Dear Alan Very informative and evocative text!
Explaining an expert's attitude towards a proper/better understanding - and a clarification as well - of a life-long dedication to idio- syncratic writings i.e. textual existence Serving as a life-line for fellow 'artists' Bravo! Andreas Maria Jacobs w: http://www.nictoglobe.com w: http://burgerwaanzin.nl On May 25, 2011, at 10:40, Alan Sondheim <sondh...@panix.com> wrote: > > > Mis/take > > Above all, my work is philosophical. It insists not on the letter of > philosophy, but on its dissemination contamination, of and through > media. > It insists on the visual as always already ikonic, inscription as > present > and concrete. It insists on the final grounds of unutterable pain and > death and the cipher that exists, not as replacement, but as fool's > errand. > > The mistake is to read my work otherwise, as neurosis or > autobiography; > the latter is always lies, fabrications and the narratology of the > predicate, and the former is no better or worse than anyone else's, > certainly nothing that structures the text. If my text is a symptom, > it is > a symptom of the well, not the hospital, and of a deliberate abject > that > refuses concealment or conciliation. > > When I write what I might consider codework, the issues exist, not > in a > traditional reading of the surface, but in the production of a > forest of > signs that ground the surface as residue, hardly symbolic, but abject > debris of the future anterior of the written. I am always aware of > this, > this structure and its motility, in every 'literary' text I write; I > am > more concerned with this level than that of the surface, which seems a > production in the sense that a play may be a production, but is a > playing > as well, with or without the theater. > > In other words, the forest of signs are trees, im/plants, physiology. > > In other words, the signs are signposts. > > When I write a text on mathematics, it is not an exercise, but > through 0 > and 1, a penetration among analogic and digital discourses, an > entangle- > ment refusing an unraveling. To the Borromean knot I oppose the plate > trick of braids rotating through 720 degrees of 3-space, deeper > melding of > structures than meets the eye, or rather structures that meet the > eye only > dynamically and not at all through a laid n-dimensional diagram with > time > as afterthought. Not a formal exercise, however defined but the > concrete > movement of organisms through space, taking up time, proceeding. > > In this regard my motion capture work is not an exercise in topology > or > choreography, but a philosophical investigation into the topology of > the > body, opposed or adjunct to a topography which is thereby rendered > political or environmental, not to mention medical, within and > without a > phenomenology of pain and pleasure. > > My characters, Julu, Jennifer, Alan, Nikuko, are actants in > Heideggerian > drama among MOOs, talkers, and other virtual worlds. They stand for > nothing and do not stand-in; they are ikonic, one might say abject, > on the > order of a thud or philosophical gesture. This is especially true of > Alan > Dojoji or Julu Twine, who have inherited what Nikuko originally > proffered > in MOOs or internet relay chat. > > I cannot force a reader to apprehend the philosophical content of my > work > - what I see as the heart of what I do, but I can say that anything > else, > anything bypassing or ignoring that, is a form of misrecognition that > mistakes my circumstances for a world or word or ward, or rather > attempts > to interpret the world or my vision of it, through my (personal) > circum- > stances which are known to varying degrees, as usual for all of us and > among us. This is in direct opposition to how I think the world, > what I > grapple with: the ultimate alienness of a existence that can only be > hinted it - surfaces, for example, skewed within liquid > architectures of > virtual worlds, or languaging decoded to the point of abject > exhaustion, > where non-sense borders on truth's frenzy in the face of an unknown. > > The world is an unknown; knowledge is always already on the bring of > annihilation, catastrophic; it cannot decode its own hunger or > power; it > cannot exist without extraneous and useless style. All mistakes are to > assume otherwise, but it is only through mistakes, miss-takes, that > anything is acknowledged or apprehended. Decoding is endless; multi- > verses fill incomprehensible gaps; it is within the diacritical that > any > progress at all is made. The chasm I acknowledge is the chasm within > all > of us; the flesh that falls apart here is the same as elsewhere. It > is the > philosophical that is the obvious beyond of religion; it gives the > remnant > a voice, and is itself the remnant of voice. The 0-1 brackets nothing. > Murmur escapes the wall. Beyond neither 0 nor 1 is the murmur. > > But it is philosophy, in the guise of philosophy, and hopefully, in > the > midst of the noise of my endless klein bottles of texts, this is what > comes through - not a philosophy of axiomatics or foundations, not a > philosophy of absolutes or technophilias, but a philosophy constantly > under erasure - an erasure in which, it turns out, the flesh is > scraped > raw, without an emergent. Synergy only goes so far, and only inso- > far as > one might deterritorialize the world, which means nothing, reduces > to the > ashes of the grave, the cries of the wounded, the anonymities of the > leading-to-slaughters, all on the levels of histories under erasure as > well. > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
