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nous reprenons contact avec des possibilités que le destin n'a pas su utiliser
Alors la rêverie vers notre passé, la rêverie cherchant l'enfance semble remettre en vie des vies qui n'ont pas eu lieu, des vies qui ont été imaginées. La rêverie est un mnémotechnie de l'imagination. En la rêverie, nous reprenons contact avec des possibilités que le destin n'a pas su utiliser. Un grand paradoxe s'attache à nos rêveries vers l'enfance: ce passé mort a en nous un avenir, l'avenir de ses images vivantes, l'avenir de rêverie qui s'ouvre devant toute image retrouvée.
(Gaston Bachelard, 'La poétique de la rêverie', 1960)
you are the attention you invoke
(August 2001 top 20 of 145 search strings that hit NQPaOFU)
effet %2
architec
k words
c:13:01 sony
aap noot mies wim zus
relmuis
'jouke kleerebezem'
france museum clamecy log
sylvia toth
hannes van es
usb modem router
jan tsichold
wim zus jet
pieter kleerebezem
young child first week of school
late-20thc literature
michel faraday electricity photo
serial number simcity 3000 world edition
frame aluminium telecom pop
he must be a communist download
everyday, anywhere
The everyday always has been a local experience. Now I get out of bed and log on. Your machine might be logged on 24/24. I envy you. I check my mail, check a couple of weblogs. I make tea and coffee, breakfast. I step outside to free the chickens. Walk around the house, look at the green, look at the weather, hope to spot a Kingfisher, tea at hand. I follow a new link. Open the shutters. I pick up on my friends' lives, who are thousands of miles away. Their everyday feeds on a different clock. When my everyday starts, in the West their everynight is young, in the East they end their every afternoon workday. It has nothing to do with globalization. A friend posts a picture and plan of their glorious new 1910 apartment in V., BC. I suggest a swap, sometime. His significant other was our mystery guest sometime ago. We follow the lines of connectivity which bind together these our everydays. Some photos which I see that are made upstate NY could have been made in my own back hill; more so: they are on my harddisk, but have no bears walking in it.
While my everyday is a local market and politics and French rural celebrations and our hamlet's neighbours' ups and downs, births and deaths included, my turf completely, meanwhile it is exactly those same everyday events, J.'s (and P's) friends' marriages, B.'s kids, dog and bears, C. and S.'s moving or stolen property, P's forgotten pin code, N.'s (re-)reading of AK, D.'s personal struggles, even R.'s Portuguese that I can't read (connecting to yet another everyday around the world!), etcetera, which make for a totally different everyday here, now.
When I spoke about weblogs at the Time to Play conference in Hämeenlinna a few weeks ago, sort of as an encore to my lecture, a woman asked how these webloggers found the time to do this writing and publishing. I told her the quip I picked up in early weblog days, around 1998, when someone posted: 'some people have lives, others do weblogs'. But it is a different story altogether. Even when there is no here in here, on the net, which is an important feature, little now now as well, yet at the 'sites of design' there are these everydays mixing in, producing almost as much as a ground tone for all that rampant connectivity. The only way to 'do a weblog', is from a life.
Eccentricity (location, habit) from a media focus and density.
pathology et sympathy
To everything I do is a pathological side. If I want to see it, I can easily select it from my everyday behaviour. What do I mean by 'pathological'? A repetitive pattern of avoidance, fear, calculation, insecurity, superstition, lies, escape, not to forget physical idiosyncrasies—think bad habits, tics, compulsiveness. Even 'good' habits can occur in a pathological form, in their compulsiveness. I can see these pathological habits with myself and with others. They are actually more present than one might think. If you care to look for them, you don't need to bring any observational skills or experiences other than those picked up in everyday life.
But rather we out-perform our every night and day darkness in isolated rituals, like art, literature, therapy. Never face them in the everyday. Follow the 'I'm a bastard but a great artiste' routine. So, stop here, back to business, before I try to counterbalance pathology with that other great sorry power: sympathy. How did I get here in the first place?
on the lighter side of darker things
Whatever happens, I will write it down," he proclaims in a revelation mixed with vanity and triumph. "I will sit at the table with my family and write down their sighs, their little pleasures, their kind hearts, their faithfulness. In the face of sin and sorrow and the shadow of death itself, they do not neglect to wash the dishes.
here is the (hypogee link to the book review)
at the breakfast table
A bright orange tiny note pad (Groupe Hamelin 'idea' bloc) and a Pentel Tradio, Victor Papanek's 'The Green Imperative; natural design for the real world', tea, a demi-burnt croissant, bread and a fresh egg, collected yesterday, boiled at 4'.
I decided to make one extra NL GOGI to pick up Gil and R+r. Maybe combine it with Derk-Jan's opening Sunday in Haarlem. We could all meet there. Momo I pass by Dordrecht to drop some models for print and plot work and down we go again. Wednesday up again, Wednesday-Friday will be Jan van Eyck rentrée, the week after prepare for drechtlog launch, in Dordrecht Sunday 15, at 15:00. R+r return to school Thursday. They both get a new place and a new teacher, Rolf (R, for those new here) upgrading to the CE2 at Courcelles, with maître Gentil, Roemer (r, for those new here) leaving pre-school to start CP with a yet unknown teacher. Madame Valet's replacement will not be back after summer, alas.
Via recent links I hit on Adbuster's September/October trouvaille, 'Designer Anarchy'. Well kids, as long as designers don't understand that it's not as much No Logo... as that it is No Slogan ('no logo' being a point in case, it's sloganization is not doing Naomi Klein's work a whole lot of good): no thematic, textual of graphical simplification of an infinitely detailed living reality, in all its vulnerability and power. No more runes on the bulletin boards.
Simplification works only down in the details of a larger, more complex (not: hermetic, but living: to be experienced, to be communicated, to be attentively and lovingly maintained) pattern, not a belief system but an operating structure—like a body of work, a life project. Within such support frames we can allow to simplify often, and at good ends, for our own use or in front of carefully informed audiences. Such simplifications then are just the appliqués of a rich and sophisticated fabric, of what Papanek calls the 'real world', and other people give different names, none however meaning the same world. Simplifications can only be small and silent. All other we have come to know as propaganda.
Searching for Papanek reference, I come across another heroic designer attempt to be meaningful beyond design, 'The Humane Village':
We believe that design holds the key to transforming the chilly uniformity of the Global Village into the detailed warmth of the Humane Village. With ethics based on compassion and justice, and a sense of humanity founded on tolerance and commitment, design holds the potential to create, not new objects, but a newly responsible social order.
Their journal however has good quote (No Quote? You can always search them back to the source for a different context):
Technological enlargementDesign is a process toward excess. As part of his spiritual health, man should make as his first object the recognition of pattern as a means to avoid excess and achieve equilibrium.
(Marshal McLuhan, my strike)
honey,
...I had to put the Zukes to sleep. They zuked the potager. Now I asked Bruce for a recipe, but it won't hurt to repeat that request here. SoupZukem anyone? (I know of a place where that would render a NewPage TootSweet).
just-in-dinner-time
5 minutes later, I (again) witness Good Use of Internet, GUI (Generosity Under Influence?):
Zucchini Pie, à la Birchlane
3 cups thinly sliced zucchini
1 medium onion chopped (ok to use red, which I prefer in almost anything)
1 cup Bisquick (Not sure if you can get this. All purpose Pancake/Baking Mix)
4 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup Parmessan (or more)
1/2 tsp marjoram or oregano
1 tsp parsley
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
Mix all ingredients, except zucchini. Add zucchini and mix gently. Spoon into 9 x 13 greased pan or big pie plate. Bake 350 for approximately 30 minutes or until golden brown.
Enjoy! With white wine and salad and let's see....Joni Mitchell or Jimi Hendrix.
later: 'browse as much as you can eat'
RecipeSource, zucchini 579, but also tempting: Indonesian 112, or tea (and what to have with it) 215...
12 Green cardamoms
8 ts Sugar
1/2 ts Saffron Threads
8 c Water (2L)
8 ts Black tea
fluid flusserian
Artists: They work obliviously to reprocess the information deposited within themselves and present it in new form to society as "works": they publish them. They emerge from themselves and enter the "work."
(Künstler: Sie arbeiten mit Selbstvergessenheit aus den in ihnen gelagerten Informationen neue heraus, und sie entwerfen sie dann als "Werke" in die Gesellschaft: Sie publizieren sie. Sie gehen aus sich heraus und ins "Werk" ein.)
How's that for publishing? Joke re-directed me to the Flusser project I hadn't looked at (not: 'I hadn't visited') for a while (since 3 October 2000, to be more precise, when I promised more links, well, here they are). It appears a German/English Glossary of the highly under-translated Vilém Flusser body of work has been put up.
'Selbstvergessenheit', in Flusser's words/ethymological Deutung, could mean a lot that 'obliviousy' obviously doesn't cover. See why yesterday it dawned to me that the German speaking are blessed? The relinking Flusser was preparing in my brain. And Joke knew it too. One more, in convenient E:
Apparatus: A toy that simulates thought and is so complex that the person playing with it cannot comprehend it; its game consists of combinations of symbols contained in its apparatuses require humans as players and functionaries.
A tool to a fool, the killer toy is the mobile phone.
fluid
- (more Flusser, with foto/sound bites, but some linkrot)
- (remarkable: two versions of Reinhold Grether's 'Die Weltrevolution nach Flusser'; one to print(?), one to link(?)
complicated game
I ask myself should I put my finger to the left, no
I ask myself should I put my finger to the right, no
I say it really doesn't matter where I put my finger
Someone else will come along and move it
Always been the same
It's just a complicated game
(XTC, on 'Drums and Wires', 1979)
unrelated observations
- When alone at home like this week all week I'm very LOUD, turning up them bpm and volume on the music. Like XTC today, the first three albums, y'day Beefheart and Pere Ubu, now playing Badmarsh Shri's 'Signs'.
- interesting dawning: there's more languages spoken in this world, than E and F, and NL, like D. Sometimes you get struck by such a thought. There's a lot of people that speak, write and read D only, and nothing else. Then, what about Spanish philosopher De Unamuno, who learned Danish, to read Kierkegaard in his original language. Our world's broken English ubikwitti is a troo hoot.
- Weeded a long loong weed, until finally the half moon shone over the roses that I was trimming.
- Plucked some right size patissons to blancher and freeze (probably the same in E as it is in F, those menu items usually are)*
- Watched this 1 year old video, made when visiting the Albert Gleize residence in Sablons, to meet with Francine and Andrea. The same tape had some family material, and Andrea's 50th birthday, which I had been able to attend earlier that year in NY, because I had gotten myself some editorial space to review the FTF2K discussion, which piece finally got me the position in Maastricht at the Jan van Eyck research center. A year passed and that video material is getting exactly an hour older while I look at it. It's a couple of hours ago, only getting older. That's the trouble with canned material.
- courtesy Caterina, sort of: Texting's annotated 'Maunifesto' of Growth. I do share most Dean Allen's second thoughts on the man Mau's insights in the 'optimal working life' programme.
* aha! patisson: custard marrow; blancher: blanch
"An ornamental and valuable variety, of dwarf trailing habit, and very prolific.
The fruits are handsome and of delicate flavour."
126 characters
personal publishing is any utterance by one person,
to any amount of other persons, using any medium
other than direct speech.
For some print purpose (A0 poster, sketching the design implications of our daily operations re:publishing, personal -- order information to follow ;-) I had to bring back my personal publishing definition to 126 characters, including spaces and interpunction. Reduce : waste. Before I had:
Personal publishing is any utterance by an individual, whether to a single or any amount of other (familiar or unfamiliar) individuals, using media other than speech.
I actually did reduce waste. Moreover, introducing 'direct' with speech keeps open a possibility of canned speech, which I consider a possible publication, the more since it has to use a medium to be stored in/distributed through. Voice mail is a publication. Leaving a message on it is a publication. Person-to-person (mediated) communication can be considered a publication. We will get accustomed to audiences of one.
meanwhile
The temperature is 36C. P+p (Pootjes and Pinkie, the cats) lie steaming under the hedge. I close the shutters with the windows open but melt down anyway.
65 characters
ephemera and classics
99% of printed matter shall be ephemera, cheap, temporarily fixed information, random subject matter, editions small and large, customized or mass-produced, ultimately located waste, and wonderful as is, material information we don't live without, sublime scraps, paper and ink, a colorful trace—meanwhile a classical body of work shall be preserved in the digital encoding, on a network, searchable, un-fixed but available from any position at any moment, ubiquitous and dis-located, but for some hidden (or more likely: lost) 'original'.
The good news being that later, new media when they grow up, will precisely be about what is not happening.
brand new start
bleed the heat off your soul
carry the light from that hole
get it up roses
get it up with brand new poses
it's cleanup time again
(Lewis Furey, 1975, from 'Lewis Furey'. Accidental SIZE="+3" rendering)
Where was I? Float around the house to stay away from the heat. Last night's fast drive still somewhere in my senses. Take out memories of their objects. Urge writ. Contribute here and there. Lost for purpose I do clean up, actually. Purge. Looking for clues, not wanting any to happen. Consume, experience, produce are again out of pace, as if it is their natural process. Wonder how musicians feel (and: about that). Favorite banjo. It's hard to act random. Remember my self-adhesive prints which fitted perfectly (random?) anywhere (ransom?) in the house, but later refused to become random in the gallery (de Appel, Amsterdam). Guess also that infamous écriture was far from automatique. Elle consiste à «écrire tout ce qui nous passe par la tête». There's the experience/express discrepancy again. 'All that crosses our mind' is on the run for logic, and quick as a bite. Even Breton made sense.
Reasonably dead language.
nqpaofu.com 2001 jouke kleerebezem Notes Quotes Provocations and Other Fair Use