my needs are my castle, my preferences are my kingdom Le Moulin du Merle 1999 September 20 Done The new design is up. The IE problem has not been solved but I hope to get feedback on how to do so. Enjoy your flight. September 19 Meanwhile, over at the test bench... IE looks terrible—as usual. Sigh. Here are the anchors for the new and upcoming NQPAOFU XVIII: 19990919 vitae operae 19990918 experiment onestop alinkaday deblogging 19990917 2andcounting counterparanoia 19990916 fog 19990915 underneath wussup oldmemes showdown (nomot) September 15-19 underneath the content, it's the browser SSSH, I'm awfully busy working on Some Secret Semantics, Huzzah... It's the NQPAOFU make-over. I hope to finish it this week-end. September 14 In Search of Free Man - If it is the drive of our time, after freedom of thought is won, to pursue it to that perfection through which it changes to freedom of the will in order to realize the latter as the principle of a new era, then the final goal of education can no longer be knowledge, but the will born out of knowledge, and the spoken expression of that for which it has to strive is: the personal or free man. Max Stirner, The False Principle of Our Education 'Just' Free The right to be free, doesn't free one of the right—as MaxStirner understood as no other. Deleuze prefers the lame 'just' to the imperial 'right'. C'est le ton qui fait la musique, Stirner whistled his song of a natural authentic egotistic freedom 100 years and n ideologies and 'practical matters' before Deleuze. Let's say that they both are 'just right', for their own time and age, and followers. Which does imply that those coming after them can use the previous to critique the latter, and both to critique their own contexts. And sign it theirs. Rule by Preference Nothing, absolutely nothing comes of the 'age of disintermediation', once just a nickname of the information age. Ha! I always propagated it an era of infinite intermediation. Today every epinionated geek has a mother-in-law to sell. They're only in it for the commodity now, but I can't wait and I'll certainly live to see the service of the web of recommendations close around the spiritual and the political. Pay-per-link is duh...pinion bottomline. Why wait to rule by your reputed preferences? myslogan.com (still available) Unlike iPinions.com, registrant: Gregory L. Katzman. Good for him! The ABCs of being I, E, Uh..., Opinionated A Dutch saying goes 'je huid duur verkopen', meaning as much as selling your skin expensive (to the hunter), not giving in an inch in any fight: eg. over your opinion, E or I, or XYZ. The best way to propagate an idea is by address, as Paul is fond to say. So might one address fit all? iBet. Instead of joining the ePinions and eMatters (quite, another Revolution!) and iDunnos (sic) of this world, concentrate on your own turf and steadily pump up the volume at home (à la Dave Winer, or Jakob Nielsen; hey, ever noticed the user friendlyness of these guys' URLs?) Don't be a puppy: join iProstitution today! Knowledgeable iBalls go a long way in the infinite intermediation universe. So let's not waste: save that opinion for your own reputation as a free (wo)man. And balls will start-a-rollin' to your URL. September 13-14 In Search of Disappearance to Joke Robaard, whose birthday is 14 September 'not-A' Sartre: Heaven is other people What I find most enigmatic about the cultural impact (or lack of it) of new communication technologies (which are truly revolutionary, even considering the word's steady inflation), is that I do not know of any radical positions taken in individual addressability or answerability, or: of anyone taking the opportunity to disappear. Over the past years, let's say since the web, none of our friends did: all of us only got more visible. Apparently this is what (new even more than mass) media allow, some might say demand, and what we are after, or conditioned to: be there (allthetime), or be square. With my closest friends and myself, I see temporary, even chronically 'serious avoidance' of (to a large part self-imposed) duties, but no hermit's lives—not even in some hip guise. We have become pathologically conscientious. Between addressability and answerability, the first is where you hang out, where you can be reached on a daily, economic basis, where the media allow you to answer the call; the second is where you just as much would like to be left alone, but at the same time why you should be reached, what you are (good for), what you have on offer, being your competence and responsibility, as fostered by eg. Mikhail Bakhtin, licensed not by number or address or other administrative function, but by name and signature. - It is not the content of a commitment that obliges me, but my signature beneath it. Bakhtin, Toward a philosophy of the deed In theory the signature has been dead for quite a postmodern moment now—yet for lives being lived, from the vital quality of our daily health and information, to the immediate danger of death in less privileged environments, we are very much focused on its mark of origin and excellence—whether we recognize the blessings of its light, or the spells of its shadow. Why do our friends not disappear? How come our addressability and answerability overlap, in availability? Why are we all entrenched in visibility? Do we imagine thus to be protected from getting lost in abundancy? Are we addicted to the ritual dance of communication? Is disappearance, like answerability, like signature, or voice, another compelling modern myth, echoing at us from utopian depths? Or could it be the next strategy for survival. With all technological affordances licensed for just-in-time connectivity, for an individual processing pace of daily messagerie, for austere preferences of immediacy and intimacy and privacy and, on the other hand, well-balanced distance and engaged professionalism in one's cont(r)acts, why would artists like us still allow ourselves to be mobilized in ever readiness... My dreams of invisibility are fed with answerability. Media wisdom has it that volume is the self-fulfilling prophesy of production: abundance its ultimate economy. Yet my high hopes for an in extremis densely mediated future are in disappearance, rather than in publicity. When the filigree intricacy of the network and the frequence of interactions reaches near real time 'open connectivity', we will not as much be technologically enhanced for more monologous visibility, as equiped for permanent conversation, in a permanent balance seeking movement, away from and towards our dear ones. This movement, such choreography of attention one witnesses in Joke Robaard's photographs, in their image, in their organization and production. They are litteraly filled with 'other people', who one doesn't know, and who certainly have not been modeled to suit the viewer (they are not exhibited, not used nor even properly introduced). From their photographic coexistence they all disappear after the fact (of shutter momentum), to continue their probably anyway connected lives. They're not dummies. Their presence unsentimentaly suggests histories and futures, even without the contact information. The agency of advertizing is far off. Yet these people can be related, even with their advertized, mediatized brothers and sisters. Robaard's groups do not perform in the splendid isolation of art discourse, like so much of contemporary art photography and video or film. They appear and disappear in a continuum of streetwise coming and going, as much surreal and utopian, as portraying one of the formidable challenges of the contemporary communicational ballancing act: disappearance in order to leave a trail. Curricular Smut And since we are celebrating, a small present to Paul: curricular smut, the art's curriculum verso... fed to me by his own anagram server, with this recommendational quote: - Facts, to become poetic, must be fused with being. Gerald Skyes September 10 How much does your privacy depend on anonymity? When privacy has to equal anonymity you ain't in the Nièvre anymore. Here, as much as you are not anonymous in a small structure like St.Germain-des-Bois, Thurigny, La Pouge, Varzy, Clamecy, you have your privacy. Privacy is equal to mutual respect and discretion. What we know about each other is played out in jokes, publicly, as much at the expense of the joker as of his or her object—this is a traditional, local public/private balance. We could repeat after famous Marten Toonder comics character Olivier B. Bommel ('geld speelt geen rol'; money is no object): privacy is no object. When G. was living in Indonesia she never experienced the total lack of privacy as a threat, rather as a comfort. (Of course East Timor is witnessing times of horror, as did former Yougoslavia recently, or Somalia, and the list continues—when all cultural qualities turn bad, for everyone). Now the Nièvre may never make as a world-in-peace model, yet with all the on-line jazz about community, there is lessons to be launched here. And relations off- and on-line to be learned. Then, again, it's love it or leave it. September 9 9999 I thought I was served a Y2K appetizer tonight: electricity was down for three and a half hours... evening fell as I phoned the electricity company EDF...: semper engaged... what was going on? On the hill Thurigny street lights remained dark. After I lit candles in the salon I finally got through. Some farmer in neighbouring Ouagne had brought down the (overground) wires, when chopping his trees. La France Profonde is counting down by its own measure. Some of the best things in life are off-line My secret love and colleague Q.S.Serafijn hasn't got much of an on-line presence—I can't even link to him here!... So you gotta buy this book that he is presenting tonight in Rotterdam. Aantekeningen/Notes. That's 100% QS. 264 pages of hard (to follow) copy. With illustrations. Eventually I might get some of it on-line. Let's not push it, there's no substitute. I am just sorry not to be in R. tonight. Life's an Automated Bitch, in three handsome steps I Bringing R+r to school this morning we automatically stopped the car upon sighting two young deer in the field. After a few minutes they approached us within 20 feet: we could see their wet noses. Elegantly they flew off when I started the engine again, to hurry for more learning. II My buy-cycle then automatically got me mirabelles at 18FF for 2 kilos at the Varzy market, and III my purchase circle was automatically entitled to one free pain chocolat at the bakery: to celebrate the all encompassing Rentrée. God, am I automatically grateful to live here. La rentrée up feedback to jk@nqpaofu.com previous nqp

hosted by nqpaofu.com NQPAOFU best bits from correspondencies, attendencies and collected hard copy the mark of launch-and-learn publishing: corrections are generally made within 36 hours. Reduction for print-out is 75%. SINCE 1998 NQPAOFU PLATINUM R+r Rolf and Roemer, kid brothers and our sons Rolf (big R, the elder) and Roemer (little r, the younger). Since we moved to middleofnowhere France they make a great team. Rolf (rolf@lemoulindumerle.com) Rolf Indah Jot Kleerebezem (RIJK, Dutch for 'rich' and a common first name) in full, born 17 July 1993: the brooder. Roemer (roemer@lemoulindumerle.com) Roemer Indah Pieter Kleerebezem (RIPK, like in Rip Kirby) in full, born 29 December 1995: the trickster. G., Gil, Gilberthe (gilberthe-akkermans@lemoulindumerle.com) Gilberthe Akkermans, my partner in life since 1978, mother of R+r and co-proprietor of the Moulin du Merle; leather bag and fashion accessory designer. Moi Jouke Kleerebezem, author of NQPAOFU since 22 March 1998; father of R+r and co-proprietor of the Moulin du Merle; artist/curator. Paul Paul Perry, long time friend and artist. Canadian with Anglo-Indian roots. Thriving expatriare in the Netherlands since 1982. Current stronghold: Alamut. Current foothold: gardening. NEW AT THE MOULIN DU MERLE http://www.lemoulindumerle.com 19990726 text modifications and interior pics (340k) nqpxvii anchors done benchmark sssh (wo)man rightorfree preferences myslogan uhpinionated iprostitution signature artscurriculum nnprivacy 9999 notes bitch previous nqp feedback to jk@nqpaofu.com