ON the onGoing Catastrophy

On a previous note. What to call this.. "style"? Its awesome.
www.adventuresofbarbiebarbie.com::::::::

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
and Lings cars
http://www.lingscars.com/

 

Visually it connects to the Ryan Trecartin, Captain Credible, Petra Cortwright hysteria that I have been mentioning earlier - what is it with this (?) that feels so strangely….precise in its description (or rather existence within and mirroring) of contemporary culture.
Im gonna try to answer my own question but it will sound like crap:

It is hysteric yet poetic.
It is violent, abusive, vain, post gender, post politics, post meaning.
It is the hyper presence of the sign disconnected from any significance.
Lots more, unlimited but less. 

I'm reading Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies right now (and since like half a year back..). Not being a philosopher or anything I can't lay claims on totally understanding or correctly interpreting what he's talking about but since this site is anonymous I can state my uneducated opinions anyway (yes I know this sounds defensive and I feel defensive). He talks about this stuff though:

"The transpolitical is also this: the passage from growth to excrescence, from finality to hypertely, from organic equillibria to cancerous metastases. This is the site of of a catastrophe and no longer of a crisis. Things rush into it at the rythm of a technology, including soft and psychedelic technologies, which drag us ever further away from any reality, any history, any destiny".  pg 46

And then, here somewhat out of context; "once it seemed to present itself as a revolution; today it ends up as special effects. And terrorism itself is only a gigantic special effect. However, this is not because no meaning is intended. Against the general transparence, terrorism wishes to call on things to regain their meaning again, but does no more than accelerate this sentence of death and indifference." pg 62-63.


ON Paris Hiltons Dog that will soon make an appearance in my work; Hi Doggie!
I think its extremely exciting to spend so much time and attention on something so ultimately trivial - Is this the artist way corresponding to a sad teenagers cutting up their arms? It feels like an insidious and sexy self-rape. Seductive for sure. Its a wilful and violent handover with the purpose of really proving that there truly aren't any boundaries to this state - the state of indifference, irony and pointlessness. Which is a point of liberation, because without meaning there is no boundaries. Anything is within reach. 

 















 
Stockholm, will go back to studio where I might have left my wallet (hopefully). 
Eat something first though.
13-01-06

THE WOMEN'S ROOM, by Marilyn French

THE WOMEN'S ROOM, by Marilyn French

As the final page closes I feel elated, I feel like writing "Its the most amazing book", like saying to someone "you have to read it". Yes. And the whole book was like that, clarity to clarity, without being to sure of itself. Its a book of relevant doubts, and of struggle. It is amazing. You should read it. 

So, it says on the cover "This novel changes lives" and on the backside "The novel for every woman who ever thought she knew herself. And for every man who ever thought he knew a woman". That is such a strange line - but in itself, it reminds the contemporary reader that the climate between men and women described in the book is hardly exaggerated. 
It obviously says this is a book primarily for women (women read books about and of men ALL THE TIME, but if there is a book about women of a woman, its not suggested seriously to be read by men). Its like the "Game" by Neil Strauss (which I haven't read yet actually). How to pick up women using all kinds of dirty techniques could be an adequate subtitle there, and I have thought of reading it to understand those men, to outsmart them. As with Sun Tzu, "The art of War". I would read those books in the same way as the men are encouraged to read Marilyn French's "The women's room". Do we believe this is time specific, things ahve changed now? Since I begun reading this book, and told everyone I know about it including a bunch of supposedly genderrole-aware men, not one of the latter has read it, or show interest in reading it, despite my elogies. By being feminist, they dismiss it. 

As I read it though, I find it striking how these women simply seem like people to me (not like women - like people! Whoa! The things you see yourself writing!). Smart, inquisitive, struggling, loving people. I dont think of them as women, and this despite the fact that a large part of the book has to do with the meaning of being a woman in the modern day western society (1970s). For me they don't seem "other". Perhaps because I identify with them, and simultaneously dont feel estranged by their gender. Normally I identify with one or other man in popular culture, since they 1), appear en masse whilst women are the exception that confirm the rule (which both conceeds them power of the norm and more diversity to choose from) 2) they appear in many forms and personalities, smart, inquisitive, reflexive etc, and not only as one semitough, semismart, semiindependent, pretty person with boobs who is only there to confirm the male protagonist. But then inevitably, I realize the difference - They always have a dick.
This is what strikes me the most about this book. To be able to talk about this, and but not from a marginalized position, in the space of the book, in the story, the group they form and their friendships, they can overcome the "otherness". From that point on, the discussions, the questions can be real, new, go beyond the same old. That is liberating. 

The backside reads further:

"THE WOMENS ROOM is the hauntingly powerful story of Mira Ward - a wife of the Fifties who becomes a woman of the Seventies. from the shallow excitements of suburban cocktailparties and casual affairs through the varied nightmares of rape, madness and loneliness to the dawning awareness of the exhilaration of liberation, the experiences of Mira and her friends crystallize those of a generation of modern women."

I guess that is what it is about and not. Read it. Read it. Read it. 
Its also about politics in the 70s, the student movements, about people struggling for something and succeeding or failing, about the best way to organize society, about love, about friendship. Its intellectually stimulating, asks many questions. 

French also says things that cuts through a lot of crap, down to the core of things: 

Excerpts: 

• "Loneliness is not a longing for company, it is a longing for a kind" p 189
  "Well, of course I'm not the person who tactfully should say this, but I am the person who can say it: is it possible to live with somebody whose values you don't share?" p 547
• "People criticize communes because they don't last, but why in hell, will you tell me, should they last? Why does an order have to become a permanent order? Maybe we should live one way for a couple of years, then try another."p 498
• "Unfortunately the world around us does not necessarily change  in tempo with changes in us." p 315
• "I talk to myself, myself, myself. Now I am smart enough to provide a fairly good running dialogue, but the problem is there's no response, no voice but mine. I want to hear another's truth, but I insist it be a truth. I talk to the plants but they shrivel and die."  p 191
• "You know, the Greek word for truth - aletheia - doesn't mean the opposite of falsehood. It means the opposite of lethe, oblivion. Truth is what is remembered." p 629 

Sunny autumn day, 
Stockholm
12-09-11

"Om det politiska" av Chantal Mouffe

"Om det politiska" 
av Chantal Mouffe

Från baksidestexten:
"Sedan en tid tillbaka har det politiska livet på många håll fått en alltmer konsensusbetonad prägel. Denna tendens beskrivs ofta i positiva ordalag som en utveckling från "förlegade" konfliktmönster mot ett "postpolitiskt" tillstånd av samförstånd och expertstyre. I skarp kontrast till de röster som hyllar denna förändring som ett framsteg för demokratin, varnar Chantal Mouffe istället för de allvarliga risker som den för med sig. I takt med att spektrumet av legitima politiska alternativ blir allt snävare, uppstår också farliga motreaktioner. Samförståndet mellan de etablerade partierna öppnar för populistiska och främlingsfientliga röresler som vänder ryggen åt demokratins grundläggande värden. För att hindra en sådan utveckling gäller det att  överge den postpolitiska inriktningen på konsensuslösningar och inse att konflikter mellan politiska motståndare utgör den demokratins själva livsnerv". (baksidan).

Varför finner jag den här boken så viktig? Jag har en upplevelse av att ha fått språket tillbaka, att ha erbjudits en tankekonstruktion som faktiskt hjälper mig att dechiffrera mina egna upplevelser.

I grunden ligger en kritik mot det liberala demokratiska synsättet, som utgår ifrån en demokratisk vision där själva institutionen demokrati endast finns till för att "moderera" den konstruktiva dialogen, det rationella förhandlandet mellan olika samhällsintressen. Denna idé utgår ifrån att det finns rationellt bättre och sämre alternativ och att det är möjligt att uppnå ett inkluderande konsensus mellan alla parter. Enligt Mouffe är ett sådant "inkluderande konsensus" runt det mest rationella alternativet inte bara en omöjlighet, utan det förnekar också politikens, demokratins själva funktion, dvs att erbjuda en arena där verkliga konflikter kan utspela sig inom kontrollerade former.

Jag behövde att någon som har läst massor med böcker mer än jag, och säkerligen är mer vis, stödde mig i denna enkla insikt: det finns konflikter. Vi är inte alla överens. Och det handlar inte i slutändan om rationellt mätande av statistik hit och dit utan om värdegrunder, och om passioner, och behovet av kollektiva identiteter. Mouffe skriver om passionerna:

"Vad det rationalistiska perspektivet inte begriper är att det som driver människor att rösta är mycket mer än den rena viljan att tillvarata sina egna intressen. Röstandet involverar en viktig affektiv dimension: vad som står på spel här är frågan om identifikation. För att kunna handla politiskt måste människor ha en möjlighet att identifiera sig med en kollektiv identitet som erbjuder en självbild som det kan värdesätta. Den politiska diskursen måste erbjuda inte bara politiska program utan också identiteter som kan hjälpa människor att begripliggöra det som sker och ge dem hopp om framtiden" (31. Lite senare citerar hon Yannis Stavrakis i hans diskussion av Lacan:

"Genom sitt påstående att sociala fantasier vinner stöd delvis därför att de är rotade i kroppens "jouissance" kan njutningens problematik hjälpa oss att ge ett konkret svar på frågan rörande insatserna i den sociopolitiska identifikationen och i identitetsformandet. Enligt den lacanska teorin ör det inte bara möjligheten till symbolisk koherens och diskursiv stängning som står på spel inom dessa områden, utan också njutningen, den jouissance som genomsyrar mänskliga begär." (s 33).

För mig framträder formuleringen "För att kunna handla politiskt måste människor ha en möjlighet att identifiera sig med en kollektiv identitet som erbjuder en självbild som de kan värdesätta". Den tangerar en annan tanke, där politisk konflikt ersatts av "rätt" och "fel". Mouffe skriver "I ett dominerande perspektiv som gjort sig av med motståndarmodellen kunde dessa partier inte heller beskrivas i politiska termer, det vill säga som motståndare att bekämpa med politiska medel. Det blev därför bekvämt att dra upp frontlinjerna på moralens nivå och låta striden stå mellan de "goda demokraterna" och den "onda extremhögern" (s 74). Rätt och fel. Ont och gott.

I detta känner jag kanske igen mitt eget utanförskap. Jag kan inte identifiera mig inom den konsensusmodell och den uppdelning i rätt och fel som många verkar ta för givet. "Med andra ord konstrueras ett "vi" (vi "moderna människor" som följer med i den reflexiva moderniseringens rörelser) genom att ställas i motsats till ett "de" (De traditionalister eller fundamentalister som söker hindra samma rörelser). De senare kan inte ta del i den dialogiska processen, vars gränser etableras just genom deras uteslutning" (s 58). "Att tala om "modernisering" på det här sättet är utan tvekan en effektfull retorisk gest som gör det möjligt att dra en politisk gräns mellan "de moderna" och "traditionalisterna" (eller "fundamentalisterna") - samtidigt som det faktum att denna uppdelning är helt och hållet politisk förnekas" (s 57). Jag upplever en konstant friktion i det att både jag (och min omgivning) gör ett antagande om mitt innanförskap i denna gemenskap, men jag upplever att jag inte får plats, att mina tankar på olika sätt ogiltigförklaras - framförallt att problematiserandet som sådant ogiltigförklaras. 

I vilket fall så kan jag ju avrunda med att jag finner den "agonistiska" principen som Mouffe framlägger intressant, inte bara i fråga om vad demokratins grundläggande syfte är/borde vara eller ens idéerna om en multipolär världsordning - utan vad som händer om man tar principen om pluralism, agonism och utsträcker den till att gälla i ett vidare sammanhang - Diversitet.
Från principen - vi strävar efter en viss likhet/ utgår ifrån en viss likhet till principen - vi strävar efter en viss diversitet, en viss agonism. Det påminner om de tankar som flimrade förbi i Bukarest texten "Connectedness is overrated". Förutom tanken på vad en sådan utgångspunkt skulle kunna göra för ett samhälle, en stad eller ett kvarter, så är det också en utgångspunkt för mellanmänskliga relationer - utgångspunkten att vi tycker mer eller mindre samma sak, kan bara leda till frustration och oförstående inför det faktum att så inte (alltid/ för det mesta/ nästan aldrig) är fallet. Att utgå ifrån olikheten istället erbjuder möjligheten att finna likheter som binder oss samman, snarare än olikheter som gör att vi faller isär.


12/08/21
Tallinn

"Camera Lucida" Roland Barthes

Reading Roland Barthes "Camera Lucida" two things stand out to me:

The Mother
How the analysis is entangled, no, not entangled, pursued, through the contemplation and experience of personal loss. And its the loss of a mother, not a father, or a child. It strikes me as bold to talk about his love for his mother in this way. And that this loss, and his wound, is the basis for the analysis of photography, through the analysis of the photograph of his mother in the Winter Garden - that something so personal is both method and material for this analysis is simply wonderful. Such an analysis has a truthfulness and poetic beauty that numbers and references can't achieve.

Was there a time in which there could be analysis made based on feelings, the musings over a state of mind and heart, through experience only, and with oneself as the only expert? Has this time passed? It seems like a privilege.
Death
- And death, of course. The mothers death, the mother who he attempts to find in the photographs, but fails, and then perhaps succeeds, and then fails and succeeds again. As Susan Sontag talks of memento mori (photographs are always memento mori) in On Photography so does Barthes in his own way. He writes: "But the punctum is:  he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been. I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is at the stake. By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future. /...)Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe." (pg 96). It makes me think that perhaps this is the force of any photography, this is the force of photography as such; it holds the nostalgic love of life and fear of death, not only of those who are in the picture but it reflects in me; I feel my own future death stab at me as my eyes meet those in the photograph. Barthes writes on a previous page:

"All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death. This is the way in wich our time assumes Death: with the denying alibi of the distractedly "alive", of which the Photographer is in a sense the proffessional. For Photography must have some historical relation with what Edgar Morin calls the "crisis of death" beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century; for my part I should prefer that instead of constantly relocating the advent of Photography in its social an economical context; we should also inquire as to the anthropological place of Death and of the new image. For Death must be somewhere in a society; if it is no longer (or less intensely) in religion, it must be elsewhere; perhaps in this image which produces Death while trying to preserve life. "(92)

This reminds me of Zygmunt Bauman, who has also written about Death and, if I remember correctly, the extents to which the contemporary society is concerned with expelling Death. From life, with drugs and preventive treatments, from view, with elderly homes and other institutions. And we are concerned, whilst living, with eternalizing life, perhaps, quite possibly, by photographing ourselves. "This is who I was", "This was my life" to the afterworld.


Tallinn
9/8 2012