conversational drift, informatic license, exquisite enclaves_by jouke kleerebezem
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31 May 2001Madame Christiane Valet 1949-2001
We mourn Madame Valet. She was a one-of-a-kind teacher and special person. La maîtresse Valet, as Rolf got to know her when he started primary school in September 1999, was buried today at the Varzy cemetery. The big church was filled. For almost thirty years she had conducted the isolated rural public school at La Pouge, St. Pierre du Mont, where she did the CP and CE1 classes, her pupils being 6-9 year olds. She had succeeded her mother, la mère Valet, who had taught at La Pouge during 40 years before her and today accompanied her daughter to the grave.
Imagine the generations raised by these two women. Remember how important it is to learn to read and write and do mathematics and history and geography, how the worlds begins to make sense with these stories—and to appear absurd at the same time, conveying the beauty and the cruelty of understanding, of recognizing the patterns, of tasting knowledge. She introduced our family to the French school system, from her 'petite structure' as she called it, and started rubbing in the language and the culture, not only into Rolf but into all of us. She did it in a strict and convincing and loving way. We owe her.
For La Pouge an era ends with the death of Christiane Valet. For her family and friends her unexpected passing, while recovering from therapies, is dramatic. Our family suddenly realizes that in many ways she landed us here and that we'll have to grow up without her.
30 May 2001
Comme il arrive toujours, dans un climat passionel, l'image de l'homme se superpose à celle de l'oeuvre, et cette image est, ici (with Yves Klein—JK), multiple.
auto
What if the 'auto' in 'autobiography' would mean the biography to write itself, to be written by itself? Then the 'autos', its integrity, would not be a writing subject vis-à-vis the object of his/her 'bios', nor would it be the particular life described/transcribed, but the live writing itself, the graphy, a trance, a tracing, involving whatever subject and object. Then the multiple autobiographies of my multiple selves would be in multiple writings, like a collaborative biographie automatique. Some exquisite corps alright.
one self per world
Paul Perry writes:
Re: the world which would auto-document the passing/passion of ourselves... (the world as auto-reliquary...)
Means one self per world right?
For only one self (one branch followed) seems to leave/write traces of itself (footprints, worn upholstry, scars, sloughed off skin cells, balls of mucous, words reverberating in the brains of others, broken branches etc.)
center of narrative gravity
Daniel Dennett writes:
Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is not spinning webs or building dams, but telling stories, and more particularly concocting and controlling the story we tell others -- and ourselves -- about who we are. [...] These strings or streams of narrative issue forth as if from a single source -- not just in the obvious physical sense of flowing from just one mouth, or one pencil or pen, but in a more subtle sense: their effect on any audience is to encourage them to (try to) posit a unified agent whose words they are, about whom they are: in short, to posit a center of narrative gravity.
(DD, Reality of Selves)
trauma
Selma Fraiberg writes
(quoted in Psychohistory: Childhood and the Emotional Life of Nations, chapter 4: The Psychogenic Theory of History, by Lloyd deMause):
Trauma demands repetition.
More deMause: Trauma demands repetition; The Relationship Between Early Nurturing and Crime -- The Importance of Empathic Parenting
two of my old titles
I Repeat that I Am (cover, De Appel magazine, 19?)
The Irremediable Narrative (exhibition, Van Abbemuseum, 1990)
invisible guests
Side by side and woven through our dialogues with our neighbors, (...) imaginal dialogues persist. We may find ourselves speaking with our reflection in the mirror, with the photograph of someone we miss, with a figure from a dream or a movie, with our dog. And even when we are outwardly silent, within the ebb and flux of our thought, we talk with critics, with our mothers, our god(s), our consciences; indeed we do so just as steadily as we once spoke to our dolls, our imaginary companions, the people of our painted pictures. We may find ourselves as audience or as narrator to conversations among imaginal others--others not physically present but actually experienced nonetheless. At times we may even notice ourselves playing more than one role in these imaginal dialogues: now child, now old one, abandoned one.
(Mary Watkins, 'Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues', quoted in Imaginal Dialogues, by Greg Nixon
22 May 2001
off and on and odd
Barcelona was a treat. Mar and Séverine the most hospitable girls; found the spectacular 'Parc dels Colors' in half-an-hour by train outside the city Mollet del Vallès (finally got that spelling right), under ideal late afternoon low light flaneur circumstances, streets crawling with kids and adolescents on their way to the small town fun fair next to the under construction site, local color and sound which even show well on video, with some wind rumble in the sound track; have all the telephone numbers and introductions that I need to pursue my interest in that park; sat in the otherwise empty hotel cafeteria one early morning (just before I revisited Parc Güell), with a television blaring voulez-vous coucher acec moi ce soir on my left and 5 German(/Spanish?) deaf and dumb people in active conversation (hear them laugh) on the right (if someone who browses a German paper is a German, that is); at the CCCB we had a 200+ audience and raised a lot of interest; great food; marvelous icecream (naranja!) at Dino's on the Rambla; my coffee bar had its own .com but I didn't take that URL down; jeez I seem to have memorized it... kasparo.com (when visiting choose their fetta, blue cheese & oregano spread, mortadella and rocket bocadillo for lunch); here's the menu for those into seriously preparing a trip; saw a lot of Dutch and some Spanish design, and some Dutch, some Brazilian, some Rumanian and a lot of Spanish designers; (hi!); to top things off, on my way out I found a concise Miralles and Tagliabue monography, in a stunningly well stocked (especially in architecture titles) airport book kiosk(!), having had scanned the city for it with no success; flew and drove and drove; took a shower at the Jan van Eyck, immediately laid down for a minute and woke up Monday morning 11 hours later wondering where I was. That was yesterday.
Like today is tomorrow really and the discotheque never stops, I since visited the Hague for work and Dordrecht for potatoes. We're late planting. Blame the weather. Netherlands' traffic jams are even longer than I thought they were. Or is the fellow Dutch more mobile? Anyway it's a disgrace. The infarct is apparent. KIKO alright. Later. And maybe I'll have a thought on the Kaycee Kase. About the author and his personage, and how we (have to) keep mixing them up? Ah, and De Witte Raaf has my In Media Omnia as its leading article, and chose well to take some Gerald van der Kaap 'wherever you are on this planet, radical stock' works to go with it. Thanks Jorinde!
17-21 May 2001
off the grid
Barcelona. And LAUS 01. I'm up on the poetics and politics (I've been wanting to use that 'p+p' jingle for a long time) of design research. Read what I would like the Jan van Eyck Akademie to head for. Friday 18, 5:30pm at the CCCB, Calle Montalegre, 5. I hope to visit the easyEmpire (collect them all). And the Mollet del Vallés grail. I've uploaded a scheme I want to use in my talk.
12 May 2001
remember
Remember always to enter a room silently, as if someone is sleeping in it.
and just
when you think nothing's gonna happen anymore, this comes in via the drop-a-line window:
Dear sir,
Iam a cameroonian who like take in the trade fair in norway if you can sent me a litter of invitation i will be very greatfull this my fax number +237 233694 and my e-mail/princewill@voila.fr
THANKS
PRINCEWILL AYUK ARREY
11 May 2001
meanwhile
I have a feeling for hiatus. Or it looks like I'm temporary out of it. There's tons of stuff but no time. Barcelona (hard to get site, LAUS 01 design festival) is coming up next week. Still have to write my paper on the poetics and politics of some design problem. How can I evaluate under these circumstances on El Lissitzky's (link courtesy Birchlane) idea of Proun and my early conceptions of cyberspace? When the heck am I supposed to extend the moulin with the .com? It's spring time for chrissake! We'll soon be circling the crops. I'm busy on the Jan van Eyck and when home in France I attend to trim my speed grass and experience other springtime blessings and uprooting matter. Our potager hasn't even been ploughed, due to the incessant rain fall of the past months. Anyone out there interested in some hard (garden) work over June-July?
Enric Miralles
Spanish architect, died at age 45, on 4 July 2000 (it's always an extra shock to know someone of your own generation gone). I only found out about his death on a web search today. Apart from my LAUS 01 obligations, my trip to Barcelona was to be a Miralles fact finding mission, parc Mollet del Vallés being the main goal. There's hardly any online presence. From the scarce information I find, I understand his office (run by his business partner and widow Benedetta Tagliabue) is currently building major projects in Barcelona. I want to see them. As an antidote to 'junk space'.
Also I would like to find the email address to contact Benedetta Tagliabue for an interview. She writes in 'Sites and Stations; Provisional Utopias' (Lusitania#7), on Parc Mollet:
...it is simply a proposal which allows us to demonstrate the possibilities of leaving the ground free.
(I wonder if ever there will be a point at which I only have to publish my wish to meet in this case Ms. Tagliabue—not knowing her whereabouts, but she'll know because she searches the web for such requests or interests (I feel a service site coming... I can see its URLready...) Imagine to be able to check every day who's informing after you. And I don't want to check phonebooks and what have you. I don't even want to use a phone. Do away with them! They are obsolete technology, as a semi-public medium. I already exclusively use them for my dearly loved ones. The phone will be intimate technology in some near future, almost like candle lit dinner today!)
Express yourself to weblogs.com, whenever the feeling strikes you!
OK, if you really want to know: 161 a1 ¡ 162 a2 ¢ 163 a3 £ 164 a4 ¤ 165 a5 ¥ 166 a6 ¦ 167 a7 § 168 a8 ¨ 169 a9 © 170 aa ª 171 ab « 172 ac ¬ 173 ad ­ 174 ae
(in other words: SMDU show my darn updates!)
what hiatus?
2-8 May 2001
To appropriate the historic transformations of human nature that capitalism wants to limit to the spectacle, to link together image and body in a space where they can no longer be seperated, and thus to forge the whatever body, whose physis is resemblance—this is the good that humanity must learn how to wrest from commodities in their decline. Advertising and pornography, which escort the commodity to the grave like hired mourners, are the unknowing midwives of this new body of humanity.
(Giorgio Agamben in 'The Coming Community')
30 April 2001
day after
(In Which Two Little Mermen, Mere Boys Really, And A Grown Up Mergirl Find Their Boots Waiting For Them At The Shore Of The Wide Waters Which Divide Them From Their Place, Where All Is Seemingly Quiet And Under Control But Appears Spilled With Bolognese Leftovers)
welcome home to 'meet in the middle' mill
...Hi, Could I Speak To Joseph Holtzman, Please?
You know what that means, don't you? Where's Nest when you most need it? 4:30pm the whatever washing waters from up the mill and those filling up down the mill (on the last dry foot left, there I was, pleading them: Go away! To the Yonne! To the Seine! To the sea! Find the mermen!... I pled) met in the middle. What else do you want a mill for, it's been built for waters to meet in the middle, only 300 years ago. Can you believe this? Can't He think of something else to send down on us? Like um, some spring sun? But forgive this impertinence. I hasten to admit we're having much better weather with it than March 14. Just no more rain if you please.
in a parallel reality, this w-e
...everything celebrated to make me feel good this week-end. The landscape, Monsieur Pootjes II, the car, the kitchen utensils... all said 'hey J, you're bloody right you are, you hit the nail on the head, you're the kewlest...' Ever had that said to you by your otherwise too hip to pay attention environment? Always beating you a mile a minute in smart? One out of a million chance, you say? This was my w-e. Whatever conspired even to make my home cooking a success. Nobody but me to witness. I mean, I invented a major Bolognese variation, including anchovies, on Saturday, and Sunday a grand pizza, with anchovy leftovers and assorted vegetables and cheeses. And square, Italian streetwise, not round, international. Actually I just emptied the fridge (a combination of anything you die for can't ever go wrong, is the philosophy of this underdressed chef), on top of that family size crispy crust. The hot Bolognese's ingredients I should share with you: white onions, garlic, fresh tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes with some of its oil, red pepper with some of its oil, champignons de Paris, minced beef, anchovies -- oregano, sage, laurel, s/p -- fry in olive oil, add a couple of glasses of red wine to simmer until right , er, viscosité is reached. Preferably served with slim tagliatelle. Sauce will even improve overnight. And overnight.
28-29 April 2001
whatever about whatever
Giorgio Agamben on 'whatever', as originally from Lat. 'quodlibet':
The common translation of this term as "whatever" in the sense of "it does not matter which, indifferently" is certainly correct, but in its form the Latin says the exact opposite: Quodlibet ens is not "being, it does not matter which," but rather "being such that it always matters."
rather a post scriptum to, than a summary of IMO
The whole point of In Media Omnia (in Dutch) is the all decisive change from 'anything goes' to 'everything goes': moving from n'importe quoi to tout importe, from what is, within certain well-defined limits (which for the visual arts enclave have been ever widening over the 20C, yet remained) tolerable, editable, possibly against the grain, an 'alternative': yet another and another—to what is actually happening, beyond legitimization, a course of all things, a 'whatever all and everything' going on and on. Moving from 'strategy' to 'occurrence', whatever happening needs all our attention. We're part of it: 'whatever' and 'whoever' perform together. Increased visibility, increased information processing power and limitless storage space, certainly exploding communications, make 'everything go' in abundance, and move swiftly. We're not in a position to lean back witnessing it, making our pick and editing and promoting, chasing one alternative with the other... creating one Stück Freiheit after another, no, we are immersed in this development, enveloped in it, driving it, undergoing it. Put down them authoring tools for a minute and open your eyes to whatever happens.
Illustrated by the prevalence of monitoring data over editing of (visual) material.
Illustrated by the difference between a 16mm camera and a webcam.
Illustrated by the difference between the ready made and found footage.
Illustrated by ...
From here we go unedited. Center and periphery have ceased to exist in the [corporate media wasteland themepark museum mall flash zone]. Don't linger at either/any place, don't even mention the loss of locus, which anyway started with industrialization in the 19C, when 'things' started to move and spread, outnumbering humans venturing out, past their horizons, to search for Exotica. We've been there, done that. Not only there is 'no more here in here', but also there's 'no more there out there' which we don't already know (...we've seen it) from the corporate brochures. Exotica is ubiquity. (Of course this brings to mind the still widely experienced sentiment of difference between the real thing and its representation, or the idea of the simulacrum—remember? We will have to find different names for different mediations. Probably as many names as some eskimos apparently have for snow, the real stuff. We have our mediations).
against thematization
The cultural industry's thematization of experience ('you are here now and this is what is happening to you now don't you feel the excitement, enjoy') is a panacea. A grappling for narrative. A grappling for branding. A grappling for sociality. But orders and control. Trying to make you stay put. Trying to make you commit. The panic pendulum stuck at the extreme end of 'we want to (make you) understand', while 'we want to experience' is at the other far end of its curve.
And we're not supposed to swing over and take over.
whatever all figs. (1) and (2): we are all the champs; we know all the exquis mots
swing those relationships
(...) Gone are the days when the military led civilian society in technology and organizational ability. The military now has more to learn than it has to teach. It can learn valuable lessons from successful American companies in many areas, including:
- No one knows who the enemy will be.
- No one knows if the enemy will be a state or an organization.
- No one knows what weapons and technologies the enemy will have and how they will be used.
- No one knows when the enemy will strike.
- No one knows what the enemy's objectives will be.
- No one knows what tactics the enemy will use.
- No one knows what rules, if any, the enemy will observe.
- No one knows which rules the Navy will be allowed to use.
- Rapid, timely, and economic worldwide distribution of material, information, and services
- Decentralized management of operations around the world
- Customer service
- Reliability of equipment
- Advanced manufacturing techniques
- Encouraging innovative leadership
- Recruiting premium talent
- Rapidly redirecting organizational focus
- Fostering organizational vigor
- Networking and information management
- Supplier integration
- Data collection and analysis
- Food services
- Dynamic incorporation of new and advanced technologies
from: The Naval War College's Newport Paper Number Thirteen
Sailing New Seas (March 1998)
Admiral J. Paul Reason, U.S. Navy Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
With David G. Freymann
(At some point my browsing went wild, which resulted in more images and links in the above, and streams of consciousness all around. I searched for the term 'trans-industrial' (projecting yet another title for my next book, a management bestseller for the American market this time: The Trans-Industrial Revolution; Forget Information Society! Buy Search Terms Now!), which I found is coined in above Newport Paper, in March 1998 (pretty telling if you think up a term which appears to have been coined by the U.S. Navy Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet which goes to prove that 'we are all the champs'). Yet it hasn't become a household term (there's more hits than I can handle on the web, but a quick scan reveals the book hasn't been produced). So I might do that title... now only to write the book. Co-author anyone? Any G-people join in? So what else was I thinking?)
whatever all fig. (3): not your whatever enemy;
still from US propaganda footage 'He must be a communist'
The military have come to this text as no surprise. That's part of the problem of 'whatever everything'. Just like the culture and media industry, the forces gain from distinct edits of world content. Since there's no more center nor periphery, they lost track of the enemy, hence lack their favorite authoring tool. Unlike the totally characteristic/caricatural post-WWII Reds, invading from the totally characteristic/caricatural East, today so-called NASTIs (nuclear/biological/chemical-arming sponsors of terrorism and intervention...) can invest/infest anywhere, using any kind of information to disrupt all and everything. The best that the .millers have come up with in contemporary stereotyping, is the evil hacker. They have become a 'content industry' for the information age, like all other mass industries. Now that they are faced with recasting their corporate agenda, to compete in an unknown consumer market, they run up against a serious authoring problem. A design problem.
giving up mass anything, giving up mass edit
back to content
Back to trans-industrial society. Why did I think of that? If we translate the one-to-many to many-to-many shift in information distribution to the level of goods and services, it becomes clear that some core(?) (mass) industrial models of production and marketing become obsolete. Radically you can imagine all (mass) industrial activity to become an infrastructural (read transport, storage, delivery) industry, with all content (food, non-food products, data, services) development in smaller production places—the smallest unit being the individual. Where or when less control (infrastructural, services) is desired/demanded, also these smaller players will have to perform the 'shipping'. My chickens' eggs and firewood my neighbours can come pick-up, or I can bring them to the village market. The IMO essay for DWR I send by email. When I go to the JvE Akademie I rely on three railway companies to get me there, or drive my commodity car over the state and some private road network. When I speak at LAUS in Barcelona some company better fly me there. I am more or less dependent of goods and services that today are still mass industrialized, in the old run-of-the-mill fashion. But access to and choice of some of the commodities already profit from other infrastructures and shifting market affordances, which are clearly felt at the producing end, if only translated in market share.
back to signature
Also on the level of signature, industrial mass production's possibilities begin to fade. Some of today's consumers seem to become more critical—being better informed—towards a giant ecological footprint, the user-unfriendliness (not to speak of the appalling design), a lack of identity, or unfavorable character/caricature ratio, of mass industrialized products (and enemies :-), including their spooky 'overseas' production policies. 'We are all originals' as one cigarette brand held before us in their campaigns—yes, we are all the champs of our own interests and desires. We want personal advice and service, personal education, personal service and personalized goods. Not less important: we want a personal voice, out wherever. And hey, surprise, people aren't all that 'original' after all, we can all share some of these interests and desires. But let's not make the old industrial mistake to compete them on a mass scale. There's plenty of other formats to try to convince each other that there's more and lesser important interests and desires, if we so wish to maintain. The real (person-to-person) market is only just opening for that competition.
It heralds a return of signature, reputation, answerability.
back to whatever
Losing mass production to diversification certainly means that we are losing guidance. "Gone are the days when the military led civilian society in technology and organizational ability", to quote my favorite caricatures. Information is a wonderful commodity, we all agree. It produces, reproduces and transports at near zero cost. It's course is near unhindered by national borders, political agendas, mass industrial strategy or other fundamentalist objections and Obstats. These modes of selection and their exclusive methods of enforcement have been or will have to be overcome. The bottomline of accepting the concept of mass selection (as oposed to the idea of whatever everything diversity), is of course acceptance of mass destruction. I have no idea of how many casualties it will take, but intuitively I am convinced that humanity will overcome mass production one day. My hope is that it will prove at the same time uneconomical, unethical and unesthetical, therefor 'not done', to the larger populace. I'm not saying we will live in peace thereafter, far from. But if 'mass repetition' will have to give in to 'all and everything diversity'—if unity is left out of variety, leaving pure diversity—diversity will rule to expose all and everything, in the best of 'whatever' ways. This should be whatever's goal. Leaving destruction where it belongs: in the person-to-person realm, like everything else. Individuals being visible in and answerable to their good and evil.
When doing this speculation, I hit upon some very difficult to understand even hard to imagine issues. I hesitate to think through, take down, let alone to be confronted with the need to live after some of my own conclusions. Some of us have become very prudent observers and critics, gently dosing their power policies, therewith giving way to the less prudent of this world to continue mass deception and destruction and rule. Many very interesting ideas, notions, alternatives, etc. have gone down in history, because mass rule and industrialization were the critical norm for their continuation—and that norm wasn't met, at the time. Now that we could be leaving mass control, entering an all and whatever everything everyday, of all matters, we can freely navigate and investigate also past interests and desires, to test them to new circumstances and affordances. Here operates exactly the 'free', of 'information wants to be free.'
In whatever preparation, to get whatever issues clear, we can start to imagine how to position vis-à-vis un-mass, un-masked humanity. That investigationcanshould start at whatever scale of un-thinking mass from our operations and deliberations.
possible notes on no choice
(and some technical editing to follow)
re: whatever
Giorgio Agamben on 'whatever', as originally from Lat. quodlibet:
The common translation of this term as "whatever" in the sense of "it does not matter which, indifferently" is certainly correct, but in its form the Latin says the exact opposite: Quodlibet ens is not "being, it does not matter which," but rather "being such that it always matters."
off-whatever remarks
The military have become a 'content industry' for the information age, like all other mass industries. Now they are faced with recasting their corporate agenda, to compete in an unknown consumer market and run up against a serious authoring problem.
(...)
Some of us became very prudent observers and critics, gently dosing their power policies and abstracting their critique from the everyday, therewith giving way to the less scrupulous of this world to continue mass deception and destruction and rule.
what went before
course to curve: don't you ever reconnect to change one word?
or add
...probably the best guitar intro ever: Hendrix' 1983... (a merman I should turn to be), on Electric Lady Land (1968)
more mermen: sailing new seas
Gone are the days when the military led civilian society in technology and organizational ability.
...and oh the joy to hit a page with critical content, where one is visitor#27 since 9/23/98 (pearls before mermen, they sure don't expand their knowledge quick enough to compete with the corporate environment... Reason's damn right: 'they are the ones that bleed')
The usual criteria of size, shape, color, luster and cleanliness of the surface apply to the valuation of Freshwater cultured pearls.
There is no denying their widespread appeal as their variety allows designers and craftsmen to create exclusive, unique pieces of jewelry to suit many moods and settings.
worth the download
16thandmission.com (courtesy: Caterina) (see also headmap.com)
meanwhile
7am and all's well at the server side.
27 April 2001
The good, the bad or the unedited? (could not post this so went to bed instead. NQP seemed down or behaved utterly strange to re:peated re:loads. Also my other sites which must run on the same machine. Things are ok now. I see people have been testing it.
26 April 2001
facts-of-life style interrogation
- How do you get the best out of people?
- You love them.
- How do you get the most out of people?
- You hate them.
- How do you get the guts out of people?
- You torture them.
- So how to get the truth out of people?
- There's no truth in people, only in their relationships.
- How do you get the best out of a relationship?
- You love it.
- How do you get the most out of a relationship?
- You hate it.
- How do you get the guts out of a relationship?
- You torture it.
- So how to get the truth out of a relationship?
- You don't, you engage in it.
you are the attention you invoke
(April 1-25 web wide search term returns with NQPaOFU)
aap noot mies
download notes for ciw foundation
map beuvron valley
wijnand bolle
walter benjamin art
fleet wood mac songs with comin
marres maastricht
sylvia toth netherlands
obiwan quotes
ahmedabad single woman flirt
bruno munari useless machines
avecom storage
adhoc imho asap
guido morselli dissipatio
claude parent
woordenboek frans-nederlands digitaal online
beelden natuur kunst
kenya economic jot notes
what can i use other than blogger
definition of epistomology
Omnia mea in media
nqpaofu.com 2001 jouke kleerebezem
