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nqpaofu.com 1998-2004 jouke kleerebezem Notes Quotes Provocations and Other Fair Use
notes, quotes, provocations and other fair use 2004
nqpaofu.com by jouke kleerebezem
issue 84
conversational drift
informatic license
exquisite enclaves
83
portal
history
85
Iwi and Wiwi begot 2 furry gooselings. Now for their names... Dibi and Bidi? We had 15 eggs in the nest and buried 4 newly born that were too weak and/or got trampled by their parents, crushed in the shell. I don't think more will come. There's just three eggs left and more dead in the nest. Some ducks however prepare a surprise.
M. Hurel entrusted me his local history archive, to browse for the St. Germain des Bois site. At home he has a collection of over 1,000 hand painted figurines, most of them historical. His French Revolution miniature diorama won him a Solex moped, in Paris in the 1950s!
We have a lot of gardening going on. While doing so three swallows feinted at our heads. I've been told already since a week there have been obsed in the Beuvron valley.
R+r brought home their spring marks. Both very good. 16,6/20 and 17,5/20, in 18 disciplines. Both scored 20/20 on Anglais... Big up les garçons!
We are on our way to NL for a fortnight. I'll be dividing my time between Maastricht, Eindhoven, Wasselonne, Strasbourg, Almere, Limmen, Zaandam and Amsterdam, the 01Book and my car.
Right mood. Johnny Cash, American III: Solitary Man.
enclav'exquise prop purchase 16 April 2004
Annie Proulx's research and writing involves some interesting methods, as I learned from BBC's Way Out West documentary. Her work's protagonists are landscape informed and weather worn. To pay as much attention to her landscapes as necessary to memorize distinct features, she draws them. It's like I am writing this role play, which uses the enclavexquise installation as a stage, to design the exhibition. The installation shapes up in the writing, even of a request for a grant. All circumstantial thinking and reasoning informs its coming into being. Proulx's research, organisation of material and actual writing is divided over several houses in extremely different settings. I carry my plans wherever in different media and go forward in starts and fits at unlikely places.
In this documentary to me Annie Proulx appears unsympathetic in a totally lovable way: a rare feature which leaves me satisfied about being unsatisfied with the acquaintance and desiring to know more. Read her FAQ to know what I mean. Her (someone's, I bet it is hers, the domain is annieproulx.com after all, she's not the kind of artist to leave the blurb to her agent) longest answer concerns not writing or signing presents or something, but web design.
Why is this site so boring looking? Why don't you spiff it up with some animation or something?
Well, for a couple of reasons. Personally, I hate the unwarranted use of Flash animation, applets, audio, and other stuff that is ancillary to the actual information presented in a website. It too often detracts from readers' understanding of the site, slows down page loads, and causes browser errors. Furthermore, there is a pernicious tendency on the part of subliterate web designers to make their sites less about reading and more about visual candy, perhaps assuming that people are seeking entertainment on the internet. I make the assumption that people use the internet to find information, and that enabling them to find the information they want quickly and easily is the one and only job of the designer. This website in particular, being a site about words, is an inappropriate place for distracting crap that goes boing.
Boing! That is her voice, in that last of the FAQ's answers. No frills. Let's read her books. Because they are much better places for large amounts of unlinked words than websites. Gniob!
In the middle of writing this entry I agree with the seller on the price of the carriage which heads it, 800 kms. from here, in the right direction, North. It says it was built by Bergers Wagenbau in Frohburg. It is completely original, as the picture shows, all the ironwork is there and in good shape, some accessories like two lanterns and the original wrench to unscrew the wheels come with it. This is one good piece to build on and hide the contraband.
I go around documenting little shops. Mine is not unlike Dave Hickey's fascination with old time providers of underground poetry, the jazzy hang-outs that his parents had a sixth sense for, finding wherever they went the exact right stage door to improvisation and other highs. Every bazaar its soirée poétique amidst everyday necessities.
The gain of maturing artistry is its growing independence of competition, hypes, the milieu du milieu. Of course it lacks the angry urgency of youth, when shame and pride battle at their most unbalanced, to show off at face value. Gombrowicz, why not him again, had a lifelong preoccupation with the ‘smoel’ of youth, as it is translated in Dutch from an unknown to me Polish word — that ruthless conk of youth.
Without necessarily considering previous issues ‘archived’, I can neither conceive of NQP as a ‘whole’. Yet I notice that the meaning of entries changes over time, are different at successive moments in their lives, even if they are not tied to topicality as such, they do age, like chairs, cheese (stuff), trees or people (beings). Entries (why entry... when it's exits, releases) sink into NQP after having floated on it. They begin their life blooming on top of layers of solid soil to decay into that same soil and become part of NQP's humus, its turf. What makes one want to dig into the ground? Planting of course, if not archeology. The difference between planting and archeology is the direction in time these two activities take. Yet both are deeply optimistic rejuvenation techniques.
I find that a Google search for “Jan-Jouke Kleerebezem”, which is the name on my birth certificate, does not return any hits. Without the quotation marks it hits one, on NQP/Shadowplay. People who have only known me until I was 17 and before I moved from Wassenaar to Groningen will never find me. The ‘Jan-’ was skipped at that occasion. With an upcoming reunion in Wassenaar in June, this is a service to old friends who I hope to meet again, if only to find if it is true what Bruce once told me is the most recognizable feature: the voice. My voice certainly did not change when I changed that name. It changed when I started this publication.
The mohair day made me think about product information. To see the goats which provided the hair that my scarf was woven from, to have known alive the meat in my dish, to know my cheese farmer and her animals, to bottle my own wine directly from its producer... all that ‘product information’ makes for a healthier diet. Rather than considering it product information, a bonus to the product, it constitutes consumption. When I recognize my neighbours' name listed at the Varzy butcher, as the provider of the Nr. 798 Charolais carcass, I have an objectively better taste of the meat.
Le Jardin des 2 Rives, Strasbourg; old friends; family business, Strasbourg vicinity; Hostellerie de l'Étoile, Wasselonne, 22-24 April 2004, T +33 (0)388 870302; tartes flambées le week-end; The French Way, Eindhoven Design Academy, 20 April coming; more 0m1m related; Allocations flashback; &tc. pictures included.
the hair's on you
With visiting friends John, Kristi and Kate, on their way to their own place in Ganges for a 9 months retreat, we do a first time visit to the Angora goat farm in Diges that Florence told us about. The farm is run by an elderly couple. She is 76, he is 83 years old. The have some 120 goats to care for. Every 6 months the animals are shaved. Their hair is hand selected and divided in 4 quality categories, the finest hair measuring under 20 micron in thickness. The 100% mohair in its finest quality is an amazing material. Cleaning, coloring and spinning is farmed out. The ‘Le Mohair des Fermes de France’ group consists of top breeders all over the country. This farm's stock contains a mixture of Australian, South-African, American and French animals. The most amazing thing was to see the owners quietly with their animals, which are kept inside until the fields are dry. They have been doing this only for 16 years. Before that during 6 years they bred horses. Before that, he was a sports instructor. Career path, anyone?
Another farm in the group has quite an elaborate website and online shop. As much as I'd like you to shop with ‘our’ Moulin Cottin in Diges (and if you'd really insist I'd pick up and send you some product), this might be an easier option. The label quality is guaranteed. Go knitters, go! I know where you blog!
People chasing data. This story has been around, I even remember a previous encounter but not the site First Mile Solutions. That's a pretty damn good name for a project. Mobile wireless (motorbike, bus) connects where cable and even static wireless doesn't reach (yet) because the economics do not allow (yet). It's the kind of hybrid old/new media I have been imagining repeatedly.
The term "First Mile" was coined by Titus Moetsabi, a poet/ developmental communications specialist, at a Southern African Rural Connectivity Workshop in Harare in February, 1997. He was the first to turn the "last mile" concept on its head and help us think instead of rural communities from the user perspective -- the first mile, not the last. This term expresses a more equitable and far less top-down approach to the challenge of providing universal connectivity, regardless of location and income.
More FMS corporate copy reads: "Now, for under $1.00 per user, rural communities that have never seen a newspaper can do things like email, browse the Web, and have their own voicemail box using FMS technology." Download the project's DakNet pdf here. It contains interesting thoughts on myths about ‘real time’ and ‘bandwidth’ necessity, we meanwhile take for granted in the West.
Never seen a newspaper, eh? Leapfrog that. For the authors and designers amongst us to start working on respectful cultural intelligence for such community connectivity. Get on your bikes and drive like a Motoman. I always wondered over the leapfrogging myth. I know what managers who use the word mean with it, in good faith. They always go around the cultural cost of such gymnastics, though.
Two-and-a-half major projects lead us into 21C. Mediatization, informationalization and constituization. I know the latter is a bad term. It's the half major project so it will probably appear to be the most important of all 3. With no good name to brand it, leaning heavily on both a mediatization and informationalization crutch, we see the end of guided emancipation and Bildung hobble into the media landscape. Enter mass constituization. It's audiences finding audiences finding audiences ad infinitum. It's niche to niche voice, whisper, or cry for help. It's the end of mass audience.
Sometimes I'm afraid it actually will happen in some future.
Mediatization attempts to blow up every message, image and news bit, to improve its visibility for a larger audience. Its first principles are volume, throughput and density maximization; informationalization tries to label correctly, store and connect microscopic content bits, to improve choice between individuals with no interest in larger crowds. Its first principles are diversity, storage and accessibility maximization; constituization is ever smaller audiences finding their ever smaller audiences. The ultimate selection in network society is people selecting people. This is constituization's first principle. No more ideas. No more messages. No more interests. Just people chasing people.
Le Dantyu as a Beacon, text and typography by Ilya Zdanevich. Dramatic work, a play or dra, published by the author under the Iliazd pseudonym, in Paris, 1923
Early morning awareness: exactly 100 days until the Enclav’Exquise installation opening on 9 July. In an Internet time frame that's a looong time. A hundred days is like how many Swatch beats! How many Swatch knots or whatnots? In the slow world of installation building, play writing and book binding however, it is just - a - hundred - days — just so many days to find your material, take the decisions, get things to work and get it in place. Who said art was going to be all ready-mades from there on?
Fair suivre svp. This is what I need help for:
- I need a ton of waste 8/16/35mm exposed film stock, preferably color material. No problem if scratched or showing other wear. Any genre. If you have any laying around or know of any available or what kind of party (recycling firm, studio?) to address for it, please contact me. Will not be used for projection.
- I need plain simple undecorated multi (6-10pcs) sets of white/brown/grey cardboard nesting boxes, all sizes welcome.
- I need one extra (to start with) large (3ft radius and up) antique wooden wheel.
- I need interesting examples of theatre play text typography: especially interested in texts that double function as a kind of score or ‘choreography’, giving temporal, spatial or acoustic clues in their typographic lay-out.
- I need one or two vertical glass fun house mirrors.
- I need a couple of class room format used but in fairly good state blackboards.
Some of these and other items which are not listed here I search on Ebay and the like. But it doesn't hurt to ask around. The film stock, nesting boxes and typography examples seem hard to find. I found one archetype fun house mirror but it had been sold. So help is welcome. The larger the item, the closer to the Almere Paviljoens Museum I'd love to find it... oh and that's right in the middle of the Netherlands, half an hour by train from its capital.
CHAR À BANCS D'ESSAI
I faint-heartedly lost the bid on the previous wheel supported construction. At least I think so... I don't find the personal ad at marktplaats.nl anymore. But there's a new one, a bit larger, at double the asking price. It seems in a somewhat better shape too, but ‘needs some repair’. One wheel is in need of it as the seller mails me upon request. But needs what? I'll have to phone him.
YOU FIND YOURSELF READING THE OPENING LINES OF A
BOOK IN A SPACE WHICH RESEMBLES THE ONE DESCRIBED.
ARTIST AND QUASIME ARE HERE TO GREET YOU
Aplaysituated dialogue. A conversation around a piece or some, divided over two or three spaces. Includes easy to find secret passages to out there enclaves. More nesting to be found. Some garden spots. Inquisitive people hanging around. A blossoming atmosphere.
Floated between my bed and the bathroom for three days on waves of fever. Where did that come from? The gastro, as it is locally known, has its periods. This is one. It knocked me completely out of my already unstable routines. But I have recovered and my awakening was bright with energy and ideas for the next months. Besides, that last morning in bed allowed me to clean my in box and reply to some dusty incoming interests.
Spam poetics keep touching us at times. Like this we can imagine to receive intelligent spam, some day, as long as there's no V* hiding inside the body of the text.
These late March days see crashes and rises alternating. Such hick-ups have to do as much with the promise of spring changing for the last punishments of winter, correspondencies out of pace, and the last, actually the very last paragraphs of the Informatiseringsopruiming essay, and other happy malaises. Otherwise everything drives like a M*.
‘You get into a groove and it drives like a motherfucker and that's where it's at.’
Moby Grape sums it up, ‘Fall On You’, on Vintage double CD, I.3. Recorded 12 March 1967, by the way.
[Cioran, Cahiers 1957-1972: ‘Il n'y a que nos cris qui nous survivent.’ (p225, 1964, May, 1-9). Then I pick up Jan Tschichold; Leben und Werk des Typographen. The book problem is there.]
Handling it well. Look at the page, then turn it over. How do these two sides relate? Is their a third and a fourth side following them? Can you count on a story's continuity over its pages? A page breaks. Like silence drops. The only void in click through media is that click. Click. There's the wait. We don't experience the time it takes to turn a page as a wait. We handle it well. After the click, a fall out, there's wait, even a short wait is a wait. Where's my attention during that wait? You never wait for a page. It might wait for you. It knows you can be silent. It stays there all the time with you when you flip it. It's there when you rest it. It's in your hands. Its time is your time. It's thin between your thumb and index finger, you hold it carefully and move it to the side, turn it over. What's on the other side? You turn it back. Flip back a couple of sheets. Look at that cover again. Look at the back cover. You continue where you left off. You pick up the story in a different mood.
How much of a man are you, to fire three missiles from a helicopter to blast a 68 year old handicapped man out of his wheelchair when he leaves church in the early morning? In the name of what kind of justice do you think you act? Which god do you hope to serve?
Even if the man is the founder of Hamas and architect of intifadahs — what do you think Hamas or the sheikh actually represent and how do you think that ideology relates to your own? Fundamentalism eat fundamentalism. To blow a man to shreds will not negotiate your rights, it will not bring peace to your home, it will not protect your folks from violence, fear and anger. As you could have known by now.
End all blind faith. The world's seen enough of it.
I
‘Exquisite Enclave’ will be the first in a series of print publications. The series' title is Omnia Mea In Media. (There will be a zero issue too.) Instead of making (‘the’) one book I decided to start a range of printed matter, all in one format, 146 x 230 mm vertical, varying in page count. Even while this idea came as a true liberation to what I had begun to refer to as my ‘book problem’, still a first title after 14 years is something of a struggle. To be light as in NQP is the outset. To optimally benefit from the printed format is the only reason to do this in ink on paper. While I do leave traces on paper recently, and continue sniffing my favorite books, the path leading to the printing press meanders quite a bit.
The first issue I want to produce all by myself. One man news-stand. For coming publications I can imagine different kinds of collaborations. Certainly to design titles — I was genuinely honored when Daniel offered his skills recently — or to illustrate them. Also I had a conversation with Paul at the occasion of my recent visit to Amsterdam, on the subject of print publishing. He has some ink on paper ideas too. And is building work.
The dateless format proves very satisfactory. Unless the date's the title, for true commemoration, it's simply the date of the upload and has little or nothing to do with the content of the entry, other than that in more than half of the cases the date of publication still is the date of writing, or at least of finishing the entry's writing. Though corrections may follow (‘within 36 hours’ I used to add), the URL/anchor doesn't change.
nqpaofu.com 1998-2004 jouke kleerebezem Notes Quotes Provocations and Other Fair Use