conversational drift, informatic license, exquisite enclaves

nqpaofu.com by jouke kleerebezem 71 notes, quotes, provocations and other fair use 70 history portal 72

[30 June 2003] fruits The key to another fine independent village house for sale in the Moulin's proximity was entrusted to us, in order to be able to harvest its 2,000 sqm. (18,000 sqf.) garden's fruits, which would otherwise rot away under their bush or be stolen from them by birds and other small fruit loving animals. Today we share the garden's rich harvest with such and even smaller creatures. Cassis black, and red currants are our gain, in interesting quantities, for jams and liqueur. The white currants have all been eaten. The garden and house are good and simple, in quite an original state, without this meaning it falling apart, with the café's salle de bal on the first floor, its vinyl floor still shining from so many amorous steps and turns having polished it, other floors in original tiles, a functioning wood fire bread oven, a modern wood fire central heating, many smaller rooms, a garage and two vaulted cellars, some dependances and plenty older fruit trees and bush in the quiet garden behind it, with a great view in the back. With the tools in the garage, a pile of wood for two winters and some interesting looking vintage conserves in bottles and glass pots in the cellars, at €91k, this is a good buy and sure investment, within the appr. '2+ hours from Paris' range, possible for several owners to share.

[28 June 2003] community Morning brings the good-bye-for-the-summer fair at R+r's school. They both pass with terrific notes. This is a busy day for all. First the fair, then we pick up the wine for tonight's Feu de St. Jean, at Bon in Migé. We prepare food and drinks in the Salle des Fêtes. From 8:30 pm. neighbours and friends arrive. We attract a small crowd including visitors from surrounding hamlets, serve them a good meal and a fire that blasts straight up in a whirl of thousands of glowing juniper pixels. In the afterglow the remaining members of the Comité agree we had a succesful new start, including some new members and plenty of ideas. Jumping over the flickering fire remains at 2 am. I strain my knee and hobble to the car.

[27 June 2003] doodle feel fodder deal free doll y0all To talk about ones feelings is an acquired pleasure. To be passionate is another. A different one, I mean. To speak frankly and freely yet another. To be intuitive comes naturally or never. None of the above necessarily combine, none are conditional to any other. To act upon intuition, to 'ne pas hésiter', comes with that intuition. Not regretting the acts following demands even further deftness. To grasp the pattern and disclose some of its hidden attractors is a serious aim to strive for. To push these patterns into different moods requires a lifetime's patience and concentration. At least, that's how I feel what I've learned. On the train I get halfway through Agamben's intriguing The Man without Content. More soon. It gets me going on the August Essay with its early (like quickly approaching) August deadline. At home for a looong holiday break I find Grace S. Look up, the roof is gone. Love that pathological voice of the later Grace. If I'm in the mood. R+r's holiday starts tomorrow. After a nap (a 9+ hour trip having followed the 4:59-5:00 three digit flip that I witnessed this morning) I do my duty for the Comité des Fêtes, building up the Feu de St. Jean juniper 'tree' bricolage, for tomorrow night's fire and a lay-out of the buvette's price list. I love to be back in my community, see the neighbours. Everybody's in shape for the summer. Also tomorrow Linde, Marjolein and Joes will arrive from Amsterdam for a two week stay. I find 10 happy ducklings, a thriving garden, not a lot of water, the house in its usual organised disorder, G.'s hand meets my suitcase detour aesthetic. Man, do I need loud vinyl, some booze and an accidental cigarette and this outlet to settle a bit and calm down.

[35 hours 2003] June GOGI Gate out gate in is how we measure the footstep of escape for the sporting life since the 1999 big move. Last week-end's inspiring trip included new time/space testing. Francine had rented a Smart which waited for me outside Avignon TGV. My maiden voyage in a car that is bigger on the inside than on the outside, which is quite a design achievement. It was an air conditioned convertible with that (why no of course you can't combine the two options). An automatic silver/black two-tone. F. had it carry green mint tea in a thermos. Still it accepted our bags. inside the thermos At the time of the Le Mirande check-in in Caromb, temperature had achieved a new high. We took it easy to get up to Le Crestet. Testing the smart size of the vehicle I steered it through the narrowest streets of Le Barroux past the comfortably sweet Les Geraniums hotel which originally I had wanted to book from the Guide Rouge de Michelin, before following the winding up-hill gravel roads after a lone hiker's directives. Protected by the higher hillside shades it elegantly slid the hood off in two clicks: one at the console, the other on its key. It took some effort though to outsmart its electronics, with no manual on board. The Contemporary Art Center has been built as a private home in 1970 for the architect's parents but was abandoned two years later when the mother had died. Years later the family sold it to the state to contain the museum. It's the perfect straight angular setting for Andrea's designs. Its roof terraces and staircases access the best views and air on a hot night. We had diner in the cheerful company of a small international crowd of Blum aficionados. F. and I skipped lunch the next day to breathe along other views and airs of a very dry indeed Provence.

[22 June 2003] grasses disclaimer: above photo links to 332k original, no teletransportation available Grasses saturating on a slowly disappearing light. For kilometers now I have breathed deeply at high speed with all windows open, trying to drown myself or to suffocate on the hundreds of smells these grasses emit and throw right into the car to be sucked out the other end and again spill into a landscape covered by the deepest sky of all France. Tonight Burgundy around Vezelay drives me way back into my religious mind.

[21 June 2003] solstice; then: love and kinship, eros, father and son, also in Lévinas I'm I find myself on the road. I go south. 35 hours GOGI from Montbard SNCF, which was a 1h15 drive from the Moulin, contrary to the ViaMichelin outlined 1h53, for 87,2kms., not 91. I did speed, sucked into the low morning light peeking over the Morvan, straight east. At the Hotel de la Gare in Montbard I have my coffees. Their 'raclette, fondue' sign has an exquisite black marker whiteboard typography, in the veins of Ed Fella c.s., so much en vogue these doodling days. ToggleType you have to look at and through and follow its curves and hooks. One wonders whose signature this truly noble amateur's mark is. Over coffees, in Ethisch en oneindig ('ethical and infinite'), Ethique et Infini (1982), Philippe Nemo's Emmanuel Lévinas interviews, I find a 27 November 1988 dated annotation on page 15. And: Emmanuel Lévinas 1905-1995 Het denkbeeld dat liefde een versmelting van twee wezens zou zijn, is een verkeerd romantisch idee. Het aandoenlijke van de erotische relatie is dat men met zijn tweeën is, en dat de ander daarin volstrekt een ander is. (p56) (...) De aandoenlijkheid van de liefde bestaat in een onoverkomelijke dualiteit van de mensen; het is een relatie met wie zich voor altijd onttrekt. De relatie heft ipso facto het anders-zijn niet op, maar ze houdt het in stand. De ander als ander is is hier niet een voorwerp dat van ons wordt of dat ons wordt, hij trekt zich daarentegen terug in zijn mysterie. (p57) Le pathétique de l'amour consiste dans une dualité insurmontable des êtres. C'est une relation avec ce qui se dérobe à jamais. La relation ne neutralise pas ipso facto l'altérité, mais la conserve. Le pathétique de la volupté est dans le fait d'être deux. (Le Temps et l'Autre, p78., Fata Morgana, Montpellier, 1979.) Où peut alors se vivre la dimension fusionnelle qui, qu'on le veuille ou non, appartient à l'éros, au désir s'accomplissant dans l'instant hors du temps de la jouissance? Lévinas conteste cette dimension, non pas au nom de la nature, mais de l'éthique. Posséder, connaître, saisir sont des synonymes du pouvoir. (op. cit., p83) Aussi la volupté est-elle ...l'événement même de l'avenir, l'avenir pur de tout contenu, le mystère même de l'avenir. (ibid.) (Michel Cornu: Propos sur la nostalgie et la mélancolie) Re-reading the Dutch quotes makes me curious after the interviews' original French. A couple of quick searches bring forth some passages. Thoughts and ideas so meticulously precise, rigorous, testing and wholesome, can only be fully appreciated in their original language (re: Spanish philosopher De Unamuno learning Danish to read Kierkegaard). I shop for Le Temps et l'Autre (but decide to buy it in Paris Friday) and Agamben's Homo Sacer. Both titles' English editions I find in the Jan van Eyck library later. (OK then: 'the pathos of love, however, consists in an unsurmountable duality of beings. It is a relationship with what always slips away. The relationship does not ipso facto neutralize alterity but preserves it. The pathos of voluptuousness lies in the fact of being two') 20 June local colour re: focus Immediately a tear springs to my eye when Rolf suddenly reads the distant type on the wall: N F H C E K ... after just a minute ago having told the doctor 'ne rien voir'.

[18 June 2003] fournir le fossoir When I realize once more I have to work on my visibility in France, more than I've done so far, I start putting together a Word file with the necessary basics: who am I, what have I done, what are my sources, what are my interests? A Word file? What have I been eating? I don't even have a French dictionary in Word. Rather make it a Quark file then. To fit the pre-print bill. But I want to save print for HR. All things considering of course I end up with a PageSpinner file, giving it a title rather than 'dossier' and put it up out there as Le Fossoir — dossier, fossoir sort of alliterating, what do you know. There's good connotations to that garden tool thing. With its Quark laid out din A7 double card as a compendium hand-out I'm all set for acquisition. Not as high res as I'd promised myself a couple of days to go, but it'll serve for the moment, this week-end when I truck down to Le Crestet Centre d'Art (no Internet presence apart from an erreur 404) where Andrea B. has another opening and book, 'Metropolitan Biography'. Francine will pick me up happy at Avignon TGV as we drive into the Vaucluse Alp foothills together from there on. Cache me if you can. Through TidBits I am introduced to geocaching which is rather relevant to my so far little successful EnclavExquise set-ups. The possibility of GPS directed interaction looks promising and was considered by me before, but now seems to have taken off seriously in the field. I have to check if warchalking Wifi data are in GPS too? Seems not. My closest by cache is on the Canal de Nivernais, installed there by 2 Swedes. Tiny Netherlands are filling up with caches too... Couldn't the 1000 journals travel from cache to cache? I see plenty mobility challenges. Next buy: a GPS scanner. Or get R. one for his 10th birthday next 17th July. With the Swatch Beat Webmaster... now obsolete indeed. Internet-Guided Offline Recreation (IGOR): Geocaching by Mariva H. Aviram Geocaching.com, the first and most trafficked Web site devoted to geocaching, facilitates seeking and creating new caches. The caches are registered in the Geocaching.com database according to "waypoints," short names representing the identifications of specific caches. Each waypoint is associated with GPS coordinates that indicate the exact location of the cache. The Geocaching.com site enables searches for any relevant data: zip code (within a user-defined radius), location, coordinates, keyword, area code, waypoint, or geocacher's username. Most caches are hidden in parks, wilderness areas, and other public spaces. When hunting for a cache, it helps to have both GPS coordinates and clues in hand - but also look for the telltale path of trampled grass that often betrays the hiding place. A "Traditional Geocache" (marked by a generic icon) is an airtight, waterproof container that stores a logbook and pen for on-site comments, a disposable camera, and some goodies. The idea is for geocachers to sift through the goodies, take one, and add something new. Another type of geocache is a "Multi-Cache," which contains a clue in the first cache that leads the geocacher to a second cache and possibly more after that. Sometimes these can be all-day affairs, involving clues, puzzles, or riddles, for which only hard-core geocachers have the necessary time and patience. A "Virtual Cache" has no hidden container: the location itself is the prize. An "Event Cache" involves both space and time; geocachers go to a certain location at a certain time to meet other geocachers. Avid geocachers frequently check the Events Calendar to see when an Event Cache is happening in their area. Geocaching aficionados appreciate Buxley's Geocaching Waypoint, a companion guide chock-full of interesting stuff. Buxley's world map of cache sites reveals the predictable pattern of a hobby for the techno-elite (that's us): the vast majority of caches are hidden in the United States (and southern Canada) and Western Europe; the rest are hidden in coastal areas of Australia, Central and South America, South Africa, major Asian cities, and Pacific islands. Buxley's also keeps a log of geocaching news and unique caches that involve more than waypoints and containers.

[15 June 2003] festival Petites Rêveries is a street petite theatre festival organized in Brinon sur Beuvron some 12kms. south from the moulin. In the picture you see the table setting for the closing meal, Sunday night. Most of its attendees are local, not even including 'the Parisians' — those who, whether or not from Paris, anyway visit their second homes from some place outside the region — the athmosphere is extremely convivial and celebratory.

[14 June 2003] rêveries The Sublime and Eros beauty concept polarity? (breakfast note of our 9 hour passing guest and Makkom memory, Fons Elders, who is also involved in the Forum 2001 Foundation.) Days start and end watering the gardens before and after the phenomenal heat. More on this week-end's Les petites rêveries festival later. Toggle Time. Reality Readiness. Parallel Punctuation. Reverie Rave. Sellerie Save. Stutter Stimulus. Strutter Stupor. Quid Quod. Whatnot.

[13 June 2003] readiness I'm browsing Johan 'Homo Ludens' Huizinga's In de schaduwen van morgen (1935, 'een diagnose van het geestelijk lijden van onzen tijd') (In the Shadow of Tomorrow: "Huizinga (himself), in the book's preface, gave us reason to see (such) a future. 'It is possible that these pages will lead many to think of me as a pessimist,' he wrote, less than a decade before his death in internment. 'I have but this to answer: I am an optimist.'"). Also, for compensation/completion/competition: I.K. Bonset (Theo van Doesburg's dadaist alter ego) essays. In schaduwen I find: Johannes Huizinga 1872-1945 Tusschen een overtuigd cultuurpessimisme en de verzekerdheid van een aanstaand heil op aarde staan al diegenen, die de ernstige euvelen en gebreken van het heden zien, die niet weten, hoe ze te heelen of te keeren zullen zijn, maar die werken en hopen, die zoeken te begrijpen en bereid zijn te dragen.       Het zou merkwaardig zijn, als men in een curve kon zien uitgedrukt, met welke versnelling het woord 'de Vooruitgang' uit het spraakgebruik der wereld verdwenen is. With Bonset I K find: Theo van Doesburg 1883-1935 Bewaart u belachelijke rede, om de rekening van uw kleermaker te controleren. In a parallel reality I write Raimundas Malasauskas who curates the 24/7 event in Vilnius this fall: The everyday has ever been 24/7, whether filled with work or play, religious or secular action -- whether asleep or awake or in any in-between state -- we live, breathe and experience our living and breathing 24/7: 'full time'. Our most successful cultural orders had (and have) a prevalence for awake, productive and secular activities, in linear productivity, but our souls and bodies know better. An economy which now wants to perform 24/7 simply aims at occupying whatever lasts of our dream time, to make it productive/consumptive in an information economy. What changes in the information/communication economy is global access and exchange: 24/7 movement (toggle) from a local embodied, situated concept to a connected, networked, distributed concept and consequently, (possible) praxis -- as well as the other way around. While locally the seasons and daylight time still more or less pace our experience, production and actions, in communication media -- as soon as we connect to the global network -- we enter a zone of dislocated time pockets where you will always find someone or something awake, true 24/7 activity, productivity. Of course this will make you sleepless, while you develop different abilities to be present, 'most' of the time. On the other hand local (situated) identity and diversity is not ruled by local time alone, but by local colour too. Local time is more easily transgressed than local colour and habit: situated knowledge can be mediated and exported in real time all of the time, without however arriving at another 'locale'. The network is filled with informational drift, data all dressed up with nowhere to go but back to its original environment, its own time zone and its own habits. Time management is a local and situated problem: I delay and distribute my actions, processing a 24/7 real time information/data feed from all over the world and replying, answering to it, in my available, local time, the time in which I obey my body and my direct physical and social environment, with which I can go out of sync to some extent, but which I cannot completely neglect. How to operate and navigate 24/7 dislocated information feeds, how to process and at the same time add to them is again a local/situated problem in the first place. Some audiences that I produce 'for' share my metabolism and time frame, others lag it and only connect after the fact, when my cultural-social systems have 'shut down' and my body is at rest. I speak/produce/publish in (near) real time, my audience is addressed in local, sometimes synchronous, sometimes lagging, situated time. The fact that we encounter such problems/possibilities on the scale of global communication is a new phenomenon. It lifts 'performance' out of its situatedness, while leaving it anchored in it at the same time. The personal publishing and weblogging production thrives on the possibilities to make visible situated productions, in real time, to dislocated audiences, in local time. We store and share, upload and download whenever we are ready: readiness is the new mode of perception, all is in readiness. Readiness connects the local and the dislocated, the stored and the floating, the individual and the public, the personal and the political. 14 June local colour nethertongue Kraait! Draad! Vanavond nog! Te tulpen! De algorithme van de vooruitgang produceert de meest fraaivorm gegeeven patroonen. Niettemin en niet te zijnig. Maar nu ff concreet. Boomlange kerels. Borgtocht. Klassefoto. De rurale verschijning in stadskleed.

[12 June 2003] wine in a bottle for jk Joke, Karin and myself pass by Mr. Bon for wines and have a good taste of some of his more special products. I return with a delicious Marc de Bourgogne. In the evening we bottle the Coulange-la-Vineuse 2002, which is a good year to stock, from 2-5 years. Building a wine stock is a disciplinary challenge bordering on keeping a daily publication.

[11 June 2003] focus In the evening R+r draw on the table top. I took the day off to repair the general exhaustion resulting from 12 days non-stop mainly social attention and other alternative efforts. I am still in avoidance mode the next day, not getting showered 03 dressed, wandering around the house and watering the gardens, not knowing where exactly to pick up what, with so much awaiting attention before the big rest sets in. If only I could devote all my time and patience to NQP et al. I open the Parkett box to find that my collection starts at #3, while I clearly remember Bice Curriger handing me the first issue at the occasion of the Amsterdam launch, at Artbook when they were still on Prinsengracht in the 1980s. Wandering the life and times brings ever more confirmation of linearity's ridicule. I have to remember to buy Agamben's Homo Sacer.

[8-9 June 2003] respect Two rabbits sit with their backs to the railroad track, looking over their shoulders and their fluffy FFFFFF tails at the loud yellow train passing by, with me in it, admiring the 'rozevingerige dageraad', or pink-fingered daybreak, which often returns to mind at occasions like this: early rises, an unfamiliar environment where you 'find yourself' unexpectedly, in a pink light reflecting from fir trees in the background.. That's when mantra pop up. Rozevingerige dageraad. The rabbits trigger another strong image put forth by Bill McKibben in The End of Nature, when he expresses his doubts as to whether he would be able to feel any respect at all for a genetically engineered rabbit, if one day he would run into one such on a hike, more than he would bring up for an empty Coke bottle. We are rapidly approaching the day that we run into genetically designed and reproduced Coke bottles that merrily hop along railroad tracks repeating their mantras, while trying to sell you something. I think I would as much respect as be haunted by such lively companion in my daily encounters. As with other species' alive-anything's unpredictable motivation I would first be challenged to find out how intelligent and communicative it is. Can we interact? Can we learn from one another? Do we share a behavioral pattern? How are our reactions to stimuli? Can we establish a role play? Who is dependent on whose best intentions? Can we have sex? Or just be friends for as long as the encounter lasts. This week-end when we start emptying out G.'s parents' attic, after having returned them home from a Moulin visit, I find two removal boxes, one containing long lost albums (the Stones' High Tide and Green Grass, Ornette Coleman's Science Fiction, Bonzo Dog Band's Gorilla) the other containing less craved art press, e.g. vintage Parkett, yet a just-in-time find and another sign pointing towards off-line activities and a return to the museum in different ways.

6th June Jasmine, 06:51hrs. IMG SRC="../2003imgs/jasmin2003large-bw.jpg" WIDTH="562" HEIGHT="749" BORDER="0" ALT="jasmin 2003 b/w" L'idéal de la vie. Eternal Jasmine, eternal grey scale. Eternal intoxicating olfactory sensation.

nqpaofu.com 1998-2003 jouke kleerebezem Notes Quotes Provocations and Other Fair Use