fredag
HAKIM BEY
Pornography
"IN PERSIA I SAW that poetry is meant to be set to music & chanted or sung--for one reason alone--because it works.
A right combination of image & tune plunges the audience into a hal (something between emotional/aesthetic mood & trance of hyperawareness), outbursts of weeping, fits of dancing--measurable physical response to art. For us the link between poetry & body died with the bardic era--we read under the influence of a cartesian anaesthetic gas.
In N. India even non-musical recitation provokes noise & motion, each good couplet applauded, "Wa! Wa!" with elegant hand-jive, tossing of rupees--whereas we listen to poetry like some SciFi brain in a jar--at best a wry chuckle or grimace, vestige of simian rictus--the rest of the body off on some other planet.
In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison--a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all--a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence--shadow-realm of print, or of abstract thought--world without risk or eros.
So poetry is dead again--& even if the mumia from its corpse retains some healing properties, auto-resurrection isn't one of them.
If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of terrorism. At any cost re-connect poetry to the body. Not crimes against bodies, but against Ideas (& Ideas-in-things) which are deadly & suffocating. Not stupid libertinage but exemplary crimes, aesthetic crimes, crimes for love. In England some pornographic books are still banned. Pornography has a measurable physical effect on its readers. Like propaganda it sometimes changes lives because it uncovers true desires.
Our culture produces most of its porn out of body-hatred-- but erotic art in itself makes a better vehicle for enhancement of being/consciousness/bliss--as in certain oriental works. A sort of Western tantrik porn might help galvanize the corpse, make it shine with some of the glamor of crime.
America has freedom of speech because all words are considered equally vapid. Only images count--the censors love snaps of death & mutilation but recoil in horror at the sight of a child masturbating--apparently they experience this as an invasion of their existential validity, their identification with the Empire & its subtlest gestures.
No doubt even the most poetic porn would never revive the faceless corpse to dance & sing (like the Chinese Chaos- bird)--but...imagine a script for a three-minute film set on a mythical isle of runaway children who inhabit ruins of old castles or build totem-huts & junk-assemblage nests--mixture of animation, special-effects, compugraphix & color tape-- edited tight as a fastfood commercial...
...but weird & naked, feathers & bones, tents sewn with crystal, black dogs, pigeon-blood--flashes of amber limbs tangled in sheets--faces in starry masks kissing soft creases of skin--androgynous pirates, castaway faces of columbines sleeping on thigh-white flowers--nasty hilarious piss jokes, pet lizards lapping spilt milk--nude break- dancing--victorian bathtub with rubber ducks & pink boners-- Alice on ganja...
...atonal punk reggae scored for gamelan, synthesizer, saxophones & drums--electric boogie lyrics sung by aetherial children's choir--ontological anarchist lyrics, cross between Hafez & Pancho Villa, Li Po & Bakunin, Kabir & Tzara- -call it "CHAOS--the Rock Video!"
No...probably just a dream. Too expensive to produce, & besides, who would see it? Not the kids it was meant to seduce. Pirate TV is a futile fantasy, rock merely another commodity--forget the slick gesamtkunstwerk, then. Leaflet a playground with inflammatory smutty feuilletons-- pornopropaganda, crackpot samizdat to unchain Desire from its bondage."
FROM T. A. Z.
The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism
By Hakim Bey
"IN PERSIA I SAW that poetry is meant to be set to music & chanted or sung--for one reason alone--because it works.
A right combination of image & tune plunges the audience into a hal (something between emotional/aesthetic mood & trance of hyperawareness), outbursts of weeping, fits of dancing--measurable physical response to art. For us the link between poetry & body died with the bardic era--we read under the influence of a cartesian anaesthetic gas.
In N. India even non-musical recitation provokes noise & motion, each good couplet applauded, "Wa! Wa!" with elegant hand-jive, tossing of rupees--whereas we listen to poetry like some SciFi brain in a jar--at best a wry chuckle or grimace, vestige of simian rictus--the rest of the body off on some other planet.
In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison--a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all--a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence--shadow-realm of print, or of abstract thought--world without risk or eros.
So poetry is dead again--& even if the mumia from its corpse retains some healing properties, auto-resurrection isn't one of them.
If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of terrorism. At any cost re-connect poetry to the body. Not crimes against bodies, but against Ideas (& Ideas-in-things) which are deadly & suffocating. Not stupid libertinage but exemplary crimes, aesthetic crimes, crimes for love. In England some pornographic books are still banned. Pornography has a measurable physical effect on its readers. Like propaganda it sometimes changes lives because it uncovers true desires.
Our culture produces most of its porn out of body-hatred-- but erotic art in itself makes a better vehicle for enhancement of being/consciousness/bliss--as in certain oriental works. A sort of Western tantrik porn might help galvanize the corpse, make it shine with some of the glamor of crime.
America has freedom of speech because all words are considered equally vapid. Only images count--the censors love snaps of death & mutilation but recoil in horror at the sight of a child masturbating--apparently they experience this as an invasion of their existential validity, their identification with the Empire & its subtlest gestures.
No doubt even the most poetic porn would never revive the faceless corpse to dance & sing (like the Chinese Chaos- bird)--but...imagine a script for a three-minute film set on a mythical isle of runaway children who inhabit ruins of old castles or build totem-huts & junk-assemblage nests--mixture of animation, special-effects, compugraphix & color tape-- edited tight as a fastfood commercial...
...but weird & naked, feathers & bones, tents sewn with crystal, black dogs, pigeon-blood--flashes of amber limbs tangled in sheets--faces in starry masks kissing soft creases of skin--androgynous pirates, castaway faces of columbines sleeping on thigh-white flowers--nasty hilarious piss jokes, pet lizards lapping spilt milk--nude break- dancing--victorian bathtub with rubber ducks & pink boners-- Alice on ganja...
...atonal punk reggae scored for gamelan, synthesizer, saxophones & drums--electric boogie lyrics sung by aetherial children's choir--ontological anarchist lyrics, cross between Hafez & Pancho Villa, Li Po & Bakunin, Kabir & Tzara- -call it "CHAOS--the Rock Video!"
No...probably just a dream. Too expensive to produce, & besides, who would see it? Not the kids it was meant to seduce. Pirate TV is a futile fantasy, rock merely another commodity--forget the slick gesamtkunstwerk, then. Leaflet a playground with inflammatory smutty feuilletons-- pornopropaganda, crackpot samizdat to unchain Desire from its bondage."
FROM T. A. Z.
The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism
By Hakim Bey
lørdag
Egill Sæbjörnsson and Marcia Moraes
The World Is Bigger Than You Think
Friday, May 6
7:30 p.m.
Performance
The Watermill Center
39 Watermill Towd Road
Water Mill, NY 11976
Reservations (required)
The World is Bigger Than You Think
On May 6, Egill Sæbjörnsson and Marcia Moraes will give a performance presentation of research for their new pop opera being developed as part of their residency at The Watermill Center. The World is Bigger Than You Think is a “walk through” experience where different places around The Center are brought to life with video projections, performance and music. The aim of the residency is to explore working “site specific” as a part of a research for a second phase of rehearsal and final presentation of the work. Lisa Lie, theater director, actor and writer from Norway together with Jeremy Woodruff, Berlin based American composer, join in for the developmental phase of this multi-stage work. During the residency the group will concentrate on adapting the material for the environment and interact with the spaces and collection of The Watermill Center. One aspect of the work is the relationship between a person and their environment, or how inner and outer worlds are connected. They will also present their work again at Clocktower Gallery in New York City on May 10. Click HERE for more details.
Moraes & Sæbjörnsson have collaborated on several projects such as The Mind that toured different institutions as Frankfurter Kunstverein, Museum for Contemporary Art in Roskilde and Neuer Berliner Kunstberein. Their last production What Got You Here Won’t Get You There was a commissioned work by Freunde Guter Musik for their series Musicworks by Visual Artists and was presented at Hamburger Bahnhof – museum für Gegenwart in Berlin. This work is supported by The Icelandic Arts Center.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Egill Sæbjörnsson has a background both as a musician and visual artist and has dealt with performance for most of his career, alongside making installations with video projected onto objects. He has exhibited his works in numerous exhibitions around the world. Last year he was nominated for the Carnegie Art Award and this year he is a fellow at Villa Concordia in Germany. Marcia Moraes is a theater director, actress, dancer and a master physical theater professor. As well as doing her own productions she worked as a director and performer with Opera Composer Jocy de Oliveira in productions in Brazil and Germany. In New York she works with Richard Schechner teaching workshops for the performance department at the NYU. Lisa Lie works in the interface between performance art and text based theater. She has through her own work and the performance duo Sons of Liberty with Stina Kajaso, had a big influence on the Norwegian performance scene through a mixture of pop-culture, trash and misantrophic honesty. Lisa Lie has also published three books. Jeremy Woodruff's thoughtful actions with sound are informed by his comprehensive research of cultural/historical musicology. In the last few years several pieces were commissioned and premiered by Percusemble Berlin, and by the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin, among others. In 2004 he moved to Berlin, Germany where he is currently Director of the Neue Musikschule Berlin. Currently he is a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh.
Image courtesy: i8 Gallery, Reykjavik and Hopstreet Gallery, Brussels. Photo by Phile Deprez
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New York, New York 10001 USA (212) 253-7484
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