Category: mindspill

war/games

October 12th, 2011 · · mindspill No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
“The word ‘strategy’ is employed in three ways. First, to designate the means employed to attain a certain end; it is a question of rationality functioning to arrive at an objective. Second, to designate the manner in which a partner in a certain game acts with regard to what he thinks should be the action of the others and what he considers the others to be his own; it is the way in which one seeks to have the advantage over others. Third, to designate the procedures used in a situation of confrontation to deprive the opponent of his means of combat and to reduce him to giving up the struggle; it is a question, therefore, of the means destined to obtain victory. These three meanings come together in situations of confrontation – war or games – where the objective is to act upon an adversary in such a manner as to render the struggle impossible for him.”
- Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power”

 

Tomorrow I am giving a presentation – a brief presentation – on a project that I imagine will preoccupy me for the rest of the semester, maybe the rest of the (school) year. Or, I suppose, it may occupy me for the rest of the year and some of the spring of next year. It is absurd to me that, beginning in September, my concept of what a year is changed drastically.

I am going to blog about it because writing about it isn’t helping. Blogging is helpful because the internet exists outside of my mind, whereas I am less than sure that TextEdit exists outside of my mind. In any case, there is a difference, at least in terms of a release of tension, between writing for oneself and writing for an (assumed) audience. Something about getting an idea out there, which in this case just means out of my head.

I am sitting at the kitchen table, next to a set-up board of chess. Also on the table is a cookbook, a book called Subtitles: On the Foreigness of Film; the novel Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee, which I am going to bring in as an example tomorrow; the book GO for Beginners by Kaoru Iwamoto, as well as a pamphlet entitled “The Way to Go,” sandwiched in between these two books; Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal talks on Zen meditation and practice, by Shunryu Suzuki, in which I found tonight a postcard with the book’s titles in calligraphy as drawn by Suzuki. I put it on the fridge.

RIP Kool Keith

On Saturday, I will begin playing chess, once a day, for 30 days. On November 15th, I will begin playing go, once a day, for 30 days.

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untethering reality

October 4th, 2011 · · mindspill No comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

I’ve recently – not that recently – begun classes at the California College of the Arts, on my way, hopefully, to an MFA through the Social Practice Workshop. As part of my studies, I’ve been asked/required to undertake a “fieldwork” project. This is problematic for me because I have a deep suspicion/wariness of the artist as researcher/savior model, where an artist goes to a town, undertakes an investigation, etc, and shows everybody the light of the Truth. I think I am, for the most part, unaware of myself, but I am certainly aware that I do not know what the Truth is. In fact, I’m not positive I care.

So I decided to pursue a few paths that seemed either entertaining or interesting or both: volunteer at a homeless queer youth center, something I’ve been wanting to do, something I’d love to be able to make work about without exploiting homeless queer youth, and so on; learn how to play chess and go, and generally delve into war or war-related games; and make some calls regarding the recent blockage of Palestinian children’s art at the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland. With all of these projects, I was relatively unsure of what I was doing. I still am relatively unsure of what I’m doing, but at least today somebody called me back.

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vinegar man v the future

August 24th, 2011 · · Assortment, mindspill No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The first weekend I was here, in an attempt to stop feeling like an alien in San Francisco, I went to an artist talk by Lawrence Diggs, aka “Vinegar Man,” aka this guy, at 667Shotwell, which, to my (pleasant) surprise, turned out to be not only somebody’s home, but in fact the home of an artist who I had seen speak the previous day on a previous anti-alien excursion. Small world? No matter, but it felt good to be at a house event, and a comfortable/welcoming one at that.

my car, sans two windows, alongside its former contents, elsewhere on shotwell street

The talk was, in theory, to be about artists revitalizing small towns, or the opportunities that artists had in small towns, or the opportunities small towns saw in artists – perhaps a combination. Lawrence Diggs, as it turned out, relocated several years ago to Roslyn, South Dakota, one of many declining towns of not-very-many-people in the state, and established the International Vinegar Museum and its attendant Festival, an absolutely preposterous enterprise that nonetheless brings much-needed income and bodies to the town. The talk was billed to center on the prospect of artists moving to declining towns and doing something in them; the positive roles that artists could play in these towns, etc. I was interested in seeing this, having recently driven through portions of southwestern South Dakota – namely the Oglala Sioux Nation through the Black Hills to Custer, SD – and noted not only its beauty but also its wrenching poverty; I had also recently read about Scenic, SD, which is apparently still for sale.

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shimmer

June 21st, 2011 · · mindspill 2 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Towards the end of this charming documentary on Idyll Dandy Acres, in the midst of an obligatory heartwarming montage segment, comes this telling little fragment:

It comes at a strange time in the video. MaxZine, who is speaking here, is featured rather prominently throughout the entire thing: chopping wood, wearing dresses, juggling, cooking, etc., in general being cute and charming and a maybe a little silly. In short, he is being portrayed in the very way that he warns against in this short segment, until he – knowingly or unknowingly – calls the filmmakers out on it.

His choice of words is fascinating: “If we create too much of a romanticized vision of what IDA is, it might make it harder for us to deal with making it what we really want it to be.” That is, the idyllic nature of IDA, its potential to exist as this sort of fantasy world of peaceloving eco-queerdom, is as much of a trap as it may be a goal, for this image would be so pervasive that it would preclude those living there from actually creating what IDA can really be. In order for IDA to remain a model towards changing the “greater society,” those living there must always be able to “figure out how to work on ourselves” – they must not be entombed in the image/expectation of paradise. For once this happens, IDA loses all of its radical potential and becomes a neutered freak sideshow prancing around somewhere in Tennessee.

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instrument instrument instrument/marcia marcia marcia

December 18th, 2010 · · Assortment, mindspill No comments - Tags: , , , , , , ,
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Cross-posted from the STEIM Project Blog:

I’ve just finished an Orientation workshop at STEIM, along with Emmanuelle Gibello, Duncan Chapman, Cormac Crawley, and Ludwig Giersch. I went without any real agenda, just with a jumble of ideas that have been sitting at the back of my mind that, given my lack of skill and patience with MAX and Supercollider, I had more or less given up on. STEIM’s history of working with improvisers had me hoping that the programs they’ve developed would make sense to me. And, thankfully and perhaps unsurprisingly, both LiSa and junXion feel intuitive to me. It is really not something that can be described, or that warrants description, even. They simply feel natural. Now I feel like a number of projects, including the development of a live interactive object to augment solo trumpet performance, are actually possible. Thanks, STEIM!

What was a surprise to me, and shouldn’t have been, was the constant discussion floating around STEIM about the role of electronics as instruments. As somebody who plays an instrument for which there is no controversy – a trumpet is unquestioned as a musical instrument, as far as I can tell – these discussions are fascinating. What makes an instrument? How is virtuosity defined? How can electronics become embodied? Who cares? In most cases it seems that the idea is to justify using a “machine” – a laptop, collection of circuits, whatever – as an “instrument.” But justify to whom and against what?

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