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nqpaofu.com by jouke kleerebezem issue 80 conversational drift informatic license exquisite enclaves 79, Bangalore-Kovalam, India portal history 81

street wise, city foolish; aka (almost) under the pavement: meta haven, sea, land, myth, decollage (photo Annelys de Vet) [16 January 2004] ubiscribe 13-17 January at the Jan van Eyck Academie we open a new research year. I present Ubiscribe. This link takes you to my slides and some links that I provide the community. It's a start. Some of these are quite appropriately up my alley. Like the Proboscis ones. The best news is that Claudia Hardi joins the team. Other good news includes the presence in Maastricht of Jan van Grunsven and Willem van Weelden, and a night out to author that city, with Daniel;l ‘MetaHaven’ van der Velden, Hinrich ‘Trichtlinnburg’ Sachs and Annelys ‘QuestionTime’ de Vet, who also caught D. under that poster. Ex-researcher Irene Hohenbüchler visited in the context of Johan Deumens' inventory of artists' books made at the JvE over the last 30 years. Irene had not visited JvE for 13 years. I remember Irene and her twin sister Christine from the late 1980s when I was a visitor here myself. Their book Her6ar I remembered from that period but only acquired when I re-entered in 2001. It reflects a working period at the Kunstwerkstatt Lienz. I was moved by her presence in an unexpected way. If one word would describe it (and I have to verify it in the NL/E dictionary) it would be ‘ontwapenend’, disarming. A rare feature in the art world.

[12 January 2004] critical mass market Monday morning at the Sedan Masrmootr Hotel our search for excellence continues! Mass markets content themselves offering second or third rate goods, I learned from John Elkington. On the other hand, a ‘market’ we could consider any system of supply and demand driven by a need to exchange goods or services, however exclusive that need might seem at first. Excellence or exclusive demands build markets for excellent goods or services. Such exclusivity need not be economically expensive, if we can trade exclusivity for exclusivity: it is the basis of peer-to-peer economies of any kind, for an exchange of expert knowledge, specific information, rare goods, &tc. Local Exchange Trading Systems let you P2P at any level. Then: our demand for quality is a quality by itself. Our needs drive industries, increasingly so in information economies. A slow food market is being built upon a demand for food with local, ecological, economical, sustainable, convivial, etc. qualities. Would informationalization and mobility then break down mass markets into smaller, more demanding markets, or just increasingly stress the mechanics and logistics of mass production and distribution to keep up or even increase the volume, while adding marketable touches of personalization and instant ubi-availability? The idea of any good or service's production cost ‘footstep’ is interesting. What to measure in order to measure a burden on the ecological, social or cultural systems that we want to maintain healthy, at the benefit of a population at large? Or does the ‘at large’ go out with the ‘mass’ in production and market? How to add up primary and secondary production costs, what to include in these and how to weigh them against larger economies? Then what to describe as the actual benefit (or quality) of a product? What to acknowledge as its step forwards? To quote Virilio: the invention of the aircraft is the invention of the crash at the same time. The measuring habit is notably hard when we look at cultural products. Here we can accept a certain degree of toxicity, a crash and cost, a perversion of the economy, as antidotal to certain societal weaknesses or wrongs that would be difficult to heal with hard commodities, as some believers in a technological fix would argue. How would that work against any loss of spirituality, education, sociality, political awareness? We cannot snack fill our empty minds and bodies for their deep hungers to shut up. Toxic commodity? Hard to measure footsteps?

The mechanic picks me up at the Masrmootr at 10:30. I continue my drive up, passing by the same border at La Chapelle, dropping off the bottle with Eric's friend. Eric is at work. Two hours later I'm in Maastricht. It's great not to have to watch the temperature when racing up the Ardennen hills. The car performs fine.

[11 January 2004] now I find myself In room 5, Marmotte Hotel in Sedan, near the French-Belgium border, French side. Just over at the other side this afternoon the car's radiator collapsed. I got myself transported to the Marmotte, this very sort of place where you typically only ever get when stranded. I bide my time and try to keep my cool. Of all the places that I'd rather be right now I was going to be at the Doors-after-Bangalore dinner party over at John and Kristi's house. Damn. That bottle of Cremant de Bourgogne tomorrow I'll give to the helpful guy that towed me back to the border and got me here. So on the Eurosport channel I see four Dutch speed skating athletes take place 1-4 at the European Championships in Heerenveen NL. With my family we used to enthusiastically watch the speed skating series in Ard Schenk and Kees Verkerk world dominance times, when the images were black and white, the round times clocked by hand, the skating rink lighting sparse and the ice still natural, so these guys actually were in the cold. Being not so much a sports man myself, I still love to watch those that I watched 40 years ago, skating and football. And I particularly love to see a Dutch champion, or four of them. If the Marmotte and like places are your life you'd be used to them and make your stay at them a productive part of your possibility niche. I know. You'd discover the differences between different Marmottes and develop your preferences. You'd find that those who work at the Masrmootrs have lives of their own. You'd find that one chef or another over at one of the Masrmootrs would cook you a great Confits de Gésier, or something. Today this Masrmootr's plat du jour is lamb cutlet and fried potatoes. I wonder if this could be one of the chef's fortes. The restaurant will only open at 7:30pm. I order another Kronenbourg 1664. The couple down the hall, the only other guests so far, do what one is expected to do when stranded à deux. Masrmootrs do bang. I phone Joke to tell her I will not sleep on her couch tonight. She regrets she cannot send me an email where I am. I would only collect it tomorrow night. The phone appears hard to dismantle and this Masrmootr has no Internet box. So we talk, which is an even more comforting thing to do under the current circumstances. After I phone Mark to cancel tomorrow's appointment. We'll meet next Saturday at 11:00. The two young personnel here at the Masrmootr appear to be stranded just like myself. Yet being here is part of their daily or at least week-end routine, financing this stage of their lives. If they should have to ‘find themselves’, it would have to be outside of this routine, so not in this place, not here, not this Saturday night. I find myself smack into their everyday, they are part of Masrmootr functionality, part of its L*Etoile du Confort fantasy. I make no impression whatsoever on how Masrmootrs tick. Though the personnel doesn't really seem to fit into this fantasy, they serve it for a living while having a life outside, in another fantasy. At night, they watch television in the Masrmootr's hallway where I pass on my way to the room. They heated my gésier and agneau for dinner. I have no more fantasies left for this place.

stock for local color at the Thurigny salle des fêtes [10 January 2004] measuring local color Saturday we go about documenting the St. Germain des Bois community's Salle des Fêtes which is located in one of its three hamlets, Thurigny, on the Beuvron border. Returning from the landfill where we dropped some personal waste we open the small community space. It is ugly. And small. We however want to accentuate its possibilities, not give in to its shortcomings. Forward looking we can imagine it expanded, with a terrace on the river. First we'll knock down the kitchen wall, turn the sink 90° anti clockwise (the old trick ever works) and build a small bar. My suggestion. They liked it at the meeting. Another thing is to improve its lighting. That can work wonders. To make it more spacious we'll have to paint the ceiling, and walls and we'll get in better furniture. How many people can we seat on 40 sqm? is my question to you. How to arrange them in small and/or larger groups on a 6×6,5 meter floor plan and leave some space to serve them. We have to find a mathematical solution, then dress it up.

[9 January 2004] ...you find yourself Great opening line. But what about: “There is something of the great about me, but because of the poor state of the market I am not worth much.” I find myself reading that one when searching for the Kierkegaard-Korsaren relationship. Heheh. Good for Him a market would emerge ‘beyond the grave’, as He counted on. K. is an old love in the search for the individual quest. What will I find if I reread him. When would I?

[8 January 2004] dawn Early dawn. Open the shutters. Turn off the house lights. A full moon sets. on information habit With technologies that work together to develop public open space as an information sharing and communication arena (ubiquitous computing, wireless networks, GPS, monitoring, data tracking — including their devices and services) some notions on how we consume and produce information become critical. Both in a socio-political and in a cultural-educational context information equality has to remain the prime perspective. First we have to acknowledge an information society's basic rule that every citizen is equally an information producer and an information consumer. Without this notion, which needs articulation in every possible way, and protection by those who have advocated open media all along, a genuine information society will not come about. Instead we will be imprisoned in a post-mass media hybrid of a communication system, which allows no symmetrical exchange between information depending parties. Technology, art/design and business shall take this issue to heart and help accomplish its conditions in conceptual, experimental and serviceable ways. To make sense of why, where and when information space and physical space interact, how that interaction challenges our notions of private and public life and the ways we conduct business and engage in leisure activities, the way we learn and become knowledgeable, is ultimately a democratic process. Yet this process needs to get its cues from bold proposals that contest otherwise too simple consensus or conventional interest. Over the coming decades, when what in retrospect will be known as the Early Information Age is shaped, boundless culturally divers ‘information habits’ will emerge. The popular notion of ‘leapfrogging’ into new media opportunities, for those parties who suffer technological or economical disadvantage, better be extended to include the overcoming of many cultural arrears the world over which are traditionally expressed in intolerance, discrimination and exploitation.

[7 January 2004] information habit In a couple of contexts I am challenged to think about our information habit (by which actions, rituals and routines we consume and produce information in everyday mobility) — or how and when it would replace information superstition and media ignorance. I propose ‘leapfrogging’ not only as a possibility to overcome 'technological and economical disadvantage' (you know where western myopia situates it), but also cultural discrimination and exploitation — right here on our privileged doorstep. Subscribed to P2PJ list, peer-to-peer journalism. local color thank you for your inspiration, touchpad touché wacom welcome

dear god have me draw more too; graphicconverter line drawing, 562 x 230 pixels; tonight [6 January 2004] vigilance Si les autorités sur lesquelles cet Ouvrage est appuyé, ne paroissent pas suffisantes pour convaincre un Lecteur, déchirons les Histoires & ne croyons plus aucun fait. M. Caraccioli, La Vie du Pape Clement XIV, 1776, quoted in Johannes Testis Monstrans' Halve waarheden, Korsaar 1989. Hier waak ik was sent to editor Jorinde Seijdel of Open magazine yesterday. Last night and this morning I start polishing it. Still have to add also Schrijfbaarheid to my list of ‘other texts’. Re: publishing. Back to Quark. For the OMIM book series I have to figure out how different editorial and production relationships perform, and how to link the resulting works to provide micro and macro view with each volume, be it 8 or 800 pages. Also I would recycle two earlier titles, somewhere included. Local color observation. Books are so calm. Look here. Certainly if you'd agree that “You can't make art by making art.” David Ireland was brought to my attention by Barbara Bloom years ago. I have his A Decade Documented 1978-1988 through her, but I've never seen his work. I do not understand why this major retrospective does not travel to Europe. He's virtually unknown here.

[5 January 2004] the books, finally This morning around 8:30, just before getting up excitedly, I suddenly and totally unexpectedly solve my book problem. The book problem is primarily an editorial and a publishing problem, then a production problem, then a distribution problem. Not a content problem — if you love books. Most books are made without these problems, or have solved them. We like to think. My books I hope to make despite around at the cost of these problems. My books I hope for to embody these problems. OMIM. The Halve waarheden and ‘Hoe zijn de reacties?’ format (146 x 230 mm. stolen from Rodney Graham's Lenz) rulez. Making a book is not the book problem. You can do it. Professionals will help you typeset it, illustrate it, print it, bind it. Eventually sell it. Making a great book few are capable of, like with everything ‘great’. Great writing delirious texts quite some authors are capable of, in the eyes of quite a few readerships. They all attract their own. Readers flock around texts. Bibliophiles flock around books. Let's make a couple of great books for these bibliophiles was my second idea this morning. Books made just like I make NQPs. A daily operation. To distinguish a book from other kinds of printed matter is all too easy. But to make a book unlike a book, nevertheless adopting the book format, use its distinguished qualities without taking all its fixed meanings for a departure, is a challenge which could make a great book, or great books. Let's organize some editorial and publishing qualities around the printed tome. Like I was a Koninklijke Subsidie voor de Schilderkunst nominee before being a painter, ran an artist space before being an artist, was a publisher (Korsaar vs. Kierkegaard... take two) before being an author, etc. So, originally I'm a publisher before anything else. I will make books to publish... anything really. Listening to Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction, an MP3 download. Ah! Tell meeee over and over and over again my friend. I pop a bottle of Jacky Nicolo BRUT. Billy Bragg and Wilco come after Barry McG., again and again — in 01Tunes, alphabetically by artist, that is. Look here. top of the head check list (book) publishing authors Ian Hamilton Finlay's printed matter Christopher Alexander's ‘The Production of Houses’ et al. Joke Robaard's flyer series Bruno Munari titles (comics series, columns?) (serial publishing) authors not publishing bodies of text Paul Valéry's ‘Cahiers’ stand alone outstanding books ‘TADANORI YOKOO’, by Tadanori Yokoo, 1977 ‘The Gentle Art of Making Enemies’, by James McNeill Whistler, 1890 ‘The System of Landor's Cottage’, by Rodney Graham, 1987 ‘Computer Lib/Dream Machines’, by Ted Nelson, 1974 ‘A Sheet of Paper’, by Remy Zaugg, 1987 Museum Abteiberg catalogue, by Imi Knoebel, 1984 ‘Notes in Hand’, by Claes Oldenburg, 1971 ‘Giorni del Secolo Nuovo’, by Nicola de Maria, 199? publication series Open Pamphlet series book marked architecture scriptorium (ubiscribe, ibilect) book shelf library library ladder local color In from the spamscape. Re: NQPAOFU, omnia mea in media just dot it!

[4 January 2004] shuffle Stuff moves around the house. The tree goes out the window, some vinyl moves two rooms away from the studio, plates change walls, folders are checked for waste. 3B pencils are sharpened. Pockets are emptied. The gate remains shut all day.

[3 January 2004] slow feed No feed today. Stig Dagerman tells me not to make/take life into performance. I dreamt my dad performed as Saint Nicolas in some costume extravaganza, bringing in lots of masked kids as his help and parading with at least 4 other Saint Nicolases, some of which were positively French. OK. Dressing up is one possible way for an identity to brrrand. But Saint Nic' alas? Life runs slow feed. No RSSity here. Even when the pace and mood swing high, the organism takes its time to process every thrill. Even when bright ideas spring up the plenty inside of it, they erupt without clear cut form. Don't mistake the experience's excitement for even the tiniest of a message. It doesn't produce but a lot of air stirred not shaken.

face plate moon mask anonymity identity inquiry [2 January 2004] face value New Year's day is spent out in the snow, on the phone and behind the keyboard, delivering (uhm) new nqp design and functionality and furthering the Open essay. It is concerned with the different conditions of both ‘anonymity’ and ‘identity‘ in an information saturated environment which overlaps (or, depending your notation system preference: merges, links) with your physical environment. Read/write my moves. Abhishek just sends me the ‘thumbnails’ of his graphics which go with the essay. With information gathering from sensored/censored phenomena becoming pervasive and information processing, as a result of its flexible calculating, comparing numbers old and new, evaluating data back and forth in time, making them up for multiple formats, space, time and identity — and how we use our concepts of each to conceive of (to memorize) the others — will break free into our new sum symbolic sympathies. We should be (not paranoid but) well aware of what we publish to whom, through which systems of representation. Control will not decrease nor increase (the hunger for it, as its limited possibilities of enforcement, being an absolute), but its productive loop of mechanics-becoming-informatics-feeding-new-mechanics will be different: read different, write different; contain different, pattern different. To Abhishek I mail at 02:26: “This short essay looks into how identity and anonymity are differently challenged strategies for a relative freedom of expression and ‘memory’: allow how to build, maintain and expand (produce?) the integrity of one's experience and social re:liability. I apply these notions to how different ‘spaces’ present different conditions for such interests as identity, security (and its challenges), intellectual and emotional growth.” Identity I need to face my friends, as it is with their recognition that I build one — anonymity to be invisible to my enemies, as it is for their prying eyes that I hide myself. Listening to Nitin Sawhney's latest and Pink Floyd's first.

[1 January 2004] one new year Preamble. At its break we'll be at the Cuncy les Varzy gathering, which includes La Grange Treillard's Florence and Patrick and Monceaux le Comte's Honorine and Derk. Time in a bottle for 2003. Happy new year to all of you. The secret word for 2004 is deliver, next best to: ‘follow through’. Francine sends me a very thin book. Ma vie n'est pas quelque chose que l'on doive mesurer. Ni le saut du cabri ni le lever du soleil ne sont des performances. Une vie humaine n'est pas non plus une performance, mais quelque chose qui grandit et cherche à atteindre la perfection. Et ce qui est parfait n'accomplit pas de performance: ce qui est parfait œuvre en état de repos. Stig Dagerman, ‘Notre besoin de consolation est impossible à rassasier’, (Vårt behov av tröst, 1952) Abhishek sends me a quote. Imprisoned by four walls (to the North, the crystal of non-knowledge a landscape to be invented to the South, reflective memory to the East, the mirror to the West, stone and the song of silence) I wrote messages, but received no reply. Henri Lefebvre quoting Octavio Paz in The Production of Space. This morning's landscape reminds me of my second favorite Little Golden Book, after and like Mijnheer de hond (Mister Dog) a Margaret Wise Brown title, illustrated by Garth Williams: Ik hou zo van (The Friendly Book) SNEEUW! DAAR HOU IK VAN! Koude sneeuw Dwarrelsneeuw Witte sneeuw Zachte sneeuw Sneeuw vind ik reuzefijn! Sneeuw die neervalt zonder geluid Wit in de blauwe nacht   Wit op de daken Wit op de boomtakken   Wit op de heuvels En overal is het héél stil Sneeuw! Daar hou ik van Rilke... I stumble on his Poésie in a NQPaOFU 32 dip in and reach for it on the shelf. O mesure d'attente... Fenêtre, toi, ô mesure d'attente, tant de fois remplie, quand une vie se verse et s'impatiente vers une autre vie. local color Opening the day with Nikhil Banerjee's sitar in Jaunpuri and Mand. Closing the day with Kishori Amonkar's Miyan Malhar Raga.

snow speckle side by side flake freeze on roof tile samples [31 December 2003] pointillé I open the shutters of the kitchen on one clear morning. Some of the horizontal surfaces are speckled with snow. Covered with white spots the 2.5 ton stone slab that one day we hope to install as a table top looks grainy like a b/w photo. Temperature must be just below zero to secure every single flake to freeze where it touches. None is falling just now. This gentle cover came at night. Up early I clean out the dining room of its overlooked christmas leftovers and tableware, light new candles in the holders, saw some wood and light the fire. I take the 01Book from the study to the dining room. As much as I'd love to own a Powerbook G4 I'm rather attached to my Macedelica. He who never throws a Mac owns some since 1986. I'll have to rearrange the museum as much as God's Own Attic when R+r move. With the incoming stuff from G.'s parents, with me spending more time in F., working at different projects, with new priorities and urgencies to be expected for 2004, things and bodies will once again move around the old house. From tomorrow. Midst illusions, the new year's an especially strong one. We returned from NL last night. More crazy driving taking me back and forth. For 2004 however one solemn intention is to stay at the Moulin more, to do much more Origami and flower arrangements, install more files, dress more including down, invite more friends, run more video and audio, grow more, burn more — I'll be here to stain more and clean more, mark the site, bring it home.

[29 December 2003] r8 At noon I pick up Roemer and Rolf at their friends Anne and Marthe's in Amsterdam. Last night Tijl and Adrienne took them there from Zevenaar where we returned G.'s parents, who'd stayed with us over Christmas. Yesterday part of the family gathered in Z., where we finish emptying the old family house. Roemer's 8th birthday was celebrated in advance and will be continued today.

[26 December 2003] Basilique Sainte Marie-Madeleine de Vézelay You find yourself in a deserted public place of deep, slow spirituality. G. notices that Rolf burns a candle for my mother, the grandmother who he never knew. It is one of our habits but this time he takes the initiative all by himself, from his own pocket money. Over the past months he is quickly maturing, taking all kinds of new responsibilities. Also: he wants a room for himself and has decided for God's Own Attic, which I knew I would have to give up at some point. He wants to paint it all purple and decorate it with Harry Potter paraphernalia. G.'s long time friend Anne Lammers does all HP design for the Dutch market and brings him a couple of large self-adhesive transparencies which have been produced to be used in the book shops window. Wow! Roemer will move to the attic after him and take another room. They will more or less take over that floor, which for the moment has only one electricity outlet and still faces the repair of all of its roofing over the years to come. We'll have to speed up its interior renovation and re-allocate some, err, ‘stuff that surrounds us’.

[24 December 2003] traces Metropolis M publishes two pages of NQP in fc highres small print. Nice scroll and 4 column page flip. The printed page gives such a different experience. It is like peeking into a miniature, a doll's house NQP. I must do the nqpaofu.compendium for next summer. Different peeking over at Doors East where more papers are being published every day.

[22 December 2003] meanwhile... First snow on Moulin grounds this morning. Very light when I take a shower, then larger flakes for a while, thin again, dissolving into the wet and muddy earth. The light between sun up, sun down, is stretching. Design and crime. I shall read Foster's ‘diatribes’, for distraction. I have finished ‘Schrijfbaarheid’ on Flusser ('s Die Schrift) last week for Metropolis M. For Open I'll be collaborating with graphic artist Abhishek Hazra who I met in Bangalore.

the way we screen [19 December 2003] storyboard Annette Stahmer's overhead storyboard for a live cartoon sequence performance at the JvE final presentation 2003.

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nqpaofu.com 1998-2004 jouke kleerebezem Notes Quotes Provocations and Other Fair Use