conversational drift, informatic license, exquisite enclaves_by jouke kleerebezem
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25 April 2001
the art of peace
Behold a helmet which a fearless soldier had worn, once often splashed with enemy blood; now, with the onset of peace, it has surrendered to bees the use of its little hollow space, and it now yields honey-combs and sweet honey. May weapons lie afar off. May it be lawful to take up arms only when you cannot otherwise enjoy the art of peace.
a propos moerstaal
What's interesting with moerstaal is: it did not develop to be a labor of love like NQP. Also, I have no idea who's reading it. It does attract eyeballs. Essentially NQP is the more personal outlet. I wouldn't find a way to express the swings that occur here in Dutch, let alone would I publish them. I know (part of) the audience. So it is addressed. It has more to do with readership, than with language. When talking, with my moods the language swings (for increasing intimacy), from French to English to Dutch. I don't publish in French, malheureusement, I can't (yet—even haven't got a spell checker); moerstaal I use to hook up Dutch essays and perform an occasional rant directed at Dutch cultural institutions and general folklore; the NQP and OFUs' tongue of love is E. It's how it started, it's how it'll continue. Even when the moerstaal itch is hard wired.
plain link (omnia related)
This will keep me off the street for a while (which proves not all technology's in place yet): headmap : location aware devices (courtesy Hypogee)
24 April 2001
D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui choisissent.
NQPaOFU#41: working on symptoms— or something in that vain
(why what we do that we do could be symptoms of what we don't that we should do or even also do but could do banyak better, you know) (like when I pick up my Latin or Bahassa and invite the world to follow me to the streets of Rome or Jakarta to shout against the government) (sort of)
(later)
(just finished an all-in-all soaring 'In Media Omnia' for De Witte Raaf) (in which context I hit upon Omnia mea mecum porto, attributed to the Greek Bias (one of the seven sages), in answer to the question why he did not hide away his goods to protect them from an attacking enemy at Priene: 'All that is mine, I carry with me. (My wisdom is my greatest wealth)', quoted by Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum. There's more attributions than to Bias, like here)
was:underon the weather
It brings the best smells and many colorful birds to be enjoyed. That's for sure. Air it. Air it. Having said that: 10:38 the sun breaks through to complete the idyll and incoming mail reveals Caterina, Paul, Jorinde—and penguins to play around with. Later.
23 April 2001
Meanwhile, not answering to my insomnia, in the early hours I missed generous activity. And Generosity misses my updates at weblogs.com. What gives indeed?
intelligent life
Alone in the big house I circle around my writing, my plants, my food, my past, my project, my links, my escapes. I again remember, when I was a young boy, before my teens, I was convinced I would 'turn mad' when older. It seemed most logical, even liberating. What else to fear but IL?
to Dirk
22 April 2001
show doubt self conscious trouble
re: connect
I was off-line for a week. Man I'm not suggesting it's been an off-week, but some sad thruths could be told here. Keeping the odd thing to myself as everyone does for self same sanity, I will only share that my mood took some steep dives.
meanwhile
The family stays in NL for another week, vacationing. Back at the Moulin we find ourselves one happy guy with one happy cat, but see no more ducklings. We thought we'd well protected them, but they simply are no more, leaving not a trace.
playing
Digital Underground, This Is An E.P. Release: Arguin' On The Funk. Later: Traffic.
stutter instruction spasm
- stains of light on humid basement tiles, which are darker than the dry ones, you know
- guitar licks, bass and horn grooves, d-rums
- stomp beat drop body
- wood chips
- pop
- pop
- stumble down
check this album?
Re: grooving with Paul the other day, I remembered my first and only ever Ornette Coleman LP (Science Fiction) I bought in 1971 or 72. Upon return I want to check how good exactly it is, but it seems to have disappeared from the shelf. Please check yours for it.
note to selves
Paul cites the 'The Show Must Go On' (dance performance) program guide:
The possibility of an art-piece, even a choreography, today is not to propose an utterance, but to invite the spectator to re-invent him/herself, or perhaps less utopic, to re-search his/her ideology of spectating, of constructing Self, or articulating security.
I don't buy this.
Shortcut post-modernism mercy killed the uttering 'author', re-birthing a stuttering 'reader'. This desperate attempt to progress 'identity' beyond ideology and critical discourse, even beyond art's emancipatory claims, simply presents a next generation Stirnerian 'Stück Freiheit', claiming to free a dialectically determined Self, only offering it 'a piece of freedom', or self 're-invention' of a buy two, use one, freeze one kind. Even a choice of selves drafts a political context, or political contexts, from a very basic conception of 'politics' as 'civic conviviality' to start with.
An art-piece as (part of) a 'show that must go on' (hardly a goal, the show being rather unstoppable—as in everything goes, but art is late to recognize, after having been such a stopper of sorts), at its most un-stable, offers a rhetorical bi-stability of self-consciously looking at/looking through (Richard Lanham). It's the panic pendulum of being serious and being not, of being a state and a process, of being truth and lie, whole and fragment, of being oneself and being not: all in one, not the one or the other, or the one for the other, but at the very same whatever moment in time.
Doubt any kind of self congratulation or depreciation.
14 April 2001
short lived threesome
11-21 April 2001
Friday 13 April 2001
everything goes slow motion step motion
12 April 2001
observation
11 April, 11:14, Parigny la Rose: one male Hoopoe. "Here is our wish, my lord: May we be given golden crowns to wear upon our heads?"
contrast
I understand. I don't understand. I buy. I make.
action
Drift contrast propel.
experience
Do me wrong, do me right, do me any way you like, but love me, love me, just love me.
(half-)writing
This is the way it goes. Your deadline approaches. You follow the thread which at some point your guts told you to communicate to the editors as your Subject. In this case: 'everything goes'. All directionless. No singularity, just the end of a critical consciousness as we know it. Nothing to be all excited about. But to write it down. So weeks come to pass. Until that deadline shows up on the calendar. You start writing. You write two, three long paragraphs from the same gut feeling which got you into this in the first place. It reads very good. You make a point. You were right from the start. You get interested in your own line of thought. You're so smart. You mail it to the editor and get some positive feedback. You count the words. You're barely at a third of what you promised. Yet all's there. You start to search for proof. Get the quotes. You use the umbrella and the sewing-machine? Develop new evidence. Here she goes again. Come on, get it now. Change them words, make it read better, improve that style, a little more emphasis, make it richer. Now you venture out into serious speculation. Change the music on the headphones. What is it that I'm saying here? Doesn't it contradict what I said... here? Hm. Change that double negation. OK. Count the words. You're all of a sudden past half way. Half way? Now don't give up here. And don't escape to the blog. But I just did. Call it spin-off. Leftovers. Half-writing. Here you go again: back to the piece.
11 April 2001all your abundance
I'm enjoying my writing on abundance for the Witte Raaf. To discern between the post-modern deception of 'anything goes', and true limitless 'everything goes', is an immense pleasure. Too bad it is in Dutch again. Will have to find to have a bundle of these translated into, err, French, for example.
4:40-5:20am
...grazing, eg. Mercator's World: The Cities of Blaeu's World ("Willem Janszoon Blaeu emerged as one of Holland's foremost cartographers and publishers. In an era of rising Dutch commercial power and growing Dutch mastery of mapmaking, Blaeu quickly expanded his globe and instrument business to include pilot guides and maps of the world, the continents, and individual European countries. Increasingly, these works reflected not only his knowledge, but his uniquely Dutch view of the world.")
in the passing
Adding portal notes to issues 40 and 41. Then, my focus is on editing and especially un-editing, for the Witte Raaf. So I find this quote:
We see what we see because we miss all the finer details (Alfred Korzybski, of 'the map is not the territory' fame). Re: my godisinabundance, 'we see what we see because we don't see god.'
Ik ben als de kleine anemoon die ik in Rome eens in de tuin heb gezien, ze was overdag zo ver opengegaan dat ze zich 's nachts niet meer kon sluiten. Het was vreselijk haar te zien op het donkere grasveld, wijdopen, nog altijd opnemend in de als razend opengesperde kelk, met die veel te veelvuldige nacht boven haar die niet óp raakte. En daarnaast al haar slimme zusters, elk dichtgegaan om hun kleine dosis overvloed. Ook ik ben zo heilloos naar buiten gekeerd, daarom ook door alles verstrooid, niets afwijzend, mijn zintuigen gaan, zonder het mij te vragen, uit naar al dat stoort, is er een geluid dan geef ik mezelf op en ben dat geluid, en, daar al wat eenmaal op prikkeling is ingesteld ook geprikkeld wil worden, wil ik in de grond van de zaak gestoord worden en wordt het eindeloos. Voor dat onverholene heeft iets van leven zich binnen mij in veiligheid gesteld, heeft zich op een allerinnerlijkste plek teruggetrokken en leeft daar zoals de mensen tijdens een beleg leven, in ontbering en zorg. Trekt, als het meent dat er betere tijden zijn aangebroken, de aandacht met fragmenten van de Elegieën, met een beginregel; moet weer terug, want buiten heerst nog altijd hetzelfde prijsgegeven-zijn. En daartussen, tussen die ononderbroken naarbuiten-belustheid en dat voor mijzelf nauwelijks meer bereikbare innerlijke bestaan, zijn de eigenlijke woningen van het gezonde gevoel, leeg, verlaten, ontruimd, een onherbergzame tussenzone, waarvan de neutraliteit ook begrijpelijk maakt waarom al het weldoen van mensen en natuur aan mij verkwist blijft.
(Rainer Maria Rilke, 'De weg naar binnen' (brief aan Lou Andreas-Salomé, 1914), in Een handvol innerlijkheid (1988), uitg. Vrij Geestesleven, Zeist, isbn 90-6038-252-8, pagina 86-87)
10 April 2001
godisinabundance
so what's for therapy today?
Try fixing online identities for 5 bank accounts (3F, 2NL); repotting Medinilla Magnifica (Phalaenopsis-Hybride and Dendrobium orchids will have to wait till I bought them a proper pot); looking through older graphic work, silkscreen on self-adhesive vinyl, picturing nests and texts—pieces that were unearthed when Gil cleaned the sellerie during my absence to NL); reading: 'AT TWILIGHT THIS AVENUE HAS... Newhighway ELEGANCE, ROMANCE, SENSATIONAL FEELINGS. I love Newhighway forever.' on the sink tidy I bought in Jakarta. I told you so. Later R+r+J do some more peeper animation for their Easter clip.
sticker album with goddieugottgod added
AT TWILIGHT THIS AVENUE HAS...
Newhighway ELEGANCE, ROMANCE, SENSATIONAL FEELINGS.
I love Newhighway forever.
9 April 2001
Again I hit the 10Mb ceiling at the ISP. Again I removed the stats, to free almost 1Mb. Guess I have to upgrade to more diskspace anyhow. If anyone knows of a better deal than $12,95/month for 25Mb, please let me know. Llamacom's 100% uptime is the standard.
visual culture
VC needs reflection and going through my notes. I was disappointed at the level of, say, how much these discussions always get stuck in defining the locus of dominance and how to counter it. In my world, dominance dissolves over 'a thousand weblogs blooming'. I'm not naive vv. evil empires and their multiple racisms, but visual culture is where you pay attention to it. So I enjoyed and was challenged by Olu Oguibe, Cathérine David and John Akomfrah—in order of appearance. Later.
8 April 2001
home
5 April 2001
highly recommended: the age of recommendation, or friends of friends revisited
What went before... Caterina raves about Cabinet, I look up their website, check the issues' index, mail them and ask for directions where to find it in Amsterdam, and recommend Atheneum Nieuwscentrum in case they have no outlet, Sina Najafi replies my mail within no time, letting me know that Idea books turned Cabinet down for distribution, but he'd like to have Atheneum's phone number; also he suggests that I know of Cabinet from Barbara Clausen? I reply 'no' and 'who is she?', and provide Sina with Atheneum's phone number. The next morning Atheneum ordered Cabinet directly from him, the copies already having been shipped, and I learn Barbara is Sina's very special bright and generous friend, former associate curator at Dia, currently finishing the curatorial program at De Appel in Amsterdam. I call De Appel to talk to her, Barbara can't be reached right now, but tomorrow is the opening of the exhibition which she co-curated. I promise the secretary to be present between 6 and 8. If only to fulfil Sina's wish: 'I hope you two run into each other some time.'
(...) what exactly do cabinet makers do: they take a cabinet form (the idea of a cabinet) and force it upon a piece of amorphous wood. The trouble with this is, that not only do they inform the wood (forcing it into the cabinet form), but also they deform the idea of a cabinet (locking it into the wood). The trouble being, that it is impossible to make the ideal cabinet.
(Vilém Flusser)
3 April 2001
where are they when you most need them
Ouch they are so productive/reflective/connected and link-rich-'n-ready, it hurts. The g-pack (and gee-pack and what have you) go bonkers with updates, just when there's piles of old media to be browsed on the job. Since also JvE is totally relevant and exciting, here's two of the best things in life competing for attention. You do my link catching up then: Caterina to Cabinet, Nina to Groke, Dirk to Hypogee, Judith to Pianographique, Fred to Bumps on Michael Chabon's Head, Mitsu is paying attention to all 5 senses and counting, Paul to Jalan Toufic, and even Stewart is back on the dotbeat gaining momentum right there and then... I can only think of one word: help.
more referral/help yourself
by Bruce, who sends me the links to several interesting thesis projects at Parsons ('wire doll', 'the killer' and lena dolata's), and via the referrer log (apart from the usual suspects) incoming smart eyeballs from chymes, missingmatter, who sends me to eureka alert on eye input; Jill Walker's jill/weblog(g?).
my own memory
What if everything you remember can be found (out more and ever more about) on the web? Sooner rather than later. Keep paying attention. And keep adding that content!
1 April 2001
'a nous de vous faire préférer le train'
ZOOM to NL, by car. SNCF is on strike. See you at Maarten's place, at the HsB (you can drive with me, Rog), the JvE, or at the Visual Culture conf. Or in some traffic jam near you, in between.
31 March 2001
more brave new content
the production of houses
We recognize the value of many of the efforts people are making to solve 'the housing problem'; but we are concerned, here, in this book, with the feeling at the root of it. We have tried to construct a housing process in which human feeling and human dignity come first; in which the housing problem is re-established as the fundamental human process in which people integrate values and themselves, in which they form social bonds, in which they become more anchored in the earth, in which the houses which are made have, above all, human worth, in the simple, old-fashioned sense that people feel proud and happy to be living in them and would not give them up for anything, because they are their houses, because they are the product of their lives, because the house is everything to them, the concrete expression of their place in the world, the concrete expression of themselves.
(Christopher Alexander, The Production of Houses, 1985)
road trip
Yesterday on my way back from Vignol I met two pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostella (cams via the world map of live web cams). A 2.500km walk, taking roughly 120 days. The last 700kms are known as El Camino de Santiago. Several hours later there's a knock at our door. We're both surprised to meet again. They are looking for a place to sleep. We feed and host them for the night. Having four guests already we feel like doing it again.
ah, webcams
Remember Mnt. Fuji?
30 March 2001
brave new content
popular request
Democracy is in the eye of the elite? It's like only the connoisseur can appreciate an artwork, what the noble amateur considers a failure. Dig? It's a paradox. An irony if you like. A luxury and a fact of life, for those into facts and lives and their luxurious combinations. Lucky are the ones who know how to admit some bi-stability in their connoisseur/amateur ratios: avoid the panic pendulum cuts. The cuts. The break-downs. Departures and returns. Reference and counter-reference. Do I hear high and low? Pitch.
popular conquest
We recognize the value of many of the efforts people are making to solve 'the publishing problem'; but we are concerned, here, on this site, with the feeling at the root of it. We have tried to construct a publishing process in which human feeling and human dignity come first; in which the publishing problem is re-established as the fundamental human process in which people integrate values and themselves, in which they form social bonds, in which they become more anchored in the media, in which the publications which are made have, above all, human worth, in the simple, old-fashioned sense that people feel proud and happy to be living in them and would not give them up for anything, because they are their publications, because they are the product of their lives, because the publication is everything to them, the concrete expression of their place in the world, the concrete expression of themselves.
daily operations and its notes
When Tim Berners-Lee 'invented' the World Wide Web over 10 years ago, he designed his publishing system to enhance and preserve corporate memory. At Geneva based CERN (Centre Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire), a constant flux of knowledge, expertise and invention needed capturing and structuring and above all to be made productive beyond individual functionality and task setting. Berners-Lee's design for this purpose had to be scalable, and so it proved: growing beyond its particular environment, beyond any size ever imagined by its inventor, it blew up the hosting Internet. The web was neither conceived to carry Amazon or Napster, nor as a model for a new economy, or as the multi-channel 'television' it came to be. The near real time communication most people use it for today, is to a large extent their own invention.
Artist Michael Samyn in a discussion once turned around the argument of producing for (meaning: in reply to) a new medium: with the Internet/www he and the rest of us got precisely what we craved, and had been waiting for since too long already, disinterested as we had grown with top down management, one-to-many media, the star system, to name just a few of the nasty effects of old school cultural production, the art world et al.
A development in personal publishing which remains closely true to the 'integrated writing, link creation and browsing' which the web allows for, is weblogging. Known since some years, this daily habit of taking personal notes while building a library of annotated links to special interests, exploded with the arrival of dedicated free software and server space, like Blogger or Pitas. Journal, homepage, professional reference, news service and the invention of new editorial formats, rolled into one idiosyncratic narrowcast—for many thousands of programmers, artists, designers, editors and writers, who pay their daily new media dues. And do weblogs.
Weblogging, networked personal publishing, builds a landscape of interests through which lead multiple, possibly competing paths. Well written, at times humorous, visual and textual narrative emerges in sometimes cleverly designed cross-linking. However engaging an individual weblog may be, it best be read in the context of other weblogs. Actually weblogs can be the exceptional online publications in which indeed it pays off to follow links, which do not distract from their point of departure, but add to it and invite an informed return. No link-and-run-school weblogs tend to pick and introduce their reference meticulously. The author expands her or his lines of thought by anchoring them in those of peers. Thus a kind of multi-authorship can form, in dialogue. Then, weblogs break free from conceived ideas of repetitive production, as a linear process of refining and finishing and performing a product, shipping at market strategic intervals. Weblogs in a sense are half-products, reaching unprojected momentum, with individual readers for individual interests.
Finally, for a reader of weblogs, the only way to best pattern (and savour!) one's own eager consumption, is by producing with the pack, and start weblogging. Ultimately the read/write/link habit, a daily and everyday agglomeration of personal interests and ideas, of observations and reflections—taking the private public and the public private—is an act, an operation, appreciated for its unlimited close attention, in times of content abundance, like ours.
add when not limited to a 500 word fix/notes to self
—right or wrong: everybody today is a 'programmer, artist, designer, editor, writer'. There's clip code, clip art, clip text, and clip identity. Clip it, post it. Welcome the Volksblog.
(I am convinced that the 'creativity divide' is a constant. With every new 'democratization' of some sort of creative or publishing tool—ever since the invention of photography—there's both horror with the professional masters of the previous technology/craft and the expectancy of a 'noble amateur' to spontaneously use the new technology in a truly original way: both hard headed mistakes, entertained by (quite) different members of communities 'in the know'. An age which depends on information producing citizens ('prosumers') however, might turn this productivity into privacy depriving slavery, or bend it to the benefit of education, radical change and whatnot (unlikely scenario). Case in point: an as of yet completely under-researched 'interactivity'; less so: the well documented 'reader/author' complicity).
—right or wrong: search is the navigation of choice, for web based publishing.
—patterns in cross-linking between personal publications should allow interest based pathways to be brought into the landscape. Monitoring cross referral should be a function built into search software.
meanwhile
Some people do not want you to mention them in your weblog. Interesting. What be that prudery? It's like not wanting your photograph taken. Those shy minds should start their own publication. Nothing's serves better to fence you off from media society, than a 'hut of one's own'.
nqpaofu.com 2001 jouke kleerebezem
