency of our claims to universality (to speak as 'one'). BUT THEY MUST BE MADE. All words and therefore actions are generated out of the constitutive lack within langauge; its failure, Beckett's 'I can't go on, I'll go on...'
The work could examine the reality of a body scared and weighed down by academic discourse, a de-centred, fragmented and split subjectivity in relation to ethics and aesthetics (united as style), using japonisme as the theatre to expose this relationship. What is sought is a stylistics of existence, an awareness and examination of the overlap between ethics and aesthetics, subject and object, which simultaneously generates art objects and artistic agency as unstable but beautiful precipitates.
(AK)
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Lacan Kimono - to be removed hikinuki-style.
Lacan's 'Table of Sexuation' painted in black on gauze. I seem to be designing costumes... (AK)
Friday, 13 August 2010
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Negative Yamamoto 2-D Idea.
Going to make these (as well as other details) into fabric 'patches' and bonda-web them on to a 2-dimensional version of the Yamamoto 'dress'.
Monday, 9 August 2010
Steven Arnold/ Kaisik Wong
I had a mental side step from Yamamoto and started thinking about Kaisik Wong and then came across
this clip of his collaborator Steven Arnold. . . a new documentary
http://www.stevenarnold.net/index.html
this clip of his collaborator Steven Arnold. . . a new documentary
Sunday, 8 August 2010
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Saturday, 7 August 2010
Kansai Yamamoto
Would love to re-create some of these designs. Love the 'hikinuki'/quick costume change, and the quality of the film.
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Butoh Dance Workshop
(AK)
I'd go to this but it is pricey:
http://glasgow.gumtree.com/glasgow/27/61330827.html
This workshop is for all of those who are willing to explore the sensibility of their own body and the trnasformative force of body moving.
No experience is necessery.
16-18 July 2010
Fri-Sat 11am-6pm
Sun 2pm-8pm
Venue:
St. Serf's Church Hall
Clark Road
EH5 3NP
Edinburgh
£95 per person (3-day workshop)
Contact:
tel: 07864267206 (Monika)
email: lb.takitoataki@gmail.com (Lukasz)
Imre's website: www.bodytaster.com
"In my workshop I do not convey any fixed form or technique, but the principles that form the basis of movement (spiral, wave, gravity, emotion etc.). We will focus on everyday movements like standing and walking, as well as on emotional forms of expression. We will establish a basis that will enable us to exchange conventional patterns of movement for fresh approaches that will help us to execute movements more easily. This workshop is for professionals in dance and theatre as well as for amateurs of all ages.
My work is based on a training of seven years in Tokyo with Kazuo Ohno (Butoh) and Noguchi Michizo (founder of Noguchi Taiso, a Japanese form of body work), and education in Alexander Technique and my experience as a dancer who is living the dance."
Imre Thormann
I'd go to this but it is pricey:
http://glasgow.gumtree.com/glasgow/27/61330827.html
This workshop is for all of those who are willing to explore the sensibility of their own body and the trnasformative force of body moving.
No experience is necessery.
16-18 July 2010
Fri-Sat 11am-6pm
Sun 2pm-8pm
Venue:
St. Serf's Church Hall
Clark Road
EH5 3NP
Edinburgh
£95 per person (3-day workshop)
Contact:
tel: 07864267206 (Monika)
email: lb.takitoataki@gmail.com (Lukasz)
Imre's website: www.bodytaster.com
"In my workshop I do not convey any fixed form or technique, but the principles that form the basis of movement (spiral, wave, gravity, emotion etc.). We will focus on everyday movements like standing and walking, as well as on emotional forms of expression. We will establish a basis that will enable us to exchange conventional patterns of movement for fresh approaches that will help us to execute movements more easily. This workshop is for professionals in dance and theatre as well as for amateurs of all ages.
My work is based on a training of seven years in Tokyo with Kazuo Ohno (Butoh) and Noguchi Michizo (founder of Noguchi Taiso, a Japanese form of body work), and education in Alexander Technique and my experience as a dancer who is living the dance."
Imre Thormann
Teatrico Olimpico, 1585
Teatrico Olimpico, 1585
The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza was Palladio s final commission and is still a working theatre.
The set was built for the opening of the theatre which was coincidentally the first modern production of Oedipus Rex.
In the film below the scene depicts Don Giovanni's man servant falling foul of a trick he and his master have conceived to dupe the virtuous Donna Anna by wearing masks so that they may immitate one another. The visual trickery of the theatre itself unfolds as the players undo the false perspective wandering through its streets and eventually confront the accused in the orchestra which in turn becomes a peculiar kind of court or 'court'.This notion of masquerade and deceit is used through out the film and the use of the setting for Oedpus Rex is interesting as not only does the tale of fate and filial duty relate to the Don Juan story but Don Giovanni happened to be Freud's favourite opera. I like Don Giovanni as a modern opera. Not everyone's motive are quite as they seem. And many of the public protestations of the individual characters conceal conflicted personal desires. The use of Palladio's architecture is particuarly interesting so too relaying classical themes through modern subjectivity.
Don Giovanni, 1979, Dir Joseph Losey.
The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza was Palladio s final commission and is still a working theatre.
The set was built for the opening of the theatre which was coincidentally the first modern production of Oedipus Rex.
In the film below the scene depicts Don Giovanni's man servant falling foul of a trick he and his master have conceived to dupe the virtuous Donna Anna by wearing masks so that they may immitate one another. The visual trickery of the theatre itself unfolds as the players undo the false perspective wandering through its streets and eventually confront the accused in the orchestra which in turn becomes a peculiar kind of court or 'court'.This notion of masquerade and deceit is used through out the film and the use of the setting for Oedpus Rex is interesting as not only does the tale of fate and filial duty relate to the Don Juan story but Don Giovanni happened to be Freud's favourite opera. I like Don Giovanni as a modern opera. Not everyone's motive are quite as they seem. And many of the public protestations of the individual characters conceal conflicted personal desires. The use of Palladio's architecture is particuarly interesting so too relaying classical themes through modern subjectivity.
Don Giovanni, 1979, Dir Joseph Losey.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
ALWIN NIKOLAIS
I have also looked at some of Alwin Nikolais' performances recently. Particularly Noumenon- and how it was criticised for objectifying the performer by conflating the distinction between setting, set and performer.
Noumenon, 1953
Noumenon, 1953
KEMP/ OHNO
I have been enjoying everyone's posts and now its time to respond- been letting everything sink in- its a good balm for sun burn anyway.
The Kemp Kabuki thing made me think about Butoh which I had come across in relation to Kabuki. Hence a few Kazuo Ohno clips.
I'm working backwards through car crash misappropriation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhsMLrZ4j6Y and abusing the dying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DzsJer_axM to the thing itself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jildd4L6_UM . . . But its an interesting journey- afforded by Youtube of course. Sorry having bother embeding video- maybe its my computer!
As to Kemp there's definitely a physical resemblance in the would-be drag as well as a generally unsettling atmosphere between the two. However I think the resemblance means little in relation to two quite distinct theatre traditions (Commedia dell'arte and Kabuki) but more the recognition of these two performers in particular.
The Kemp Kabuki thing made me think about Butoh which I had come across in relation to Kabuki. Hence a few Kazuo Ohno clips.
I'm working backwards through car crash misappropriation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhsMLrZ4j6Y and abusing the dying http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DzsJer_axM to the thing itself http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jildd4L6_UM . . . But its an interesting journey- afforded by Youtube of course. Sorry having bother embeding video- maybe its my computer!
As to Kemp there's definitely a physical resemblance in the would-be drag as well as a generally unsettling atmosphere between the two. However I think the resemblance means little in relation to two quite distinct theatre traditions (Commedia dell'arte and Kabuki) but more the recognition of these two performers in particular.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Clinamen and serendipity
I have been doing a lot of research and thinking today, but mostly feeling overwhelmed! To bring it back to two simple points of great interest, I will introduce to this, our scrapbook-o-rama, some wikipedia, some youtube, and some odds n' sods.
1. Clinamen:
Clinamen is a swerving motion, an unpredictable movement.
Lucretius, a Roman poet, wrote an epic poem entitled: De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). Lucretius described the void - the 'beginning' of the universe - and he described atoms falling through the void in parallel to each other at a constant speed. According to Lucretius, for some unknown reason, an atom moves an infinitesimal amount - this is the clinamen - and thus precipitates a collision with other atoms which gives rise to larger matter being formed. The clinamen accounts for the concept of free will.
In our recent 20th century, the concept of clinamen became a source of fascination to many literary figures: Raymond Queneau, Harold Bloom, Lacan, Derrida, and a French polymath philosopher called Michel Serres (who has written a lot on clinamen and its use in theories of thermodynamics). Clinamen was important to the Oulipo group... in fact, the concept of clinamen is integral to their manifesto.
Here is an excerpt from an essay on the Oulipo and algorithms, which at this point is discussing how the group tackled the problem posed by computer-generated programs being used on texts removing the human agency involved in creating literature:
"During one of its reunions in the early 1960s the Oulipo anticipated the risk of automatism in the structures they were defining. The group attempted to make room for individual freedom but they were unable to reconcile freedom with automatism. Jacques Bens recognized that every structure automatized writing to a certain extent, and Claude Berge added that potential literature generated new automatisms [Bens 1980, 144]. Le Lionnais insisted that a sufficiently complex system of constraints offered writers a number of options from which they could choose.
The Oulipians wanted to avoid the unconscious automatisms of the Surrealists, but the conscious use of structures in their writing produced what they could not avoid describing as "automatic". Le Lionnais admitted that "it is true that the birth of machines has modified the current sense of the word 'automatic'" [Bens 1980, 185]. The Oulipo recognized that the problem of using computers to create texts stemmed from the writer's inability to remain aware of how the machine applied constraints.
In the 1970s the Oulipo introduced the notion of the clinamen, which helped to resolve this dilemma. Based on a conception of the movement of atoms in Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, the clinamen is the primordial anti-constraint: it makes creation possible by introducing chance and spontaneity in an ordered universe [Motte 1986b]. The Oulipo recovered a sense of the unexpected in the constraints they used..."
- Digital Humanities (journal) at Hartwick College, 2007
(http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/1/1/000005/000005.html)
2. Serendipity
Oxford English Dictionary:
"The occurrence of events by chance in a beneficial way"
I recently met someone who recounted a lecture he'd attended at Edinburgh recently given by Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point among other things). The subject was serendipity and purportedly Gladwell described three levels of serendipity:
i) Columban
ii) Archimedean
iii) Galilean
The lecture is not available online as far as I can tell and I can't find any information about this sketched out concept either. Below are my interpretations of the anecdote relayed...
i) Columban
Christopher Columbus set sail for India but intended to approach it the long way, by sailing west. Of course we all know he hit the Americas. This then is an example of what I hesitantly call accidental serendipity. Columbus was not looking for the Americas; he intended to land elsewhere and yet he stumbles upon this discovery.
ii) Archimedean
So you know the story about Archimedes in the bath... He had been thinking about a way to work out the volume of matter, and one evening or whatever he was in the bath, and Eureka. This is coincidental serendipity in that although he was not actively seeking a solution through experiments with water, the problem and the bath had a potential relationship which he discovered by coincidence. Perhaps up until this moment whilst indulging in baths he usually had a massage which distracted him...
iii) Galilean
This is the third level. Galileo was actively seeking evidence to support his theory that the planets orbited the sun and not vice-versa. He looked into space keen to see something that would prove him correct. And on one occasion he witnessed the moons of a distant planet orbiting the planet. This provided him with enough evidence...
I must apologise for my vague reporting of this lecture, but I had no printout or alternative source to check my handwritten notes against. I think the principle remains clear though. This systematic description of serendipity poses interesting links with the concept of clinamen.
And now, I leave you with:
3. Odds 'n sods:
Radical composer, Olga Neuwirth's Clinamen/Nodus:
Olga Neuwirth - Ce Qui Arrive
("explores the subject of coincidence")
http://iem.at/Members/noisternig/arts/cqa/index_html/document_view
Olga Neuwirth - Lost Highway
An opera based on David Lynch's film.
Production information:
http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/catalogue/cat_detail.asp?musicid=31012
Excerpt:
Wikipedia definition of clinamen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen
Wikipedia on Lucretius:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius
Stanford Encylopedia entry on Lucretius:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/
1. Clinamen:
Clinamen is a swerving motion, an unpredictable movement.
Lucretius, a Roman poet, wrote an epic poem entitled: De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). Lucretius described the void - the 'beginning' of the universe - and he described atoms falling through the void in parallel to each other at a constant speed. According to Lucretius, for some unknown reason, an atom moves an infinitesimal amount - this is the clinamen - and thus precipitates a collision with other atoms which gives rise to larger matter being formed. The clinamen accounts for the concept of free will.
In our recent 20th century, the concept of clinamen became a source of fascination to many literary figures: Raymond Queneau, Harold Bloom, Lacan, Derrida, and a French polymath philosopher called Michel Serres (who has written a lot on clinamen and its use in theories of thermodynamics). Clinamen was important to the Oulipo group... in fact, the concept of clinamen is integral to their manifesto.
Here is an excerpt from an essay on the Oulipo and algorithms, which at this point is discussing how the group tackled the problem posed by computer-generated programs being used on texts removing the human agency involved in creating literature:
"During one of its reunions in the early 1960s the Oulipo anticipated the risk of automatism in the structures they were defining. The group attempted to make room for individual freedom but they were unable to reconcile freedom with automatism. Jacques Bens recognized that every structure automatized writing to a certain extent, and Claude Berge added that potential literature generated new automatisms [Bens 1980, 144]. Le Lionnais insisted that a sufficiently complex system of constraints offered writers a number of options from which they could choose.
The Oulipians wanted to avoid the unconscious automatisms of the Surrealists, but the conscious use of structures in their writing produced what they could not avoid describing as "automatic". Le Lionnais admitted that "it is true that the birth of machines has modified the current sense of the word 'automatic'" [Bens 1980, 185]. The Oulipo recognized that the problem of using computers to create texts stemmed from the writer's inability to remain aware of how the machine applied constraints.
In the 1970s the Oulipo introduced the notion of the clinamen, which helped to resolve this dilemma. Based on a conception of the movement of atoms in Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, the clinamen is the primordial anti-constraint: it makes creation possible by introducing chance and spontaneity in an ordered universe [Motte 1986b]. The Oulipo recovered a sense of the unexpected in the constraints they used..."
- Digital Humanities (journal) at Hartwick College, 2007
(http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/1/1/000005/000005.html)
2. Serendipity
Oxford English Dictionary:
"The occurrence of events by chance in a beneficial way"
I recently met someone who recounted a lecture he'd attended at Edinburgh recently given by Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point among other things). The subject was serendipity and purportedly Gladwell described three levels of serendipity:
i) Columban
ii) Archimedean
iii) Galilean
The lecture is not available online as far as I can tell and I can't find any information about this sketched out concept either. Below are my interpretations of the anecdote relayed...
i) Columban
Christopher Columbus set sail for India but intended to approach it the long way, by sailing west. Of course we all know he hit the Americas. This then is an example of what I hesitantly call accidental serendipity. Columbus was not looking for the Americas; he intended to land elsewhere and yet he stumbles upon this discovery.
ii) Archimedean
So you know the story about Archimedes in the bath... He had been thinking about a way to work out the volume of matter, and one evening or whatever he was in the bath, and Eureka. This is coincidental serendipity in that although he was not actively seeking a solution through experiments with water, the problem and the bath had a potential relationship which he discovered by coincidence. Perhaps up until this moment whilst indulging in baths he usually had a massage which distracted him...
iii) Galilean
This is the third level. Galileo was actively seeking evidence to support his theory that the planets orbited the sun and not vice-versa. He looked into space keen to see something that would prove him correct. And on one occasion he witnessed the moons of a distant planet orbiting the planet. This provided him with enough evidence...
I must apologise for my vague reporting of this lecture, but I had no printout or alternative source to check my handwritten notes against. I think the principle remains clear though. This systematic description of serendipity poses interesting links with the concept of clinamen.
And now, I leave you with:
3. Odds 'n sods:
Radical composer, Olga Neuwirth's Clinamen/Nodus:
Olga Neuwirth - Ce Qui Arrive
("explores the subject of coincidence")
http://iem.at/Members/noisternig/arts/cqa/index_html/document_view
Olga Neuwirth - Lost Highway
An opera based on David Lynch's film.
Production information:
http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/catalogue/cat_detail.asp?musicid=31012
Excerpt:
Wikipedia definition of clinamen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen
Wikipedia on Lucretius:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius
Stanford Encylopedia entry on Lucretius:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Pseudo Punk Pseudo Racism (?) and Mishima's Head
As you probably know, Mishima commited seppuku after a kind of failed coup. Life immitated art - he acted out in the lifeworld what he had created in 'Yukoku'. Here are some snivelling shits singing about him for light(ish) relief.
Mishima Conducting... Madame Butterfly?
There is nutty footage of Mishima conducting some kind of marching music. I'd like to slow down the footage and put it over that of a dying Butterfly.
The footage of him waking up could also be spliced in and used.
The footage of him waking up could also be spliced in and used.
BRING ME THE HEAD OF YUKIO MISHIMA!
We could look at the kabuki plays of Mishima. If you don't know his work, please look him up. I have been attracted to him due to the very explicit relationship between masculinity and masochism that much of his work demonstrates. I have attached the final scene of his film 'Yukoku' almsot as the antithesis of Madame B. I love blood in a black and white film. The marks on the floor are very interesting too - the black blood as ink, the raised Noh stage as a white canvas.
Butterflies
What about many butterflies dying? I like the idea of the death happening continually through a short film. A film about endings. Very simple. The use of many different female opera singers sining the death scene, all of their arias brought together in a cacophany could be very beautiful and overwhelming. There is something about the unrelenting, accusatory, unfinished, finger pointing final note in the opera that moves me enormously. It ties in to the use of classical music in short films made by arty fags in the 60s and 70s that I personally adore.
Another Butterfly Dies
I love the staging in this end scene - not sure about the puppet boy! The use of the 'invisible' stage hands is apparent here too. Again the bloody death is enormously dramatic and stylised. The removal of red material from her obi (symbolising blood) is very similar to the revealation in the hikinuki.
Madama Butterfly
I apologise for blog hogging, but I assume everyone else is very busy. Since I am on a holiday, of sorts, my mind has been busy gathering ideas etc for the collaboration.
Whilst thinking about the theme of japonisme I started looking at the final hari kiri or seppuka scene from Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Because I have been thinking about the emptiness of the signs of gender/sexuality/race, and their stylisations and how they can be temporarily occupied by the subject, the final scene of Butterfly's death - due to her Western 'husband's' absence and the loss of her child - I began to see enormous parallels between the stripping away of one costume for another (one character to reveal the 'true' character in the hikinuki), and the ceremonial death of a character/subject - their disemboweling.
The final scene of the opera is always very dramatic, and the directors use many different ways to symbolise her death, different ways of showing the blood pouring out of her. The relationship between the hikinuki and the bloody death are very closely related here, ESPECIALLY the stage hands removing the cloths:
Whilst thinking about the theme of japonisme I started looking at the final hari kiri or seppuka scene from Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Because I have been thinking about the emptiness of the signs of gender/sexuality/race, and their stylisations and how they can be temporarily occupied by the subject, the final scene of Butterfly's death - due to her Western 'husband's' absence and the loss of her child - I began to see enormous parallels between the stripping away of one costume for another (one character to reveal the 'true' character in the hikinuki), and the ceremonial death of a character/subject - their disemboweling.
The final scene of the opera is always very dramatic, and the directors use many different ways to symbolise her death, different ways of showing the blood pouring out of her. The relationship between the hikinuki and the bloody death are very closely related here, ESPECIALLY the stage hands removing the cloths:
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Sharon Kinsella's Research on Ganguro
This may be tangential, but it is a fascinating article. I am corresponding with her. She teaches at Manchester University.
http://www.kinsellaresearch.com/new/faces.pdf
- AK
http://www.kinsellaresearch.com/new/faces.pdf
- AK
Monday, 21 June 2010
Japonisme, the 'aesthete' and contemporary criticism and parody.
Looking for a better version of this. But the lyrics relate to ideas of artifice, the avant-garde, faking the fake, with a love of all things Japanese. Of course, Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Mikado' was pure Japonism/Japonisme, even although they seem to be sneering at the fad here. The character singing is called Bunthorne and is a bit of a sham homosexualist...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience_(opera)
Bowie and Kabuki
Bowie was trained to 'dance' and mime by Lindsay Kemp - who worked at the Glasgow Citizen's theatre and was well-versed in kabuki - making many works that reference the art form. He made choreography for Derek Jarman's films.
Ganguro
A fetishisation of the fetish for blacking up, thus revealing the problem through an application of concealer (to the lips, obviously!)
Ms Maclaine as Yoko Mori - 1
In order to not be 'found out' Maclaine wears dark brown contacts in the film to confuse her husband. When he is looking at the rushes and processing the film he sees the film for a brief second in the negative, and notices that her eyes look blue. Through seeing the negative (lie) he understands the positive (truth). She is found out.
I am collecting quotes (possibly as fodder for a voice over?)
Whilst looking up dazzle images I found this classic:
'No one would believe that I should be cleaning toilets but here in the West with talent like this, I'm an Artist. Yes, the entrepreneurial spirit infects the ambitious, the driven the savant, even the dissolute. As a morality tale, Razzle Dazzle Sea Scape works to deliver a sense of wonder while grounded to the rhyme of history and the rhythm of the brush strokes. Finding Chi in a meditation of light and shadow is the essence of communication, the meaning of life, it's what makes me look to the next work that makes me so spiritual.' - Randal
I've been looking at the film 'My Geisha' staring Shirley Maclaine, where a western actress 'blacks up' by wearing the white make-up of a geisha to fool her husband (a film director) to put her in his version of 'Madame Butterfly'. The quotes are fantastic ('Deception was never so much fun!' - on the poster). I also came across a short Russian version of the film and a few other weird versions - one where someone is filming the screen as the dvd plays, in order to sell it. Creates beautiful, extreme colour effects.
This also lead me to the pheneomena of 'blacking up'/'black face' in Japanese culture, specifically, the subculture called 'Ganguro' ('face black' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro). It is said to have started with an obsession with Michael Jackson and Naomi Campbell (!), who blurred the race divide and flirted with 'being white', (suposedly).
I am immediatley drawn to such blurrings, misconceptions, crossings, scenes of revealation and concealment, where all that is usually revealed (through a specific employment of an aesthetic) is an ethical dilema, yes, but usually (and more worryingly) a kind of racist stereotype and caricature based on a mis-understanding and mis-portrayal of the 'other'.
I can't yet figure out to move images about in these posts so will post them separatley.
- Alex
Whilst looking up dazzle images I found this classic:
'No one would believe that I should be cleaning toilets but here in the West with talent like this, I'm an Artist. Yes, the entrepreneurial spirit infects the ambitious, the driven the savant, even the dissolute. As a morality tale, Razzle Dazzle Sea Scape works to deliver a sense of wonder while grounded to the rhyme of history and the rhythm of the brush strokes. Finding Chi in a meditation of light and shadow is the essence of communication, the meaning of life, it's what makes me look to the next work that makes me so spiritual.' - Randal
I've been looking at the film 'My Geisha' staring Shirley Maclaine, where a western actress 'blacks up' by wearing the white make-up of a geisha to fool her husband (a film director) to put her in his version of 'Madame Butterfly'. The quotes are fantastic ('Deception was never so much fun!' - on the poster). I also came across a short Russian version of the film and a few other weird versions - one where someone is filming the screen as the dvd plays, in order to sell it. Creates beautiful, extreme colour effects.
This also lead me to the pheneomena of 'blacking up'/'black face' in Japanese culture, specifically, the subculture called 'Ganguro' ('face black' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro). It is said to have started with an obsession with Michael Jackson and Naomi Campbell (!), who blurred the race divide and flirted with 'being white', (suposedly).
I am immediatley drawn to such blurrings, misconceptions, crossings, scenes of revealation and concealment, where all that is usually revealed (through a specific employment of an aesthetic) is an ethical dilema, yes, but usually (and more worryingly) a kind of racist stereotype and caricature based on a mis-understanding and mis-portrayal of the 'other'.
I can't yet figure out to move images about in these posts so will post them separatley.
- Alex
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