tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32345596112598523462024-03-13T17:38:36.193+01:00PERfACTirsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.comBlogger608125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-67779312251967632512018-12-28T19:20:00.001+01:002018-12-28T19:20:49.642+01:00that's a wrap | happy new year<div style="text-align: left;">
Another year nears its end, reminding us that there is much about it to reflect on and a lot more to get ready for in the next one. As many of us take this last week to do (just) so (or pretend to, anyway) -- to recover before we resume -- I leave you with these poems by <a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/wislawa-szymborska/poems/">Wislawa Szymborska</a>, as a way to bridge the remainder of the 'holiday' -- this threshold of time lost and anticipation, the intermingling of memory and future in our search for substance and meaning. </div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e26XBmATuaQ/XCZV9ReMU1I/AAAAAAAAF-s/TKksWXpq4_sRWYklZO_lEVonOzc9x_ouACLcBGAs/s1600/schuiten-francois-ne-en-1956-la-cenerentola-acrylique-crayon-1378286346883415.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="800" height="273" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e26XBmATuaQ/XCZV9ReMU1I/AAAAAAAAF-s/TKksWXpq4_sRWYklZO_lEVonOzc9x_ouACLcBGAs/s400/schuiten-francois-ne-en-1956-la-cenerentola-acrylique-crayon-1378286346883415.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>La Cenerentola</b>, <a href="https://www.altaplana.be/en/gallery/images/la-cenerentola">François Schuiten</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /><div style="text-align: center;">
<b><u>Children Of Our Age</u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
We are children of our age,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
it's a political age.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
All day long, all through the night,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
all affairs--yours, ours, theirs--</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
are political affairs.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Whether you like it or not,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
your genes have a political past,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
your skin, a political cast,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
your eyes, a political slant.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Whatever you say reverberates,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
whatever you don't say speaks for itself.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
So either way you're talking politics.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Even when you take to the woods,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
you're taking political steps</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
on political grounds.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Apolitical poems are also political,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and above us shines a moon</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
no longer purely lunar.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To be or not to be, that is the question.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And though it troubles the digestion</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
it's a question, as always, of politics.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
To acquire a political meaning</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
you don't even have to be human.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Raw material will do,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
or protein feed, or crude oil,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
or a conference table whose shape</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
was quarreled over for months;</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Should we arbitrate life and death</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
at a round table or a square one?</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Meanwhile, people perished,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
animals died,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
houses burned,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and the fields ran wild</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
just as in times immemorial</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and less political.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
</span><div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LlOnsRgV5go/XCZS1X3sn0I/AAAAAAAAF-g/NMTGnZsDpvYw37lsOM_6JR4Yu-46NQrBgCLcBGAs/s1600/enki%2Bbilal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="786" height="237" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LlOnsRgV5go/XCZS1X3sn0I/AAAAAAAAF-g/NMTGnZsDpvYw37lsOM_6JR4Yu-46NQrBgCLcBGAs/s400/enki%2Bbilal.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><b>Une Odeur d'étoile de Mer en Train de Mourir</b>, Enki Bilal (<a href="https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/85816-political-philosophy-in-comics/page-4">The Hunting Party</a>)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><u>The End And The Beginning</u></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
After every war</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
someone has to clean up.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Things won’t</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
straighten themselves up, after all.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Someone has to push the rubble</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
to the side of the road,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
so the corpse-filled wagons</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
can pass.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Someone has to get mired</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
in scum and ashes,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
sofa springs,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
splintered glass,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and bloody rags.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Someone has to drag in a girder</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
to prop up a wall.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Someone has to glaze a window,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
rehang a door.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Photogenic it’s not,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and takes years.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
All the cameras have left</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
for another war.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
We’ll need the bridges back,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and new railway stations.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Sleeves will go ragged</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
from rolling them up.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Someone, broom in hand,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
still recalls the way it was.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Someone else listens</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and nods with unsevered head.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But already there are those nearby</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
starting to mill about</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
who will find it dull.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
From out of the bushes</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
sometimes someone still unearths</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
rusted-out arguments</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and carries them to the garbage pile.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Those who knew</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
what was going on here</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
must make way for</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
those who know little.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And less than little.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
And finally as little as nothing.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
In the grass that has overgrown</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
causes and effects,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
someone must be stretched out</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
blade of grass in his mouth</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
gazing at the clouds.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">***</span></div>
</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-41221160626521747432018-11-25T03:00:00.000+01:002018-11-25T04:28:00.215+01:00Albania celebrates | The Culture of Independence and the Unmaking (i.e. Redesigning) of Skanderbeg’s legacy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BSbQMvbL0QY/W_oB5PV4HCI/AAAAAAAAF-M/ud3tROetYVo2-_J0xLJlDqXqvAdSvrerACLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_1337.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="653" data-original-width="986" height="131" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BSbQMvbL0QY/W_oB5PV4HCI/AAAAAAAAF-M/ud3tROetYVo2-_J0xLJlDqXqvAdSvrerACLcBGAs/s200/IMG_1337.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nhuIPrz9X14/W_n8NWP_i1I/AAAAAAAAF94/Rg5j6lvNTYcF5yP4fQ1_4IDQgINPo2y7ACEwYBhgL/s1600/IMG_1340.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="647" data-original-width="990" height="130" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nhuIPrz9X14/W_n8NWP_i1I/AAAAAAAAF94/Rg5j6lvNTYcF5yP4fQ1_4IDQgINPo2y7ACEwYBhgL/s200/IMG_1340.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">MVRV design proposals in Tirana, screenshots </span><a href="https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=3846" style="font-family: inherit;">via</a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">
</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
A state-run institution whose <i>disposition </i>is composed of half-truths, and whose sensibility and form is in the habit of wearing — thus <i>bearing </i>— only two masks: its own take on (tacky) <i>kitsch</i>, a mannerism not to be confused with vernacular, and its public ‘<i>at work</i>’ image that depicts the same short-sightedness of any social media ad campaign, hence an interfaciality laced with insecurities and <i>conceit </i>— which it then promotes as CULTURE — can be very telling, namely in revealing its <i>agency </i>as the inability to grasp and accept the shared reality it imposes its ‘legitimacy’ on, thus pretending to educate those living in it so to ‘cultivate’ it; when, in fact, it is this legitimacy that gets cultivated to become its main legacy — CULTURE.<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">The answer to the question </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">What does CULTURE (have to) celebrate, then?</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> is quite simple: </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">self-preservation</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, namely its ability to suspend a </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">shared </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">reality in favor of a </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">hegemonic </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">one that hangs suspended over it as to cast the deepest shadow with the blindest of lights (i.e. half-truths), so to render people’s perception and consciousness obsolete, namely their bearings of and in </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">any </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">reality.</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pkRyhueMIxU/W_n8OEH6znI/AAAAAAAAF94/f-rZo0gI6AYk8ndQYM7Y6tX1LI30NqWggCEwYBhgL/s1600/IMG_1343.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="699" data-original-width="992" height="140" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pkRyhueMIxU/W_n8OEH6znI/AAAAAAAAF94/f-rZo0gI6AYk8ndQYM7Y6tX1LI30NqWggCEwYBhgL/s200/IMG_1343.jpg" width="200" /></a> <a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QaUrGymAFXo/W_n8OQN4xmI/AAAAAAAAF90/OVHo_ZIN9TUUu4fsn-a8lE1DNtsjucxfwCEwYBhgL/s1600/IMG_1344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="699" data-original-width="992" height="140" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QaUrGymAFXo/W_n8OQN4xmI/AAAAAAAAF90/OVHo_ZIN9TUUu4fsn-a8lE1DNtsjucxfwCEwYBhgL/s200/IMG_1344.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">MVRV design proposals in Tirana, screenshots </span><a href="https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=3846" style="font-size: small;">via</a></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cultural Hegemony deceives people into ceding their faculties, thus </span><i style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.perfact.org/2018/10/gentle-manifest-weve-never-been-public.html">freedom</a></i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, in favor of a universal reality hinged on this exact </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">cognitive disorientation</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, which it then proceeds to </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">stabilize </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">— i.e. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">manipulate into acceptance</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> — through erasure (of their shared past) and abstraction (of its continued imposition on them), thus normalizing </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">specter </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">as a totality where a potent panoptic gaze blinds lives into spectrality. Such a </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">celebration</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> then becomes nothing more than an </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">omnipresent surveillance</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, better known as CULTURAL NORM.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">The survival instinct from the loss of one reality persists as consumption of and over-indulgence in the other, with </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">neither </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">realities being fully grasped. Such a living, at the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">edge </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">of two unknowns, might as well be resignified as a life in and of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">unknown unknowns</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> — though the edge itself marks a </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">duration </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">that is persistently </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">historical</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Hegemony limits the chances and choices of an intelligible reality by reducing this duration — i.e. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">mental health</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> — to a coping mechanism. So power becomes the only intelligence able to </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">draw a(ny) distinction</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> — devising the line, the edge, the limit, and even the history of the reality it forcefully offers. A reality that starts as discrimination is then cultivated into a </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">stability</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, thus becoming the only way of life. As it appears and it is perceived as a ‘stable’ reality, it assumes </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">autonomy</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, hence </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">responsibility </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">to secure its own duration — i.e. self-preservation and legacy.</span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uodLxzucjaY/W_n8Ngn8G-I/AAAAAAAAF9g/PjXcHpUzu5UODURMYNlDsSe5KW_pfYD-gCEwYBhgL/s1600/DSC_0516.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1162" data-original-width="1600" height="290" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uodLxzucjaY/W_n8Ngn8G-I/AAAAAAAAF9g/PjXcHpUzu5UODURMYNlDsSe5KW_pfYD-gCEwYBhgL/s400/DSC_0516.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.perfact.org/2018/03/undigested-thoughts-in-search-of.html">via</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As a powerful device (e.g. tool, weapon, mechanism) of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">enunciation</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, CULTURE regulated as such works to increase the hegemonic choices of articulation. Hence, the responsibility of CULTURE is indeed to celebrate this stability in order to guard (i.e. surveil) its legacy. In fact, such a celebration seems to be its only </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">agency </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">— i.e.</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"> its ethical capability and aesthetic capacity</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. So, in this year of <a href="http://www.perfact.org/2018/03/myth-unmaking-excerpt-on.html">Skanderbeg</a>, 500 years after his death, it’s not at all shocking, probably even fitting, for the state-run institution of CULTURE to </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">celebrate itself </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">instead.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*********************************************</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-56946744275967955082018-11-18T12:00:00.000+01:002018-11-18T12:00:00.758+01:00Hitchcock's Tower: Windmill of the Mind or Source of Power | Headspace to Cityscape | Hitchcock's <i>Vertigo</i> takes quite a peek into the ever complex relationship between (wo)man and the city, more specifically the way in which the depths of the mind erupt the self to extend beyond one's imposed limit(ation)s and onto the environment that encircles it, that gives it its liveliness. It shows us a glimpse of how the sensible (memory and imagination among others) is distributed and materialized through the layered city (which is what gives it its layers). We can then understand the <i>tower </i>in the film as an architecture that is as much spatial as it is temporal; as hard of an object as it may be a constructed abstraction (history, too) of the psyche. More than an architecture it is that (mental) character of the everyday we've grown to inhabit quite elusively. A <i>high</i>tened everydayness that is both cyclical and linear — <i>heights </i>that we might describe as <i>oscillations</i> between the windmills of our mind and sources of power — <i>an acrophobic cyclone between headspace and cityscape</i>.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>What then becomes (of) the <i>gravity </i>of a(ny) constructed reality?</b> </blockquote>
In order to start thinking about what this question might mean, or how to go about answering it, let's first take a look at how the complexity of Hitchcock's <i>Vertigo </i>has been attempted — either to graze, grasp or unpack it — by filmmakers, critics, fans and others over 60 years, among whom I'd like to emphasize Chris Marker and focus on his take of H's film as narrated in one of his most notable essay-films <i>Sans Soleil</i>. <i>Vertigo</i> was one of Marker's favorite films and we see many of its themes present in his work.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>*******</b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>And beneath each of these faces a memory. And in place of what we were told had been forged into a collective memory, a thousand memories of men who parade their personal laceration in the great wound of history.</i><b> </b>— <b>Chris Marker,<i> Sans Soleil</i></b></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>******* </b></span></div>
<div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<b><u>Headspace to Cityscape: Perception, Imagination, Memory</u> </b></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<b>in Hitchcock’s <i>Vertigo </i>as narrated in Marker’s <i>Sans Soleil</i></b></h3>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; text-align: left;">[appropriated excerpts]</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
“I'm writing you all this from another world, a world of appearances. In a way the two worlds communicate with each other. Memory is to one what history is to the other: an impossibility.<br />
<br />
“Legends are born out of the need to decipher the indecipherable. Memories must make do with their delirium, with their drift. A moment stopped would burn like a frame of film blocked before the furnace of the projector. Madness protects, as fever does.<br />
<br />
“[O]nly one film had been capable of portraying impossible memory—insane memory: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. In the spiral of the titles he saw time covering a field ever wider as it moved away, a cyclone whose present moment contains motionless the eye.</div>
<div>
<br />
“It seems to be a question of trailing, of enigma, of murder, but in truth it's a question of power and freedom, of melancholy and dazzlement, so carefully coded within the spiral that you could miss it, and not discover immediately that this vertigo of space in reality stands for the vertigo of time.<br />
<br />
“Hitchcock had invented nothing, it was all there.</div>
<div>
<br />
“From this fake tower—the only thing that Hitchcock had added—he imagined Scotty as time's fool […], finding it impossible to live with memory without falsifying it. Inventing a double for Madeline in another dimension of time, a zone that would belong only to him and from which he could decipher the indecipherable story […] when he had saved her from death before casting her back to death. Or was it the other way around?”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wNTRpmD5c4Q/W_CALQ0nkQI/AAAAAAAAF9Q/XaBf4ifZSFwgaLyLBJ9GbsNXnrN4QJOYgCEwYBhgL/s1600/Vertigo_Montage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="540" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wNTRpmD5c4Q/W_CALQ0nkQI/AAAAAAAAF9Q/XaBf4ifZSFwgaLyLBJ9GbsNXnrN4QJOYgCEwYBhgL/s640/Vertigo_Montage.jpg" width="432" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>*******</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<u><b><br /></b></u></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Here then are a few exercises to think through this film and the many complexities it reveals, complexities and contradictions of any design — the necessary consciousness and cognitive abilities and tools — to construct a reality.<br />
<br />
<u><b>Exercise One</b></u></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Let’s consider a different scenario — where the character of Madeline is both an extension of the city and its protagonist. As in H’s other film, <i><a href="https://fanfare.metafilter.com/11982/Rear-Window">Rear Window</a></i>, made four years prior in 1954, the city is very much present, an omnipresence that enables and capacitates liveliness (life + love), both as source and height of it. Albeit at a different scale (the neighborhood block in <i>RW </i>and city-wide in <i>V</i>), the city is portrayed as an everyday totality. It is both context and character — a character which contextualizes and a context which characterizes. It is the physical space-time where psychopathologies play out and where <i>phobias </i>and <i>philias </i>(fetishes, even) are heightened and transposed. If in <i>RW</i>, we experience the block through voyeurism (a philia), the city in <i>V </i>disorients elliptically (through acrophobia). Inversely, we could also say that these philias and phobias are experienced or lived in and through the city. Though both psychopathologies emerge from a condition of damage or isolation, the main (and male) character's passive-aggressiveness finds a way to channel his repression <i>through </i>the character of the woman. In both films, she is the one taking risks and for a moment she constructs her own reality (or does she?). By heightening her strength and independence as such, H is actually constructing the imaginary reality of the protagonist, his perceived power, as to anticipate the demolition of both at the end. Reality constructed by one's repressed lines of control (H's too) and punishment becomes one of <i>gaze </i>here — it is the "<i>cyclone whose present moment contains motionless the eye</i>." It consists of falsifying the differences and nuances between perception, imagination, and memory of both man and woman — and more importantly those of the power and freedom between them. The haunt of one's past hunts the reality of the other. Madeline's strength and independence makes her a sacrificial offering. Her reality constructed in such a way puts her in a <i>double-bind</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>What then is her gravity here? It is <i>through (per H).</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>Woman as a sacrificial offering is not new. The Albanian tale of Rozafa, the woman who was walled in order for the castle to stand, can be thought of as another example where a woman was literally holding a heavy load on her shoulders, the height and mass of a tower. Hitchock's tower in Vertigo can be understood as both the context of the city and the character of the imagined or false reality of the protagonist. It can be thought of as an architecture of reality — a tool that heightens a(ny) reality (drawing its limits) and height as a weapon of a(ny) construction to (temporarily or permanently) suspend one's reality, hence the violence of gravity (psychopathology).<br />
<br />
Now, let’s go back and reread the above excerpts with this scenario in mind as a way to understand the film through the double-bind reality of Madeline — both the city and the imagined reality (psychopathology) of the protagonist, as (designers of) her reality.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<u><b>Exercise Two</b></u></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i> "a psyche ... desperately searching for an object on which to concentrate its repressed energy"</i></blockquote>
For more approaches to Hitchcock's <i>Vertigo </i>— the film and its director; the physical experience and the psychological condition (<i>acrophobia</i>); the elusiveness of the word, figure and image of vertigo in general; as well as how it materializes in the city and how the city itself creates it — let’s repeat <b>Exercise One</b> with other texts (mostly reviews) found <a href="http://fanfare.metafilter.com/7109/Vertigo" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: underline;">here</a>. That way we can grasp <i>gravity </i>as and through a multitude of things, characters, activities and contexts, in order to be able to ask the question and challenge the gaze upon which today's reality is constructed.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<u><b>Exercise Three</b></u></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This is more of a reflexive exercise, to sort of step back and see if at some point here you thought: what if there is no other character, other than the protagonist of course, which may be either man or woman, both or neither, and all this has been playing out in the character's (one's) head — that s/he has invented (falsified) a reality in order to confront and capture one's fear of loosing control of one's actual reality — which may or may not be real — but in doing so, one discovers the obsession s/he has accumulated in order to build up one's own real <i>insecurities </i>— which, in a way, may be the true culprit of this whole endeavor. What is the gravity of insecurity? How does one stand up straight? What is it to crawl?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But, I may very well be overthinking it, so let’s move on. On the other hand though, I am specifically pointing towards a protagonist that may or may not be an individual, human, or natural — for example the state, corporations, capital, the public, AI, and so on.<br />
<br />
<b>What then is our gravity, our fulcrum? How would we know how high to reach without becoming something else? What else could we become? </b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<u><b>Exercise Four</b></u></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This last exercise asks the question: What makes some of these recurring themes on or around <i>acrophobia </i>still relevant today; and, how are they played out in the city, your city? How might (spatial + temporal) vertigo shape your reality? Let's think of reality as the <i>everydayness </i>of both our livelihood and liveliness.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>How would you describe the acrophobia<i> </i>of your everyday?</b> </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>The concept of the everlasting illuminates the past. […] The character of the everyday has always been repetitive and veiled by obsession and fear. In the study of the everyday we discover the great problem of repetition, one of the most difficult problems facing us. The everyday is situated at the intersection of two modes of repetition: the cyclical, which dominates in nature, and the linear, which dominates in processes known as “rational.” The everyday implies on the one hand cycles, nights and days, seasons and harvests, activity and rest, hunger and satisfaction, desire and its fulfillment, life and death, and it implies on the other hand the repetitive gestures of work and consumption.</i> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>In modern life the repetitive gestures tend to mask and to crush the cycles. The everyday imposes its monotony. It is the invariable constant of the variations it envelops. The days follow one after another and resemble one another, and yet–here lies the contradiction at the heart of everdayness–everything changes. But the change is programmed: obsolescence is planned. Production anticipates reproduction; production produces change in such a way as to superimpose the impression of speed onto that of monotony. Some people cry out against the acceleration of time, others cry out against stagnation. They’re both right. </i>— <b>Henri Lefebvre,</b><i style="font-weight: bold;"> The Everyday and Everydayness</i></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Vertigo as a <i>temporal dimension</i> of constructing a(ny) reality might be as important as its spatial effects in the city and within us.<b> How then are power and freedom negotiated at this dimension, and how do they challenge or accelerate the architecture of our reality as design agents?</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">**********************************************</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-82452788617549713922018-10-31T16:24:00.001+01:002018-11-17T17:25:46.957+01:00Masterplanning for the short run | In search of missing pieces<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Is anyone else bothered by the increasingly common phenomena of adding the word ‘luxury’ to new developments or newly renovated architecture: luxury apartments, luxury stores, high-end galleries, etc.? Luxury then becomes a program all on its own, no matter the secondary use it is added to it. Luxury is the program of capital, and if we were to map all the places and spaces that are considered and promoted as such, we would have to think of the city as becoming-luxurious — a luxury to be afforded — thus increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible. Cities are not being diversified at all then, they are just being redeveloped into economic exclusion zones, unified around a sole stimuli, money. As a consequence, the city is increasingly dehumanized. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Cultural assets have fallen prey to capital. Historical neighborhoods are turning into high-end commercial and financial centers. Private money is surely proving to be a better incentive than the polyphonic wellbeing of public heritage. If we were to ask how much a city is worth, we would have to also ask, how little is its past valued? We’re just starting to see the quantification of such unfathomable equation (equity/equality) — its value — but it will take a long while to grasp its qualification (quality+fiction) — its weight. How much will it weigh on us? How much will we weigh in it?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">As master of a regulatory plan that pretends to decentralize (much of what it takes away), the state-capital system works to internalize the flow of capital — thus normalizing the inequality it is based on and legitimizing the design of a new luxurious class. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Masterplanning, then, as a blueprint and rendered image of redevelopment, becomes a way to reduce and streamline the city’s public heritage (both, its public + heritage) — abstracting the time and material history of a hundred(s) year old city — into this flow of capital, which in turn emerges as the manifest of (its) “quantification of power”, where “each member profits in his own way.” (1)</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">As it materializes in the city, capital’s influence is revealed to be greater than the city’s historical, natural, judicial and cultural resources — therein lies its undisputed (yet unchallenged) thus absolute power. Because of this unprecedented acceleration of dominance, capital may in fact be the only (if not truly) autonomous organism (species) of man’s progress.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Masterplanning in the age of capital is a strategy of isolation and restriction, which deepens class segregation by isolating access and opportunity as it takes over and deplets shared assets and resources. </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">The masterplan is capital’s masterpiece.</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> It is how capital </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">metamorphoses</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> in real space — colonizing bodies, spaces, and psyches, a total </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">embodiment by design</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> instituted by self-serving systems of governance, whose political rigidity reduces governing to policing in order to maintain the hegemony of the status-quo — to ensure their dictatorial genealogy lasts; and, whose aesthetic guard-ism manifests an image of uniformity under the “luxury” moniker. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">The </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">masterdesign</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> may promise a one-of-a-kind relationship with capital, though what it actually produces is an endless desire to (over) consume. Meaning: it doesn’t matter how luxurious the relationship with capital may be, it still produces a commodity, which makes capital quite a high-maintenance partner. The more access one is given to “consume” another, the more unrequited and all-consuming this relationship becomes. The masterdesign assures an almost immediate consumption of luxury, thus enabling an addiction that needs to be kept up just so one can function. In the end, this addiction is how the human species consumes itself. It reduces life to a basic existence that requires nonsensical constructs of unprecedented realities that the city (and environment in general) simply cannot capacitate and won’t ever be able to support if it continues to be looted by the intensity of the addiction to capital. Hence, the </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">uniformity</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> of luxury can be understood as a double-headed form of violence: first, as an exponentially multiplying </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">unity</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (i.e. colonization) of cannibalistic consumption of (it)self as well as the city’s (and all it encompasses); and second, as a guard</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">ism</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (i.e. addiction) that “</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">only reproduces itself when it is reproducing something new</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">”. (2)</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Luxury is a product of power. It designates how power is seized, distributed and enforced. It is the incentive to re-categorize what at one time or another, but for a long time, was shared by many publics. It is a remastering of the human, its environment, and the master[ed]pieces it has created (as well as its not yet fulfilled potentialities) in a way that </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">maxi</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">mizes or </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">master</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">mizes profit. As evidenced thus far, suc</span><br />
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">h </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">re</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">mastering or </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">re</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">duction is a total (planetary) </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">redesign</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> toward extinction of life as we perceive it, as we understand it, as we live it. We don’t have to know it anymore, as long as we consume it and as long as it becomes easily digested and digestible.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">What’s even more curious is the coupling of the ‘luxury’ program with pedestrian activity and green spaces, such as these areas are the first to have biking and pedestrian lanes, greenery, maybe a water feature or two, street lights, and so on. It is curious because when do we see a rich person walking? In developing countries, and especially in Albania, they tend to drive some of the most luxurious cars, that is, if they’re not chauffeured around. Walking is a practice of the masses; it is how the public processes its independence and individuality in and through the ever-changing city. What, then, does it mean to luxurize the space of walking, if not to transform the individual, the public, the masses into spectral beings? (3) </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Such is the dogma of masterplanning for the </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">short run</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">. Short, implies an extinction — while run, implies a blur. It’s no secret that I am not a fan of the word “masterplan” and what it currently consists of. I would rather ask how a regulatory plan is and can be mastered. What is it to plan and what does it mean to designate? What is it to design and what does it mean to master the self and the other? I would rather mine a masterplan than interpret it, but it is hard to ask questions when so little is made available prior to (the decision of its) execution. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">I read somewhere — can’t exactly remember where at this moment, but it said something to this effect — that, we might’ve sold our souls or even want to do so, but who’s buying?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">With everything that’s happening in the world, I wonder how much (and for how long) we would weigh without one; and if our road to extinction would be heavier or lighter as result. I </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">don’t mean soul in a romantic or religious way, but soul as a force of life, essential to its being its essence, or rather what makes human life possible: mind, heart, will, i</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">ntegrity, intelligence, empathy, consciousness, health, language, politics, shared space, etc.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">As far as Tirana (or any other such developing city in Albania) is concerned, I cannot imagine what would its architects and urbanists talk about in local or international conferences and seminars on history and preservation. If until now there was a preserved and protected architectural district or building to talk about, from this moment on it would be hypocritical to assert any historical standing. I guess there’s always nostalgia to fall back on.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">(1) Deleuze & Guattari, </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">On the Line</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, 1983, Semiotext(e)</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">(2) ibid.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">(3) Arjun Appadurai, </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-size: 17pt; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-59516876694232507292018-10-20T06:22:00.001+02:002018-10-20T06:49:15.012+02:00Undigested Thoughts | In search of hollow-eve(n)<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the metamorphosis of the city center from historic corridor to outdoor commercial mall </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the metamorphosis of the pedestrian from a public ‘escaping boredom’ to a consumer ‘embracing boredom’</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br />
boredom is different from loneliness<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the metamorphosis of ‘boredom’ from play to affordance </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the metamorphosis of expression from playground to publicity </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the metamorphosis of freedom from discovering one’s own amidst the differences of the many to the many obeying the (often corrupt) privilege of the one</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the metamorphosis of the city is the metamorphosis of its society </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the metamorphosis of the environmental landscape is the metamorphosis of mental nature </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the metamorphosis of man to cockroach is a reminder that cockroaches (will) outlive men — it is a return to, an end of, or becoming a being other than human, ancient even</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
metamorphosis is the human redesigning themselves to a coma, maybe death — to an uncertain afterlife, surely </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
metamorphosis may (seems to) be the design of extinction to an original life form, hybridized </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
this metamorphosis is an accelerated alienation </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
an alienation from oneself?</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
an alienation toward oneself?</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
an alienation…</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
no one will be able to afford </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
no one will be able to escape</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
a (rat) race…</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
no one will win because no one can see the freedom anticipated by the finish line</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
no one wants to win because fear catches up</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
freedom turns into fear<br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">nowadays, public space does not mean freedom but fear</span></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
freedom of living turns into fear of dying </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
freedom (by death — as the ultimate finish line) turns into fear (of life — living as the ultimate fear; fearing as the ultimate life form)</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
this metamorphosis seems fierce to oscillate between freedom and fear like that — between life and death</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
this metamorphosis could be the everyday life or the critique of the everyday life</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
it certainly is the habit [habitat, (in)habitation, (h)ability] of the everyday life </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
metamorphosis makes every day possible </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
metamorphosis makes life possible </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
thus, metamorphosis is a materialization [in mind + matter] of time</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
The world finds itself on the brink or <i>eve</i> of yet another fundamental shift, and since it is October or harvest-time, the shapeshifter that is metamorphosis, this uncanny and cunning habit turns into a doubleheader (hint), a double-edged sword, a trick-or-treat, hollow and even. So it might be useless to caution the darkness of the hollow eve or the hollowness of its events. </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
It’s definitely better to warn of the abyss of light instead. That’s why we have Hallowe’en — the metamorphosis of (a consumable) remembrance (now lightly consumed).</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
the hollow eve(n) between time lost and time found, not quite regained — is it fall or is it autumn — i forget</div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
All this to say happy halloween! [As I’m sure I didn’t spook anyone.]</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-67838861874899466182018-10-11T13:41:00.000+02:002018-10-11T13:41:04.283+02:00Gentle Manifest | We’ve Never Been Public<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Paradox of Public (&) Design: Public Space and Nuances of Freedom</span></u></b></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px; text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wHCJ2DmO1P0/W780XB8GhEI/AAAAAAAAF8k/2wR5JNEV4UIoKwP4IcCOHEpHrc78QW9-QCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_0980.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="129" data-original-width="750" height="68" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wHCJ2DmO1P0/W780XB8GhEI/AAAAAAAAF8k/2wR5JNEV4UIoKwP4IcCOHEpHrc78QW9-QCLcBGAs/s400/IMG_0980.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #454545;">
<br /></div>
</div>
In order to reflect on or provide an answer to the question in the photo, let’s consider reframing it by breaking it down further: Does Public imply a liberation of sorts; a freeing from one’s own fascism; a release of it even? Does it promise a community — (of) shared values and struggles? Is it a shared reality? Is there a correlation between the freedom of a society and the one its public space enables? What can the spatiality of a public (space) — its planning and design in the city — tell us about the (nuanced) freedom of its society? Has the public in Albania ever been free to organize and protest — to not just be organized to celebrate something, but to question, to dissent it — without being subjected to various (political, social, economic) repercussions?<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<br /></div>
<i>Public </i>is a word that defies definition — said differently — any definition it takes on, in one way or another, constricts the freedom it might imply, thus revealing the impossibility of its totality — its absolute materializon. Hence, any effort to outline or plan it is in fact the designer’s own construction of reality, how s/he perceives and imagines the reality s/he shares with others, a <i>constructed </i>— be it constructive or constrictive — <i>commons</i>. There exist forces beyond the designer’s control of course, and that needs to be taken into account — but, as the public (space) becomes a kind of commons that shapes and organizes — and to a certain degree predetermines — a kind of (freedom for the) community, then the responsibilities for its nuanced freedom (or lack thereof) should be shared among those who take on such a difficult task. If designers (whoever they might be: independent and individual members of the public, the state or private enterprises) take on such a (consciously) difficult task, then they take on both the <i>privilege </i>— the right to design a public — as well as the <i>responsibility </i>to ensure the rights of those they design for — their designated freedom — in it. Hence, public space can be thought of as a social contract way before it becomes a spatial one. <br /><br />Since the <i>freedom </i>implied by the word public is just as elusive, the task of designing a(ny) public space can then be thought of as one of designating freedom, mobilizing it, giving it form. As a middleman of sort, or better yet as a translator that is able to materialize, to mold all those other (faceless or not) forces and idea(l)s into a public (space), the designer is in a position to read between the lines, to leverage one toward the freedom of the other, or for that matter to collude with one’s power against the other. Design can be a genuine or ingenious process of metamorphosis, no doubt. Though, more often than not, unfolding such a becoming — or design as an <i>act </i>of unfolding design as an <i>image </i>of becoming (a process of becoming in itself) — has revealed the latter as a Machiavellian scheme, in which invisible powers take on a public embodiment — hence its integrity — so to normalize their abstraction, hegemony, violence, and to further integrate — or make integral — their yet unforeseen ends. In this case, <i>embodiment </i>is not synonymous with <i>empowerment</i>, because a seemingly proportionate give-take exchange becomes in fact monopolized, a perpetual take(over) masked as a general and generous giving. As such, design becomes a closed loop, a vicious cycle. It doesn’t enable transformation nor a transition, but it assures the rebirth or recolonization of an already established hegemony. <div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></span></div>
<i>Ethics is truly the substance and privilege of the designer. </i><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></span></div>
Thus when I talk about a <i>public</i>, I am referring not only to the freedom it embodies, but the one it releases — the <i>freedom it empowers</i>. When I ask about the freedom of creativity and discovery, of resisting and becoming, I am not questioning it (them) in the designer, but i am inquiring about the freedom of those he designs for. How does the designer enable and share the same freedom(s) to the designee publics? <br /><br />If public projects are described as <i>open </i>through the shapes of their form, their uninterrupted circulatory flow, their multi-program flexibility, their material transparency, and their environment sustainability — among others — then I want to know how these attributes enable the public in return. How do they designate bodies to access and discover their own, as well as their shared freedom in such a place? How does form, flow, flexibility, transparency, sustainability extend similar <i>dimensions of tolerance</i> to the public? <br /><br />I take <i>open </i>here to imply <i>a given degree of freedom</i>. If we think of architecture as a framing of sorts, then the drawing, the plan, the building become both a device, a witness, a documentation — an <i>artifact </i>of the impossibility to capture or enclose all space — and a <i>mechanism </i>of unfolding it, to (both) <i>discover </i>its human(e) dimension(s) and to <i>test </i>its own (aesthetic and ethic) tolerance toward these dimensions. Why, then, in renderings or any visual documentation, public space is shown as a place of <i>enchantment </i>through recreational activities enabled by service-base programs (such as cafés, concerts, vendors, etc.), and not as a place that allows <i>disenchantment </i>too — where it is safe to protest — that accommodates different types of learning — that is bare from imposed propaganda — thus allowing a leisure of a different kind, an immersion in another sensory experience, that of trees, minerals, textures, sounds that are often drowned out by the spectacle of the images and artificial colors of the city? Why can’t I see or envision the flow, flexibility, transparency or sustainability of the public dimension(s) as tolerated by the enchanted image? Why am I not convinced by the community it portrays? <br /><br />Because I know a few of its people and I am aware of the socio-economic context they inhabit. Their true shared values and struggles cannot be erased by the image — the opportunities to ameliorate should not be dictated by it either. The enchanted image doesn’t capture, distribute, nor encourage the disenchanted public it represents. It is interested in only redesigning <i>its </i>(designer + bigger forces) dimension of reality, because what good is a designer if s/he doesn’t design. It’s what separates them from their public. It is also the wrong way to go about the privilege and the responsibility given to one as a (public) designer. One should not forget nor dismiss the fact that the public, too, can be an ingenious co-designer. It is why every year, when the city shuts down for various mass-celebrations, I ask myself, it wouldn’t be that different to organize mass-resistances instead. Why is it so difficult to do though? This swelling of the public through planned distractions, why can’t it also become a way to somber it up — to lay it, the city and its institutions bare?<br /><br />It might indeed be a privilege to be bumped up from a designated public to a designer, but a designer mustn’t forget that s/he will always be part of a community that shares a common reality, no matter how constrictive or constructive s/he designs it to be. The designer’s involvement then can be more than just privilege, it can become a <i>choice </i>to extend this freedom to their community — an invitation to design their livelihood <i>together</i>.<br /><br />The question thus becomes, a two-parter: first, <i>Which power (ethic) does the designer follow?</i> and then, <i>Which power (force or regime) does public form and livelihood follow?</i> <br /><br />In Albania, public space has always been designed through oppressive means, be they political or economic. Public livelihood has always been designed as a perpetual struggle to ensure continued dependence — not to encourage or allow independent thriving. It has always been a space that has enabled only the freedoms <i>sanctioned </i>by hegemony, as evident by its increasingly <i>repressive </i>public. The nuances of freedom its society has been subjected to for decades, if not centuries, hasn’t varied much, it has only deepened and normalized the shadows of its public. Bottom-up transgressions of these sanctions have always been harshly punished. But, enforced political mass-gatherings and state propaganda activities, which can also be considered (scaled-up) transgressions, are revered as the right to (practice) free-speech, as democracy at work. <br /><br />So, <i>who </i>does public space and its public belong to, if not all? Has the public been deterritorialized from the impossibility of its enclosure, the <i>openness </i>and freedom inherent in it, only to be reterritorialized as a belonging <i>to </i>someone? And if its openness — to be shared by all without the fear of prosecution, to use it to speak up — has always been such an impossibility, <i>can we (for sure) say that Albania has ever been truly public? </i>Was it ever given the freedom to discover its own nuances of it? Is there such a freedom left anymore? <div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">*************</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-19479096508007148222018-09-23T15:57:00.000+02:002018-09-23T16:00:33.825+02:00Albania's 'Transition' as an 'Accident of the Transfer'? | (re)Thinking with Virilio [Part III]<span style="color: orange; font-family: inherit;">*</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The following is the last installment of a three-part series. The link to the others can be found <a href="https://www.perfact.org/2018/09/albanias-transition-as-accident-of.html">here</a> and <a href="https://www.perfact.org/2018/09/albanias-transition-as-accident-of_23.html">here</a>. </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-c5e415d7-7fff-e11b-899f-c7e3d462e339"></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;"><i>Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at most the empty carcass of time. </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="text-align: start;">— Karl Marx, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Poverty-Philosophy.pdf" style="font-family: inherit;">The Poverty of Philosophy</a></i></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xp3UnX8ObaY/W6eMc46PFpI/AAAAAAAAF7o/5ltqZWxJ65gPY-n23Gb2pA1Cs8OoN_uzgCLcBGAs/s1600/Perfact_Shesh_S5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xp3UnX8ObaY/W6eMc46PFpI/AAAAAAAAF7o/5ltqZWxJ65gPY-n23Gb2pA1Cs8OoN_uzgCLcBGAs/s400/Perfact_Shesh_S5.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>PËRshesh</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Virilio's work helps us understand the city as part of a larger ecology of power — globalization and technology — which can instruct us to approach the present neoliberal regime in the country not as one of a kind, but as one of the many forms it has taken worldwide — and, when comparing it with the old regime of communism, to be mindful of one’s forceful isolation and the other’s intense openness — an openness stimulated only by what is able to profit from it while still harboring a continued narrow-mindness from previous such oppressions within. The light it promises renders illusory if it doesn’t take on the task of finding lightness within, in order to liberate it. The light(ness) it brings, weighs — it is worth — as much as the remnants of darkness — the burden — it carries within. The war of the present (age) is a war waged on time, where the democratic becomes dromocratic. </span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<u>General Note</u>: <b>Bold </b>text indicates my emphasis. </div>
<div>
The postcards in this post are the latest (4x6) sequence of <a href="http://www.perfact.org/2016/10/postcards-from-tirana-in-search-of.html">the ones</a> I started to do about two years ago here on the blog, along with a few other montages I've posted on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PERfACT.alb/">Facebook page</a>. All are available and free for all to use under the Creative Commons license <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/?">CC BY-NC-SA 4.0</a>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0OHCONRyj1c/W6eMdKQRPOI/AAAAAAAAF8A/Pz7z2sPlxzwoWesdyA8nsP60BJ5-b-nYQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Perfact_Shesh_S6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0OHCONRyj1c/W6eMdKQRPOI/AAAAAAAAF8A/Pz7z2sPlxzwoWesdyA8nsP60BJ5-b-nYQCEwYBhgL/s400/Perfact_Shesh_S6.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>PËRshesh</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>
<u style="color: #444444;"><br /></u></h3>
<h3>
<u style="color: #444444;">The Dromoscopic City</u></h3>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="color: #666666;">Thus my people will be deported for want of intelligence. </i><span style="color: #666666;">— Livre de Malédictions</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s i</span>mportant to return to the city. </span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To return to the city is to return to politics or to the political people.</span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It’s not by chance that in Greek the city is called the ‘polis’. The city was created in a relationship to territorial space. It is a territorial phenomenon, a phenomenon of territorial concentration. Old villages are spread over a territory which is not a territory but a field, in all senses of the term. There is creation, from the old villages, through what has been called kinesis, of an urban territorial unit – the Greek city-state, to take a well-known reference. </span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since politics and the city were born together, they were born through a right: the creation of a territory or of an estate by right, being established, the right of autochthonism. There are rights because there is territory. There are rights and therefore duties </span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">– he who has land has war, as the people of Verde said. </span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He who has rights in an urban territory has the duty to defend it. </span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The citizen is also a soldier-citizen. I feel this situation survives up to the present; we are experiencing the end of that world. Through the ups and downs of the state, the city-state, the more or less communal state, and finally, the nation-state, we have experienced the development of politics linked to the territory; always down-to-earth. In spite of railroads and telephones, we experienced a relationship to the soil and a relationship to a still coherent right. There was still a connection to territorial identity, even in the phenomenon of nationalistic amplification. Today, as we saw earlier with the end of time-space and the coming of speed-space, the political man and the city are becoming problematic. </span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you talk about the rights of man on the world scale, they pose a problem which is not yet resolved, for a state of rights is not connected with a state of place, to a clearly determined locality. We can clearly see the weaknesses of the rights of Man</span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It makes for lots of meetings, but not for much in the way of facts. Just take a look at Eastern European countries or Latin America. It seems to me that </span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">speedspace which produces new technologies will bring about a loss, a derealization of the city</span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The megalopolises now being talked of (Calcutta, or Mexico with 30 million inhabitants) are no longer cities, they are phenomena which go beyond the city and translate the decline of the city as a territorial localization, and also as a place of an assumed right, affirmed by a policy. Here, I’m very pessimistic. </span><span style="color: #444444; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel we’re entering into a society without rights, a ‘non-rights’ society, because we’re entering a society of the non-place, and because the political man was connected to the discrimination of a place. The loss of a place is, alas, generally the loss of rights. </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-82ef93af-7fff-c361-4125-e2e5a441a247"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-82ef93af-7fff-c361-4125-e2e5a441a247"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">
</span></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-82ef93af-7fff-c361-4125-e2e5a441a247"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here, we have a big problem</span>: </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the political man must be reinvented–a political man connected to speed-space.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There, everything remains to be done, nothing’s been accomplished. I’d even say the question hasn’t been considered. [...] We truly have here a political question and an urban question, because at present the cities are undone by technology, undone by television, defeated by automobility (the high speed trains, the Concorde). </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The phenomena of identification and independence are posed in a completely new way</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. [...] We have here a phenomenon of distortion of the territorial community that explains the phenomenon of demands of independence. Before, we were together in the same place, and could claim an identity. Today, we are together elsewhere, via high-speed train, or via TV. There is a power of another nature which creates distortions. We are no longer in space, but in speed-space. [...] There’s a logic there, and it’s a logic which poses problems. (</span><a href="https://onscenes.weebly.com/philosophy/speed-space-interview-with-paul-virilio#" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">via</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-toynbSMhNfI/W6eMdElxx_I/AAAAAAAAF78/9s3CibxFLp0wwuzWI90yWIWW1QETiLV_gCEwYBhgL/s1600/Perfact_Shesh_S7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-toynbSMhNfI/W6eMdElxx_I/AAAAAAAAF78/9s3CibxFLp0wwuzWI90yWIWW1QETiLV_gCEwYBhgL/s400/Perfact_Shesh_S7.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>PËRshesh</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think the chapter on the politics of disappearance, in Virilio’s </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Negative Horizon</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> book is worth quoting at length below for a comparative understanding of politics in, and of time — pertaining to history and origin; to autochthony, which is a hot button issue amongst Albanians and one that is currently thought through territory, not time; from the agora of the democratic theater to the stadium as form of perpetual movement in search of identity.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YzXBsJLJihs/W6eMdt8X3LI/AAAAAAAAF78/4mxjCVjpJZU6DG3qBITjHj4GgjUxb4NKwCEwYBhgL/s1600/Perfact_Shesh_S8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YzXBsJLJihs/W6eMdt8X3LI/AAAAAAAAF78/4mxjCVjpJZU6DG3qBITjHj4GgjUxb4NKwCEwYBhgL/s400/Perfact_Shesh_S8.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>PËRshesh</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><u>The Politics of Disappearance</u></span></span></h3>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
</h3>
<div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>We must always see ourselves for the last time</i><span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>.</i> — Pascal Jardin</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #444444;">If in the past the first political act consisted in making the form of the city apparent at the same time as the figure of citizenship, and this was the underlying meaning of the rites of foundation and the rites of autochthony in the ancient civic space, it seems that we are now witnessing the premises of a fundamental reversal: it is no longer a question of forming ‘autochthonous’ (i.e. native) citizens along with foreigners coming from whatever sort of synechism, as was the case in the Athenian city, but rather a process leading to the disappearance of citizenship by transforming the residents into ‘foreigners within’, a new sort of untouchable, in the transpolitical and anational state where the living are nothing more than ‘living dead’ in permanent deferment.</span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A degraded form of the ‘political’ in the old sense of the term, ever refusing to decide between place [</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lieu</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">] and milieu, sociology will engage the persistence of the morphological illusion in omitting </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">time </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in favour of a reference to, and reverence for, history. Nevertheless, contrary to the process of synoecism, </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the marshalling of men</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from the ‘rural demes’ in a single city, autochthony appears as a </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">marshalling of time</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, of a time that has nothing historical about it, as it involves instead a perpetual recommencement of the origin. Again, as Nicole Loraux explains: ‘</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In order to have its moment in the history of the democratic city, the myth of autochthony is nonetheless written in a </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">slowed</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">repetitive</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">time</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which, year after year, repeats the same festivals, the same celebrations, thus marking off the space of the City</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’. A necessary ‘topos’ of official discourse, Athenian autochthony is therefore, </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">before all else</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a mythical ‘Kronos’, a political rhythm, a ceremony leading the panathenaeans up the Acropolis from the cemetery of the Kerameikos, from birth to the public death of these ‘sons of the fatherland’, for whom</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> time is annulled in the irrevocable return from the end to the origin</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> An eternal present inscribed in the time of the ‘polis’, the autochthonous myth stresses the ‘political’ time of the citizen in separating him from his tribal or familial idiorhythms. This process begins with the agrarian origins and proceeds up to the beginnings of the industrial era in which the </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dromocratic </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">revolution will succeed the democratic revolution in innovating an </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accelerated time </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where the energy technologies will progressively eliminate the myth of the territorial rootedness of the state. </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ‘cult of the matter’</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Earth Mother and Virgin of origins, </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">will be supplanted by the cult of light, where absolute ‘substance’ is worn out and fades away, giving way to a necessary </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accident of the transfer</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Athenian erection, at the </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chthonian </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">passage from the origins of myth, will be replaced by the </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cryptic </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">passage from shadow into light. The traditional political enclosure will be succeeded by a great ‘transpolitical’ disorder. An autochthony of </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">time</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, more than of any particular place, less indigenous than photogenous since time is the cycle of light, the subject that will see the day will be born less mortal than </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">visible</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; less a topos than a chronos, this subject will be born in the light of the time of a </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chronotropism of the living</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> where mythical conditioning of the liturgy will give way to technological conditioning of populations exploited in their biorhythms. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the face of this trauma, the principle of the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">geomorphological identity </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of the citizen tends to be efface</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">d; less a native [</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">originaire</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">] than a member of a society [</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">«sociétare»</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">], there will be no delay in the imperceptible process whereby the citizen becomes nothing more than a </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">stand in </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">suppléant</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">].</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Privileged residents, those entitled to the ‘rights of the city’ of a democratic state, are superseded by </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">visitors</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, transitory citizens, tourists, spectators of a dromocratic state where vision [</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">la vue</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">] is life [</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">la vie</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">]. . . .</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If yesterday, in the unity of the neighbourhood, the other was at once known and recognized through repetition, the ritual of encounters and public events, with the transportation revolution, this ‘neighbour’ will become a </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">spectre </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that one will see only accidentally. The great disorder will, therefore, do less to perfect exchange than it will serve to give rise to this </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">fleeting presence</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This kinetic habituation to the disappearance of the congener will have the character of a social divorce: passing [</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">passant</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">], fleeting [</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">passage</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">], physical presence of the similar will lose its reality to be replaced by its ‘brand image’. The blind spots stretch out to the point where the diffusion of the body increases and the transience of people will surround us progressively with strangers. The discrediting of the notion of the </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">enemy</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to be replaced progressively by what is suspect and poses a threat, thus signals less the decline of defence than the absence of allies, the discrediting of civic alliance.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We will thus see the extensive character of, first, provincial and, then, national definitions of locations succeeded by that of an intense transnational visualization where the long theories of the democratic liturgy will disappear, replaced by the ‘unwinding [</span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">défilement</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">] sequences’, an accelerated substitute for the actions of an absent people.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The art of seeing, of foreseeing, politics does not, therefore, escape the rule according to which ‘Art does not render the visible but rather renders visible.’ In this reconversion of the field of representation, the City ceases to be a ‘theatre’ (agora, forum) in order to become instead a darkened chamber, a </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cinema </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where visibility supplants all territoriality, all legitimate location. But let us return to consider the invention of Athens: ‘There is an upper area: </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the Acropolis</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and a lower: </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the Agora</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the Kerameikos</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. There is also an interior, the Acropolis and the Agora, and an exterior, outside the walls of the City, the Kerameikos where the Athenian democracy buried those who served. In this public cemetery, the common inscriptions were consecrated to an idealistic glory: the polis, the indivisible unity that owes its authority to the </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">effacement of its andres, its soldier-citizens, valorous yet identical and interchangeable</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Curiously, in this genre of historical heroization a certain site is missing, namely, the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">stadium </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in which the democratic equality of the City comes to an end with the rise of a momentous dromocratic publicity.</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Here the civic point of view is inversed: there is an upper area, the levels on which the spectators are seated, and a lower area, the track where the actors file out. . . . Within this theatre of mobile performances, those present have the view of the gods, while those who pass through are dominated by the insatiable curiosity of the crowd of voyeurs. </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are far from the ideal platitude of the equals of the agora, nothing like that, instead there is only the spectral analysis of a population exposed to the disclosure of an elite of movement</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"> If the public place is, therefore, the place of the demos, the track is, by way of analogy, that of the invention of a dromos where the eternal return of political origins is renewed by the revolution of a ‘transpolitical’ spectacle which bears with it in a germinal state the tyrannies of an empire where logistical ideals progressively replace the political ideologies of Athenian democracy. While the agora and the republican forum will have long since disappeared in the enclosure of parliaments, the ‘public place’ will survive by becoming the stadium of military processions, before disappearing in its turn into the traffic of the transportation revolution. Thus after the gymnasium, the amphitheatre and the racetrack will have played their role in anticipation of the airfield and satellites installing in orbit their peripheral rites.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Site of a morphological overexposure, the sporting arena is, therefore, not only a ‘crater’ for the popular irruption, it is also a type of census</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In this inventory, </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the form is the ground [fond] that rises again to the surface</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Surveillance becomes the last quarter of the eclipse of the community, </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the high-security quarter</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the logistical delocalization of power. It is logical, thus, to see the national stadium [...], transformed into a </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">concentration camp</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, since the enterprise of political appearances gives way to the aesthetic of military disappearance. </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A reduced model of an abolished civic space, the stadium is without doubt the end of the morphological illusion of the State, the ultimate ‘stadium’ of the city and, therefore, indirectly, of legitimate citizenship</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. What plays out [...], beyond all reasons of state, is an argument between the ancients and the moderns, a campaign promise of the ‘postpolitical’. [...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Their liturgy takes the place of the hearth of the community, of the Athenian </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">cratos</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; an agonistic ceremony, </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">their perpetual movement is situated beyond the death of the ‘similar’, beyond the political, it poses for us the question of the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">identity of the living</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The ‘public place’ becomes at once the cemetery of the political and a ‘transpolitical’ forum. [...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The act of presence replaces the act of birth and autochthony; the opposition to tyranny is no longer one of ideology, it is that of a life, of the enigma of the living body mysteriously </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">present in time</span><span style="font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We can do away with civic space or eliminate the political capital, but in abolishing the public cemetery, we simultaneously exterminate all descendents. The funerary foundation of societies is stronger than the erection of the city, </span><span style="font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the vengeance of presence prohibits the mass grave of the state</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">***</span></h3>
<div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-19516933516198624902018-09-23T15:56:00.000+02:002018-09-23T16:01:15.889+02:00Albania's 'Transition' as an 'Accident of the Transfer'? | (re)Thinking with Virilio [Part II]<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*</span>The following is the second installment of a three-part series on Virilio’s work. The link to the others can be found <a href="https://www.perfact.org/2018/09/albanias-transition-as-accident-of.html">here</a> and <a href="https://www.perfact.org/2018/09/albanias-transition-as-accident-of_88.html">here</a>.<span id="docs-internal-guid-01ec70b0-7fff-ce2b-00af-403297ccc09b"></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>A society which rashly privileges the present — real time — </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>to the detriment of both the past and the future, also privileges the accident. </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;">— Paul Virilio,<i> <a href="https://www2.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol3_2/virilio.htm">The Museum of Accidents</a></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5Z3-iCCf78I/W6eHVoyIeCI/AAAAAAAAF7I/RT-Vc9iRYEcXKgAvPdS-SyP3gYgW8LYTgCLcBGAs/s1600/Perfact_Shesh_S.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5Z3-iCCf78I/W6eHVoyIeCI/AAAAAAAAF7I/RT-Vc9iRYEcXKgAvPdS-SyP3gYgW8LYTgCLcBGAs/s400/Perfact_Shesh_S.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">shesh<span style="text-align: left;"><i>PËR</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Virilio's work </span><span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">helps us understand the Albania's <i>Transition</i> to neoliberalism as part of a larger ecology of power, where the city as a layered ground of human reflections and historical recordings becomes a non-place, an acceleration of the present that enables the disappearance of both past and future. The speed of overindulgence is also that of disappearance, that speed-space in which private constructions/developments rush to privatize public land, and corrupt governments push for a quick confirmation of ‘special’ (tailored but illegal) laws. S</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">peed-space</span><span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, as opposed to </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">space-time</span><span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, is the space of <i>absolute power </i></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i> the perfect image that enables the perfect crime</i>. The beauty of it, no matter how fleeting (pun intended), consist in getting away with it, not only unscathed but thriving. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The speed-space is one of war, hence new technologies have aided the latest Albanian regime of Rilindje to wage war within, a war on democracy (free speech and will) by campaigning </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the beautiful</span><span style="font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> — ‘<i>beauty will lead us out of the dark ages and into the light</i>'. The sentiment ‘Let there be light’ (I am thinking of John Huston’s 1980 documentary) takes a profound meaning here, along similar lines of Marie’s Antoinette’s ‘Let them eat cake’ bit, for not only showing the bleak conditions the starving masses (mental or physical), but for revealing the darkness of those enlightened in overindulge. This motto of <i>beauty</i> enables us to (fore)see the <i>deception of light</i>. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hence, Rilindje’s ‘beauty’ breaks away from previous defense/offense mechanisms, such as the fortress or the bunker type — the terror through architectural heaviness </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in favor of <i>light </i>and <i>architectural lightness</i>. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through smoke and mirrors, it has build swift walls of light instead. This is not a one-off practice </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">— it is a worldwide</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> phenomena, and as such, it champions </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Albania's inclusion to those being led astray by the ‘<i>gaze of the West</i>’. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The city has always been a site of matter, where idea(l)s, mentalities, materialize. It, thus, provides a well-documented and layered proof of who, what and when has had a hand in design(at)ing it over time. It provides depth </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">— </span><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">which is now being challenged by the confrontation between </span><i style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">space-time</i><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"> memories and </span><i style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">speed-space</i><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"> intensities in an everything-is-up-for-grabs manner </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">— a (peacetime) war of speed waged on time (thus, territory) for power (absolution). Despite its best efforts to hide its true agenda,</span><span style="font-family: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"> R’s ‘beauty through (speed of) light’ campaign, as both an instrument of war and a promise of peace, visibly remains surface-deep, a deception, an optical illusion that in its quest to enlighten souls fails to reach their depth, that darkness it wants to bring to light. So in a way, in its quest to civilize the masses (to bring a western light eastward, globalization itself), R’s regime reveals the darkness within, the darkness that makes all regimes possible, that of absolute control </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">— of means and ends</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">. Its panopticon is constructed in perceived freedom — a </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">coercion</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> of space, of mind, of time. How can it enlighten or civilize (via its aesthetically ‘seductive’ projects) when it takes away public territory; when it continues to oppress freedom — physical and psychological — when it keeps minds in the darks and limits the space of bodies; when it smooths the city into a surface of accelerations and disappearances — when it exhausts its relief and exterminate its historical heritage? An unbearable lightness of being indeed. How much does such lightness weigh on humanity? Just as much as the burden of its psychic darkness perhaps?</span></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-884d7b39-7fff-dfed-8789-838c99fa152e">
</span>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">***</span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
The paragraphs below describe the architecture of globalization so well — now fully <i>unleashed</i> in Albania (a top-down legalization of ‘extralegal’ state-private building boom, no different than the ‘informal’ bottom-up, do-it-yourself urban growth of post-‘90s, which it has condemned illegal, and what it hasn’t yet demolished still awaits legalization, for ‘beauty’ related issues no doubt) — and visibly so as we see it unfold in the <i>historical theater</i> vs. <i>private skyscraper</i> <u>debate</u> in Tirana.<br />
<br />
<u>General Note</u>: <b>Bold </b>text indicates my emphasis.<br />
The postcards in this post are the latest (4x6) sequence of <a href="http://www.perfact.org/2016/10/postcards-from-tirana-in-search-of.html">the ones</a> I started to do about two years ago here on the blog, along with a few other montages I've posted on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PERfACT.alb/">Facebook page</a>. All are available and free for all to use under the Creative Commons license <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/?">CC BY-NC-SA 4.0</a>.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w0R7vUXGd78/W6eHb004DDI/AAAAAAAAF7g/gyqwum4BuzY8KGZompPA3s3j0J3WI9vfQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Perfact_Shesh_S2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w0R7vUXGd78/W6eHb004DDI/AAAAAAAAF7g/gyqwum4BuzY8KGZompPA3s3j0J3WI9vfQCEwYBhgL/s400/Perfact_Shesh_S2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">shesh<span style="text-align: left;"><i>PËR</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #666666;">The accident is an inverted miracle, a secular miracle, a revelation.</span></i></div>
<div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #666666;">When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck. </span></i></div>
<span style="color: #666666;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="color: #666666;">— Paul Virilio,<i> Politics of the Very Worst</i></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #666666;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #444444;"></span></span><br />
<h3 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #444444;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u>The Museum of Accidents</u></span></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #444444;">
</span></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #444444;">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I say at the end of the article that television is the actual museum. In the beginning, I say: a museum of accidents is needed, and the reader imagines a building with accidents inside. But at the end, I say: no, this museum already exists, it's television.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is more than a metaphor: the cinema was certainly an art, but television can't be, because it is the museum of accidents. In other words, its art is to be the site where all accidents happen. But that's its only art.</span></div>
</span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444;">One exposes the accident in order not to be exposed to the accident. It's an inversion. There is a French expression that says: to be exposed to an accident, to cross a street without looking at the cars means exposing oneself to be run over. This is more than a play with words, it's fundamental. For instance, when a painter exhibits his work, one says: he exposes his work. Similarly, when we cross the street, we expose ourselves to a car accident.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And television exposes the world to the accident. The world is exposed to accidents through television. The editor of the New York Times was recently interviewed in Le Nouvel Observateur, and he said something that I really agree with: </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">television is a media of crisis, which means that television is a media of accidents</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. [</span><a href="http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=62" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">via</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">]</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dwll3cnxj3w/W6eHb_Hzm6I/AAAAAAAAF7g/DXi4KCt9etIriRc8S6fvKpwCOVt0avySQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Perfact_Shesh_S3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dwll3cnxj3w/W6eHb_Hzm6I/AAAAAAAAF7g/DXi4KCt9etIriRc8S6fvKpwCOVt0avySQCEwYBhgL/s400/Perfact_Shesh_S3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">shesh<span style="text-align: left;"><i>PËR</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<u><span style="color: #444444;">Squared Horizon</span></u></h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="color: #666666;">What is the ‘portable window’?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i style="color: #666666;"><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I used this term in reference to architecture, because the problem in architecture is first and foremost one of doors and windows. It is not the wall which encloses, since a structure that cannot be entered is not a structure for man.</span></div>
</div>
</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There are three windows. There is the French window (door) which serves to effect an architecture, a place where man lives, be this a city or an apartment. There is the window which renders itself autonomous, the window as a place of light or looking – here we have an extraordinary invention related to a religious problem, the problem of the cult of light, through the claustra, solar calendars, etc. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The third window is the television screen</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">… So when I speak of a window, I mean this third window. I am speaking also of another constructed space, that of telecommunications and the new technologies. Another point concerns cutting out: </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you only have an image if there is cutting, for nothing is ever seen in its entirety</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everything is always perceived through a frame</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and it’s certain this frame existed from the moment the first eye opened upon the visible field. This process continued with the framing of paintings, the frame of the photograph, and the frame created by the television camera eye. I believe when you talk of a third window, you are talking about a new frame, a sidereal frame, since with communications satellites and live re-broadcasts, the problem of the window becomes a macrocosmic phenomenon. But, this all stems from the very first window, the porthole drilled in the megalithic tomb. In these tombs there was a tiny hole to let the sun shine in. All this goes back to the beginning of time. That’s why I call it the continuation of as tory, the aftermath of that first sighting.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> As a first step we spoke of space; I think here we should speak of time.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The contemporary image is a time-image, even a speed-image. The first pictures were space images, and that’s what I refer to when I speak of an </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">aesthetics of disappearing</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Images only persist because of the persistence of their medium</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: stone in the neolithic era or in ancient times, carved wood, painted canvas. … Those are an aesthetics of immersion, of the appearance of an image which becomes permanent. The image is sketched, then painted and coated, and it lasts because its medium persists. With the coming of photography, followed by cinematography and video, we entered the realm of an aesthetics of disappearance: </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the persistence is now only retinal</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Despite the film used in photography and cinema, there is no longer any real ‘support’. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sustaining medium is retinal persistency because there is a persistency of the image in my eye that is this image in motio</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">n. Let’s never forget that. So I believe an aesthetics of disappearing is another world, another link to the real. It is a link to the real as fleeting, as uncertain.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I think the old image, the old reality, was a reality that can be presented as a </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">space-time</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> reality. Man lived in a time system of his actual presence: when he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there. Today we are entering a space which is </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">speed-space</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. [...] </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think the present finds us squarely between these two times</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are living in both the extensive time of the cities of stories, of memories, or archives, or writing, and the intensive time of the new technologies.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> That’s the ‘</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">program of absence</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’ that’s how we program our definitive absence, because we’ll never be present in that billionth of a second.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[...] </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Man is present in the average time situated in the long duration of historical phenomena and the short duration of his reflexes</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, of the ‘twinkling of an eye’.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[...] </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">War produces accidents</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It produces an unheard-of accident, which is upsetting the traditional idea of war. Substance is necessary and accident is contingent and relative! That is the traditional story of the return to the accident. In war time the opposite is true. Here accident is necessary and substance relative and contingent. What are war machines? They are machines in reverse – they produce accidents, disappearances, deaths, breakdowns. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think war in this sense conveys something which at present we are experiencing in peace time; the accident has now become something ordinary</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[...] Now, with the new technologies, not only do they make war all the time, in all seasons, but non-stop, day and night. We have a </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">totalizing phenomenon that is also a phenomenon we experience daily with live broadcasts</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> from the four corners of the earth, which allow us to watch a festival or a ballgame. There is therefore a cancellation of the daytime. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the same way that there is a cancellation of timespace, there is a cancellation of daytime as a way of dividing up time. Daytime is no longer the astronomical day, it is the day of techniques</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. With astronomical daytime, chickens went to sleep when Man did. Today, chickens continue to go to sleep when the sun goes down, but men no longer do. When the sun goes down, electric light and television go on. It’s another time, another day beyond the solar day. (</span><a href="https://onscenes.weebly.com/philosophy/speed-space-interview-with-paul-virilio#" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">via</span></a><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Nckk0xRo0vg/W6eHb_9-LII/AAAAAAAAF7c/Nw4J7xdRLIA4sKsd4RoEz4baRGAw7GJPACEwYBhgL/s1600/Perfact_Shesh_S4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Nckk0xRo0vg/W6eHb_9-LII/AAAAAAAAF7c/Nw4J7xdRLIA4sKsd4RoEz4baRGAw7GJPACEwYBhgL/s400/Perfact_Shesh_S4.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">shesh<span style="text-align: left;"><i>PËR</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<h3>
<span style="color: #444444;"><u>Negative Horizon</u></span></h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>What we see arises from what is not apparent. </i>— Paul de Tarse</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A sublimation of the hunt, the course imposes a cleared surface; a sublimation of war, the speed record demands a pure surface. Devoid of accidents, of relief, </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the ground becomes the mirror of acceleration</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. […] Early on Caeser would assert that ‘the greatest glory of a state is to make its frontiers a vast desert’. A smooth leveled surface — is the desert not the first transfiguration of the states of matter? — such as Herschell indicated in his time: </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an object illuminated in the light of the sun on the horizon acts like a mirror. . . . </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The illumination of the horizon serves to transform non-polished surfaces into reflective surfaces, as we see verified with dromoscopic illumination: </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the accelerated perspective acts like a luminous source</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the anamorphosis of the trajectory produces an effect of accentuated depth, followed by an optical rectification similar to that of light on the horizon. […] In reality, most images, whether mobile or immobile, arise from the capture of the visible domain by </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a process that puts into play the interaction of light with the surfaces of reflection or of recording </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(natural elements of reflection, photosensitive emulsions…) and according to the same principle as the inversion of the image. The perception of relief and the estimation of distances (space and time) being inseparable from the stereoscopic acuity, binocular visionaries, we only perceive the third dimension when one of our eyes receives an </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">image temporized</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> through its relationship to another (this is what is called the ‘Pultrich effect’). For the object in accelerated movement, this temporization is further reinforced by the polarizing effect of the windows of the vehicle, in other words </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by the artifice of the horizontal illumination of speed interfering with the nearby or distant surfaces of the environment</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[…] </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Visible on the level of the surface, speed appears thus like an optical phenomenon of reflection of the ground. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A surface effect in constant (advancing) ‘telescopic’ and (accelerated) ‘dromoscopic’ transformation, acceleration is in fact only a form of hallucination.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444;">[…]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ‘</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I see nothing but becoming</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’, said Nietzsche. . . . In this optic, we could add, since </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">space is that which prevents everything from being in the same place</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the conquest of speed is the pursuit of this ‘parking of deterrence’, of this last ‘place’ where objects and their features would no longer be solely </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">isomorphs</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> but </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">holomorphs</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, that is, interchangeable at will, rendered </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">homogeneous </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dromogenous</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by the artifice of the instantaneity of ubiquity.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> An apocalyptic land, surface of reflection, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the desert receives the image</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the optical illusion caused by the overheated atmospheric strata, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the image of the mirage</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> [T]he sands of the desert were the materials of a perfect holographic revelation</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In fact, </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the hologram is not the sophistication of a false perspective, the realization of a perfect image, but the opposite: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the exhaustion of relief, the extermination of all perspective</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Henceforth, what is ‘false’ is no longer anamorphosis but the depth, the length, the distances of time and space perspective. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The attainment of the horizontal ‘escape velocity’ [«vitesse de libération»] liberates us from the alleged reality of the third dimension</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In allowing us to escape the time span of the trajectory, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">speed actually liberates from the ‘volume’ of the object, from places [des lieux] as from the milieu.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444;"> No more delay! No more relief! There is no longer any significant difference between the real and the effect of the real.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> [W]hat is at stake </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is the abolition of depth, the end of expanses of time. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[…]</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Pure speed becomes both height and length, the alpha and omega of absolute power.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> […] The metaphor has become reality: both a means of instantaneous destruction and a means of sophisticated projection, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the speed of physical light becomes </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the absolute weapon</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and the light of speed produces </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the perfect image</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, the hologram </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of pure power</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444;">[P]ure speed is now the supreme and concentrated effect of a war beyond battles, of a pure war requiring the focal point, the pure surface of the desert.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444;">[…]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> While a concurrence is suddenly established between the progressive illumination of the morning horizon and the accelerated perspective, the light of the finish rises to the zenith for the adept of limit-speed; </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the course becomes a hunt for the sun</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> After having successively sacrificed space to time, and then the distance of time to distance-speed, the vector becomes the last dimension of a world that is now reduced to the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">desert of the moment</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444;">[…]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Appearing like the effect of a sequencing, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the optic of the locomotive illusion is analogous to the cinematographic optical illusion. </span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the height of desertification, the fascination with the negative horizon amounts to exhausting the last resource of space: the void. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The will to power is here, therefore, the will to arbitrarily increase the density of the depth of field</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, by changing the objective horizon into a ‘wall’ [</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mur</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">], into a screen, for the inscription of the effects of the light of acceleration. In this architecture, the narrowing of the aim signals the completion of the site; the sound barrier [</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mur du son</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">], ‘wall’ of heat, thus Sliding Home impatiently built itself up, the refuge of exile for those who covered space with their tombs [</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tombes</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">], these record-breakers [</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tombeurs de record</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">] who, not content with the desert of the ground, secretly aspired for opacity, for the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">desert of the sky</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The speed cage is excessively reduced, the frame of the windscreen closes on the atmospheric depth. The resistance of the air to the progress of the automobile closes the hardening of the sky, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the crenel of the course becomes the rampart of the limit-speed, the wall of light</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Massive, translucent, the desert thus gives birth to the last figure of the Bunker, a singular reversal takes place here: </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the void of the ground causes the fullness of the sky</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, of the sky with a polish that is reflected in the reduced silhouettes of the vehicles.</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">**</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If the world is merely a false semblance the time sweeps aside in a single blow, </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">speed is the air, the wind, of time — a relative wind that instantly sweeps away the desert of bodies</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ‘</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every surface is an </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">interface</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> between two spheres constantly governed by an activity in the form of an exchange between two substances in contact with one another</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.’ </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444;"> The screen replaces the mirror.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444;"> [T]he message is the speed of release.</span></span></div>
</span></div>
<div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">***</span></h3>
</div>
<div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-76848923431305345492018-09-23T15:55:00.002+02:002018-09-23T15:59:15.101+02:00Albania's 'Transition' as an 'Accident of the Transfer'? | (re)Thinking with Virilio [Part I]<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*</span>The following is the first installment of a three-part series on Virilio’s work. The link to the others can be found <a href="https://www.perfact.org/2018/09/albanias-transition-as-accident-of_23.html">here</a> and <a href="https://www.perfact.org/2018/09/albanias-transition-as-accident-of_88.html">here</a>.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;"><i>Every war is a war of time. </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit;">— Paul Virilio</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">***</span></h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There has been much talk about Albania's turn of the century transformation, more specifically its 'transition' from one regime to the other - from communist dictatorship to a capitalist economy - culminating in a neoliberal cult with Rilindje. To understand this transformation, which was by no means an isolated event or accident, I would like to do so by putting together a few snippets of the great thinker and essayist, the late Paul Virilio. I've been wanting to write a longer piece on the Albanian's 'transition' years (circa 1990-2013) as an '<i>accident of the transfer</i>', a shift from '<i>time-space</i>' to '<i>speed-space</i>', as well as the '<i>disappearance of aesthetics</i>' <span style="color: #222222; white-space: pre-wrap;">— </span>as it has been unfolding through mass-media and urban space in Tirana these past thirty years, but I haven't had much time to sit down and properly confront (all the nuances of) such an issue. For the moment, though, I'd like to share a few of V's writings (excerpts and concepts) along with a quick video I made with all this in mind. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Someone told me once that if I were to borrow from a David, choose Cronenberg over Lynch. I think both are impressive visual thinkers, but I have to agree about Cronenberg. Hence, what you see in the video is a personal attempt at translating my own thinking of and through two disenchanted but brilliant thinkers, a writer and a visual artist, bringing them both to a completely different context, one that occupies my most of my thoughts lately, Albania. I do believe the issues they raise might be specifically theirs, but they're not so isolated to the present <span style="color: #222222; white-space: pre-wrap;">— </span>nor is Albania anymore <span style="color: #222222; white-space: pre-wrap;">— </span>on the contrary, they foresaw it clearer than others where we were headed. So, in connecting the dots to make sense of it all for myself, I saw figments of interrelated patterns, which goes to show how interconnected the world is, even if it doesn't speak to parts of itself <span style="color: #222222; white-space: pre-wrap;">— </span>so I went with it, because I do see the matters of the world through the lens of energy <span style="color: #222222; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span> never lost, always transferred. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The video is titled <u style="font-weight: bold;">sheshPËRshesh</u> <span style="color: #222222; white-space: pre-wrap;">— </span>and as always, I am open to thoughts and criticism about it. The reason why some of the montages I construct seem a visual mess (dense at first look) is because I am thinking with and through the bombardment of the images I find and collect, in order to unpack a thought I have or to discover potential others, to anticipate and confront the nuanced sensibilities of their form, hence why they end up being both, forms of quasi-intuition and unfinished diagrams of sorts. It is the unfolding process of folding the images I find, to discover their depth of field and porosity <span style="color: #222222; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span> to construct my own position in them. It is a work in process that aims to distinguish perception from meaning <span style="color: #222222; white-space: pre-wrap;">—</span> it doesn't always succeed, nor it is meant to most of the time. The postcards that make up the video will accompany the text in the other two posts of this three-part series on <i>(re)Thinking with Virilio,</i> and they're the latest (4x6) sequence of <a href="http://www.perfact.org/2016/10/postcards-from-tirana-in-search-of.html">the ones</a> I started to do about two years ago here on the blog, along with a few other montages I've posted on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PERfACT.alb/">Facebook page</a>. All are available and free for all to use under the Creative Commons license <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/?">CC BY-NC-SA 4.0</a>. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">(An earlier <i>Thinking Out Loud with Virilio</i> post can be found <a href="http://www.perfact.org/2016/12/a-year-worthyless-of-posts-in-search-of.html">here</a>.)</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>General Note</u>: <b>Bold </b>text indicates my emphasis.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwAeYuArLxO7xC-AOw4aAuRF-W9rpciJrbrzRJG4vn02Fm74sLux3Rz0_MTQMxUlEFUpvuG55UqGPk_Wd2KUQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<u style="color: #444444;">The Vision Machine</u></h3>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>A Topographical Amnesia</i></span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Bergson asserts that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mind is a thing that endures</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, one might add that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it is our duration that thinks, feels, sees</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The first creation of consciousness would then be its own speed in its time-distance, speed thereby becoming causal idea, idea before the idea. It is thus now common to think of our memories as multidimensional, of thought as transfer, transport (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">metaphora</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) in the literal sense.</span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"> If we think about light, which has no image and yet creates images, we find that the use of light stimuli in crowd control goes back a long way.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> That perverted peasant and Paris pedestrian, Restif de la Bretonne, observing life with the rustic’s sharp eye, soon gave way to a new, anonymous, ageless character who no longer took to the streets looking for a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">man</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, like Diogenes with his lantern burning in broad daylight. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He now sought light itself, for where there is light there is the crowd</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. According to Edgar Allan Poe, our man no longer inhabited the big city strictly speaking (London, as it happens), but the dense throng. His only itinerary was that of the human stream wherever it was bound, wherever it was to be found. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All was dark yet splendid</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Poe wrote, and the man’s only terror was the risk of losing the crowd thanks to the strange light effects, to the speed with which the world of light vanishes. …’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> [Hitler’s architect] wrote: ‘Within these luminous walls, the first of their kind, the rally took place with all its rituals. … I now feel strangely moved by the idea that the most successful architectural creation of my life was a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chimera</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an immaterial mirage</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.’ Doomed to disappear at first light, leaving no more material trace than a few films and the odd photograph, the ‘crystal castle’ was especially aimed at Nazi militants who, according to Goebbels, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">obey a law they are not even consciously aware of but which they could recite in their dreams</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> On the basis of ‘scientific’ analysis of the stenographic speed of his various speeches, Hitler’s master of propaganda had invented, again in his own estimation, a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">new mass language</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which ‘no longer has anything to do with archaic and allegedly popular forms of expression’. He added: ‘This is the beginning of an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">original aesthetic style</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a vivid and galvanising form of expression.’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"> At least he was good at self-promotion.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">topographical memory</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, one could speak of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">generations of vision</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and even of visual heredity from one generation to the next. The advent of the logistics of perception and its renewed vectors for delocalising geometrical optics, on the contrary, ushered in a eugenics of sight, a pre-emptive abortion of the diversity of mental images, of the swarm of image-beings doomed to remain unborn, no longer to see the light of day anywhere.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"> This was the real beginning, technically and scientifically speaking, of power based on hitherto unrecognised forms of postural oppression and, once again, the battlefield would ensure rapid deployment of the new physiological prohibitions.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The origin of the word propaganda is well known: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">propaganda fide</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">propagation of the faith</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The year 1914 not only saw the physical deportation of millions of men to the battlefields. With the apocalypse created by the deregulation of perception came a different kind of diaspora, the moment of panic when the mass of Americans and Europeans could no longer believe their eyes, when their </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">faith in perception</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> became slave to the faith in the technical </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sightline</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> [line of faith]: in other words, the visual field was reduced to the line of a sighting device.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...] </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But what does one see when one’s eyes, depending on sighting instruments, are reduced to a state of rigid and practically invariable structural immobility? One can only see instantaneous sections seized by the Cyclops eye of the lens. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vision, once substantial, becomes accidental</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Despite the elaborate debate surrounding the problem of the objectivity of mental or instrumental images, this revolutionary change in the regime of vision was not clearly perceived and the fusion-confusion of eye and camera lens, the passage from vision to visualisation, settled easily into accepted norms. While the human gaze became more and more fixed, losing some of its natural speed and sensitivity, photographic shots, on the contrary, became even faster.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...] </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> On a more practical note, Ray Bradbury recently remarked: ‘Film-makers </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bombard with images</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> instead of words and accentuate the details using special effects. … You can get people to swallow anything by intensifying the details.’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The phatic image</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">— a targeted image that forces you to look and holds your attention — is not only a pure product of photographic and cinematic focusing. More importantly it is the result of an every brighter illumination, of the intensity of its definition, singling out only specific areas, the context mostly disappearing into a blur.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...] </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"> In 1968 Daniel Buren explained to Georges Boudaille: ‘It’s funny when you realise that art was never a problem of depth but one of form. …’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">***</span></h3>
<h3 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><u><span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Less Than An Image</span></u></span></h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> To admit that for the human eye the essential is invisible and that, since everything is an illusion, it follows that scientific theory, like art, is merely a way of manipulating our illusions, went against the political-philosophical discourses then evolving in tandem with the imperative of </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">convincing</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> the greatest number, with its accompanying desire for infallibility and a strong tendency towards ideological charlatanism. Publicly to point to how mental images are formed, including the way their psychophysiological features carry their own fragility and limitations, was to violate a state secret of the same order as a military secret, since it masked a mode of mass manipulation that was practically infallible.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">[...]</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"> Today, the strategic value of speed’s ‘no-place- has definitely outstripped the value of place. … The delineation between past, present and future, between here and there, is now meaningless except as a visual illusion. …</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"> Malevich said it all at the beginning of the century: ‘The universe is spinning in a pointless vortex. Man, too, for all his little objective world, is spinning in the limbo of the pointless.’</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">***</span></h3>
<div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-34019479114546205782018-09-14T14:12:00.001+02:002018-09-14T14:36:29.605+02:00Gentle Manifest | Diçka (për) rreth (nesh)<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-bold"; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">About Us</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-bold"; font-weight: bold;"> (II)</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-bold"; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Një nga qëllimet e kësaj faqeje është të çmitizojë:</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">(</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">dmth</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">)</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Ajo mundohet të hedh poshtë mitet totale, ata që vendosen nga lart-poshtë dhe që pranohen nga të gjithë si të vërteta të plota — paçka se janë të rreme. E bën këtë thjesht duke vënë në pyetje padiskutueshmërinë e tyre, tashmë të normalizuar. Pyetjet që shtron mund të jenë të shumta, por aspak të tepërta. Ashtu siç një vepër mund të ketë disa përkthime, faqja i sheh këto pyetje si përkthime të ndryshme të kryeveprës së mitit — (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">dmth</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">) më tepër si metodë përkthimi sesa interpretimi, apo një lloj interpretimi nëpërmjet përkthimit (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">if you will</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">). Pyetjet si përkthim(e) duan të kuptojnë dhe të komunikojnë realitetin apo racionalizimin e mitit, sa më objektivisht, (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">dmth</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">) pa ofruar përgjigje që s’i di, por duke patur (gjithmonë) parasysh se një farë subjektiviteti është i pashmangshëm (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">innate</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">). Pra, ato mundësojnë (disa) realitete të ndryshme që mund të jenë ndrydhur apo dhe shuar nga gllabërimi formal i mitit, i realitetit që ai përcakton dhe projekton (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">design(ate)s</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">) — që ai i jep formë. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">E di që mbase tingullon çuditshmëm, por këto janë realitetet reale, vërtetësia e të cilave qëndron në vetë faktin që ato vazhdojnë të mbijetojnë, edhe pse shpesh herë vetëm si fragmente të pangjashme. Ky është <i>ç</i>mitizimi për të cilin flas — vënia në dyshim, nxitja, sfidimi, apo dhe kundërshtimi — nëpërmjet pyetjeve — i realitetit të vetëm (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">total</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">) të mitit, i formës së autorizuar të tij, nga krerë — ndaj, dhe emërtimi i tij kryevepër. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Nëse e shohim mitin si një largim apo izolim nga realiteti, një tjetërsim të realitetit që përjetojmë vetë dhe jo atij që na thonë se po e jetojmë (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">alienation</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">) — atëherë, çmitizimi mund të kuptohet si një mënyrë çfamiljarizimi (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">estrangement</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">) me realitetin despotik mitologjik. Prandaj dhe ngadonjëherë pyetjet apo pikëpamjet e faqes mund të duken pak </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">uncanny</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, por i njëjti argument mund të bëhet dhe për çuditshmëritë që dëgjojmë në mitet e rradhës sot apo për ata që kemi besuar deri më sot. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Nuk janë mite vetëm ata 5000, 500 apo dhe 50 vjeçarë, por dhe ata 5 vjeçarë, 5 mujorë apo dhe javorë. Fjala është për ata mite që vijnë nga lart-poshtë — ose më mirë, pyetjet janë për ata mite që pasi frymëzohen (pse jo, dhe që mund të shfrytëzohen) jashtë apo lart, zbresin — apo bien si stuhia që s’ke ç’i bën; apo mos hidhen fare si rrufe, nejse s’ka rëndësi si vijnë, por si formohen dhe si materializohen nga hiçi në një trup dhe hapësirë gjithpërfshirës(e). Mbase s’ka rëndësi nga vijnë, ashtu siç nuk kemi ç’ti bëjmë Nënës Natyrë kur materializohet, kur na përmbyt shiu në dimër dhe djersa në vapë. Mbase dhe kemi ç’ti bëjmë, dhe madje shumë — por dhe mund të jetë tepër vonë — s’i dihet — s’e dimë akoma. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<br />
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Po nuk mësuam si të bashkëjetojmë me të pa e zaptuar, dhe pa rrafshuar ekologjitë që ajo mundëson, atëherë po, që s’do kemi ç’ti bëjmë. Një mënyrë e të mësuari është </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">ç</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">mësimi i jetesës imponuese që kemi ndërtuar në të, ashtu si dhe qëndrimit mbizotërues apo sjelljes sunduese ndaj saj. Ky çmësim është një mënyrë </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">ri</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">mësimi, <i>proper</i>. Ashtu si dhe </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">ç</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">mitizimi është një </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">riparim</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> realitetiti dhe racionaliteti — edhe pse nëpërmjet mënyrave jo aq racionale (si </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">uncanny</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">). “</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">Ç</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">” (</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">un</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">-) është një </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">rezistencë</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> e vazhdueshme ndaj mitizimit të përhershëm dhe realiteteve tona tashmë të brishta. Të paktën, Nënën Natyrë e shohim, e presim, e ndjekim, e ndjejmë, e vuajmë (në </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">kohë</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> reale), por miteve (“Babë(zi)ve Krye”) që formohen në një hapësirë abstrakte, në një vertikalitet midis resë dhe territorit — në një distancë virtuale që duket sa e lirë aq dhe e pafund, që s’duket, s’pritet dhe s’ndiqet hiç, por ama ndihet dhe vuhet akoma më shumë — </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">kudo</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> dhe </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">kurdo</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> — si t’ia bëjmë atyre?!</span></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-2111432013010569482018-09-06T11:44:00.000+02:002018-09-06T11:44:07.583+02:00Gentle Manifest | To live is to be haunted<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">For most of its adult life, this blog has experimented with forms* of critical investigation of Rilindje (R), mostly because, after almost three decades of what was deemed a ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">transitional</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’** period in Albania —rightly or wrongly so, but certainly one of fast-paced transformation without much of the democratic progress it was first thought to be — R promised to </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">fix</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> both, democratic failure and cultural progress, under a </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">unified vision</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> for the future of the country; something along the sentiment «</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">Albania, the ‘beautiful’: unleashing beauty to tame the beast.»</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">What did R thought of as ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">beauty</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ and what did it thought of as ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">beast</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">It promised to develop a ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">western</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ democracy, or at the very least to design a place attractive enough to seem renewed. In short, a seemingly new life.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">For whom, though? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Freedom was always implied. During this time, no one spoke of (the lack of) it publicly — in general or specifically about the ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">beauty</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ (e.g. urgency) of having rights — the right to free speech, to affordable housing, to outstanding education, to public space and amenities, to fair laws, to uncensored artistic expression (i.e. not that of the ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">artist-in-chief</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’), and to so many other necessities — mental, individual or communal autonomy. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Why would anyone? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">The country was not being invaded. It remained ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">at peace</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Unity</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">did not mean a single or total vision — at first. It </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; text-decoration: underline;">just</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> meant ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">beautifully</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">, at piece’ — only later it was understood (maybe, still, not yet) that </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">just</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> was by design, a designation for the un</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">just</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">(ified).</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Hence, through experimental critiques — in the form of graspings 1 and scrypts 2 — the blog has been trying, at the very least, to understand the forms of freedom implied by the name Rilindje and those deployed by it — how its politico-aesthetic act of (re)designing Rebirth (as a fix-it-all dogma) was already shaping perceptions and practices of freedom. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">How and what was (it) needed the most, though? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">The questions central to the blog’s quest had (and continue to have) everything to do with Rebirth as the design dogma and practice of R. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">What did it considered valuable and of value? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">What did it kill? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">What did it presume dead? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">What had died that it was giving some of it enough life and </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">privilege</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> to come back on again? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">What kind of a new life was it now breathing? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">At the beginning, without knowing much about R’s motivation (its </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">scrypt</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">), nor fully grasping how it would translate in a lived experience (deeds), the blog was quietly rooting for a true</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">r</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> birth, for a much needed awakening that c(w)ould’ve changed previous forms of governing so deeply rooted in both corruption and totalitarianism — one that c(w)ould’ve totally revamped its (public and private) institutions; one that c(w)ould’ve delivered and cheered on all the different forms of possible (and those not yet imagined) freedoms; one that c(w)ould’ve really made a difference within the country, and in the eyes of those outside forces whom R was so eager to impress (i.e. EU). But, what the blog and many others got instead was largely cosmetic, a rebirth in name only, a facelift to hide the long and deep-seated depression from persistently insignificant and precarious changes — that truly capitalist existence of going on a shopping spree one can’t afford to subdue (suppress) their blues — the feeling of being (care)free, in debt. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Even though, at times, the blog goes hard on ‘but what does R mean’ and ‘can we figure out what R means by what R does’, it has always thought of R as an (missed) opportunity for Repair. Henceforth, the better approach and questions to ask, may be to confront, challenge and renegotiate R’s Realm, its </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">unity of/and vision</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">, its narrative of beauty, from one of Rebirth to one of a much needed Repair. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">Demanding repair every time R alludes to rebirth is a position of resistance. Redefining R’s beauty within its own narrative of it, is a position of beauty. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span> </div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">R’s roaming caravan keeps redrawing the line between life and beyond-life, that self-induced pseudo-rebirth that makes existence precarious, at least in this blog’s eyes. As the blog itself ponders on its own existence, it’s starting to look closely at the existence of those it was brought up with (about ~ 7yrs ago, though R’s origin can be traced to at least a decade earlier), and that occupies itself with now. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Maybe it was the time in which R came on — a time out of joint, of ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">transition</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ from dead(ly) living to living dead(ly) or vice versa — that gave R probable cause to walk this line and play it with such precariousness all the way to becoming dead-ly. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Maybe R was birthed by this realm of back and forths, in order to render it more legible, to legitimize it, thus to repeat it, in order to ensure its own existence. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">No matter what though, the illusory life that R reverberates through rebirth has disillusionized many, this blog included. Its insistence on such rebirth, and ultimately its own renewal, only reaffirms R’s hubris and disregard for the inherent spectrality of the process its name implies and warns of — it remains aloof to the specter that now lingers heavier than ever. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">The spatial is indeed a duration. Thus, the longer this blog lives, the more it entertains the thought of existing solely as a hauntological form of resistance.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">“Our problem … is not so much that we are seduced by our memories of long ago, but that we cannot produce new memories.” 3</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Citing Derrida’s book “Specters of Marx”, Mark Fisher adds: “Derrida’s title, needless to say, was a play on all of the ghostly imagery in Marx—most notably, of course, the opening line of the Communist Manifesto: “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism”. Part of the point was: if communism has always been spectral, what does it mean to say that it is now dead? Derrida’s other major reference-plex is Hamlet, especially the line, “The time is out of joint”. Here we are back with dyschronia or temporal disjuncture as the principal characteristic of hauntology.” 4</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">If specter is what’s inherited from the past (i.e. Communism) as well as from the future that preceded R’s (i.e. the ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">transition</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ period), then would it make sense to speculate that the specter of Democracy is also haunting R? Could R’s (neoliberal) Rebirth be approached (analyzed) as a simultaneous haunt of unrealized past and future, both C and D?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Benjamin insisted that “We must wake up from the world of our parents” (V, 1048). </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">“But what can be demanded of a new generation, if its parents never dream at all?” replies Susan Buck-Morss. 5</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Hence, it might not be too far fetched to speculate that R’s intolerance or repression of old haunts may have animated, enlightened new or renewed apparitions. “When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.” 6 Has R given up on the past/future its name suggests? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">How would it have been different, if named Repair?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">If Rebirth is not more than just a repetition of old ways that won’t die; a coming back of what’s been repressed for so long, the question might be(come): </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">If it won’t die, how does it age?</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> When R promised a new life, a better one, only to then reduce it to an aesthetic unity, a forced top-down style of Idio(t)syncrasy as the only ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">legitimate</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ (beautiful) form of a progressive nation, it wasn’t without precedent (the socialist realism of our time?). We already know how it will age — renewed by rebirth, maybe?</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">To investigate Rebirth’s possible forms of freedom — those implied vs. deployed — from an uncanny POV, that of the </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">return of the repressed</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">— through defamiliarization and estrangement — is </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">a position of resistance.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">[The blog would also argue that absolute freedom resists form, but absolute freedom is improbable — what is possible, at least for the sake of the argument here, is the fact that any and all forms that deny freedom can be subverted from within the regimes of form to reveal their limits in ways that offer new means to undo them. (D&G) This is the position resistance takes. It is the one within from a place of without.]</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">What if </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">unity of vision</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> was not just ‘renewed beauty’ but a form of freedom whose beauty was ur(a)gency, a form of ‘renewed ur(a)gency‘ perhaps, whose just(ly) design — its stimuli — was the ur(a)gency of rights, the beauty of rights, the designation of/for ‘repair is rights’. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">What if unity</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">+</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">vision was a vision unified through difference; a unity that had the capacity and will to provide new forms of governing, where new doesn’t mean more elaborately designed ways of continuing old policies and practices of corruption, but new as in letting them die, not rebirthing them with a faceless facelift. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">How does a facelift age? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">How does it differentiate from repair? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">An actual birthing of democracy though, whose sole vision is to allow it to exist, to grow, to live independently of who brought it to life. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">I say </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">birth</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> because it can be easily argued that </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText"; text-decoration: underline;">we’ve been democratic as much as we’ve been communist</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> — we’ve not been communist nor democratic. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">(Never</span><span style="font-family: ".HelveticaNeueInterface-Regular";">‽</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">) </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">I say </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">birth</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> because we’re in the midst of ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">celebrating</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ the year of Skanderbeg, the year of his death — a symbolic rebirth of (his) democracy — a ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">celebration</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ of his </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">unity of vision</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> or R’s? — without once questioning the uncanny resemblance of these ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">celebrations</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ to the specter his death brought forth.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">The blog never thought it would talk about S so much this year, but all the institutional ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">celebrations</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ got to it(‘s nerves), so here we are, haunted by the ghost and spirit of a </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">unity and vision</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">, a freedom that has been dead for half a millennia. A freedom that is now spectral.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Hauntology as “a political gesture” then — as “a sign that the dead will not be silenced” 7, might be another way for this blog to realize itself, to not try to force the genie back in the bottle, but to let R’s “architecture realize itself in its own death” 8 — or at least in what R wishes from the genie (or jinn, defined as a “being concealed from the senses”), although making a deal with the ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">devil’</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> can’t be </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">that</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> easy. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">If R’s realization, its freedom and repression of haunts, depends on the “collective dreams of escape” implied by its name — Rebirth; the blog approaches R’s existence as a “collective grief” instead — a resistance that insists on Repair as “collective works of mourning”. 9</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">We continue to live in a time out-of-joint, thus it might not be such a bad idea to view (R’s) existence through the lens of hauntology “as a crucial-cultural and political-alternative both to linear history and to postmodernism’s permanent revival,” because what the blog mourns “most keeningly … is the very possibility of loss</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">”</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> (the loss of freedom amongst others)</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">.</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">10</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">To live is to be haunted — R by its name, the implications of the name Rebirth (haunts) and the design of its new life. One hants the life and the other redesigns the haunt. One might say the blog is haunted too, by the fragmented ways it sees and thinks, as well as by the stuttering of its writing. Embracing, that to live, is indeed to be haunted, might be the first step toward existential freedom, the leap away from mental repression.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Bold"; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Notes:</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">*I use the word </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">form</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> to mean both (a) </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">regime</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"> and (its) </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">limits.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">**</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">The italized words in single quotations are, in definition, perception, and use, at least in my opinion, still debatable. There have been many arguments, from people smarter than me, refuting the validity of what thdescribe; the word ‘</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">transition</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">’ for example.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";"></span><br /></div>
<br />
<ol>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Charles H. Kahn, </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">The Art and Thought of Heraclitus</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">, paraphrases H’s CXXIV fragment: “Graspings, that is to say groups holding together, apprehensions bringing things together: these are wholes and not wholes; they characterize a system which is convergent, divergent, structured by cooperation and by conflict; this system is consonant, dissonant, held together by harmony and discord alike; from all its components a unity emerges, and from this unity all things emerge.”</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Jennifer Bloomer, </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">Architecture and (the) Text: The (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranese</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">; “In its ambiguous emblematicity of “crypt,” and its ambiguous position between picture and writing, the hieroglyph suggests a writing that is other than transparent, writing that is illegible in the conventional sense, a writing in which repressions surface. This “writing” might be termed </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">(s)crypt</span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">. It is the writing of Joyce and the writing (etching) of Piranesi, which give themselves up to other readings.”</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Mark Fisher, </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">ibid.</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Susan Buck-Morrs, </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Mark Fisher, </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">ibid.</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Aaron Betsky, </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">Violated Perfection: Architecture and the Fragmentation of the Modern</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">Mark Fisher, </span><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText-Italic"; font-style: italic;">The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology</span></li>
<li style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: ".SFUIText";">ibid.</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="color: #454545; font-family: .SFUIText;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69);"> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="color: #454545; font-family: .SFUIText;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(69, 69, 69);"><br /></span></span></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-20700897571367684642018-09-01T17:33:00.000+02:002018-09-01T17:33:06.984+02:00On language, PPPs and wrestling | In search of missing perspectives <blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.”</i></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666;">— Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse (1977)</span></blockquote>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">While the world of politics and corporations, or the game which defines their culture, is often described as competitive, masterminded, as chess, and maybe even as a kind of media-centric theater, the life of the public realm has always been characterized as one of spectatorship and representation. Using this kind of language to organize and categorize the </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">social</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> — (as) they who </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">do</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (in terms of gestures/moves) and they who </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">receive</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (in terms of spectacle/spectator) — is one of </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">power</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">; one that constructs power/lessness and asserts its longevity. It is a language of inequality. Just like history is written by the winners, it seems to me that language has been deployed to preserve the legacy of masters. Hence, we need to find new ways to resist and subvert this language. What if we do not only refer to, but actually talk of politicians and corporations as they who take, who corrupt, and of publics as they who give, who are taken for? What if we approach and speak of spectatorship as resistance, and the public ‘lifestyle’ as struggle? What if we stop calling politic(ian)s and conglomerates leader(ship)s and start addressing them as dictator(ship)s? These questions might be too big or complex to take on, but not impossible to ask, especially when we realize that the master’s house will never be dismantled with the master’s tools. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">I bring this up because we often talk about politics, private interest, and public space from a position that ultimately separates them, at the juncture of their intersections. What if instead we approached them from a place within, from amidst their thickly entangled ecology — one that we would need to work our fingers through knots and to the bone, to decipher and make sense of its diverging threads? Hence, a transversal or sectional investigation of language as a construct of power might reveal a fuller spectrum of how these power relations are established. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">For example, let’s consider the Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Albania. As the name suggests, PPPs are modeled in the form of a </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">partnership</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> where both parties have an equal standing and mutual benefits. Though, even with Public taking top billing, we can argue until we run out of breath about which P is what and which P gets what P(iece), but that’s beside the point here. The point is that, as an ecology of all three, PPP gives us a clear model through which to analyze, sort, and understand the Power relations between Public realm and Private interests, maybe in the same way we try understand the difference and dependency of the host/parasite couplings or a lovers’ discourse. The fact that such a model, a Partnership </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">legally </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">exists, on paper, doesn’t necessarily mean it is mutually fair, and it shouldn’t automatically legitimate its </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">in situ</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> practices. Bear with me here. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">If the public-private coupling continues to be described as a partnership in the already established language of masters, of power, on paper anyway, then it is important to understand that it will translate as one of inequality in deeds. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">It is not the position of the public nor that of the private that we need to watch closely, but that of the partnership (hence from within) which constitutes the construct of power and constraint of freedom, thus (the many degrees of) fairness. The parameters of the partnership fall under the tutelage or tyranny of the state, at least for now, which is in a position to leverage one against the other or both against the middle. Or maybe I’m giving it too much credit, too many sides. As a middleman of sorts, the state acts as both referee and judge, jury, executioner. The P of Partnership stands for Politic(ian)s. They administer public assets and resources. They sell said public assets and resources to the private. After enough such transactions, the state might eventually lose its leverage because it will have nothing else to sell. In a final act of despair, it may even give away its constituents’ data. So, the three P-s will not have the same capacity to P(lay) P(ower) anymore, nor will it ever be a multitude of P-s. They will be devoured into one — a kind of becoming P(anopticon). But still, the specter of the Public will haunt the partnership, lingering over its name. In its afterlife, the public becomes a myth. But what’s in a name, right?! I digress only to make the point that what might be a morose description of events here, thus unpopular opinion, it is in fact the reality of how language designs power and how it is designed by it in return, in the language of masters. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span> </div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">With the Public Private Politics (PPP) as the social model/medium/media for the 21st century Albania, it becomes all the more important to be able to find a new language, at least a different one, to deduce, describe, and deploy the P-s involved: Public, Private, Politics, Partnership, Play, Power. Seen from a different POV, the PPP model provides us with a language of struggle too, one that can dismantle that of power. So, for once, instead of seeing it through the eyes of competitive sports, the masterminding of chess or the melodrama of the theater, let’s look at it through the lens of something else — </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">wrestling</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (for example) — which provides us with a much needed tactility of action and symbols, of gesture and exaggeration.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Below, I’ve shared a few excerpts from Barthes’ essay on </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">wrestling</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, taken from his </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">Mythologies</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> book. He uses wrestling as a theoretical framework to critique the language of the so called mass-culture, which might be useful to us too, to understand that of the PPP. Keep in mind that the essay was written in the ‘50s and the book was published in the ‘70s, hence much has changed since then. Nonetheless, I found bits of it helpful in grasping the construct of power. It is even more interesting if you read it a second time (for our purpose here) without knowing which P is in the ring and which P is outside cheering or booing. We always assume the latter is the public, but what if that wasn’t the case?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">(</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">As it is taken out of the context, time and space of the writing, I recommend you read the entire essay to draw your own conclusions.) </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ztyD26Wy6Tc/W4qw58u15CI/AAAAAAAAF6U/3TreznYQQfUroG46WuTbC0Cn2anmArRiwCLcBGAs/s1600/Barthes_Mythologies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="332" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ztyD26Wy6Tc/W4qw58u15CI/AAAAAAAAF6U/3TreznYQQfUroG46WuTbC0Cn2anmArRiwCLcBGAs/s320/Barthes_Mythologies.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<br /><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-bold"; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">The World of Wrestling</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess. Here we find a grandiloquence which must have been that of ancient theatres. And in fact wrestling is an open-air spectacle, for what makes the circus or the arena what they are is not the sky […], it is the drenching and vertical quality of the flood of light. Even hidden in the most squalid […] halls, wrestling partakes of the nature of the great solar spectacles, Greek drama and bullfights: in both, a light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.* […] True wrestling, wrongly called amateur wrestling, is performed in second-rate halls, where the public spontaneously attunes itself to the spectacular nature of the contest. [I]t abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">[W]restling is a sum of spectacles, of which no single one is a function: each moment imposes the total knowledge of a passion which rises erect and alone, without ever extending to the crowning moment of a result. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">Thus the function of the wrestler is not to win; it is to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him. […] Wrestling […] offers excessive gestures, exploited to the limit of their meaning. [A] man who is down is exaggeratedly so, and completely fills the eyes of the spectators with the intolerable spectacle of his powerlessness. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">This function of grandiloquence is indeed the same as that of ancient theatre, whose principle, language and props (masks and buskins) concurred in the exaggeratedly visible explanation of a Necessity. The gesture of the vanquished wrestler signifying to the world a defeat which, far from disguising, he emphasizes and holds like a pause in music, corresponds to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic mode of the spectacle. […]</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">Each sign in wrestling is therefore endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles. As in the theatre, each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">[…]</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">It is therefore in the body of the wrestler that we find the first key to the contest. […] Wrestlers therefore have a physique as peremptory as those of the characters of the Commedia dell'Arte, who display in advance, in their costumes and attitudes, the future contents of their parts [.]</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">The physique of the wrestlers therefore constitutes a basic sign, which like a seed contains the whole fight. But this seed proliferates, for it is at every turn during the fight, in each new situation, that the body of the wrestler casts to the public the magical entertainment of a temperament which finds its natural expression in a gesture. The different strata of meaning throw light on each other, and form the most intelligible of spectacles. Wrestling is like a diacritic writing: above the fundamental meaning of his body, the wrestler arranges comments which are episodic but always opportune, and constantly help the reading of the fight by means of gestures, attitudes and mimicry which make the intention utterly obvious. Sometimes the wrestler triumphs with a repulsive sneer while kneeling on the good sportsman; sometimes he gives the crowd a conceited smile which forebodes an early revenge; sometimes, pinned to the ground, he hits the floor ostentatiously to make evident to all the intolerable nature of his situation; and sometimes he erects a complicated set of signs meant to make the public understand that he legitimately personifies the ever-entertaining image of the grumbler, endlessly confabulating about his displeasure. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">We are therefore dealing with a real Human Comedy, where the most socially-inspired nuances of passion (conceit, rightfulness, refined cruelty, a sense of 'paying one's debts') always felicitously find the clearest sign which can receive them, express them and triumphantly carry them to the confines of the hall. It is obvious that at such a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theatre. In both, what is expected is the intelligible representation of moral situations which are usually private. This emptying out of interiority to the benefit of its exterior signs, this exhaustion of the content by the form, is the very principle of triumphant classical art. Wrestling is an immediate pantomime, infinitely more efficient than the dramatic pantomime, for the wrestler's gesture needs no anecdote, no decor, in short no transference in order to appear true. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">Each moment in wrestling is therefore like an algebra which instantaneously unveils the relationship between a cause and its represented effect. Wrestling fans certainly experience a kind of intellectual pleasure in seeing the moral mechanism function so perfectly. […]</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">What is thus displayed for the public is the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice. Wrestling presents man's suffering with all the amplification of tragic masks. The wrestler who suffers in a hold which is reputedly cruel (an arm-lock, a twisted leg) offers an excessive portrayal of Suffering; like a primitive Pieta, he exhibits for all to see his face, exaggeratedly contorted by an intolerable affliction. It is obvious, of course, that in wrestling reserve would be out of place, since it is opposed to the voluntary ostentation of the spectacle, to this Exhibition of Suffering which is the very aim of the fight. This is why all the actions which produce suffering are particularly spectacular, like the gesture of a conjuror who holds out his cards clearly to the public. Suffering which appeared without intelligible cause would not be understood; a concealed action that was actually cruel would transgress the unwritten rules of wrestling and would have no more sociological efficacy than a mad or parasitic gesture. On the contrary suffering appears as inflicted with emphasis and conviction, for everyone must not only see that the man suffers, but also and above all understand why he suffers. What wrestlers call a hold, that is, any figure which allows one to immobilize the adversary indefinitely and to have him at one's mercy, has precisely the function of preparing in a conventional, therefore intelligible, fashion the spectacle of suffering, of methodically establishing the conditions of suffering. The inertia of the vanquished allows the (temporary) victor to settle in his cruelty and to convey to the public this terrifying slowness of the torturer who is certain about the outcome of his actions; to grind the face of one's powerless adversary or to scrape his spine with one's fist with a deep and regular movement, or at least to produce the superficial appearance of such gestures: wrestling is the only sport which gives such an externalized image of torture. But here again, only the image is involved in the game, and the spectator does not wish for the actual suffering of the contestant; he only enjoys the perfection of an iconography. It is not true that wrestling is a sadistic spectacle: it is only an intelligible spectacle. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">There is another figure, more spectacular still than a hold; it is the forearm smash, this loud slap of the forearm, this embryonic punch with which one clouts the chest of one's adversary, and which is accompanied by a dull noise and the exaggerated sagging of a vanquished body. In the forearm smash, catastrophe is brought to the point of maximum obviousness, so much so that ultimately the gesture appears as no more than a symbol; this is going too far, this is transgressing the moral rules of wrestling, where all signs must be excessively clear, but must not let the intention of clarity be seen. The public then shouts 'He's laying it on!', not because it regrets the absence of real suffering, but because it condemns artifice: as in the theatre, one fails to put the part across as much by an excess of sincerity as by an excess of formalism. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">We have already seen to what extent wrestlers exploit the resources of a given physical style, developed and put to use in order to unfold before the eyes of the public a total image of Defeat. […] In wrestling, unlike judo, Defeat is not a conventional sign, abandoned as soon as it is understood; it is not an outcome, but quite the contrary, it is a duration, a display, it takes up the ancient myths of public Suffering and Humiliation: the cross and the pillory. It is as if the wrestler is crucified in broad daylight and in the sight of all. I have heard it said of a wrestler stretched on the ground 'He is dead, little Jesus, there, on the cross,' and these ironic words revealed the hidden roots of a spectacle which enacts the exact gestures of the most ancient purifications.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">But what wrestling is above all meant to portray is a purely moral concept: that of justice. The idea of 'paying' is essential to wrestling, and the crowd's 'Give it to him' means above all else 'Make him pay'. This is therefore, needless to say, an immanent justice. [T]he crowd is jubilant at seeing the rules broken for the sake of a deserved punishment. Wrestlers know very well how to play up to the capacity for indignation of the public by presenting the very limit of the concept of justice, this outermost zone of confrontation where it is enough to infringe the rules a little more to open the gates of a world without restraints. For a wrestling-fan, nothing is finer than the revengeful fury of a betrayed fighter who throws himself vehemently not on a successful opponent but on the smarting image of foul play. Naturally, it is the pattern of Justice which matters here, much more than its content: wrestling is above all a quantitative sequence of compensations (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth). […] Justice is therefore the embodiment of a possible transgression; it is from the fact that there is a Law that the spectacle of the passions which infringe it derives its value.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">It is therefore easy to understand why out of five wrestling- matches, only about one is fair. One must realize, let it be repeated, that 'fairness' here is a role or a genre, as in the theatre the rules do not at all constitute a real constraint; they are the conventional appearance of fairness. So that in actual fact a fair fight is nothing but an exaggeratedly polite one [.] </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">Conversely, foul play exists only in its excessive signs [.] Since Evil is the natural climate of wrestling, a fair fight has chiefly the value of being an exception. […]</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">Extrapolated, fair wrestling could lead only to boxing or judo, whereas true wrestling derives its originality from all the excesses which make it a spectacle and not a sport. The ending of a boxing- match or a judo-contest is abrupt, like the full-stop which closes a demonstration. The rhythm of wrestling is quite different, for its natural meaning is that of rhetorical amplification: the emotional magniloquence, the repeated paroxysms, the exasperation of the retorts can only find their natural outcome in the most baroque confusion. Some fights, among the most successful kind, are crowned by a final charivari, a sort of unrestrained fantasia where the rules, the laws of the genre, the referee's censuring and the limits of the ring are abolished, swept away by a triumphant disorder which overflows into the hall and carries off pell-mell wrestlers, seconds, referee and spectators. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">[…] What the public is looking for here is the gradual construction of a highly moral image: that of the perfect 'bastard'. One comes to wrestling in order to attend the continuing adventures of a single major leading character, permanent and multiform like Punch or Scapino, inventive in unexpected figures and yet always faithful to his role. The 'bastard' is here revealed as a Molière character or a 'portrait' by La Bruyère, that is to say as a classical entity, an essence, whose acts are only significant epiphenomena arranged in time. This stylized character does not belong to any particular nation or party […] the aficionado does not attribute to him any country except 'fairness' - observing the rules. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">What then is a 'bastard' for this audience composed in part, we are told, of people who are themselves outside the rules of society? Essentially someone unstable, who accepts the rules only when they are useful to him and transgresses the formal continuity of attitudes. He is unpredictable, therefore asocial. He takes refuge behind the law when he considers that it is in his favour, and breaks it when he finds it useful to do so. Sometimes he rejects the formal boundaries of the ring and goes on hitting an adversary legally protected by the ropes, sometimes he re-establishes these boundaries and claims the protection of what he did not respect a few minutes earlier. This inconsistency, far more than treachery or cruelty, sends the audience beside itself with rage: offended not in its morality but in its logic, it considers the contradiction of arguments as the basest of crimes. The forbidden move becomes dirty only when it destroys a quantitative equilibrium and disturbs the rigorous reckoning of compensations; what is condemned by the audience is not at all the transgression of insipid official rules, it is the lack of revenge, the absence of a punishment. So that there is nothing more exciting for a crowd than the grandiloquent kick given to a vanquished 'bastard'; the joy of punishing is at its climax when it is supported by a mathematical justification; contempt is then unrestrained. One is no longer dealing with a salaud but with a salope - the verbal gesture of the ultimate degradation. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">Such a precise finality demands that wrestling should be exactly what the public expects of it. Wrestlers, who are very experienced, know perfectly how to direct the spontaneous episodes of the fight so as to make them conform to the image which the public has of the great legendary themes of its mythology. A wrestler can irritate or disgust, he never disappoints, for he always accomplishes completely, by a progressive solidification of signs, what the public expects of him. […] What is portrayed by wrestling is therefore an ideal understanding of things; it is the euphoria of men raised for a while above the constitutive ambiguity of everyday situations and placed before the panoramic view of a univocal Nature, in which signs at last correspond to causes, without obstacle, without evasion, without contradiction.</span></div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><br /></span>
<div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text";">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: ".sfuitext";">When the hero or the villain of the drama, the man who was seen a few minutes earlier possessed by moral rage, magnified into a sort of metaphysical sign, leaves the wrestling hall, impassive, anonymous, carrying a small suitcase and arm-in-arm with his wife, no one can doubt that wrestling holds that power of transmutation which is common to the Spectacle and to Religious Worship. In the ring, and even in the depths of their voluntary ignominy, wrestlers remain gods because they are, for a few moments, the key which opens Nature, the pure gesture which separates Good from Evil, and unveils the form of a justice which is at last intelligible.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text";">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: ".sf ui text";">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">*********************************************</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-84382138074725347022018-08-29T10:50:00.000+02:002018-08-29T11:03:39.349+02:00Gentle Manifest | A few words about us<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">As I revisit and rewrite parts of the manifest, the about </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">us</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> profile, for this site, I keep thinking about why the blog has lasted for as long as it has and why I continue to post and write bits (however fragmented, cryptic or undigested they might be). The quick answer is because the questions never end, but the truth is that the task of learning how to ask better questions hasn’t been that simple. The facts and fictions, the assertions and answers given to the public (myself being part of it) have been seldom clear, and at times contextually senseless. Hence, the persistence of the question </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">why</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> every time I succumb to the mental and physical exhaustion of keeping the blog/ facebook page up and running, voluntarily. It may or may not be a labor of love, unlike the trendy and unruffled pages that populate the ether, but it certainly is labor. It certainly is a struggle (especially for an introvert as myself): a struggle to think out loud, to write; a struggle to cope with a number of designers and projects that have grown numb to social problems, choosing to be intoxicated by a culture of consumption instead; a struggle to find peers, friends, and mentors to think independently and polemically with; a struggle to find the time and energy to be available to this space and the people and conversations in it, because whoever comes to it is the space, it wouldn’t exist otherwise. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">At the beginning, it was the struggle of not finding a space or community, an online forum (an architectural/urban one) to be a part of, outside of grad school and work. Now, I’d say, it is not so much out of love, although it is there, but out of the necessity for such a place — which occupies only a tiny and obscure thread really — that ups my determination to continue it. I am grateful too, for all the people I’ve found along the way, and with whom I share my thoughts and this space. [Feel free to tell me to get off my high horse.]</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">I understand that each </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">why</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> can be answered with a </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">why not</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> or a </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">so what</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, thus I want to expand on it a bit more. The longer version might read at times like the work of Nietzsche’s </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">undigested stones</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> of history, or as a </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">struggle in/of form</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, where windmills and labyrinths of the mind battle for sense, but such is the matter of an unfinished self, the </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">us</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> part of the blog, which, at this point in time, is positioned in the midst of and can be described only through the distance of setting aspirations for itself and not quite reaching them yet. [Hence, feedback is much appreciated.]</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Initially, PERfACT(s) was meant as a virtual channel to communicate and express voices in formation, starting with mine, as a way to assemble and often dismantle myself, my position toward life, the world and how being a designer (we’re all designers really) might steer it a certain way or might not have any use in/for it. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Throughout the years, it has become a process of discovering the self within and without a community that has been as familiar as it has been estranged to me (as an immigrant driven by a certain need to demystify some of the nostalgia that comes with longing). It has become a learning of and with the characters that have populated the posts, be they people, buildings, design concepts, cities or media — characters that have inhabited the space or were imagined in it and of it. It has become a growing with, through and along the distance of these relations, through a simultaneous curiosity and spectatorship, as much as growing weary of it too at times. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">The aim has always been to ask better questions, for a clearer and more in depth understanding of the context and the issues Albania faces — which might be specific to the country, but are not isolated from the rest of the world’s — as one way ofcontributing to the <i>agency</i> needed for a possible <i>social and spatial change</i> there. Another aim is to understand the role of design and designers in <i>shaping</i> such change. That is why I post ‘stuff’. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">I do think that our everyday life has been already and totally designed through an aesthetic that desensitizes courage, as it accelerates an extravagant and unrestrained fantasy (fetishizing hope in a way). I am not against imagination whatsoever, but I remain sceptic of how this source of creativity has been used by those in power, charged against those that are not. It has been deployed as a weapon to widen the gap of inequality, a gap that has been fantasized, imagined and now implemented at </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">full speed. So, the intent has always been to unstuff the ‘stuff’, knowing all along that I’d fall short of properly unpacking most of it — which is the true or ideal aim of this endeavor.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">The position taken here is one of simply showing how shockingly </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">unfree</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> design is today, how </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">unfreely</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> and </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">repressively</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> society has been designed. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Even though, </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">ours </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">is not a direct approach of ‘boots on the ground’ activity, </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">we</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> are determined to contribute — at least to try to, within our limits, even if indirectly — to unravel this design as an </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">anaesthetic</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> tool and strategy (per N. Leach) through different latencies: efficiencies, possibilities, leverages, critiques, etc. — to speak for what the initial shock of design anaesthetics, its ‘beauty‘ and ‘innovation’, render invisible and insignificant. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">We</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> have always operated on a minor and often off key, a stammering of sorts (per D&G’s work on Kafka), always considering the and any creative act of design as one of </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">resistance</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">; as a process of demystification and stripping bare the stuffed progress too often mistaken as an even more ‘sustainable’ or ‘beneficial’ way toward democratization. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">So, yes, the page is political in that it is public and open to a multifaceted public, but it stands politically independent in regard to the already established party lines. </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">We</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> are political because the questions </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">we</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> ask are political. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">If everything is done by design, then how can we redesign our freedom? How do we redesign ourselves to unlearn the freedom we’ve been designated</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (assigned)</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;"> by each passing or staying regime</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (be it political or economic)? </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">If we predict a future through a design done today, driven by the aneasthetics of today, then would it be free at all? </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">What </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">we</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> see happening in Albania and elsewhere is a </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">redesign of hope</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">not freedom</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, with nothing left to chance other than the consequences of such a shortsighted design. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">The prospect of a </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">future</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> is the fundamental aspect of human life. It is the </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">promise of freedom</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> that everyone wants; many of us imagine this promise as </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">hope</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, something to hope for, but only few take it on as </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">life</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> itself, as the </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">courage</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> to actually live freely day in and day out. For them, life itself is at stake. So, to pursue social and spatial change, we need to rethink the promise of freedom, to </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">undesign it as hope and redesign it as courage</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">, within ourselves but also and most importantly within the community we’re a part of and share our lives with, online and offline. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">As I write this, I realize that I am indeed speaking to myself first, as a way to understand my growth or what does it mean to change, but also, and as my personal and professional motto is Whitman’s famous verse “I</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;"> contain multitudes</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">”, I realize that each individual contains a public within, hence is political in the sense (to fully utilize the greek origin of the word pertaining to sense perception, perceptible, sensitive; aesthetics) of the distances (relationships) we construct (design) between thinking and doing, feeling and knowing, thus to change is to extend oneself outward (from without) toward other characters that make (but don’t necessarily define) us. This is courage. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">And this is what I and this page strive for, at the very least our endeavor has been many a lesson on (growth through) vulnerability and resilience. Said otherwise: PERfACT(s) has been and continues to be a stammering, an enunciation of vulnerable but persistent experiences of experimenting with form as/of formation. Hence, it approaches (it wants to, it tries to) </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">design</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> as the distance between form and formation. It approaches </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">courage</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> as a form of designing the self and the other (body politic, social body). It approaches </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">critique</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> as an inquiry into (1) the desensitization and perceptual stagnation of design; and (2) the legitimacy of known regimes of ‘freedom’. It also approaches </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">critique</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> as an assemblage of graspings and (s)crypts, which is not interested in the average of their multitude, but in the strength of the plurality that comes from their differences (per Bakhtin). And, ultimately, it approaches </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">critique</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> as another form of design(ing)/designation.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">We</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> agree with Hannah Arendt that </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">freedom is something fundamentally strange, </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">and to design it, or for design to achieve it, </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">we</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> can utilize its estrangement, our estrangement from it, not only as a creative device (per Shklovsky) but as a craft of resistance (per Brecht), which synthesizes </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">political rigor</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (i.e. reality, i.e. act) and </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">aesthetic freedom</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> (i.e. ideology, i.e. myth or image) with a </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">revolutionary (high historical) consciousness</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Ultimately, </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">we </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">understand </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">design as an organism </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">(act+image) </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">of survival and practice of freedom</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">.</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-left: 128px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">~~~~~~</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">Notes:</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 20.3px;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"></span><br /></div>
<br />
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";">I use </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">us</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> and </span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext-italic"; font-style: italic;">we</span><span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"> to note that even though at the moment I am the only one that manages the page, there have been more than a few collaborations with others, as well as many contributors to the blog over the years. Another reason why, is the fact that the blog / page is more than just an extension of myself or my life; it has become a fluid organism (through commentary, discussions and troll messages) with an existence all its own, and to deny it as such is to pretend that I have it all under control. </span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext";"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: ".SF UI Text"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: ".sfuitext"; font-size: 17pt;"><br /></span></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-14503708463984468212018-07-28T02:00:00.000+02:002018-07-28T02:00:07.693+02:00Gentle Manifest | Brecht's Poems 4Six Late Theatre Poems<br />
<br />
<b><u>LOOKING FOR THE NEW AND OLD</u></b><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
When you read your parts<br />Exploring, ready to be surprised<br />Look for the new and old. For our time<br />And the time of our children is the time of struggles<br />Between the new and the old.<br />The cunning of the old working woman<br />Who relieves the teacher of his knowledge<br />Like a pack to heavy to carry, is new<br />And must be shown as new. And old<br />Is the fear of the workers in wartime<br />Reluctant to take the leaflets which will teach them; it must<br />Be shown as old. But<br />As the people say, at the moon’s change of phases<br />The new moon for one night<br />Holds the old moon in its arms. The hesitancy of the timid<br />Proclaims the new time. Always<br />Fix the ’still’ and the ‘already’.<br />The struggles between the classes<br />The struggles between new and old<br />Rage also within each man.<br />The teacher’s willingness to teach<br />Is overlooked by his brother, but the stranger<br />Sees it.<br />Check over all the feelings and actions of your characters<br />For new and old features.<br />The hopes of the trader Courage<br />Are mortal to her children; yet the dumb girl’s<br />Despair about the war<br />Belongs with the new. her helpless movements<br />As she drags her life-saving drum on to the roof<br />A great helper, should fill you.<br />With pride; the energy<br />Of the trader who learns nothing, with compassion.<br />Reading your parts<br />Exploring, ready to be surprised<br />Rejoice at the new, be ashamed at the old.<br /><br />(p. 424-5)<br /><br /><b><u>THE CURTAINS</u></b><br /><br />On the big curtain paint the cantankerous<br />Peace dove of my brother Picasso. Behind it<br />Stretch the wire rope and hang<br />My light fluttering half curtains<br />Which cross like two waves of foam to make<br />The working woman handing out pamphlets<br />And the recanting Galileo both disappear.<br />Following the change of plays they can be<br />Of rough linen or of silk<br />Or of white leather or of red, and so on.<br />Only don’t make them too dark, for on them<br />You must project the titles of the following<br />Incidents, for the sake of tension and that<br />The right thing may be expected. And please make<br />My curtain half-height, don’t block the stage off.<br />Leaning back, let the spectator<br />Notice the busy preparations being so<br />Ingeniously made for him, a tin moon is<br />Seen swinging down, a shingle roof<br />Is carried in; don’t show him too much<br />But show something. And let him observe<br />That this is not magic but<br />Work, my friends.<br /><br />(p. 425)<br /><br /><u><b>THE LIGHTING</b></u><br /><br />Give us some light on the stage, electrician. How can we<br />Playwrights and actors put forward<br />Our images of the world in half darkness? The dim twilight<br />Induces sleep. But we need the audience’s<br />Wakeful-, even watchfulness. Let them<br />Do their dreaming in the light. The little bit of night<br />We now and then require can be<br />Indicated by moons or lamps, likewise our acting<br />can make clear what time of day it is<br />Whenever needed. The Elizabethan wrote us verses<br />About a heath at evening<br />Which no electrician can match, nor even<br />The heath itself. So light up<br />What we have laboured over, that the audience<br />Can see how the outraged peasant woman<br />Sits down on the Finnish soil<br />As if it belonged to her.<br /><br />(p. 426)<br /><br /><b><u>THE SONGS</u></b><br /><br />Separate the songs from the rest!<br />By some symbol of music, by change of lighting<br />By titles, by pictures now show<br />That the sister art is<br />Coming on stage. The actors<br />Change into singers. They have a new attitude<br />As they address themselves to the audience, still<br />Characters in the play but now undisguisedly<br />Accomplices of the playwright.<br />Nana Callas, the round-headed landlord’s daughter<br />Brought to market like a hen<br />Sings the song of the mere<br />Change of masters, not to be understood without the wriggle of the hips<br />Trick of the trade that<br />Turned her privates into a scar. Not to be understood either<br />The canteen woman’s song of the Great Capitutulation, unless<br />The anger of the playwright<br />Is added to that of the woman.<br />But dry Ivan Vesovchikoff, the Bolshevik worker, sings<br />With iron voice of the class that cannot be beaten<br />And friendly Vlassova, the mother<br />Reports, singing in her particular careful voice<br />That the banner of reason is red.<br /><br />(p. 426-7)<br /><br /><u><b>WEIGEL’S PROPS</b></u><div>
<b><u><br /></u></b>Just as the millet farmer picks out for his trial plot<br />The heaviest seeds and the poet<br />The exact words for his verse so<br />She selects the objects to accompany<br />Her characters across the stage. The pewter spoon<br />Which Courage sticks<br />In the lapel of her Mongolian jacket, the party card<br />For warm-hearted Vlassova and the fishing net<br />For the other, Spanish mother or the bronze bowl<br />For dust-gathering Antigone. Impossible to to confuse<br />The split bag which the working woman carries<br />For her son’s leaflets, with the moneybag<br />Of the keen tradeswoman. Each item<br />In her stock is hand picked: straps and belts<br />Pewter boxes and ammunition pouches; hand picked too<br />The chicken and the stick which at the end<br />The old woman twists through the draw-rope<br />The Basque woman’s board on which she bakes her bread<br />And the Greek woman’s board of shame, strapped to her back<br />With holes for her hands to stick through, The Russian’s<br />Jar of lard, so small in the policeman’s hand; all<br />Selected for age, function and beauty<br />By the eyes of the knowing<br />The hands of the bread-making, net-weaving<br />Soup-cooking connoisseur<br />Of reality.<br /><br />(p. 426-7)<br /><br /><b><u>ON SERIOUSNESS IN ART</u></b><br /><br />The seriousness of the man who shapes the silver ornaments<br />Is likewise welcome in the art of the theatre, and welcome<br />Is the seriousness of people discussing the text<br />Of a pamphlet behind locked doors. But the seriousness<br />Of a doctor stooping over his patent is no longer compatible<br />With the art of the theatre, and it utterly bars<br />The seriousness of the priest, whether gentle or hectic.<br />
(p. 428)<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>*Bertolt Brecht Poems 1913-1956, Edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the co-operation of Erich Fried, 1979 edition.</i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>*********************************</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-65776106821452935192018-07-27T02:00:00.000+02:002018-07-27T02:00:04.306+02:00Gentle Manifest | Brecht's Poems 3<b><u>THE BREAD OF THE PEOPLE</u></b><br />
<br />
Justice is the bread of the people.<br />
Sometimes it is plentiful, sometimes it is scarce.<br />
Sometimes it tastes good, sometimes it tastes bad.<br />
When the bread is scarce, there is hunger.<br />
When the bread is bad, there is discontent.<br />
<br />
Throw away the bad justice<br />
Baked without love, kneaded without knowledge!<br />
Justice without flavour, with a grey crust<br />
The stale justice which comes too late!<br />
<br />
If the bread is good and plentiful<br />
The rest of the meal can be excused.<br />
One cannot have plenty of everything all at once.<br />
Nourished by the bread of justice<br />
The work can be achieved<br />
From which plenty comes.<br />
<br />
As daily bread is necessary<br />
So is daily justice.<br />
It is even necessary several times a day.<br />
<br />
From morning till night, at work, enjoying oneself.<br />
At work which is an enjoyment.<br />
In hard times and in happy times<br />
The people requires the plentiful, wholesome<br />
Daily bread of justice.<br />
<br />
Since the bread of justice, then, is so important<br />
Who, friends, shall bake it?<br />
<br />
Who bakes the other bread?<br />
<br />
Like the other bread<br />
The bread of justice must be baked<br />
By the people.<br />
<br />
Plentiful, wholesome, daily.<br />
<br />
(p. 435)<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>*Bertolt Brecht Poems 1913-1956, Edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the co-operation of Erich Fried, 1979 edition.</i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-8696075001441651602018-07-26T02:00:00.000+02:002018-07-26T05:35:46.376+02:00Gentle Manifest | Brecht's Poems 2Four Theatre Poems<br />
<br />
<b><u>PORTRAYAL OF PAST AND PRESENT IN ONE</u></b><br />
<br />
Whatever you portray you should always portray<br />
As if it were happening now. Engrossed<br />
The silent crowd sits in the darkness, lured<br />
Away from its routine affairs. Now<br />
The fisherman's wife is being brought her son whom<br />
The generals have killed. Even what has just happened<br />
In her room is wiped out. What is happening here is<br />
Happening now and just the once. To act in this way<br />
Is habitual with you, and now I am advising you<br />
To ally this habit with yet another: that is, that your acting<br />
should<br />
At the same time express the fact that this instant<br />
On your stage is often repeated; only yesterday<br />
You were acting it, and tomorrow too<br />
Given spectators, there will be a further performance.<br />
Nor should you let the Now blot out the<br />
Previously and Afterwards, nor for that matter whatever<br />
Is even now happening outside the theatre and is similar in<br />
kind<br />
Nor even things that have nothing to do with it all - none of<br />
this<br />
Should you allow to be entirely forgotten.<br />
So you should simply make the instant<br />
Stand out, without in the process hiding<br />
What you are making it stand out from. Give your acting<br />
That progression of one-thing-after-another, that attitude of<br />
Working up what you have taken on. In this way<br />
You will show the flow of events and also the course<br />
Of your work, permitting the spectator<br />
To experience this Now on many levels, coming from<br />
Previously and<br />
Merging into Afterwards, also having much else now<br />
Alongside it. He is sitting not only<br />
In your theatre but also<br />
In the world.<br />
<br />
(p. 307-8)<br />
<br />
<b><u>ON JUDGING</u></b><br />
<br />
You artists who, for pleasure or for pain<br />
Deliver yourselves up to the judgement of the audience<br />
Be moved in future<br />
To deliver up also to the judgement of the audience<br />
The world which you show.<br />
<br />
You should show what is; but also<br />
In showing what is you should suggest what could be and<br />
is not<br />
And might be helpful. For from your portrayal<br />
The audience must learn to deal with what is portrayed.<br />
Let this learning be pleasurable. Learning must be taught<br />
As an art, and you should<br />
Teach dealing with things and with people<br />
As an art too, and the practice of art is pleasurable.<br />
<br />
To be sure, you live in a dark time. You see man<br />
Tossed back and forth like a ball by evil forces.<br />
Only an idiot lives without worry. The unsuspecting<br />
Are already destined to go under. What were the earthquakes<br />
Of grey prehistory compared to the afflictions<br />
Which we suffer in cities? What were bad harvests<br />
To the need that ravages us in the midst of plenty?<br />
<br />
(p. 308)<br />
<br />
<b><u>ON THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE</u></b><br />
<br />
The critical attitude<br />
Strikes many people as unfruitful.<br />
That is because they find the state<br />
Impervious to their criticism.<br />
But what in this case is an unfruitful attitude<br />
Is merely a feeble attitude. Give criticism arms<br />
And states can be demolished by it.<br />
<br />
Canalising a river<br />
Grafting a fruit tree<br />
Educating a person<br />
Transforming a state<br />
These are instances of fruitful criticism<br />
And at the same time<br />
Instances of art.<br />
<br />
(p. 308-9)<br />
<br />
<b><u>THEATRE OF EMOTIONS</u></b><br />
<br />
Between ourselves, it seems to me a sorry trade<br />
Putting on plays solely<br />
To stir up inert feelings. You remind me of masseurs<br />
Singing their fingers in all too fatty<br />
Flanks, as in dough, to knead away sluggards'<br />
Bellies. Your situations are hastily assembled to<br />
Excite the customers to rage<br />
Or pain. The audience<br />
Thus become voyeurs. The sated<br />
Sit next the hungry.<br />
<br />
The emotions you manufacture are turbid and impure<br />
General and blurred, no less false<br />
Than thoughts can be. Dull blows on the backbone<br />
Cause the dregs of the soul to rise to the surface.<br />
With glassy eyes<br />
Sweaty brow and tightened calves<br />
The poisoned audience follows<br />
Your exhibitions.<br />
No wonder they buy their tickets<br />
Two by two. And no wonder<br />
They like to sit in the dark that hides them.<br />
<br />
(p. 309-10)<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>*Bertolt Brecht Poems 1913-1956, Edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the co-operation of Erich Fried, 1979 edition.</i></span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">********************************************</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-18738157394186012018-07-25T02:00:00.000+02:002018-07-25T02:00:00.130+02:00Gentle Manifest | Brecht's Poems 1<b><u>THIS BABYLONIAN CONFUSION</u></b><br />
<br />
This Babylonian confusion of words<br />
Results from their being the language<br />
Of men who are going down.<br />
That we no longer understand them<br />
Results from the fact that it is no longer<br />
Of any use to understand them.<br />
What use is it to tell the dead<br />
How one might have lived<br />
Better. Don't try to persuade<br />
The man with rigor mortis<br />
To perceive the world.<br />
Don't quarrel<br />
With the man behind whom<br />
The gardeners are already waiting<br />
Be patient rather.<br />
<br />
The other day I wanted<br />
To tell you cunningly<br />
The story of a wheat speculator in the city of<br />
Chicago. In the middle of what I was saying<br />
My voice suddenly failed me<br />
For I had<br />
Grown aware all at once what an effort<br />
It would cost me to tell<br />
That story to those not yet born<br />
But who will be born and will live<br />
In ages quite different from ours<br />
And, lucky devils, will simply not be able to grasp<br />
What a wheat speculator is<br />
Of the kind we know.<br />
<br />
So I began to explain it to them. And mentally<br />
I heard myself speak for seven years<br />
But I met with<br />
Nothing but a silent shaking of heads from all<br />
My unborn listeners.<br />
Then I knew that I was<br />
Telling them about something<br />
That a man cannot understand.<br />
<br />
They said to me: You should have changed<br />
Your houses or else your food<br />
Or yourselves. Tell us, why did you not have<br />
A blueprint, if only<br />
In books perhaps of earlier times -<br />
A blueprint of men, either drawn<br />
Or described, for it seems to us<br />
Your motive was quite base<br />
And also quite easy to change. Almost anyone<br />
Could have seen it was wrong, inhuman, exceptional.<br />
Was there not some such old and<br />
Simple model you could have gone by<br />
In your confusion?<br />
<br />
I said: Such models existed<br />
But, you see, they were crisscrossed<br />
Five times over with new marks, illegible<br />
The blueprint altered fives times to accord<br />
With our degenerate image, so that<br />
In those reports even our forefathers<br />
Resembled none but ourselves.<br />
At this they lost heart and dismissed me<br />
With the nonchalant regrets<br />
Of happy people.<br />
<br />
(p. 124-6)<br />
<br />
<b><u>WORDS THE LEADER CANNOT BEAR TO HEAR</u></b><br />
<br />
In the ministries it is well known that the Leader winces<br />
Whenever he hears words which begin with the syllable PRO-<br />
Such words as 'proletarian', 'prose', 'provocation' or 'pro<br />
and con'.<br />
'Prostitution' and 'profit' seem to disquiet him too.<br />
Whenever these words are mentioned in his presence<br />
He glances up shyly with a hunted, guilty expression<br />
Which the speaker is hard put to explain.<br />
Another syllable which causes him difficulty<br />
Is the syllable GRAM, occurring in the word 'gramme'<br />
Which designates a small unit of weight, and in words such<br />
as 'grammar'. Since the Leader<br />
Exhibits such antipathy toward these two syllables, it follows<br />
Quite naturally that, above all, a word which contains them<br />
both<br />
May never under any circumstances be uttered in his presence -<br />
Wherefore, at Party and theatrical functions<br />
The word PROGRAMME is always replaced by the expression<br />
'sequence of events'.<br />
<br />
(p. 298)<br />
<br />
<b><u>DIFFICULTY OF GOVERNING</u></b><br />
<br />
1<br />
Ministers are always telling the people<br />
How difficult it is to govern. Without the ministers<br />
Corn would grow into the ground, not upward.<br />
Not a lump of coal would leave the mine if<br />
The Chancellor weren't so clever. Without the Minister of<br />
Propaganda<br />
No girl would ever agree to get pregnant. Without the<br />
Minister of War<br />
There'd never be a war. Indeed, whether the sun would rise<br />
in the morning<br />
Without the Fuhrer's permission<br />
Is very doubtful, and if it did, it would be<br />
In the wrong place.<br />
<br />
2<br />
It's just as difficult, so they tell us<br />
To run a factory. Without the owner<br />
The walls would fall in and the machines rust, so they say.<br />
Even if a plough could get made somewhere<br />
It would never reach a field without the<br />
Cunning words the factory owner writes the peasants: who<br />
Could otherwise tell them that ploughs exist? And what<br />
Would become of an estate without the landlord? Surely<br />
They'd be sowing rye where they had set the potatoes.<br />
<br />
3<br />
If governing were easy<br />
There'd be no need for such inspired minds as the Fuhrer's.<br />
If the worker knew how to run his machine and<br />
The peasant could tell his field from a pastryboard<br />
There'd be no need of factory owner or landlord.<br />
It's only because they are all so stupid<br />
That a few are needed who are so clever.<br />
<br />
4<br />
Or could it be that<br />
Governing is so difficult only<br />
Because swindling and exploitation take some learning?<br />
<br />
(p. 295-6)<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><i>*Bertolt Brecht Poems 1913-1956, Edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the co-operation of Erich Fried, 1979 edition.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><i><br /></i></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #cccccc; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*********************************************</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-38734854251967413352018-06-26T10:06:00.005+02:002018-06-28T21:56:51.208+02:00 The Empty Box | Excerpts on theater<div>
I have decided to share with you a few excerpts from <b>Peter Brook</b>'s book, <b><i>The Empty Space</i></b>, because I think it is crucial that we not only engage with the current conversations and activist movements surrounding the proposed demolition of the National Theater in Albania, but that we multiply the momentum of their resistance, the energy of this public force, by taking it even further - from performance to knowledge - to expand our understanding of <i>theater</i>, which is one of the 'other' creative disciplines that has been pushed aside during the country's economic and ideological transition in favor of the more marketable contemporary arts. To do so, many questions need to be asked and a rigorous historiography should be researched - if it hasn't been done already. It is high time <u>we stop consuming information and start cultivating knowledge</u> (e.g. situated, open source, etc). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The text below is taken from two of the four Theaters of the book: <i>Deadly</i>, Holy, <i>Rough</i>, Immediate, which was published in 1968. As it is posted here out of context and 50 years after it was written, I would recommend you read the book yourselves, in order to draw your own conclusions. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2ejBd5KrMG4/WzHlU2W_ohI/AAAAAAAAF5s/fUaKTYC8jjQMlBpopQZ_ywvMXk4ViaFFwCLcBGAs/s1600/The%2BEmpty%2BSpace_Peter%2BBrook_COVER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1034" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2ejBd5KrMG4/WzHlU2W_ohI/AAAAAAAAF5s/fUaKTYC8jjQMlBpopQZ_ywvMXk4ViaFFwCLcBGAs/s400/The%2BEmpty%2BSpace_Peter%2BBrook_COVER.jpg" width="257" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: orange; font-size: large;"><b>"</b></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Karvani vigan i kulturës ecën përpara duke mbartur gjurmët e çdo artisti drejt një grumbulli me mbeturina që sa vjen e rritet. Teatrot, aktorët, kritikët dhe publiku janë ndërthurur në një mekanizëm që kriset, por kurrë nuk ndalet. </span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Teatri ka nevojë për një revolucion të përhershëm.</span><b><span style="color: orange; font-size: large;">"</span></b></span><b><span style="color: orange;"> </span></b></blockquote>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>The Deadly Theater</b><br />
<div>
<b><br /></b>I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theater to be engaged. Yet when we talk about theater this is not quite what we mean. Red curtains, spotlights, blank verse, laughter, darkness, these are all confusedly superimposed in a messy image covered by one all-purpose word. <br />
[...]<br />
All through the world theater audiences are dwindling. There are occasional new movements, good new writers and so on, but as a whole, the theater not only fails to elevate or instruct, it hardly even entertains. The theater has often been called a whore, meaning its art impure, but today this is true in another sense - whores take the money and then go short on the pleasure. [...] In fact, were the public ever really to demand the true entertainment it talks about so often, we would almost all be hard put to know where to begin.<br />
[...]<br />
Anyone who watches the real successes as they appear each year, will see a very curious phenomenon. We expect the so-called hit to be livelier, faster, brighter than the flop - but this is not always the case. Almost every season in most theater-loving towns, there is one great success that defies these rules; one play that succeeds not despite but because of dullness. After all, one associates culture with a certain sense of duty, historical costumes and long speeches with the sensation of being bored: so, conversely, just the right degree of boringness is a reassuring guarantee of a worthwhile event. Of course, the dosage is so subtle that it is impossible to establish the exact formula - too much and the audience is driven out of their seats, too little and it may find the theme too disagreeably intense. However, mediocre authors seem to feel their way unerringly to the perfect mixture - and they perpetuate the Deadly Theater with dull successes, universally praised. Audiences crave for something in the theater that they can term ‘better’ than life and for this reason are open to confuse culture, or the trappings of culture, with something they do not know, but sense obscurely could exist - so, tragically, in elevating something bad into a success they are only cheating themselves.<br />
[...]<br />
Again with Shakespeare we hear or read the same advice - ‘Play what is written’. But what is written? Certain ciphers on paper. Shakespeare’s words are records of the words that he wanted to be spoken, words issuing as sounds from people’s mouths, with pitch, pause, rhythm and gesture as part of their meaning. A word does not start as a word - it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behavior which dictate the need for expression. This process occurs inside the dramatist; it is repeated inside the actor. Both many only be conscious of the words, but both for the author and then for the actor the word is a small visible portion of a gigantic unseen formation.<br />
[...]<br />
It is vain to pretend that the words we apply to classical plays like ‘musical’, ‘poetic’, ‘larger than life’, ‘noble’, ‘heroic’, ‘romantic’, have any absolute meaning. They are the reflections of a critical attitude of a particular period, and to attempt to build a performance today to conform to these canons is the most certain road to deadly theater - deadly theater of a respectability that makes it pass as living truth.<br />
[...]<br />
The opposing words ‘literary’ and ‘theatrical’ have many meanings, . . ., they all too often describe ways of warding off contact with disturbing themes.<br />
[...]<br />
‘Reality’ is a word with many meanings, but here it is understood to be that slice of the real that reflected the people and the problems around the actor, and it coincided with the slices of existence that the writers of the day, Miller, Tennessee Williams, Inge, were trying to define. In much the same way Stanislavsky’s theater drew its strength from the fact that it corresponded to the needs of the best Russian classics, all of which were cast in a naturalistic form. For a number of years in Russia, the school, the public and the play had made a coherent whole. Then Meyerhold challenged Stanislavsky, proposing a different style of playing, in order to capture other elements of ‘reality’. <br />
[...]<br />
All this brings us back to the same problem. The word theater has many sloppy meanings. In most of the world, the theater has no exact place in society, no clear purpose, it only exists in fragments: one theater chases money, another chases glory, another chases emotion, another chases politics, another chases fun. The actor is bundled from pillar to post - confused and consumed by conditions outside his control. Actors may sometimes seem jealous or trivial, yet I have never known an actor who did not want to work. This wish to work is his strength. It is what enables professionals everywhere to understand each other. But he cannot reform his profession alone. In a theater with few schools and no aims, he is usually the tool, not the instrument. Yet when the theater does come back to the actor, the problem is still not solved. On the contrary, deadly acting becomes the heart of the crisis.<br />
[...]<br />
When we say deadly, we never mean dead: we mean something depressingly active, but for this very reason capable of change. The first step towards this change is facing the simple unattractive fact that most of what is called theater anywhere in the world is a travesty of a word once full of sense. War or peace, the colossal bandwagon of culture trundles on, carrying each artist’s traces to the ever-mounting garbage heap. Theaters, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks, but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are too busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theater at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity, surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud, and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?<br />
<br />
<b>The Rough Theater </b>(or Informal)<br />
<br />
It is always the popular theater that saves the day. Through the ages it has taken many forms, and there is only one factor that they all have in common - a roughness. Salt, sweat, noise, smell: the theater that’s not in a theater, the theater on carts, on wagons, on trestles, audiences standing, drinking, sitting round tables, audiences joining in, answering back: theater in back rooms, upstairs rooms, barns; the one-night stands, the torn sheet pinned up across the hall, the battered screen to conceal the quick changes - that one generic term, <i>theater</i>, covers all this and the sparkling chandeliers too. I have had many abortive discussions with architects building new theaters - trying vainly to find words with which to communicate my own conviction that it is not a question of good buildings and bad: a beautiful place may never bring about explosion of life; while a haphazard hall may be a tremendous meeting place: this is the mystery of the theater, but in the understanding of this mystery lies the only possibility of ordering it into a science. In other forms of architecture there is a relationship between conscious, articulate design and good functioning: a well-designed hospital may be more efficacious than a higgledy-piggledy one; but as for theaters, the problem of design cannot start logically. It is not a matter of saying analytically what are the requirements, how best they can be organized - this will usually bring into existence a tame, conventional, often cold hall. The science of theater-building must come from studying what it is that brings about the most vivid relationship between people - and is this best served by asymmetry, even by disorder? If so, what can be the rule of this disorder? An architect is better off if he works like a scene designer, moving scraps of cardboard by intuition, than if he builds his model from a plan, prepared with compass and ruler. [...] At the beginning of electronic music, some German studios claimed that they could make every sound that a natural instrument could make - only better. They then discovered that all their sounds were marked by a certain uniform sterility. So they analyzed the sounds made by clarinets, flutes, violins, and found that each note contained a remarkably high proportion of plain noise: actual scraping, or the mixture of heavy breathing with wind on wood: from a purist point of view this was just dirt, but the composers soon found themselves compelled to make synthetic dirt - to ‘humanize’ their compositions. Architects remain blind to this principle - and era after era the most vital theatrical experiences occur outside the legitimate places constructed for the purpose. [...] The Rough Theater is close to the people: it may be a puppet theater, it may - as in Greek villages to this day - be a shadow show: it is usually distinguished by the absence of what is called style. Style needs leisure: putting over something in rough conditions is like a revolution, for anything that comes to hand can be turned into a weapon. The Rough Theater doesn’t pick and choose: if the audience is restive, then it is obviously more important to holler at the troublemakers - or improvise a gag - than to try to preserve the unity of style of the scene. In the luxury of the high-class theater, everything can be all of a piece: in a rough theater a bucket will be banged for a battle, flour used to show faces white with fear. The arsenal is limitless: the aside, the placard, the topical reference, the local jokes, the exploiting of accidents, the songs, the dances, the tempo, the noise, the relying on contrasts, the shorthand of exaggeration, the false noses, the stock types, the stuffed bellies. The popular theater, freed of unity of style, actually speaks a very sophisticated and stylish language: a popular audience usually has no difficulty in accepting inconsistencies of accent and dress, or in darting between mime and dialogue, realism and suggestion. They follow the line of the story, unaware in fact that somewhere there is a set of standards which are being broken.<br />
[...]<br />
Of course, it is most of all dirt that gives the roughness its edge; filth and vulgarity are natural, obscenity is joyous: with these the spectacle takes on its socially liberating role, for by nature the popular theater is anti-authoritarian, anti-traditional, anti-pomp, anti-pretense. This is the theater of noise, and the theater of noise is the theater of applause.<br />
<br />
Think of those two awful masks that glower at us from so many books on theater - in ancient Greece we are told these masks represented two equal elements, tragedy and comedy. At least, they are always shown as equal partners. Since then, though, the ‘legitimate’ theater has been considered the important one while the Rough Theater has been thought less serious. But every attempt to revitalize the theater has gone back to the popular source. Meyerhold had the highest aims, he sought to present all of life on the stage, his revered master was Stanislavsky, his friend was Chekhov; but in fact it was to the circus and the music hall that he turned. Brecht was rooted in the cabaret: Joan Littlewood longs for a fun-fair: Cocteau, Artaud, Vakhtangov, the most improbable bedfellows, all these highbrows return to the people: and Total Theater is just a mix-up of these ingredients. All the time, experimental theater comes out of the theater buildings and returns to the room or the ring.<br />
<br />
The Rough Theater has apparently no style, no conventions, no limitations - in practice, it has all three. Just as in life the wearing of old clothes can start as defiance and turn into a posture, so roughness can become an end in itself. [...] The Rough Theater deals with men’s actions, and because it is down to earth and direct - because it admits wickedness and laughter - the rough and ready seems better than the hollowly holy.<br />
<br />
It is impossible to consider this further without stopping to look at the implications of the strongest, most influential and the most radical theater man of our time, Brecht. No one seriously concerned with the theater can bypass Brecht. Brecht is the key figure of our time, and all theater work today at some point starts and returns to his statement and achievement. [...] He began working at a time when most German stages were dominated either by naturalism or by great total-theater onslaughts of an operatic nature designed to sweep up the spectator by his emotions so that he forgot himself completely. Whatever life there was on-stage was offset by the passivity it demanded of the audience.<br />
<br />
For Brecht, a necessary theater could never for one moment take its sights off the society it was serving. There was no fourth wall between actors and audience - the actor’s unique aim was to create a precise response in an audience for whom he had total respect. <br />
[...]<br />
All this stems from a strict sense of purpose. Brecht believed that, in making an audience take stock of the elements in a situation, the theater was serving the purpose of leading its audience to a juster understanding of the society in which it lived, and so to learning in what ways that society was capable of change.<br />
[...]<br />
No actor can play a cipher: however stylized or schematic the writing, the actor <i>must </i>always believe to some degree in the stage life of the odd animal he represents. But nonetheless an actor can play in a thousand ways, and playing a portrait is not the only alternative. What Brecht introduced was the idea of the intelligent actor, capable of judging the value of his contribution. There were and still are many actors who pride themselves on known nothing about politics and who treat the theater as an ivory tower. For Brecht such an actor is not worthy of his place in adult company: an actor in a community that supports a theater must be as much involved in the outside world as in his own craft.<br />
[...]<br />
It is not as though the period of necessary debunking were now over. On the contrary, all through the world in order to save the theater almost everything of the theater still has to be swept away. The process has hardly begun, and perhaps can never end. The theater needs its perpetual revolution.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
In everyday life, ‘if’ is a fiction, in the theater ‘if’ is an experiment.<br />
In everyday life, ‘if’ is an evasion, in the theater ‘if’ is the truth.<br />
When we are persuaded to believe in this truth, then the theater and life are one.<br />
This is a high aim. It sounds like hard work.<br />
To play needs much work. But when we experience the work as play, then it is not work any more. <br />
A play is play.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*********************************************************</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-88119862013440773442018-06-20T13:00:00.000+02:002018-06-29T00:17:09.291+02:00Undigested Thoughts | In search of missing theater(s)Lëvizja e aktivistëve për teatrin (<b>#mbroteatrin</b>) duhet kuptuar jo vetëm si mbrojtje e trashëgimisë historike nëpërmjet arkitekturës së një ndërtese, por vetë teatrit si organizëm dhe akt(ivizim) kolektiv, si një arkitekturë (art+tekton) që ushqen, zhvillon dhe shpreh jo vetëm lirinë e fjalës po atë të mendjes së individit (të menduarit), kulturës shoqërore (të sjellurit) dhe ndërgjegjes historike (të kujtesës kolektive), pra një arkitekurë që mundëson jo vetëm publikun por dhe (materializon) hapësirën e tij.<br />
<br />
Duke u mbajtur jashtë ndërtesës së teatrit, në oborrin e tij, kjo lëvizje mundëson dhe materializon atë hapësirë publike që e kërkojmë kudo, jo vetëm jashtë në qytet por edhe brenda në institucionet e tij. E zhvendos spektaklin e këtyre institucioneve në rrugë (dhe me këtë veprim nxjerr në pah vetë hierarkinë (jo)publike «teatër-bashki-kryeministri-privat»). Eshtë një aktivizëm që "shfuqizon skenën dhe auditorin duke i zëvendësuar ato me një hapësirë të vetme, pa asnjë lloj ndarje apo pengese, duke u kthyer kështu në një teatër veprimi. Eshtë një akt që rivendos komunikimin e drejtpërdrejtë midis spektatorit dhe spektaklit, aktorit dhe spektatorit, duke e vënë spektatorin, pra publikun, në qendër të vëmendjes, veprimit dhe hapësirës që ta ndjejë fizikisht dhe të preket direkt nga ai”. (Artaud)<br />
<br />
Atëherë mund të themi se kjo levizje aktiviste përbën një ‘minor’ arkitekturë, <i>vanguard</i>-izmi i së cilës nuk qëndron tek efekti shokues (sic mund të them psh për disa ‘top-down’ ‘fake-avant-garde’ ‘arte bosh’) por boshti i tij është vetë fakti që vë në dyshim dhe shtron pyetje mbi legjitimitetin e shumë gjërave që bëhen në emër te tij, të publikut. Pra është (dhe duhet të jetë) një përgjigje përtej reaksionit dhe indinjimit fillestar. Edhe pse asimetrike në formë apo fuqi duhet të jetë propocionale në veprim.<br />
<br />
Lëvizja mund të kuptohet si një ndërgjegjësi dhe pergjegjësi shoqvrore që edhe pse e di margjinalitetin e saj vazhdon ta mbajë qëndrimin/pozicionin e vet, nuk pretendon për hegjemoni, e kupton domosdoshmërinë e formave të qeveritjes dhe ligjeve demokratike, ashtu si dhe praninë e forcave politike (pluralizmin) – pra, si një praktikë kritike-kreative, ky aktivizëm është (mund, dhe duhet të jetë) ‘<i>creatively parasitic</i>’ dhe ‘<i>insistently oppositional</i>’ që “kërkon (apo të paktën shpreson) të arrijë një sintezë të rigorozit politik (political rigor) dhe lirisë estetike (aesthetic freedom) duke rritur ndërgjegjen historike të publikut pa e intimiduar atë apo duke perdorur thjesht retorikë”. (Barthes/Brecht)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Mchn5M66H8Q/WzHWjWdeeuI/AAAAAAAAF5g/hyHmCkMo6-YPeDiwQymH1u5dskPOh7UxwCLcBGAs/s1600/Marat_Sade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1180" data-original-width="1600" height="295" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Mchn5M66H8Q/WzHWjWdeeuI/AAAAAAAAF5g/hyHmCkMo6-YPeDiwQymH1u5dskPOh7UxwCLcBGAs/s400/Marat_Sade.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Një ide për <b>#ejanëteatër</b>? Leximi, recitimi, interpretimi i dhe dialogu midis ligjit, projektligjit, dhe procedurave ligjore si vetë <i>karakter</i>ë të ketij konflikti, ku publiku i komunikon këto tekste ashtu siç i kupton . . . dmth duke nxjerrë në pah mangësite apo trillimet e tyre, dhe duke i shprehur e materializuar nëpërmjet gjesteve individuale që manifestojne një polifoni qëndrimesh dhe fuqish. Në këtë mënyrë, ai publik që është pothuajse gjithmonë një spektator, të vijë (në skenën publike, ashtu sic e ka të drejtën e tij) dhe të vihet në qendër të spektaklit që e rrethon.<br />
<br />
Siç thotë dhe <b>Brecht</b>-i: <u>Ky akt duhet të luhet si një pjesë (copëza) historie</u>, dhe spektatorit ti jepet shansi të vihet në një pozicion ku mund të krahasojë dhe të kritikojë influencat e ndryshme që e bëjnë atë, dhe shoqërinë në të cilin ai jeton, të sillet në një mënyre apo tjetrën. Nga ana astetike, kjo do të thotë se <i>gjesti </i>shoqëror i kujtdo që del në skenë, aktorit apo dhe spektatorit, mbart një rëndësi të veçantë. Artet duhet të fillojnë ti kushtojnë më rëndësi gjestit, d.m.th. gjestit me rëndësi shoqërore, jo atij ilustrues apo ekspresiv. Parimi i gjestit, në këtë rast, zëvëndëson atë të imitimit. [...] Kur përmbajtja e aktit kthehet, teknikisht, në një pjesë (komponent) të pavarur, ndaj së cilës teksti, muzika dhe skena 'përvetësojnë qëndrimet' e tyre; pasi iluzioni që kërkon ti shfaqë publikut sakrifikohet për një diskutim të lirë me të, dhe spektatori, në vend që të përjetojë një eksperiencë ndryshe, detyrohet të marrë pjesë aktive ashtu sikur të ishte tek kutitë e votimit; atëherë mund të themi se ndryshimi ka nisur dhe po ndodh përtej çështjeve formale, dhe për herë të parë po fillon të prek/ndikojë rolin/funksionin shoqëror (social) të teatrit.<br />
<br />
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">****************************************************</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-84219911946676256902018-03-13T11:05:00.001+01:002018-03-13T11:05:23.319+01:00Hidden Cities & Walls of Language (excerpts)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<b>No More Masterpieces</b> <span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">- A.Artaud</span><br />
<br />
<b>This may begin to delineate a line of scrimmage between making architectural objects and writing architectonic texts.</b> <span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">- J.Bloomer</span><br />
<br />
<b>The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes; their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language and their significance is as great as the importance of our language.</b> <span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">- Wittgenstein</span><br />
<br />
<b>Does the visual image destroy the walls of language? The true significance of visual images must be rethought after thoroughly examining the thickness of the walls of language.</b> <span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">- Abe Kobo</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3O9BTM9trQM/Wqd9XsLGHyI/AAAAAAAAFyw/j_D3W3MY_g4oMaRI-9pdG2jrJnikQa-cgCEwYBhgL/s1600/Perfact_fb%2Bcover_gr_spring18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="1600" height="147" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3O9BTM9trQM/Wqd9XsLGHyI/AAAAAAAAFyw/j_D3W3MY_g4oMaRI-9pdG2jrJnikQa-cgCEwYBhgL/s400/Perfact_fb%2Bcover_gr_spring18.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© PERfACTs "The <i>ACTIVATION</i> of the Traditional Games (Lojëra Popullore)"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>**</b></span> The text below is from <b>William H. Gass</b>'s essay <i>Invisible Cities</i>, in his book <i>Tests of Time</i>, p. 37-68. <i>The reading emphasis is mine.</i> I have selected these excerpts (sometimes out of the original context) as a tool to make sense of Tirana now, to question the [in]visible gestures and mediated narratives found in the city. My main concern here is <i>'the scrimmage' </i>between making and writing architecture (architectural forms / forms of our language) - and how we can <i>'activate'</i> the line of demarcation between what is intrinsic and extrinsic to one and the other.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;">(Granted, W.H.Gass has written this book with Calvino's work in mind (and what it might teach us about the modern city), but some of the points he brings up cannot be ignored in today's neoliberal Albania. Thus, my interest in posting it. I recommend you read the original essay to draw your own conclusions.)</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uIi_Sh0dxO4/Wqd9x-wJSnI/AAAAAAAAFy0/xZtfAzNWKk49MfN2gZqb4ITptQKJds48ACEwYBhgL/s1600/perfact_fb_profile_spring18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uIi_Sh0dxO4/Wqd9x-wJSnI/AAAAAAAAFy0/xZtfAzNWKk49MfN2gZqb4ITptQKJds48ACEwYBhgL/s320/perfact_fb_profile_spring18.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© PERfACTs "Theaters quietly unseat themselves and perform their plays outdoors." </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br />
<span style="color: #444444;">Think of the word <i>polis</i> – “city” – itself: a word which will be young still when every other city is a midden or in unsieved dust. It is the wretchedness of this truth, it is the injustice of any one word’s overweening reality which has made this truth so invisible. <br /><br />Imprisoned by either walls or words, it is all the more important to try: to dream beyond the bricks; beyond the outer courtyard with its watchtowers, guards, guns; beyond the words which screen us from the world, beyond our own aims, fears, normally trivial aches and pains, which we nevertheless enlarge and objectify as bruises in hillsides, as knocks in walls, as cuts through mountains, as the leveling of plains. <br /><br />Cities can be cleansed even of themselves when they do not understand the true nature of their inhabitants...<br /><br />Scheherazade, staving off death with her stories, must borrow or invent...<br /><br />[T]he camps of catastrophe, cities of sewers and open wounds... scalded by their atmosphere, whose admired autumnal sunsets are caused by clouds of foetid gas; cities where growths of garbage define the parks, and every alley is intestinal; the cities we can only forget, it seems, by repeating them, by reproducing… reinvesting, rebuilding, reinhabiting… by reenacting their several and similar hells, not smoothly and professionally, but stupidly and clumsily...<br /><br />We have fables Aesop might have managed, not by imagining animals but by imagining cities. <br /><br />From our journeys, we may return with other wares, but that won’t matter, for what will render them significant will be their placement on the pavement, the flights of influence they suggest, the orders they elicit from the eye … returning, not with these images alone, but with the wonder of their relationships. </span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #444444;">The chessboard is also the grid of every great city. It is only incidentally a set of paths, for these paths are principally corridors of power, influence, force.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br />What we frequently fail to understand is that the city is not an assemblage of buildings streaked by highways and streets; it is a subtle pattern of powers, like the board.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #444444;"><i>At times he thought he was on the verge of discovering a coherent, harmonious system underlying the infinite deformities and discords, but no model could stand up to the comparison with the game of chess. </i></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="color: #444444;">[B]eneath the pieces the board is bare, the stones of all his cities’ buildings dissolve in the lines which bound them, and these run pointlessly – invisibly – off into space… On that slick ivory surface, on the fired clay, in that open square of wood which is at once a piece of playing field and a square of the city, what can one further see? the footprint of a pavement? perhaps a taut and angry fiber? the glaze of a dreaming eye? logs lazily adrift in a slow-moving river? a woman peering from an upstairs window? Every object is itself a cell which would contain us, yet every end has its outlet as well; and as we pass through a cave’s yawn to the hollow of a hollow tree, from that hollow to an open door or window, we cross one threshold to achieve yet another, even more wondrous, wider world. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">When the concept of the city, with its concrete streets and concrete towers, has been replaced by that of the game, with its architectural grid and gun range, its system of implicit threats, its irregular spheres of influence; and when that game, furthermore, has been, in its interest, exhausted; then the materials of the contest, its dinky tools, the ivory itself, its fingered skin, the shape of the cross on the king’s crown, are entreated for results. A pillar becomes a tree, a tree a totem. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">Let me recapitulate our progress. It is a pattern to be found in all the arts. We begin our pursuit of the city by examining the particular, the things that cities are made of – squares, streets, buildings, bridges, people, parks – allowing the least leaf to be engraved upon our faces as though it has been long pressed there. We endeavor to give to the shallowest saucer great depth, but we do so through the intensity of our attention, by dwelling on the small bob of its basin, the thin rule of gold around its rim, the cup which will squat there when the tea is finally ready. We collect facts. We describe things as we believe they really are. Not only our streets, but our lanes, our halls and closets, are named in this realm of reference, this freeway of denotation. The procedure will give us one sort of city: a city of idle odors and random sounds, a city of character, of what is popularly called “place.” Our city will have a personality, for we shall have rendered the gestures of its spirit, the way in which it resembles a young girl, a lecherous uncle, an old maid. Our city will be a richly human body made of countless bones. Many a corner will strike us like an elbow. Many a path will wear like a hole through our shoe. Many a brick will stiffen at our touch. The light will fall irregularly throughout the city, palely in this place, brightly in another, after the manner of our understanding. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">Not content with this, we soon seek – in the playing fountain, the shaded courtyard, the kneeling man, the fan, in the look that leaps like a tree through the stone pavement – a pattern of powers, of influence and agitation; and like the Great Khan we withdraw toward the game, although it is still people we see moving about like pawns, and not yet pawns we see moving about like people. This method will give us still another sort of city, a city in which system is beginning to be born, in which terms are beginning to be replaced by relations, in which roles are beginning to define their representatives, and not the reverse. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">The signifier has swallowed the signified, although you may still observe it as a swell in the stomach, like a bulge beneath the bedclothes of a bereaved and sleeping body. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">What has really happened to us? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">We have begun to listen to the sound of our own words, not merely to their meanings; we have begun to circle their shapes like a walk around a town; we have turned to the representatives of thought for sustenance, not to the thoughts themselves, or to the things those thoughts were presumably about; for just as trees are bark and leaves and light, and the forest is trees and leaflight too, so the city is made of millions of small forms and fine textures, of the very near and the quite far, and like the wilderness may have its own mountains, depending on place and point of views, tiredness and timing. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">A city is a wall for words, misunderstood or simply imitated in spray paint; but it is a house for houses too, and so should have its doors and sudden windows, its stairs and stories, its halls and dining rooms and dens. We have explored our chosen city through dreams of its streets and derelict alleys, its suspension bridges and bridle paths. Now we remain with the mute sign itself. The map of the city is the city. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">Shortly new words will begin to be heard in the sounds which old words make, as for instance in “swoon,” which I understand, now that I speak it clearly and listen with a pure ear, is not the languid faint I formerly feared, but the casual and quiet glide path of a paper airplane. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">Not only are there cities which belong to the past, and are now invisible for that reason; but there are cities of the present whose existence is quite evident to any traveler with eyes alert and curious, but which are hidden to the inhabitants, who no longer need to experience their postboxes, their scented trees, in order to allow their dogs to piss against them on their twice-daily walks. A neighborhood may be missed entirely by a preoccupied visitor. I certainly do not notice now the soles of my feet, my weight, my restless or resentful ears, opposing opinions. … Great stretches of so many cities are indistinguishable, and even when we peer at them, they are simply stretches, highways which have thrown out little asphalt lots along them like oozes of rust on a pipe. Amid so much tastelessness, it takes a pretty tasteless gesture to create a locale. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">But when are cities invisible because they have no identity, and when is it because of our indifference, our bemused eye? </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">Our cities are like seas, and it is not uncommon to see one building seize and swallow another like a shark. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">All future cities are invisible as a matter of course. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">To illuminate the landing of a stairway, panels of stained glass foresee the development of the city. Which are the true forms and which the false? We can ask this question even when we believe we know which is the solid city and which the reflection. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">I live, myself, in a city of defeated expectations, a city of inept lies. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">When will shopping centers become warehouses if warehouses are already galleries, ateliers, or rifle museums? Theaters quietly unseat themselves and perform their plays outdoors. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">But the falsehoods began when the first earth was moved. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">Not every building remarries readily. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #444444;">There are timeless cities, not because they seem eternal, but because everything about them is the same age, like the nose, ears, chin of a face. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #666666;">[<i>Invisible Cities</i> is a book about still another book, Dante’s <i>Inferno</i>, composed as nearby to <i>The Travels of Marco Polo</i>. The nine sections of Calvino’s text resemble the nine circles of Hell through which Virgil escorts Dante, although Marco Polo carries the khan with him largely by turns of the wheel of the word. There is a definite, not to say plummetous, descent from the first part, which opens with “Cities and Memory,” to the final one, which begins with “Cities of the Dead,” after which we fall more precipitously toward those cities which are said to be “hidden.” In Calvino though, we meet cities on our journey, not Dante’s miserable men.] </span></span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #444444;"><i>Below that point we found a painted people,<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i>who moved about with lagging steps, in circles,<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i>weeping, with features tired and defeated.<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i> And they were dressed in cloaks with cowls so low<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i>they fell before their eyes, of that same cut<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i>that’s used to make the clothes for Cluny’s monks.<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i> Outside, these cloaks were gilded and they dazzled;<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i>but inside they were all of lead, so heavy<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i>that Frederick’s capes were straw compared to them.<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i> A tiring mantle for eternity!<br /> </i></span><span style="color: #444444;"><i><span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;">[Inferno, canto XXIII, 11, 58-67]</span></i> </span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #444444;">The technique of this magical and fabulous fiction concerns the recognition of the Real, which is its insistent subject. … Reality does not consist of things, their collections, or their shallow denominations. Reality is not a set of simple situations, nor is it one shade of anything. It is not even a single system of relations – invisible as they all are. The experience of the city exceeds our experience of Proust. A great city’s life lies in the details, in the details as they fulfill a whole. Consider what a little grass does to a set of steps, and then multiply… multiply…. Consider what a crack of light does to the dungeon, and multiply for freedom and for sky. Consider the multiplication not only of niceties but of vulgarities as well: signs, poles, wires, trash, broken glass, peeling paint, rotting boards. And multiply… multiply…. <br /><br />Isn’t that what happens to the elements of a successful city: they satisfy our needs, allow our lusts, remind us of our past, inhabit our future, encourage our reveries? What is a text but a community of words? <br /><br />We have seen cities clothed in colored tiles, courtyards composed of images and ancient scripts and antique statuary, streets lined with streams, lined with inclining tables and dissipated awnings… A single building can sometimes overpower an entire city and, become more than an emblem, more than a feat to be admired: a conscience to be obeyed. [The cities] the text takes us through, including those that disappeared ahead of history and before we reached the title page; governmental cities too, capitals with a capital C, and those which will be paraded by our absent or our sleeping eye as the text turns silently inside itself, thinking like a drill bit does, bringing more aspects to inner view … continuously, invisibly. <br /><br /><i>“The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born.”</i> Yet cities come to an end when they lose their boundaries, when neighborhoods, districts, regions flow together with the sameness of a flooding river, masses of indistinctly different men covering the country. <br /><br />[Lastly] the unjust city, a meat grinder… Here, hidden, the just recognize one another by their manner of speech … Here, however, within the very virtues of the just and their secret city, lies the sense of their superiority like the celebrated canker in the rose. To realize that your righteousness deprives you of the pleasure and privileges the unjust enjoy drives you to despise justice and resent your own virtue. By means of this grim dialectic another unjust city, hidden beneath the hidden, begins to grow, a cancer called “just cause.” <br /><br />In the unjust city – our cultureless world – the just – the cultured – recognize one another as citizens of the same secret city, but their very isolation and the protections of superiority they must adopt to survive encourage a bitter hubris, which costs them the esteem they have fancied was their fitting reward. <br /><br />Notice how the same lesson lay unlearned in this city...</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<div>
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>***************************************************</b></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-68541631061000002332018-03-10T13:51:00.001+01:002018-03-10T13:51:46.624+01:00myth (un)making | An excerpt on (mis)appropriation of SkanderbegToday, I would like to share an excerpt from <b>Ardian Klosi</b>'s book <i><b>Te Kundërcjapi</b></i>, as a way of reflecting on the events that are being held in honor of Skanderbeg both in Albania and abroad - more specifically to engage those discussions that are celebrating the 500th anniversary of his death - and furthermore, to probe a "disquieting depth", a provocation on the significance and burden of transcendence; from a life lived as a man and fighter, to a (fictitious, but not meaningless) revival as symbol, myth, our national hero. Granted, this post is not meant to unpack all of these hopes - only to scratch an itch, as it were, about the misuse, misinterpretations, and misappropriations that are and have been thrown around for quite some time in regards to the language used (first and foremost), historical facts and cultural heritage, 'revolutionary' criticality (read: (in)action), and so on.<br />
<br />
I am making my way through this book a lot slower than I anticipated, but I did choose this specific piece for two reasons: 1) to give you a glimpse of what inspired yesterday's <a href="http://www.perfact.org/2018/03/undigested-thoughts-in-search-of.html">post</a> (and the undigested thoughts behind it); and 2) to put the resistance fighter in a different context - that of the author - that of the dissident. I know this might be quite a reach on my part (or maybe not) because (way too often) Skanderbeg has been appropriated in mythical terms (at least from what I've read), and not as a figure of dissent (such as Klosi), one that critically unravels (in) the shadows of mainstream history. This is a juxtaposition that I'd like to look at further (and am just now beginning to research), or at least be able to start a conversation with those that know more than I do about seeing Skanderbeg in this light, and moreover to acquire a comprehensive knowledge (archive/mapping) of Albanian dissidents. Those of you that would like to share, please do reach out!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-webLL3i2ftE/WqNpwLg7lGI/AAAAAAAAFyU/fKFFQyYuk_gMVGqmk-sjf4uzSdGPCEliACLcBGAs/s1600/book%2Bof%2Bdissent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1279" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-webLL3i2ftE/WqNpwLg7lGI/AAAAAAAAFyU/fKFFQyYuk_gMVGqmk-sjf4uzSdGPCEliACLcBGAs/s200/book%2Bof%2Bdissent.jpg" width="159" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bBubpVBRCDM/WqNpwJPI0gI/AAAAAAAAFyQ/yQDmysGQsB4U1W6bmGP7jT_AwWQLEZQiQCLcBGAs/s1600/skanderbeg_dissent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1447" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bBubpVBRCDM/WqNpwJPI0gI/AAAAAAAAFyQ/yQDmysGQsB4U1W6bmGP7jT_AwWQLEZQiQCLcBGAs/s200/skanderbeg_dissent.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-size: x-small;"><i>The Verso Book of Dissent: Revolutionary Words from Three Millennia of Rebellion and Resistance, </i>an anthology of dissenting voices.</span></div>
<br />
Lastly, I should add that any inquiry into what we might consider role models (in my case the 'anti-spectacle' or the critical specter of the dissident) can be approached simply, with the question of how do we do justice to such people who have struggled against those in power - the dissidents who raised their voices in protest and dedicated their lives (through fighting or writing) to dismantle the normative oppressions that have haunted and persecuted us for so long; still.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aOmGYgf1x9U/WqNqUt5g0MI/AAAAAAAAFyg/LpccZ4l4JgImsdujmgHJxqkwvKb5x2cBQCLcBGAs/s1600/klosi_te%2Bkundercjapi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1307" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aOmGYgf1x9U/WqNqUt5g0MI/AAAAAAAAFyg/LpccZ4l4JgImsdujmgHJxqkwvKb5x2cBQCLcBGAs/s320/klosi_te%2Bkundercjapi.jpg" width="260" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="color: orange;">**</span>Excerpt in Albanian<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><u><i>Po na e marrin</i>, <b><i>Te Kundërcjapi</i></b>, <b>Ardian Klosi</b></u></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #666666;"> </span><span style="color: #444444;">Po na e marrin Kastriotin. Janë ngritur ca njerëz të ligj, xhelozë, regresivë, antishqiptarë dhe po na e marrin. Po ku do ta shpien? Nuk dihet, a do t'ia çojnë fqinjëve veriorë, jugorë, a kishës katolike, a asaj ortodokse, s'është e sigurt, e sigurt është vetëm që nuk duan të na e lënë. Thonë edhe sikur do t'ua lënë në dorë disa historianëve si Hopf, Hahn, Shuflai, Pall, Babinger, Marinescu, Valentini, Schmitt, njerëz që vetëm arkivat njohin dhe fyejnë ndjenjat e një populli të vogël. Uh uh uh.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> Po na e marrin Skënderbeun. Për herë të dytë, pasi e morën osmanët një herë, ia shqyen varrë, i shpërndanë eshtrat mes tyre dhe s'i lanë gjurmë në këtë vend, tani kanë dalë ca mendjembrapshtë që do t'ia heqin Gjergjjit kurorën nga koka e skeptrin nga dora dhe do të na e lënë historinë e mesjetës pa mbret. Oi oi!</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> Duan të thonë se s'ngriti flamurin e kombit në Krujë e në Lezhë, po flamurin e Bizantit dhe të kryqit. Po shpifin se qenkësh nga familje ortodokse, sikur gjoja i ati paska blatuar në mal të Atosit Kullën e Arbrit, sikur i vëllai Reposhi qenkësh dorëzuar kallogjer, po thonë se paska patur nënë sllave, se kishte kunetër, baxhanakë e nuse jo vetëm prej gjaku të pastër shqiptar, por edhe serbë, malazezë, bizantinë. Upupu që një mortje i ngrëntë, e haram u qoftë qumështi shqiptar i nënës! E pasi ia hoqën kurorën, i hoqën dhe Mbretërinë e Shqipërisë, që shtrihej, siç e kemi në librat e shkollave 50 vjet e këtej, nga Përmeti në Vermosh, nga Peja në Karavasta, po duan ta ngushtojnë në Dibër, Mat e Krujë; i hoqën qeverinë, i hoqën ministritë, Kuvendin dhe shërbiment e fshehta, i hoqën Ushtrinë Çlirimtare të Arbërisë dhe e lanë me një kalori të lehtë prej 3000 a 4000 burrash. Nc nc nc! E pasi nuk e lanë sulltan Muratin të vdiste nga marazi poshtë mureve të Krujës, po shumë më vonë në një tavernë të Azisë së vogël, e vunë Kastriotin t'i jepte Alfonsit V të Napolit betimin e vasalit dhe çelësat e Krujës po atë vit, më 1451. Po e bëjnë Skënderbeun me zotër feudalë, me aleatë e mbështetës, po duan të thonë sikur ka marrë rregullisht rroga nga Venediku, ushtarë nga Napoli, dukate me mijëra nga papët, kur ai ishte i vetëm, për 25 vjet mbi kështjellën e tij arbërore, që u ngrit në anë të Adriatikut dhe u bëri ballë gjithë stuhive, nga Lindja dhe nga Perëndimi, njësoj si ajo kështjella tjetër, 500 vjet më vonë...</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> Dhe thonë se nuk e paska penguar vërshimin osman mbi Europë, sikur gjoja në të njëjtën kohë Mehmeti II Pushtues paska marrë Konstantinopojën, Bosnjen, Serbinë, Vllahinë, Peloponezin e gjithë Greqinë. Turp, turp, turp!</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> Po rrëzojne Historinë e Nolit, që shkriu një jetë për Gjerqin e tij, edhe pse nuk e pa mirë derëziu që po mbështetej mbi një histori kallpe, mbi të ashtuquajturin Antivarinin; e sado i thoshin dijetarë të tjerë se është një prift mashtrues i shekullit 18 e mos i beso, imzoti ynë zemërbardhë s'lëkundej nga e tija, se donte ta mësonin vogëlushët historine siç e donte e mira e kombit e jo siç thoshin dokumentet e armiqve.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> Ububu, ububu! E vunë të zihej me fisnikët e tjerë shqiptarë, njërit t'i merrte tokat, tjetrit kështjellat, të tretin ta ndante nga gruaja, të tjerë t'i hidhte në birucat e Napolit, e lanë të grihej gjithë jetën me Dukagjinët, kur ne e dinim se të gjithë i qenë nënshtruar dhe e njihnin për mbret. Popopo! Po sa shumë tradhtarë, po sa shumë besëqena ngrinin armët kundër tij! Na dilka se e luftonin vazhdimisht shqiptarë, jo po Jakub Muzaka, jo po Izir beu, jo po Ferid beu, jo po Ballaban pasha. Si, ngriheshin komandantë shqiptarë dhe u binin zotërve shqiptarë?!! Luftonin shqiptarë me shqiptarë? Një palë për kryqin e të tjerët për gjysmëhënën?! Si ishin ndarë të gjithë më gjysmë, Muzakat, Balshajt, Aranitët, Dukagjinët, njëra palë me emrat Tanush, Gjergj e Pal, tjetra Jakup, Mehmet e Feriz, ca zinin be për gjakun e Krishtit e ca për mjekrën e Muhametit? Po ne e dinim se populli shqiptar u bashkua si një grusht i vetëm rreth mbretit të tij dhe i bëri ballë rrebeshit pushtues osman për 25 vjet! Si thatë, ishin pushtuar me kohë dhe pastaj bënë kryengritje? Domethënë osmanët e kishin marrë Arbërinë 50 vjet më parë, i kishin ndarë qytetet e kështjellat më të mëdha me Venedikun? Ofshofshofsh.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> I patë si qenë mbledhur ditën e shtunë? Kuvend i baballarëve të kombit! Një masë e murrëtyer, e zymtë, me kostume gri, që ngrinte zërin dhe dënonte. Dënonte armiqtë e shqiptarizmës që me çelësa e dara të zeza kanë zënë të dekonstruktojnë mitologjinë nacionale. Rezil dy herë, rezil tri herë! Ptu, ptu, ptu! Si Plenum ngjante, si mbledhje e Lidhjes së Shkrimtarëve, atëherë kur dënonte devijatorët me orientimet e sapodala të Udhëheqësit. Të gjithë njëzëri.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> Të gjithë ata që e drejtojnë këtë vend tash sa vjet në pikë të hallit u bashkuan të shtunë në një Përlutësore për Kastriotin, kundër armiqve të rinj. Ata që po ia falin fqinjëve Shqipërinë llokma-llokma, me bregdet, me ishuj e me gadishuj. Që po i përdorin trevat e Kastriotit për fabrika çimentosh. Që e kanë bërë Arbërinë kryqëzim trafiqesh droge, skrapi e rruspiesh. Që nënshkruajnë ligje të turpshme për (s)pastrim figurash. Që s'po i lënë vendit një pikë dinjiteti. Të gjithë në hall të madh për Skënderbeun. Po i lëkundin statujat, faqezinjtë, po na e lënë popullin pa Baba!</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> Mbylluani gojën këtyre hairsëzëve, sekuestrojuani librat këtyre armiqve. Se po vazhduan kështu na e morën vërtet Skënderbeun, ia morën Akademisë së Shkencave, Lidhjes së Shkrimtarëve dhe Artistëve, Kështjellës shkëmbore buzë Adriatikut. Ia morën dhe e lanë... pa pendët e nacionalizmit... pa izolimin qindvjeçar kombëtar.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"> E lanë Skënderbeun me shkëlqimin që e kishte vetë, dikur.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">****************************************************************</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-83136911168094789132018-03-09T00:12:00.000+01:002018-03-09T00:12:38.973+01:00Undigested Thoughts | In search of missing spectre(s)500 years after his death, 2018 is being celebrated as The Year of Skanderbeg (and of Albanian national identity) - so I decided to make a quick thing (below) in hopes of more reflection and less celebration. <div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TxaoyqC47wA/WqHC3NxR1vI/AAAAAAAAFyA/SmZBYXqCwIgS2nLfQ-mYuGnPP2BLQjaHwCLcBGAs/s1600/DSC_0516.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1162" data-original-width="1600" height="290" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TxaoyqC47wA/WqHC3NxR1vI/AAAAAAAAFyA/SmZBYXqCwIgS2nLfQ-mYuGnPP2BLQjaHwCLcBGAs/s400/DSC_0516.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© www.perfact.org</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-7612678603120030842017-06-24T01:10:00.002+02:002017-06-24T01:21:54.556+02:00Undigested Thoughts | In search of 'Memoirs Found in a Bathtub'As the election campaigns make their final bang before whatever whimper they'll feel on Sunday when Albanians go to vote, I'd like to offer you a couple of the many ways I might convey what I think of this rat race and its self-inflicted climatic messages, in what has quite honestly been an overwhelmingly anticlimactic turn of events, online and in real life. New timelines on old promises, past futures aged and preached anew. Same old, some would say, still not being able to distinguish whether these things happen to us or for us.<br />
<br />
I don't want to dismiss this dullness (of the 'same old', which takes its cue from the status-quo of the everyday life), far from it, I'd like to isolate and define it as a real and steady instrument of power that materializes as a soft violence on citizenship, one that refrains the citizen's freedom of choice (which is obvious if we just glance at and listen to the choices). Voting, no matter how it has been treated in times past, continues to stand as both, the citizen's voice and weapon of combat, their freedom and responsibility. The question that remains then, is how are these citizens able to proceed when those who speak for them, those who represent them - all of the political parties - practice such soft violence?<br />
<br />
So, in light of this still undigested question, the first way of conveying my thoughts about the election is through the blunt <i>dialog</i> of untamed tongues:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yOZ9g0DF8R0" width="500"></iframe>
</div>
<br />
And secondly, through another <i>dialog</i> of a more indirect approach (or sermon of sorts), via an excerpt from <b>Stanislaw Lem</b>'s <i><b>Memoirs Found in a Bathtub</b></i>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bSI6-2UA1X8/WU2eSyMeehI/AAAAAAAAFj8/kEg_ZletKfAFZ6VwtjJK5iagpKJI28XBACLcBGAs/s1600/memoirs%2Bfound%2Bin%2Ba%2Bbathtube.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1414" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bSI6-2UA1X8/WU2eSyMeehI/AAAAAAAAFj8/kEg_ZletKfAFZ6VwtjJK5iagpKJI28XBACLcBGAs/s320/memoirs%2Bfound%2Bin%2Ba%2Bbathtube.jpg" width="281" /></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>" </i></b></span><span style="color: #444444;">"And here you thought you were a prisoner in a labyrinth of evil, where everything was pregnant with meaning, where even the theft of one's instructions was a ritual, that the Building destroyed only in order to build, to build only in order to destroy the more -- and you took this for the wisdom of evil... Hence your mental somersaults and contortions. You writhed on the hook of your own question mark to solve that equation of horror. But I tell you there is no solution, no equation, no destruction, no instructions, no evil -- there is only the Building -- only -- the Building --"</span><span style="color: #444444;">"Only the Building?" I echoed, my hair on end.</span><span style="color: #444444;">"Only the Building," he echoed my echo, shivering.</span><span style="color: #444444;">"This is not wisdom, this is a blind and all-encompassing perfection, a perfection not of man's making but which arose from man, or rather from the community of man. Human evil, you see, is so petty and frail, while here we have something grand and mighty at work... An ocean of blood and sweat and urine! One thundering death rattle from a million throats! A great monument of feces, the product of countless generations! Here you can drown in people, choke on them, waste away in a vast wilderness of people! Behold: they will stir their coffee as they calmly tear you to shreds, chat and pick their noses as they outrage your corpse, and brew more coffee as it stiffens, and you will be a hairless, worn-out and abandoned doll, a broken rattle, an old rag yellow and forgotten in the corner... That is how perfection operates, not wisdom! Wisdom is you, yourself -- or maybe two people! You and someone else, that intimate flash of honesty from eye to eye..."</span><span style="color: #444444;">I watched his deathly pale face and wondered where I'd heard all this before, it sounded</span><span style="color: #444444;"> familiar. Then I remembered -- that sermon, the sermon about choking, evil and the Devil, the sermon which Brother Persuasion told me was intended as provocation...</span><span style="color: #444444;">"How can I believe you?" I groaned. He shuddered.</span><span style="color: #444444;">"O sinner!!" he screamed in a whisper. "Dost thou still double that what may be a harmless conversation or joke on one level doth constitute, on another, legal action and, on yet another, a battle of wits between Departments? Verily, if thou followest this line of thought, thou shalt end up nowhere, since here anything, hence everything, leadeth everywhere!"</span><span style="color: #444444;">...</span><span style="color: #444444;">"What are you saying?"</span><span style="color: #444444;">"You <i>still</i> don't understand? I'm an <i>agent provocateur </i>because I'm a priest. Only as your agent provocateur am I, a priest, allowed to say what I've said here. Of course, we expect you to cooperate..." (170-172) </span><span style="color: orange; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>"</i></b></span></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">**************************************************************</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-2248633818749945752016-12-29T19:28:00.001+01:002016-12-29T19:28:54.494+01:00Tirana Masterplan(s) Again | In search of missing masteryTo those who have asked my thoughts on the new plan, as I havent had enough time to study it all in such a short amount of time, all I can say for now, and generally speaking about public design and planning practices in Albania (old and new), is that we're getting very good at the legacy of ripping up(apart) our legacy; borrowing the time of the present to do it, and robbing the future of a cemented foundation (pun intended). Thus, we've never truly or legally been historic, in the sense of sound decision-making based on context, nor have we been quite modern. We've always been a little off- (modernity and historicity), which is not necessarily a bad concept - it is actually good (theoretically and philosophically) but not in the way we've actually done it. As a too-real condition, it has made us schizophrenic (metaphorically and cognitively speaking).<br />
<br />
Quick gratification as design and planning practices does not a legacy make, well not the one we want anyways. Instead of racing against time and reason (for the sake of perceived innovation) ; and declaring war on pretty much everything else, including common and professional sense with forms that violate our sensibilities and everyday life of experiencing the city, let's stop to watch and listen to how fundamental forms of life organically (not forced) intermingle in the city: human, social, physical, ecological, etc. Design and planning should be a synthesis that augments without dictating. They ought to focus on the forms of dwelling first, not buildings. They need to mobilize a deep communication with the life in and around (even within) these forms, not just function in order to follow (the) form (of vertically governin).<br />
<br />
We crave new forms of <i>agency</i>: of cognition and critique; not shapes and doodles made in boredom. As designers, we are responsible for all we design<i>ate</i>. As citizens, we've grown accustomed to the ‘safety’ of the shadows cast, fearing the unhealthy glare of the light. It is darkness that shapes light. It is the past that shapes the possibility for a future. It is our humanity that shapes our design.<br />
<br />
With this in mind, I leave you with Victor Hugo's ‘Les Misérables’, taken out of the context of a heavy (written) volume and placed in this fragment of post-thought still in formation. You can read it narrowly as in architecturally speaking, or broadly as in design and planning practices. After all, both are no small (de)feats and of war-like disposition.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“That form has long been fully illuminated; it did have a certain traditional obscurity through which always veils the truth for a longer or shorter time; but now the history is luminous and complete. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, all luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, and the darkness of the despot struggles with the splendor of the captain. Hence a truer measure in the final judgment of the nations. Babylon violated lessens Alexander; Rome enslaved lessens Caesar; massacred Jerusalem lessens Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. It is woe to a man to leave behind him a shadow which has his form.”</i></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*************************************</div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3234559611259852346.post-25743008987601573552016-12-27T15:17:00.000+01:002016-12-27T22:07:16.997+01:00A year worth(y/less) of posts | In search of missing truths in 2016Another year bites the dust.<br />
<br />
Looking back, we can agree that such a year probably started to dissolve at conception (or concession in Albania). A kind of built-up presence, accumulated since the beginning of millennia, which has finally accelerated enough to materialize, becoming unmistakably visible, just enough to crash. An accident of time, maybe? It is time to re-read <a href="http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=62">Virilio</a>'s "<i>Information Bomb</i>" and "<i>Politics of the Very Worst</i>" more closely this year-end:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“There are eyes everywhere. No blind spot left. What shall we dream of when everything becomes visible? We'll dream of being blind.” [IB]</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“</i><i>The<u> accident</u> is an inverted miracle, a secular miracle, a revelation. When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries <u>its own negativity</u>, which is <u>invented</u> at the same time as [...] progress.</i><i>” [PVW]</i></blockquote>
2016 was one for the books and drawing boards -- <i>the perfect storm of invention(s)</i>. That is, <i>invention of information, as impact</i> [read: <i>accident</i>(s)]; redrawing lines of narrative and image, pushing for form instead of formation, causing a deep withdrawal into (or advance (out) of) oneself.<br />
<br />
As a result, this blog was sporadic in translating (as) this <i>trans-form</i>-ation, and making legible the turmoil of its <i>formation</i>, thus fewer posts were written here and (unfortunately) faster '<i>truths</i>' got made in social media. <i>I</i>t got caught up in <i>one too many </i>reactionary sentiments, making itself more sensible to unproductive energy and vulnerable disposition. In an attempt to fathom the <i>absurd</i> logic and the information <i>craftiness </i>of whatever invention, <i>I</i>t got distracted (and mildly co/stu-nned) by the <i>face value</i> of its impact; misreading (hence, mistaking) promise for premise and imaginary for imagined. Although, I feel that the <i>thought-image</i> construed and provided as (a cultural) <i>truth</i> was doing both (and all) simultaneously. It has been quite a 50 week (and counting) ride of inventing the anticipation of uncertain, yet already existing accident.<br />
<br />
It is just the beginning though, and one doesn't know how to gear up for
what seems like a long f(l)ight ahead. Should we feel sick to our
stomach, be(come) somber, read <a href="https://monoskop.org/File:Arendt_Hannah_The_Human_Condition_2nd_1998.pdf">Hannah Arendt</a>, or just <i>be</i>
and let the hype direct the flow of (one's) thought, energy, and the
myth of democracy? If this year was one of attacks on public space just
to see its publics hurt (through suicide bombers or privatization); of
wars made just as banal and <i>real</i> as the everyday; of post-truths,
alt-right, selfies, and nihilism; then, 2017 can be anticipated as one
of mass(ive) PTSD (post-traumatic-stress-disorder), of post-revolutions
and freedom-fluidity, of alt-delete and alt-control (with no
alt-option), of the displaced self (made possible by the displayed self
or the selfie) as a representation of the real distanced by reality. A
year of <i>paradoxes</i> where cultural <i>progress</i> (as a human construct) will mean both, the normalization of, and invention as/of the accident. (<i>"We'll dream of being blind."</i>)<br />
<br />
A new sort of cultural nihilism has emerged in the <i>accident of the post-</i>, and the <i>post-accident</i>
of the progress (invention/accident) paradox, where the human makes way
for its inhuman self, in a kind of post-colonization (a de-colonization
and re-colonization cycle of) survival. 2016 has provided much evidence
of (unreal) human fictions and (real) inhuman influences, be that by
advancing AI-s, or human cruelty and imagination. We've witnessed
way-too-real historical re-enactments of violence enter as <i>newness</i>, in what now marks the era of <i>post</i>(s) human-centrism, the acceleration/deceleration paradox of human <i>artifice</i>.
The camouflage(d) has been abstracted; political health, stealth and
wealth have become spectator sports, whose public service operate on the
inhuman scale of market value; whose public scrutiny has not been
(human-)scaled to <i>citizen</i> prosperity and safety of <i>place</i>. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The future will be an <i>anomaly</i>: <i>a normalization of alienation</i>. </div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BNGS_J9itkk/WGJftCWd2aI/AAAAAAAAE8A/bHQpGTQ3aFAeQrJ4LGchKDJPqlrkQhH2wCLcB/s1600/dvd-covers-lost-320.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BNGS_J9itkk/WGJftCWd2aI/AAAAAAAAE8A/bHQpGTQ3aFAeQrJ4LGchKDJPqlrkQhH2wCLcB/s320/dvd-covers-lost-320.jpg" width="233" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">an experimental film by <i>Jonas Mekas</i></span></div>
<i><br /></i>
<i>Where does this leave/take us?</i> This is the one question on everyone's mind, beyond what I might as well call <i>hope</i> (Einstein's definition of insanity - doing the same thing and expecting different results), and the <i>perversity</i> (branded as innovation/invention) of New World [B]order(s). Well, be it a blessing (some sure do see it as such, <i>sigh</i>) or a curse, one thing is certain; 2016 showed us the paradox of being human, that we're on the verge of fulfilling a very old proverb, albeit its warnings:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>1. May you live in interesting times. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>2. May you be recognized by people in high places. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>3. May you get what you wish for.</i></blockquote>
We are, then, left to figure out the last one:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>4. May you find the final blessing/curse.</i></blockquote>
With this in mind, I feel the new year ought to be one of <i>forensics</i>, in deciphering facts, truths and what's real - just so we're clear on where the line stands and which side of the paradox we're on (if any). This line of f(l)ight is a spatial (and cultural) force associated with violence (most often than not), but it can also be a tool/place for critical thinking. In disseminating and diagnosing the dimensions of the paradox, we open it up as a line of communication, that determines the progress of and in (its) formation, and not as a (form of) commodity of invention.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>We should (learn to) be better critics, diligently and sensibly so. </b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Lastly, I leave you with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_%C5%A0vankmajer">Jan Švankmajer</a>'s <i>Dimensions of Dialogue </i>and the possibilities of interacting forms.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="347" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/17034946" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="520"></iframe>
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://vimeo.com/17034946">Jan Švankmajer: Dimensions of Dialogue (1982)</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user4352214">ΜΙΤSARAS //grafos</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">******************************************************************
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
irsiB http://www.blogger.com/profile/09647681637024034853noreply@blogger.com0