Träume - Studie zu Tristan und Isolde (Dreams)

Wesendonck-Lieder by Richard Wagner
July 5th, 2010

Sag, welch wunderbare Träume
Halten meinen Sinn umfangen,
Daß sie nicht wie leere Schäume
Sind in ödes Nichts vergangen?

Träume, die in jeder Stunde,
Jedem Tage schöner blühn,
Und mit ihrer Himmelskunde
Selig durchs Gemüte ziehn!

Träume, die wie hehre Strahlen
In die Seele sich versenken,
Dort ein ewig Bild zu malen:
Allvergessen, Eingedenken!

Träume, wie wenn Frühlingssonne
Aus dem Schnee die Blüten küßt,
Daß zu nie geahnter Wonne
Sie der neue Tag begrüßt,

Daß sie wachsen, daß sie blühen,
Träumend spenden ihren Duft,
Sanft an deiner Brust verglühen,
Und dann sinken in die Gruft.

Thanks to David Gödel and Rick Owens !

You and me, don't you know? In the same boat.

"In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false." Guy Debord

June 20th, 2010

 

Via the New Shelton wet/dry: "The Preface to the Phenomenology, all by itself, is considered one of Hegel's major works and a major text in the history of philosophy, because in it he sets out the core of his philosophical method and what distinguishes it from that of any previous philosophy, especially that of his German Idealist predecessors (Kant, Fichte, and Schelling).

 

Hegel's approach, referred to as the Hegelian method, consists of actually examining consciousness' experience of both itself and of its objects and eliciting the contradictions and dynamic movement that come to light in looking at this experience. Hegel uses the phrase pure looking at(reines Zusehen) to describe this method. If consciousness just pays attention to what is actually present in itself and its relation to its objects, it will see that what looks like stable and fixed forms dissolve into a dialectical movement. Thus philosophy, according to Hegel, cannot just set out arguments based on a flow of deductive reasoning. Rather, it must look at actual consciousness, as it really exists." (From Wikipedia)

Home of the Brave

by Laurie Anderson

June 12th, 2010

 

Yes, it's been a while but since I have been reminded this week it is now time to reveal that I still am a fan of hers. So, reconsider Home of the Brave (1986).

 

"Flying Birds.

Excellent Birds.

Watch them fly.

There they go."

 

"Well I was talking to a friend

And I was saying:

I wanted you.

And I was looking for you.

But I couldn't find you. I couldn't find you.

And he said: Hey!

Are you talking to me?

Or are you just practicing

For one of those performances of yours?

Huh?

Language! It's a virus!"

 

"O Superman. (...)

And I've got a message to give to you.

Here come the planes.

So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come

as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go."

 

"Anyway, we got into their boat and left the island.

But they never stayed anywhere very long.

Because the woman was restless. She was a hothead.

She was a woman in love.

And this is not a story people tell.

It is something I know myself.

And when I do my job, I am thinking about these things.

Because when I do my job, that is what I think about.

Oooo la la la.

Yeah La La La.

Voici. Voila'.

Here. And there.

Ooo la la la.

Oh yes.

Voici le Langue D'Amour.

This is the language of love."

The past is giving meaning to the present and therefore the present has no meaning.

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1995-1986)

March 26th, 2010

 

From Wikipedia: "Jiddu Krishnamurti was a renowned writer and speaker on philosophical and spiritual subjects. His subject matter included: psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, human relationships, and bringing about positive change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social."

 

Am currently working my way through seven talks and five Q&A meetings, which took place in Saanen, Switzerland in 1980. Reconsider!

CRASH

Gagosian Gallery's homage to J.G. Ballard

February 17th, 2010

 

From Dangerous Minds: "As a tie-in to the Gagosian show, Iain Sinclair, writing in today's Guardian, offers up a wonderful account of his trip to Shepperton, where Ballard spoke of the art and artists that most inspired him. When it came to such things, Ballard was clearly a lucid, passionate speaker. You can get a rare glimpse of this yourself in the '93 interview from British television."

 

From Guardian: "The incantatory manifesto, What I Believe, deploys Ballard's favourite device, the list, as he curates a museum of affinities: 'I believe in Max Ernst, Delvaux, Dalí, ­Titian, / Goya, Leonardo, Vermeer, Chirico, Magritte, / Redon, Dürer, ­Tanguy, the Facteur Cheval, / the Watts Towers, Böcklin, Francis Bacon, and all the invisible artists / within the psychiatric institutions of the planet.'"

 

(Painting by Ed Ruscha) 

Alternate reality games

Dr. Jane McGonigal

February 3rd, 2010

 

Tomorrow we have another round of final-year project's presentations at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. One of the students, Roland Sigmond, will present a concept for an alternate reality game.

 

From Wikipedia: "The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants' responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium."

 

That might be the reason why I was thinking about Jane McGonigal today. She just launched a new ARG called Evoke.

In 2006, Dr. McGonigal was named one of the world's top innovators under the age of 35 by MIT's Technology Review.

In 2008, Dr. McGonigal was named one of the Top 20 Most Important Women in videogaming, and World Without Oil received the South by Southwest Interactive Award for Activism.

Check her out, she is really something.

William Forsythe

Improvisation Technologies
January 26th, 2010

William Forsythe: "So I began to imagine lines in space that could be bent, or tossed, or otherwise distorted. By moving from a point to a line to a plane to a volume, I was able to visualize a geometric space composed of points that were vastly interconnected. As these points were all contained within the dancer's body, there was really no transition necessary, only a series of foldings and unfoldings that produced an infinite number of movements and positions. From these, we started making catalogues of what the body could do. And for every new piece that we choreographed, we would develop a new series of procedures."

Thanks to Phillip Schulze!

Midtown 120 Blues

by DJ Sprinkles aka Terre Thaemlitz
January 9th, 2010

Always had this thing going for Terre Thaemlitz. Listen to some excerpts of his Midtown 120 Blues album.

Via SFBG: "DJ Sprinkles is one alias in a vast arsenal overseen by Terre Thaemlitz, who also makes records under the monikers G.R.R.L., Terre's Neu Wuss Fusion, and Kami-Sakunobe House Explosion, among others. Thaemlitz's approach to electronic music is playful and dead up serious about its capacity for political content. His (or her, depending on your preference; Thaemlitz's gender identity is fractured and fluid) current release as DJ Sprinkles, Midtown 120 Blues (2009, Mule Musiq) opens with a thesis statement: House isn't so much a sound as a situation."

Via Wikipedia: "Terre Thaemlitz is a musician, public speaker, and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label. Thaemlitz's work critically combines themes of identity politics - including gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race - with an ongoing critique of the socio-economics of commercial media production. This diversity of themes is matched by Thaemlitz's wide range of production styles, which include electroacoustic computer music, club-oriented deep house, digital jazz, ambient, and computer-composed neo-expressionist piano solos. Graphic design, photography, illustration, text and video also play a part in Thaemlitz's projects."

I am

A permutation poem by Brion Gysin
January 6th, 2009

"He's the only man I've ever respected in my life. I've admired people, I've liked them, but Brion Gysin was the only man I've ever respected." William S.Burroughs

Via UbuWeb: "The Englishman Brion Gysin, one of the founders of the beatnik movement and inventor of such new formulas as the collage-novel, has composed his phonic texts on this principle. I am is a classic of the genre. Composed exclusively of permutations of the biblical words 'I am that I am', with ever more marked accelerations, he succeeds in rendering, from the initial nucleus, a crowd of 'I am's, the creation of the world in geometrical progression until it fades away in the sidereal silence."

Also check out Brion Gysin in UbuWeb Film.

One

Mark Pellington and Jon Klein
December 16th, 2009

Today, for no reason, I thought about Mark Pellington and Jon Klein's 13-part international series Buzz, which they created in the late 80s. This format had a huge impact on my work back then.

Via boing boing: "Buzz was a fantastic experiment in non-linearity and cut-up that drew heavily from - and presented - avant-garde art, underground cinema, early cyberpunk, industrial culture, appropriation/sampling, and postmodern literature. Experientially, it feels like what Mondo 2000 would have looked like as a television show, and in fact Mondo founder RU Sirius was interviewed on the first episode. Other notable contributors/subjects included William S. Burroughs, Jenny Holzer, Genesis P-Orridge, Syd Mead, and many other happy mutants. This was the future of television, circa 1988. Too bad it didn't quite pan out this way."

Via Mark Pellington: "This groundbreaking work in collage and sound / image / text juxtaposition became the primary focus of his early work, leading to the creation of an ambitious 13-part global series, Buzz with MTV Europe producer/director Jon Klein. Commissioned by MTV and channel 4 (UK), Buzz was hailed by critics as progressive, adventurous television."

Amongst others Mark Pellington also directed the video clip for U2's One, which I still like a lot.