Saturday, 18 June 2011
Notes from "The painter of modern life" by Charles Baudelaire
Beauty is made up, on the one hand, of an element that is eternal and invariable, though to determine how much of it there is is extremely difficult, and, on the other, of a relative circumstantial element, which we may like to call, successively or at one and the same time, contemporaneity, fashion, morality, passion. Without this second element, which is like the amusing, teasing, appetite-whetting coating of the divine cake, the first element would be indigestible, tasteless, unadapted and inappropriate to human nature. I challenge anyone to find any sample whatsoever of beauty that does not contain these two elements.
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Notes from Giorgio Agamben "Notes on Gesture"
(In the cinema, a society that has lost its gestures seeks to re-appropriate what it has lost while simultaneously recording that loss)
An era that has lost its gestures is, for that reason, obsessed with them; for people who are bereft of all that is natural to them, every gesture becomes a fate.
[...]
For it is only as a gesture in which potential and action, nature and artifice, contingency and necessity, become indiscernible (in the final analysis, therefore, solely as theatre) that the idea of eternal return makes sense.
[...]
Gesture rather than image is the cinematic element.
[...]
Film images are neither 'timeless postures' (like the forms of the classical world) nor 'static sections' of movement, but 'moving sections', images which are themselves in motion, which Deleuze calls 'moving pictures'.
[...]
Because it is centrally located in the gesture, not the image, cinema essentially ranks with ethics and politics (and not merely with aesthetics)
[...]
What characterizes gesture is that in it there is neither production nor enactment, but undertaking and supporting.
[...]
Gesture is the display of mediation, the making visible of a means as such. It makes apparent the human state of being-in-medium and thereby opens up the ethical dimension for human beings.
[...]
In this sense, gesture is the communication of a potential to be communicated. In itself it has nothing to say, because what it shows is the being-in-language of human beings as a pure potential for mediation. But since being-in-language is not something that can be spoken of in propositions, in its essence gesture is always a gesture of a non-making of sense in language, it always a gag in the strict meaning of the term, indicating in the first instance something that is put in the mouth to hinder speech, and subsequently the actor's improvisation to make up for a memory lapse or some impossibility of speech.
[...]
The essential 'mutism' of cinema (which has nothing to do with either the presence or absence of a soundtrack) is, like the mutism of philosophy, an exposition of the human being's being-in-language: pure gesturality. The Wittgensteinian definition of mysticism as the showing of what cannot be spoken of, is a literal definition of the gag that displays language itself, being-in-language itself, as a giant memory lapse, as an incurable speech defect.
V
Politics is the sphere of pure means, which is to say of the absolute and total gesturality of human beings
An era that has lost its gestures is, for that reason, obsessed with them; for people who are bereft of all that is natural to them, every gesture becomes a fate.
[...]
For it is only as a gesture in which potential and action, nature and artifice, contingency and necessity, become indiscernible (in the final analysis, therefore, solely as theatre) that the idea of eternal return makes sense.
[...]
Gesture rather than image is the cinematic element.
[...]
Film images are neither 'timeless postures' (like the forms of the classical world) nor 'static sections' of movement, but 'moving sections', images which are themselves in motion, which Deleuze calls 'moving pictures'.
[...]
Because it is centrally located in the gesture, not the image, cinema essentially ranks with ethics and politics (and not merely with aesthetics)
[...]
What characterizes gesture is that in it there is neither production nor enactment, but undertaking and supporting.
[...]
Gesture is the display of mediation, the making visible of a means as such. It makes apparent the human state of being-in-medium and thereby opens up the ethical dimension for human beings.
[...]
In this sense, gesture is the communication of a potential to be communicated. In itself it has nothing to say, because what it shows is the being-in-language of human beings as a pure potential for mediation. But since being-in-language is not something that can be spoken of in propositions, in its essence gesture is always a gesture of a non-making of sense in language, it always a gag in the strict meaning of the term, indicating in the first instance something that is put in the mouth to hinder speech, and subsequently the actor's improvisation to make up for a memory lapse or some impossibility of speech.
[...]
The essential 'mutism' of cinema (which has nothing to do with either the presence or absence of a soundtrack) is, like the mutism of philosophy, an exposition of the human being's being-in-language: pure gesturality. The Wittgensteinian definition of mysticism as the showing of what cannot be spoken of, is a literal definition of the gag that displays language itself, being-in-language itself, as a giant memory lapse, as an incurable speech defect.
V
Politics is the sphere of pure means, which is to say of the absolute and total gesturality of human beings
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Varro, De Lingua Latina
A person can make (facere) something and not enact (agere) it, as a poet makes a play, but does not act it (agree in the sense of playing a part); on the other hand the actor acts the play, but does not make it. So the play is made (fit) by the poet, but not acted (agitur) by him; it is acted by the actor, but not made by him. Whereas the imperator (the magistrate in whom supreme power is invested) of whom expression res gerere is used (to carry something out, in the sense of taking it upon oneself, assuming total responsibility for it), neither makes nor acts, but takes charge, in other words carries the burden of it (sustinet)
Gilles de la Tourette
With the leg as support, the right foot is raised from the ground in a rolling motion from the heel to the tips of the toes, which are the last part to be lifted away: the whole leg is brought forward, and the foot touches down at the heel. At this moment, the left foot, which has completed its roll and now rests only on the tips of the toes, in turn leaves the ground; the left leg is carried forward, moves closely alongside the right leg and goes past it, and the left foot touches the ground at the heel just as the right is finishing its roll forward.
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Francis Alys - A story of deception
desert eats jungle
jungle eats sea
sea eats desert
desert eats man
man eats jungle
jungle eats desert
from a piece of paper at Francis Alys' show at the Tate. The gallery attendant wouldn't let me photograph a A4 piece of paper but allowed me to copy what it said on my mobile.
A story of deception :
magic / absurdity / poetic / political / loop / unfinished / never-ending / infinite / never-changing / ever-changing
Simple gestures that generate different readings.
A fascination with human labour. People carrying carts/boxes/shop-bikes/plants.
Le temps du sommeil :
Series of small oil-paintings. Echoes of the performances, gestures.
The paintings in the series Le Temps du sommeil were begun in 1996 and often worked at night. They feature visionary dreamlike scenes involving tiny suited men and women acting out strange rituals reminiscent of children's games and gymnastic experiments. Many of these images anticipate and recall the forms he has employed in his actions, but the paintings connect to his actions in other ways too since their surfaces are worked and re-worked. Like the actions, they are perpetually unfinished, and their interpretations unfold over time without resolution.
from the booklet
Monday, 19 April 2010
Pier Paolo Pasolini - The Filmmaker - Documentary
Pier Paolo Pasolini - The Filmmaker - Documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gZzIlsNvDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gZzIlsNvDA
Monday, 15 March 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
