Friday, January 23, 2004
Wolfli/Borges
Was reading some Borges this evening, and came across this passage in his short story "The Immortal" (Collected Fictions, tr. Andrew Hurley, p.189):
"The Troglodyte's lowly birth and condition recalled to my memory the image of Argos, the moribund old dog of the Odyssey, so I gave him the name of Argos, and tried to teach it to him. Time and time again, I failed. No means I employed, no obstinacy of mine availed....I reflected that Argos and I lived our lives in separate universes; I reflected that our perceptions were identical but that Argos combined them differently than I, constructed them from different objects; I reflected that perhaps for him there were no objects, but rather a constant, dizzying play of swift impressions. I imagined a world without memory, without time; I toyed with the possibility of a world that had no nouns, a language of impersonal verbs or indeclinable adjectives."
And, here's what I wrote about the Adolf Wolfli show at the American Folk Art Museum:
"It feels like Wolfli actually does what Borges describes in his stories. His drawings are like a memory that cannibalizes itself over and over, rephrasing the same images over and over and over, turning them inside and out, but through a kaledescope mounted onto the Hubble. These drawings are *profoundly* inaccessible, because they were produced by a consciousness so inconcievably far from that of yr everyday citizen that they seem outright alien. They're impenetrable in the way that Raymond Roussel's texts are because you just cannot fathom how on earth they came about onto the page. There's no gesture at all in his drawings, the lines are so meticulous, so uniform, and so plentiful that it's impossible to become involved in the gesture that produced them. My jaw was open throughout the entire show, I ducked under, pulled sidelong glances at, and tried to catch these things unawares so that I could get in somehow, but there's just no way. It would be easy to imagine spending a lifetime looking at and trying to understand these drawings. They're as rich a product of the infinity of imagination as I've ever seen."
That quote must have been what I was thinking about when I was referring to the Wolfli paintings as "Borgesian".....it's the view across the mirror.
"The Troglodyte's lowly birth and condition recalled to my memory the image of Argos, the moribund old dog of the Odyssey, so I gave him the name of Argos, and tried to teach it to him. Time and time again, I failed. No means I employed, no obstinacy of mine availed....I reflected that Argos and I lived our lives in separate universes; I reflected that our perceptions were identical but that Argos combined them differently than I, constructed them from different objects; I reflected that perhaps for him there were no objects, but rather a constant, dizzying play of swift impressions. I imagined a world without memory, without time; I toyed with the possibility of a world that had no nouns, a language of impersonal verbs or indeclinable adjectives."
And, here's what I wrote about the Adolf Wolfli show at the American Folk Art Museum:
"It feels like Wolfli actually does what Borges describes in his stories. His drawings are like a memory that cannibalizes itself over and over, rephrasing the same images over and over and over, turning them inside and out, but through a kaledescope mounted onto the Hubble. These drawings are *profoundly* inaccessible, because they were produced by a consciousness so inconcievably far from that of yr everyday citizen that they seem outright alien. They're impenetrable in the way that Raymond Roussel's texts are because you just cannot fathom how on earth they came about onto the page. There's no gesture at all in his drawings, the lines are so meticulous, so uniform, and so plentiful that it's impossible to become involved in the gesture that produced them. My jaw was open throughout the entire show, I ducked under, pulled sidelong glances at, and tried to catch these things unawares so that I could get in somehow, but there's just no way. It would be easy to imagine spending a lifetime looking at and trying to understand these drawings. They're as rich a product of the infinity of imagination as I've ever seen."
That quote must have been what I was thinking about when I was referring to the Wolfli paintings as "Borgesian".....it's the view across the mirror.
Thursday, January 22, 2004
"Performing Justice" - Conference at NYU, 2/4
This looks to be very intriguing, I'll be taking notes and (trying to) minidisc it. Oh, I still need to post my Music and Philosophy: Adorno and The Double, notes. I'll do that. In fact, I'm planning on putting my notes for *everything* online, including class notes.
---
Calendar of Events
Rose-Marie Lewent Conference on Ancient Studies
"Performing Justice"
Thursday, February 5, 2004 4:30 p.m.
Silver Center for Arts and Science
100 Washington Square East
Hemmerdinger Hall (Room 102)
Screening of Zvika Serper's Agamemnon
(Hebrew with English subtitles)
Zvika Serper (director)
Tel Aviv University
and
Carol Martin
New York University
Friday, February 6, 2004 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Silver Center for Arts and Science
100 Washington Square East
Hemmerdinger Hall (Room 102)
Introduction
Matthew S. Santirocco
New York University
"Representations of Justice in Aeschylus' Oresteia"
Helene Foley
Barnard College/Columbia University
"Popular Culture and the Juridical Process"
Richard Schechner
New York University
"The Theater of Rules: Re-membering Law in Performance"
Bernard Hibbitts
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Comments and Discussion
Carol Martin
New York University
and
Danielle Allen
University of Chicago
"Theatre and Justice: The Exonerated"
Jessica Blank (author), Erik Jensen (author), and Robert Balaban (director)
"Agamemnons"
Laura Slatkin (New York University), John Chioles (New York University), Charles Mee (playwright), Peter Meineck & Robert Richmond (Aquila Theatre Company), Richard Schechner (New York University), and Zvika Serper (Tel Aviv University)
The conference is held in conjunction with the Aquila Theatre Company's production of Agamemnon by Aeschylus.
The screening and the conference are free and open to the public. No reservations required. For further information, please contact NYU College Dean.s Office: (212) 998-8100; e-mail cyberdean@nyu.edu
A flyer of this event is available for download in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view this file.
---
Calendar of Events
Rose-Marie Lewent Conference on Ancient Studies
"Performing Justice"
Thursday, February 5, 2004 4:30 p.m.
Silver Center for Arts and Science
100 Washington Square East
Hemmerdinger Hall (Room 102)
Screening of Zvika Serper's Agamemnon
(Hebrew with English subtitles)
Zvika Serper (director)
Tel Aviv University
and
Carol Martin
New York University
Friday, February 6, 2004 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Silver Center for Arts and Science
100 Washington Square East
Hemmerdinger Hall (Room 102)
Introduction
Matthew S. Santirocco
New York University
"Representations of Justice in Aeschylus' Oresteia"
Helene Foley
Barnard College/Columbia University
"Popular Culture and the Juridical Process"
Richard Schechner
New York University
"The Theater of Rules: Re-membering Law in Performance"
Bernard Hibbitts
University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Comments and Discussion
Carol Martin
New York University
and
Danielle Allen
University of Chicago
"Theatre and Justice: The Exonerated"
Jessica Blank (author), Erik Jensen (author), and Robert Balaban (director)
"Agamemnons"
Laura Slatkin (New York University), John Chioles (New York University), Charles Mee (playwright), Peter Meineck & Robert Richmond (Aquila Theatre Company), Richard Schechner (New York University), and Zvika Serper (Tel Aviv University)
The conference is held in conjunction with the Aquila Theatre Company's production of Agamemnon by Aeschylus.
The screening and the conference are free and open to the public. No reservations required. For further information, please contact NYU College Dean.s Office: (212) 998-8100; e-mail cyberdean@nyu.edu
A flyer of this event is available for download in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view this file.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
The Worst of American Idol
My roommate is watching "The Worst of American Idol" right now in his room. I can hear it, faintly. Normally I jump at the chance to see stuff like this, but I'm just too tired, and wanted to lie down and listen to my new mueller/korber/steinbruchel cd. That cd was too quiet, and the show was too loud, so I took my headphones off and listened.
The qualm I have with the show is that some of these people aren't really *that bad*, they're just pretty mediocre. It's not that they've got bad voices, a lot of them are singing material that takes a virtuiosity which they haven't really cultivated; one gets the feeling that if they take something a little more straightforward, it wouldn't sound half bad. From my perspective, it seems like there's less public singing around nowadays, at least than there was in some imaginary past I've made up. All singing needs to be theatrical now, if it's not on a stage, and at a distance, it's not considered something to do. They sing on TV, on the radio and before the national anthems, but do they still sing in bars, in temple/church or to their children? There's something that's more direct about that kind of singing, it's more about community about particpating, than aesthetic distance and judgement.
The qualm I have with the show is that some of these people aren't really *that bad*, they're just pretty mediocre. It's not that they've got bad voices, a lot of them are singing material that takes a virtuiosity which they haven't really cultivated; one gets the feeling that if they take something a little more straightforward, it wouldn't sound half bad. From my perspective, it seems like there's less public singing around nowadays, at least than there was in some imaginary past I've made up. All singing needs to be theatrical now, if it's not on a stage, and at a distance, it's not considered something to do. They sing on TV, on the radio and before the national anthems, but do they still sing in bars, in temple/church or to their children? There's something that's more direct about that kind of singing, it's more about community about particpating, than aesthetic distance and judgement.
Monday, January 19, 2004
AMPLIFY 2002: balance review
....is here. My long and ponderous rebuttal to my critics is here. Like, I know it's a lot of text and stuff, but if you read the review all the way through, you really ought to read the rebuttal too.
The length of my response has nothing (well, almost nothing (-: ) to do with being thin skinned; it's more that I had the opportunity, and the desire to actually think all the way through an argument, and try to make a point. Nowadays I've stopped feeling bad about writing/thinking about art so much. I figure that anything that forces me to structure any sort of thoughts I have at this point is a good thing, and worth doing.
It's 5am. I should have been asleep 5 hours ago.
The length of my response has nothing (well, almost nothing (-: ) to do with being thin skinned; it's more that I had the opportunity, and the desire to actually think all the way through an argument, and try to make a point. Nowadays I've stopped feeling bad about writing/thinking about art so much. I figure that anything that forces me to structure any sort of thoughts I have at this point is a good thing, and worth doing.
It's 5am. I should have been asleep 5 hours ago.
