Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to Week 2 on -empyre_
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thank you, Cengiz for sharing your op-ed on lean production with Anna Watkins Fisher. I'm particularly struck by this line: "This crisis is making visible the fragile social relations that have until now invisibly underwritten the new American way of life." I have been thinking about how the invisibility to the eye of the virus, and the uncertainty of its mechanism since it is novel, has the effect of rendering hyper-visible, or magnifying, existing structural contradictions that have held together capitalist regimes. As Sorelle writes of the "vast inequalities between people that have come to light"— it is perhaps not so much that these inequalities were hidden in the first place but it is harder now to avert our collective eyes from these inequalities. In the Singapore example Sorelle gave, the predatory treatment and othering of the mostly South Asian laborers in the construction and shipping industries have been both omnipresent, criticized for decades, and larger ignored but now that the status quo is threatening the health and economic wellbeing of its internal others, and the optics of Singapore's attempt to be a model example of handling the virus, temporary measures have been put in place, such as shifting workers out of perennially overcrowded dorms, etc. It remains to be seen, after the end of this long pandemic moment, what of the temporary and emergency measures that are being enacted within different states will remain permanent, at whose benefit. In Jonathan's formulation, "what makes us vulnerable to the worst is also what grants us the possibility of the best." If this global viral situation reveals us as intertwined lives that cannot be enclosed by borders, I wonder what renewed, hopeful logics can emerge in this crisis and its aftermath. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
[-empyre-] (no subject)
--empyre- soft-skinned space--I've been thinking about the discussion between Junting, Aviva and Melinda on the porosity of borders—and Aviva's concern on "what will emerge now from the chaos," particularly from authoritarian figures with a penchant for building literal and symbolic walls. it does seem that on the level of nation-states, the porosity of borders has led to an intensification of nationalistic thinking and action, in terms of drawing even tighter boundaries and guarding what's within a defined boundary, whether within a nation-state, a city, or a family unit defined by residential proximity. As a new immigrant to Toronto since last August after 7 years in the States, I'm following the events and discourses in the States with a sense of dread, familiarity and alienation. At first, I was caught up with updates and that sense of sadness and guilt—sadness, as Renee says over the projects that have been suspended—and guilt, over feeling sadness at suspended projects when so many are in truly precarious and vulnerable situations, and guilt over being away from family in Singapore and Malaysia (if we leave Canada, we do not know when we'll be allowed back in since we are not Permanent Residents). At the U of Toronto, we have just completed three weeks of rushed online learning so now there's a quieting down as my partner and I draw up new plans for this summer. So much of our work and life had depended on so much travel, that this will be the first summer in more than a decade that we will stay put within the confines of our 1-bedroom apartment. Grateful and guilty that we can do so. Plans and experiments with cooking and baking have been punctuating our days, maybe it's to still have something to be able to plan and come to fruition within a small realm of predictability. And for the first time, I'm cultivating microorganisms in the form of a 7-day old sourdough starter that's become my marker of time and the displaced container of our deferred dreams. Stay well, all ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
[-empyre-] (no subject)
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Stirling Newberry: "The space also has differing viewpoints, as does every individual viewer. Art in situ is, too some extent, illusory." In his essay, "Reality and its Shadow, " Levinas is suspicious of art as monstrously inhuman because it is trapped in the stasis of a "Meanwhile" that does not come to pass. He says that "art is the falling movement on the hither side of time, into fate." In his reading, the haunted temporality of the image—that is neither in the moment, nor has any future—is trapped in stasis. Levinas lists non-plastic arts, "music, literature, theater and cinema," that too do not escape the shadow of the meanwhile. For Levinas, the meanwhile is an "eternal duration of the interval" and it is Art that brings about just this duration in the interval, where the shadow of reality is immobilized. In my rereading of the meanwhile in Levinas's through its shadow, I propose that the relation between art and art in remediation as the meeting of shadows and shadows. If the shadow is reality's parallel possibility where reality's nonexistence is discovered, Levinas's work could be read as a philosophy of the shadow that haunts the visible. In a chapter of my book project, I read the rhythm in Levinas's oeuvre between belief in vertical transcendence and the turns to darkness alongside the acts of substitution that link the intervals of reality and the shadow of art through the late 1990s textures of the Bangkok alley in In the Mood for Love and the remediation of *In the Mood for Love*, by Singapore artist Ming Wong in an installation 'In Love for the Mood." ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 167, Issue 2
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Kate: "What fascinates me here is the intersection of multiple temporal vectors: A personal, phenomenological experience of passage, a continuous reassessment of authoritative historical narratives and momentous encounters with seemingly universal timescales that go beyond human experience. Works of art allow us viewers to variously “inhabit” these temporal vectors by focusing experience on a specific set of aesthetic conditions." Yes, I'm very interested in the multiple temporalities intertwined within cinematic duration. What does this mean for the relation between the duration of the film and that of the world? In my current book project, "Luminous Flesh, Haunted Futures: The Visible and Invisible World of Chinese Cinemas," I argue that in *The Visible and the Invisible,* Merleau-Ponty extends his charismatic intertwining of the flesh of the world to the duration of time. In the unfinished work, there's a line "past and present are Ineinander [intertwining], each enveloping enveloped, and that itself is the flesh." Merleau-Ponty gives multiple references to the duration of the past, expressed in terms of light and world, for example, the enigmatic note "Rays of Past/ of world." I extend Merleau-Ponty's question "Where are we to put the limit between the body and the world, since the world is flesh?" to the perforated limits between the flesh of the world and the cinematic flash of the world. Rather than cinema being a delayed representation of a past moment or a given reality, it can then be read as a virtualisation of time that is not any less real. I'm inspired by the scene from Tsai Ming Liang's *Goodbye, Dragon Inn * (2003) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHMxMJ6qkOU (43 second mark here) In the scene of the rays and shadows of the cinematic world of King Hu's *Dragon Inn *(1967) falling on the skin of the Ticket Lady that forms the cinematic world enacted within Fuhe Grand Theater, that is then screened for the audience of *Goodbye, Dragon In*n, who are themselves embedded within the flesh of the world—what we see then is an amplification of not only philosophy in motion but also the materialisation of a fleshly duration. On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 8:56 PM Kate Brettkelly wrote: > --empyre- soft-skinned space-- > 1. Maybe there is also such a thing as mountain time that's inhabited and > experienced differently by people attracted to mountains for the > sublime/universal time or as in Chiang's film, for the duration of survival > 2. In this case, duration itself might be running still and flowing deep > but not in the sense of 'movement' or 'perspectival depth.' > > With respect to Liz’s contributions, I’m so pleased this conversation has > touched on the work of Hou Hsiao Hsien - a filmmaker whose lengthy, > durational scenes has inspired my own research. > > What fascinates me here is the intersection of multiple temporal vectors: > A personal, phenomenological experience of passage, a continuous > reassessment of authoritative historical narratives and momentous > encounters with seemingly universal timescales that go beyond human > experience. Works of art allow us viewers to variously “inhabit” these > temporal vectors by focusing experience on a specific set of aesthetic > conditions. > > The NZ-based art collective Local Time have achieve this by focusing > aesthetic experience on the act of drinking water. They serve exhibition > visitors glasses of fresh spring water drawn from the Horotiu stream – a > significant historical resource for indigenous Maori peoples of Auckland – > that has been paved over and now runs beneath the roads of Auckland’s > central business district. Local Time approach this as a gesture of > hospitality, but I’m wondering if visual arts such as this offer a special > means of implicating viewers/experiencers in durational passages that are > ‘unknown’ to them. Is there such thing as subversive experience of > duration? How might this relate to the survival of subjugated histories and > natural phenomena that have been “paved over” by dominant ideologies? So > many thoughts! > > - Kate > > On Thu, 8 Nov 2018 at 15:00, Timothy Conway Murray > wrote: > >> --empyre- soft-skinned space-- >> Elizabeth Wijaya wrote "On Kate's point on deep time and the danger of >> obscuring/forgetting >> historical subjugation and social inequality, maybe there is also such a >> thing as mountain time that's inhabited and experienced differently by >> people attracted to mountains for the sublime/universal time or as in >> Chiang's film, for the duration of survival." >> >> Something I've been discussing with artists and students ove
[-empyre-] (no subject)
--empyre- soft-skinned space--I agree with Tim's observation that Chiang's work remains tied to "projection" with elements of "distancing" and I think this is true even for the so-called immersive VR experience. From my experience of VR so far, it is immersive insofar as the act of putting on the headset cuts off more of your senses from the immediate physical surroundings than in a cinema hall, for example, but partly because there's frequently still a lot of limitations including the loss of frame rates, it doesn't close the 'distancing' gap that VR is sometimes touted to do. Another example of an even greater distancing through the use of drones is from an artist that Tim is familiar with—Singapore artist Charles Lim's "SEA STATE 9: Proclamation. "Proclamation" comes from the Singapore President's legal/magical ability to sign and turn "sea" into legal land. The sea is filled in with sand from Vietnam/Cambodia/Indonesia in the process officially called "land reclamation." Though this is not an example of indigenous art, it is interesting how "reclamation" has different resonances for native and indigenous people versus when the state is "reclaiming" the land from the sea. In terms of time, I think the work below, entirely shot with drones, shows the invisibilized processes that make up the quotidian time of Singapore. These processes are omnipresent and not obviously hidden from sight but are also invisible in time because few have the opportunity to see the slowness of the parts that make up the machinations. But of course, from this high point of view, the racialized aspect of the labor involved is also not visible. https://vimeo.com/204825032 -- Elizabeth Wijaya Ph.D. Candidate Department of Comparative Literature Cornell University Ithaca, New York ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 167, Issue 2
cultural heritage of the Cayugas, a > project which will culminate in the commission of a new Cayuga sculpture. > > Your post also reminds me of another work by Smithson, his salt sculptures > created for the 1969 Cornell University "Earth Art" exhibition ( > http://78.media.tumblr.com/8c044a34d4c024796e1958f953b4e5bb/tumblr_mr4dtbfQ6N1r70t2xo1_1280.jpg). > For this series of works, installed in the University art museum, Smithson > dis-played salt retrieved from the mines running under Cayuga Lake, the > home waters of the Cayuga. A lot can be said about these underdiscussed > works, but I've always appreciated them as countering, through an emphasis > on artistic constructivism and deconstructionism, the kind of universalist > approach to the environment that Smithson later describes Spiral Jetty to > be. Here the approach to this earthly material seems dependent, > contingent, on its placement within the very institutional history -- a > University art museum on Cayuga homelands -- of its artistic > transformation. But, as Kate cautions, even the 'deconstruction' of such > universalisms depends on the very cen > trality of the universalisms themselves. Indeed, it was not until last > year that the President of Cornell University first openly acknowledged in > formal settings the Cayuga homelands on which the University sits. > > It is in this complex regard that I'm hoping our discussions of 'duration' > in contemporary art will dwell on the cultural persistence of passage and > survival. > > Thanks for opening this window, Kate. > > Tim > > > Timothy Murray > Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, CCA Biennial > http://cca.cornell.edu > Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art > http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu <http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu/> > Professor of Comparative Literature and English > > B-1 West Sibley Hall > Cornell University > Ithaca, New York 14853 > > > > ?On 11/5/18, 3:22 PM, "empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on > behalf of Kate Brettkelly" behalf of kate.brettke...@gmail.com> wrote: > > --empyre- soft-skinned space-- > > > -- > > ___ > empyre mailing list > empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu > > > End of empyre Digest, Vol 167, Issue 2 > ** > -- Elizabeth Wijaya Ph.D. Candidate Department of Comparative Literature Cornell University Ithaca, New York ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
