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29 August 2002
todeu
We return the 28th from quite a versatile trip to NL, celebrating what remained of the boys' summer holidays. In short: roughly chronological highlights include R+r and myself with Linde and Marjolein taking a North Sea dip from the Castricum beach, with the yellow flag raised to signal a dangerous breaking o' waves, inbetween windy showers of rain, fighting the elements dangling 'know-no-fear' Roemer off his arm, when he is swept off his feet all the time, drinks and fries after; seeing my sister and 3 out of her 4 kids, including 'de neefjes' Jouke and Timo who know their Nintendo; a prolonged stay at the grandparents with no weather forecast available to even start thinking about camping, so more family outings instead, like to Burger's Zoo with its new aquarium and to the Arnhem Museum where R+r delighted in the bicycles and bushglass works by Simon Barteling; buying Pokémon Stadium 2 through marktplaats.nl, spotting it 'as new' at 5 kms from the grandparents' home with Tom S., who is saving his pocket money for a gamecube; a quiet visit to the exhibition of gorgeous 17C Spanish flower still lives at the Frans Hals Museum and subsequent check of the Heemstede gallery. I surprize my late mother's late nephew's widow, Beatrijs Terpstra-de Lugt, in the enchanting villa 'MARJA' that her father architect Jacobus de Lugt (1888-1952; no web reference found to this date) built his family in Aerdenhout in 1918 (I remember early childhood visits to this house and its attic where Henk and Beatrijs kept their pigeons, oh and their Xmas cards that I collected as a kid—their remembrance could fill an entire NQP one day); a one stop shop on the way home at the Roermond designer outlet budget enclave, where G+I bought several bargain K. thingies.
Meanwhile at the Moulin 4 kittens (two primarily red, one red/white, one black/white: 'cow') are born (totalling up to 8 cats; anyone interested, in a Moulin Cat?) the day before we return, while Mr. van Sitters (Kees sr.) starts on the mill's wheel, in a remarkable effort including e.g. sawing the wood that he needs from the poplars that came down a couple of weeks ago. Unexpectedly Madame Paris passes by the house just a couple of hours before we return, with her son, daughter-in-law and grandson. She and her husband ran the Moulin household for the Ferrier family, the owner before Follope, around 1964-1978. What a shame we don't see them. They lived in the basement while their six sons had their bedroom(s) in the attic. The van Sitters take them to the dining room. They don't want to go through the house (which they never did even when they lived here, apart from the elderly woman who maintained the rooms and furniture. Otherwise she probably locked the rooms), but what they get to see of it fills them with nostalgia. Apparantly we have more pre-Follope items on display than we are aware, like the dining room lamp and even some of the wallpaper, which to our knowledge had all been put up by the Follopes. Years before they acquired the house, the Ferrier family, after having lost their only daughter in the Moulin, left the house, never to return, leaving the Paris family by themselves, only using the basement and attic, watching over the house and garden. They had a lot of animals, 150! ducks, geese, turkeys, a pig, chickens.
Meanwhile, a two week old beard itches, while the fingertip of my right hand digit, that I thought to have stuck back adequately after having nearly separated it from the finger when tailoring three of my gladiolus for the vase, has hardened.
All-in-all it seems like about time to take up work again. Summer's over. Good. Good summer. Go to work. Join the force. 'Let's have fun'.
26 August 2002
transitions
A transition, from one state to another, of any element, is only accomplished by violence (though this violence be immeasurably slow). The remainder of our text shall be concerned with this phenomenon in its varied forms: revolutionary evaporations, cataclysmic meltings, excruciating condensations.
Dr. Noble Möll, An Introduction to Variable States, 1896 (via Dark Ice, by Thomas Bolt)
25 August 2002
NL breaks
Moerstaal, the Dutch NQP sisterlog, suffered a year long update hiatus. I did not spread myself thin enough to keep up the Dutch. While in NL, I pass that 25 August date which marks a year of non-activity. Stilstand is achteruitgang. So on the face of it NQP c'est moi, more than anything else. Such I realize at times, as most webloggers do. 'One site fits all' after-all?
Reviewing my sites I again come across Shadow Play, which I am now updating in the background. Such simplicity! Two lines: one chronological (actually consisting of both detailed blocks of 'past', and a yet inseparable today-is-the-first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life ticking away chunk of 'future'), one alphabetical, topical. X 'n Y, linking along Z, over time... Most items are recovered from memory, reviewed or recast irregularly—all will prove to be present in more than one mind, if searched via the net. Yet, an individual inventory and timeline—a lifespan projected for a humble 100 years. With every VLINK disappearing into the BGCOLOR you only bring them back if select all. Or you remember their position and click in the dark. Last upload on SP dated back 16 March 1998, NQP start being just a week away.
15 August 2002
quinze août
The Breugnon vide grenier finally brings R+r a Nintendo 64 cheap, with two games (Mario 64, and Mission Impossible which is offered on marktplaats.nl in exchange for Pokemon Stadium 2, or Mario Kart, or an extra controller), an adaptor to play Gameboy Color games and one controller. Video (console) gaming herewith enters the household. TV only entered my first household in the mid 19sixties at age 11-12, 'rather late'. I guess R+r too will remember their first gaming as 'rather late'.
With all the computation having visibly and invisibly entered the household over the past ten years it is surprising, if you like disappointing, to see so little deep change. We're all still accounting. Maybe deep change is lurking however. I bet. It takes a detour, that's what it does.
The afternoon in Cuncy les Varzy brings food and wine on the table for 144. The St. Germain des Bois commité de fête has a business outing, to see what the neighbouring village makes of it. Then H+R+W are here, and from Treillard F. and P., with a friend, and Antoinette. I stretch out under a fat oak after the copious meal, close my eyes with the Mavica on my stomach, and the number 23 ticket which will later win me a small prize in the lottery. I rest.
14 August 2002, just after 0:00 hrs.
tale of two kitchens, 1.0, 2.0
The wall separating kitchen and loo is out. Thanks to Hans and Rini, and Hans' nephew Willem's unspoiled raw power, this afternoon we downed it. Debris has yet to be disposed of, but we can see a large kitchen here, still with a toilet in the corner, sporting two windows, one NE and one W. It's been a clean cut. G+I find ourselves in the temp kitch, sipping a Té Bheag after everyone's gone and R+r sleep on a dose of Harry Potter. Later I find myself at the 01Book, editing some of the previous and adding, playing Jayhawks' Tomorrow The Green Grass, listening to 'Two Hearts': 1.0, 2.0? over the 01Book 01Tunes headphones. And after that song, 'Real Light'. Turn it up. 'Over my shoulder'. 'Bad time'.
The next moment I find myself peeing in the corner of the kitchen.
orderly encore
clutter/cluster, some orderly finds
Way to arrange: in the studio/bureau a collection of small objects sits on top the pétrin. You'd need one of those outline drawings/maps with numbers referring to each object to get their stories. Cathérine never sets foot here.
unrelated
Later today, like nine-ish, Simone takes us to see a piece of real estate, a house and two dépendances, low in the 150k Euro market segment, which from the photos and description looks very promising to me. I felt the itch. It's situated near La Charité sur Loire, about 60kms East from the Moulin. Expect some photos and more information.
13 August 2002
nested order
Cathérine who also is our cleaning lady in this role always leaves rooms cleaned in symmetrical balance. I go behind her to restore the different compositions of related content living in the Moulin's spaces (soon to be updated), in the form of bric-à-brac, household utensils and esthetic artefacts, to their original meaningful position. Ordering is a matter of grouping, in-/excluding and composition of collections containing collections ad infinitum. Ordering is the ultimate nesting act.
some orderly birds, inside cover, front bent back
clutter/cluster
The language of spatial order constitutes of the visual organization of three dimensional objects on and in horizontal, vertical or tilted supportive planes. Three dimensional 'reading' (scanning the environment) is temporarily fixed in a succession of planes: the order of objects has to invite the close attention which we apply when focusing on a tableau. A pictorial tradition (search) serves how we read display. Eye tracking? Analyses of our prefered perception and recognition in 8 themes, of attention grabbers [The eight laws of artistic experience: 1) The 'peak shift principle' makes exaggerated elements attractive; 2) Isolating a single cue helps to focus attention; 3) Perceptual grouping makes objects stand out from background; 4) Contrast is reinforcing; 5) Perceptual 'problem solving' is also reinforcing; 6 Unique vantage points are suspect; 7) Visual 'puns' or metaphors enhance art; 8) Symmetry is attractive], V. S. Rachandram.
Previous orderly thoughts. Or outside.
Poetics of space: what quote.
meanwhile
At lemoulindumerle.com and at Le Moulin du Merle works do progress. The kitchen was sold and removed. Its space is emptied out, ready for its breakthrough towards the North-East, towards the morning light and vegetable garden view. The dotcom work progresses slowly, but gains in importance in parallel to the actual construction work.
(not a design brief, but close) The kitchen is part of a larger economy of raw, cooked both to be digested and to be returned to nature materials and the acts upon them in order to change their state, or status, and the storage, maintenance and of course use of its proper tools and utensils—finally fire and water in any constitution. The larger system partly consists of or communicates with other (sub-)systems. Electricity, gas and water come in, passing through, feeding the activities performed in the kitchen, and go out again, sometimes in an altered state, evaporated, chemically altered, polluted or cleaned. The kitchen is about food, not eating. Before and after eating: preparation, cleaning, disposal, recycling, storing.
(depending on your screen resolution) (above, or preferably)
left: disassembled kitchen back wall to be removed shortly, right (under): current temporary basement (garden level) kitchen
storage/washing room in the background
email alert
You know who you are. Those of you who haven't heard from me since too long a time please accept my sincere apologies. As you can tell from these notes I have other priorities at the time. Most of you can expect to get their replies from, say realistically, September 2 at the latest. There's no social suicide attempt from my part at stake. Anyway the quickest way to find out is to step by. I will in most cases open the gate. Ask QS.
7 August 2002
début/débit
Tout début est simple. Rather than dependent on 'finding' inspiration, that permanent/pertinent lie of certain art, the start of any cultural production lies in taming the forces of pervading inspiration into solid expression/transmission, informing whatever raw dead or alive material with a notion, as for it to carry or embody, to protect or project, to shelter or disclose whatever message.
Inspiration is the force which drives one's life, to be exorsized in abundant fits and starts, one beginning after another, far less ends, or no ends just infinite beginnings, all by inspiration, the uncontrolable urge to 'let become what is', to paraphrase Nietsche's 'become who you are', without any ruling model or goal. In our repeated celebration of infinite inspired beginnings we are all debutants for ever. We're the animal that never stops.
All my pessimism is inspired. All my optimism is inspired. My desires and duties are all inspired. Some moods are inspired to (some inspirations) get me down, some (are inspired to) get me up. Some inspiration gets me frustrated: torn between the up and down of its mood. All fits and starts and no way to end is pure inspiration—not pure joy, not pure frustration, but pure matter of fact life force, which we can see become beautiful or ugly all around us and inside us all the time. We take our inspiration out on others, too.
Not by (deeper) understanding, or 'fulfillment' of some original goal, but by possibility proper, of translation and articulation, as transformation: one 'thing' becoming another, when acted creatively upon it, adding information to the process of inspiration, in order to single out, to articulate the débit in a proper début, while in a sense to end it temporarily, to artificially halt it for an instant, in order to render (it) enough momentum for a new start, from another position, for the one bit you just had it become—that kick start/kill start dynamic, is the only form in which we can handle our inspiration and feed it at the same time. Not in any causal stimulus/response kind of linear progressive way, but in eternal returns of simple moods, amazement, irritation, we oppose and propose the vital force.
To infinitely start and end that energy of inspiration into some understanding, to 'have become what is', that wouldn't be what it is, without us making it exactly that, is probably as close as we might get to fulfillment—the original goal of creativity, or information exchange, which only unconceivable generosity might allow.
note to self: contact gallery in Luik; Omnia Mea in Media; panels and plateaux; self adhesives; tables; information graphics; d'accord lui repondis-je.
Marcel Broodthaers, Pense-Bête, 1964
"Here you cannot read the book without destroying its sculptural aspect.
It is a concrete gesture that passes the prohibition on to the viewer—
at least that's what I thought would happen. But I was surprised to find that viewers
reacted quite differently from what I had imagined. Everyone so far,
no matter who, has perceived the object either as an artistic expression or as a curiosity.
"Look! Books in plaster!" No one had any curiosity about the text; nobody had any idea
whether this was the final burial of prose or poetry, of sadness or pleasure."
(MB, 'Ten Thousand Francs Reward', in Marcel Broodthaers, 1974)
MOI AUSSI, JE ME SUIS DEMANDE SI JE NE
POUVAIS PAS VENDRE QUELQUE CHOSE ET REUSSIR
DANS LA VIE. CELA FAIT UN MOMENT DEJA QUE
JE NE SUIS BON A RIEN. JE SUIS AGE DE QUARANTE ANS...
L'IDEE ENFIN D'INVENTER QUELQUE CHOSE D'INSINCERE
ME TRAVERSA L'ESPRIT ET JE ME MIS AUSSITOT AU
TRAVAIL. AU BOUT DE TROIS MOIS, JE MONTRAI MA
PRODUCTION PH. EDOUARD TOUSSAINT LE
PROPRIETAIRE DE LA GALERIE SAINT LAURENT.
MAIS, C'EST DE L'ART, DIT-IL
ET J'EXPOSERAI VOLONTIERS TOUT CA.
D'ACCORD LUI REPONDIS-JE.
SI JE VENDS QUELQUE CHOSE IL PRENDRA 30%,
CE SONT PARAIT-IL DES CONDITIONS NORMALES
CERTAINES GALERIES PRENANT 75%.
CE QUE C'EST?
EN FAIT, DES OBJETS.
"I, too, wondered whether I could not sell something and succeed in life. For some time I had been no good at anything. I am forty years old...
Finally the idea of inventing something insincere crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway. At the end of three months I showed what I had produced to Philippe Edouard Toussaint, the owner of the Galerie St. Laurent. 'But it is art' he said 'and I will willingly exhibit all of it. 'Agreed' I replied. If I sell something, he takes 30%. It seems these are the usual conditions, some galleries take 75%.
What is it? In fact objects."
(Marcel Broodthaers, 1964. Text announcing the artist's first exhibition, April 10-25 of that year)
meanwhile
My favorite time of year announces itself for the first time early morning in a fragrant filter on the summer. Its temperature and humidity factor bounce of herbs and trees to produce both that typical light and smell that stirs me into attention to discover slowing down growth and limiting flowering, an increase in drying, ripening, some hesitant decay. All engages in rest after activity, attuning itself to a different speed of events, the maturing of our excitement to the purpose of a fuller and thicker state, solidifying.
I've always expected that my true love for autumn would mean my own troisième age to become the most fruitful period of my life. Thick and deep indeed. Well. If I'm not burying myself already, some slowing down has certainly been going on since a couple of years. If there's still the same sum total of energy, it's allocated differently. It takes a lot of energy already to slow down, like it is more tiring to walk down hill than up. Into the shady grove, while shamelessly admiring the panorama, with the full clarity an experienced eye offers.
Out of orange reflecting blues and purples all of a sudden QS Serafijn arrives at the end of a day, when I find him writing a 'sorry-not-to-have-found-you-home' note on a black and white photo postcard in his car, while Marloes one more time checks the gate, where I notice her. "...'allo." "hallo." "ben je Nederlands?" " ja, ik ben hier met QS." We've only met once before, but now I recognize her. On the gate is a note for the baker's deliverer to tell her that we won't need bread until next Saturday. We're eating from the freezer to move the kitchen to the basement and perform our first major rearrangement at the Moulin, breaking out the kitchen to enlarge it and add a window on the vegetable garden, which is now in the loo. So reading the signs QS assumed we were off. The bell doesn't work. either That's new to me.
5 August 2002
meanwhile
Working all through last Friday, schlepping stones and mixing cement I contributed to give me this 50 feet long vegetable garden wall as a present, with the indispensable help of Joost, Tijl and Gil, who had started it a while ago. It will be plastered to fit the old part behind the former pig shed. While that (wider) part has two rows of classic red roof tiles on top, I still hesitate to apply a ridge-tile here.
'August 2' returned a couple of times over the week-end, when unexpected congratulations and presents came in. Other festivities included the Thurigny vide grenier (garage sale) and méchoui (lamb roast), both on Saturday, which made us unhappily miss Florence and Patrick's rave at La Treillard. From the Moulin guests left while other friends receive different guest that we know too, so traffic still increases along our D23, which already showed signs of southbound hike and an increase in leisure activities. 'Black Saturday', when throughout France millions leave for or return from holiday destinations, was quite a colorful and exhaustive one.
Some events over the week-end were compensated, at times enhanced, by a lofty flight of Jefferson Airplane material, ultimately including Starship and Slick/Kantner music, played in some sort of chronology which in its condensed form presented a reviewable slice of life, from about age 14 to my late 20s. Rather than pure nostalgia such a musical flashback opens windows to a past gone by, not only for myself but for pop culture, commerce and its protest movements, clearly bringing back its architectures, publicities and other sign languages, its media 'poetics and politics', not in any historical kind of critical way, rather matter of fact, in a sense never having started or ended, just passed by—mood, not movement. Moods repeat themselves.
"You can't be serious." If there's a lesson to be learned.
Crazy Miranda lives on propaganda
she believes anything she reads
it could be one side or the other
Free Press or Time Life covers.
(Grace Slick, Crazy Miranda, on 'Bark', 1971)
The manufacture of a present (...) [which] wants to forget the past and no longer seems to believe in a future, is achieved by the ceaseless circularity of information, always returning to the same short list of trivialities, passionately proclaimed as major discoveries. Meanwhile news of what is actually changing, comes rarely, and then in fits and starts.
(...)
With consummate skill the spectacle organizes ignorance of what is about to happen and, immediately afterwards, the forgetting of whatever nonetheless has been understood. The more important something is, the more it is hidden.
(...)
It is in the interests of those who sell novelty at any price to eradicate the means of measuring it.
(Guy Debord Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, 1988)
A lot Debord had right. 11 September 2001 fits his bill. Crazy Miranda freaked out. But where have all the 'bad guys' gone since, where resides 'evil' today? The usual suspects hand us no more suggestions. What exactly have they been—did they think they were—after?
2 August 2002
Notes to self. The one date of the year which can serve me as an entry title because it is my mother of all entry titles started me wandering the dark hall of the Moulin, just after 0:00 in the dim glow of the 01Book, headphone plugged in to play Blows Against the Empire (1970), PageSpinner opened at nqpaofu57.html, landing me in the kitchen to have a whisky with G. who turned up from her studio soon after. I don't want to take August 2 serious until I wake up in it, so we don't mention its celebration and drink to whatever.
Think Venues, Act Media and more, a lot more I find on a following random browse of vintage NQP, an hour later when Gil's off to bed and I open the private booz vault to pour one more for the road.
The longest day for shortest notes. I sent congratulations belated to F. and receive from I. and her brother W. Again in NQP's past, I find another August 2 spent writing I. a letter, ink on paper sent in a stamped envelope, to contact her for the first time since very long. Back issues.
Zzz...
The other August 2 opens around 7:45. First up of 10, I round the garden and weed around the nasturtium, which has one, lone, red, frail, flower.
Who's looking for proof in consensus is misled. Shared opinions' only proof is people's deep need to agree indeed, indeed.
A tool is no extension but an enhancement to your skills—you're performing a learning process. The better the tools you use are, the better tools you will need indeed, indeed.
1 August 2002
green archeology
I have been excavating lupine and gladiolus for two days now, from under thick layers of virginia creeper (if that's what it is... it's what the dictionary sez for 'wingerd' and sure sounds like my weed from hell) and other dominant herbal species. The first gladiolus I find shows a budding flower. Red it is.
Growth is no achievement. Natural selection is an offence. To good taste. To human dignity. To original protest. Here's to the crown of creation! '"And you've got no place to go!"
wah!
now playing: Jefferson Airplane Grace Slick's 'rejoyce', on After Bathing at Baxter's (1967). For two or three sensitive summers back then I lived fully mood supported by the haunting Cassady/Kaukonen/Slick rubbing of bass, guitar and voice. Of JA's earlier (definitely pre-Starship) years, my best funk 'n jump however has been 'If You Feel' on Crown of Creation. Wah!... "if If you feel like leaves falling, if you feel like smiling, fall leaves smiling, fall leaves smiling, smiling, smi-i-ling, yeah..." That's my Marty Balin! The Kaukonen solo following over Cassady bass lines scarred a permanent groove in my brain.
31 July 2002
table top
At one of the more concentrated moments during the ongoing summer rest I find myself hiding form the heat under a large oak tree sitting down at a pick-nick table next to the Besbre lockage just outside the Trézelles camping municipal, with the best intention to take down whatever, using available tools and material like a camera, paper and pencils, as I notice a highly simple scene, easily, like routinely, selected, framed and stored, in two takes of which the one presented here is the better. What makes one of two only slightly different images the 'better'?
The track of the browsing eye when trying to make sense of a scene esthetically, constructing a narrative relationship between given elements in a 'picture' or whatever 'scene', using (applying, evaluating, demonstrating) some of the scanning subject's infinitely rich but not easily accessed (or activated, or produced) previous visual experience and knowledge of graphic representation—this primitive coming and going and forever returning looking for clues of the eye—needs to be accommodated almost in a physical sense. Like material obstructions can hinder a hike in the landscape, when scanning an image or scene the wandering eye meets with stumbling blocks, where concept and visuallity appear to be lost in bothersome, even offending, banalities in the sense of mere obviousness and redundancy. No information is created to stimulate our progression.
The first thing that strikes me on the table is the glistening drop of water, sap or syrup, with the drawing block automatically not placed upon. Then more or less obviously, not emphasized in this composition, the intended object of attention, and the subject, among other samples outside this image's frame, of some shots that came before: the acorn. Acorns, most green and immature some brown and dried out already, keep dropping out of the tree in which' shade I am, at a regular pace. I note the corners of the sketching paper to be slightly folded, which insults its proper usability for some products but serves the minimal intrusion esthetics of my recording. The table top shows both organized scratches and natural lines in the wood.
The captured image contains more information than the original scene. Selection and framing add value. As a heuristic principle, even if mechanically captured without much deliberation: once having been recorded, stored, exposed, published, every scene's informational life starts—here it develops a scene into a sceno-graphy, some reflected light into photo-graphy, a random character into typo-graphy, an innocent transaction into porno-graphy—following after which edit access, repetition, opening and closing are repeated acts upon the piece, in order to accept/promote it as a commodity, deliberately taken out of, or isolated from, infinite meaningless eventfulness and transaction.
Access to 'image' is essentially undirected. Unsupervised, its stubborn stillness saves it from whatever, even as unlinear as possible, completion. Consequently, when offering no information, presenting known or at least anticipated data, any image will herewith obstruct our eye's tracking motion and subsequently cause a vexation of the mind. Since there's no follow-up for the still image, no elucidating context developing, there can only be another still image. Such a 'still' image should not be taken for just another instance in a series. If we do so, we construct our own sentimental linearity, organizing the input, laying things out in a row, clinging onto (con-)sequentiallity. Obviousness is truly offensive, so boring, no matter whether in visual organization, presentation programming, commentary or creation. Ultimately, very matter of fact, scenes at some point of their organization happen to be composed, staged and lit 'just right' for you, in front of your eye, to be met and made sense of at that precise moment in time, temporarily for who composes, possibly to some level anticipating another recipient eye's restless scan for stimuli and narrative pattern, to enhance his or her learning and experience building. Such a comforting thought.
more notes to self: mathematical notation? eye tracking? grapefruit image search? more shadowplay.
30 July 2002
more recent navigation
roam: random left and right turns, straight forward or straight back, around in circles or advancing progressively, in series of directional whims.
browse: party goers one by one. Food and drink and landscape. Eh, menus?
follow: signs—including (typo-)graphical, morphological, atmospherical, commercial. Or follow directions.
occupy: hold, keep, maintain, open and close. Buy.
other actions: rewind, track, link, score, delve, (un-)cover. 'Disclose' was the word that I was looking for.
Roemer navigating the party at John and Kristi's in Ganges,
where also Aya and Marcel went, who can be found in this issue's header
nqpaofu.com 2002 jouke kleerebezem Notes Quotes Provocations and Other Fair Use *1998