“‘Man puts up a building - and falls apart himself. Who’ll be left to live then?’ doubted Voshchev, lost in his passing thoughtfulness.”
— - Andrei Platonov, The Foundation Pit (via crazed-maddened-eyes)
One glance at Pride-filled queer porn is more than enough to show how a vague optimism infects every corner of critique and life and human relations and sex and eating and violence, replacing every real tension with an over-inflated positive sensation. A desire for the ashes of trauma to give rise to a healthy, self-actualized individual.
In my own works, critically addressing this terminal naiveté has meant actively exhibiting both public and private aspects of my life, all the while showing how both are constructs and neither grant much visibility to myself as a person. Neither clarify my subjective struggle for a sense of placement within social contexts, and neither give you any true sense of knowing me. If you are a follower of my work, I am sure you would agree that despite all of my apparent openness and insistence upon invoking first-person narrative, and despite all of the words or images which one can conclude cause embarrassment for my parents or others, all of this “private” information somehow shares very little about my life (what life? terminal homebody), what I do (as little as possible), what I am like to talk with (I hear warmer than most anticipate, but maybe a bit too formal or polite, which may in turn be alienating), what I eat (my overwhelming knowledge of McDonald’s characters is a clue), what my friends are like (generally non-queer, non-transgendered outsider types of various class and cultural backgrounds), whether or not they know about my work (maybe of it, but generally not about it), if I smoke or drink or take drugs (never, although I would like to think this does not necessarily relate to any moral conviction - but from observation they seem to be more burdensome than liberating, and their use generally linked to transcendental ideologies which have no appeal to me), if I really am as economically strapped as I claim to be (yes, but I think I live more comfortably than people with standard incomes and heavy lifestyle loans related to homes, autos, etc. - also, I have no costs related to alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc., which burden most low-income persons I know), if I am the kind of person who can comfortably take a shit in front of a lover (never), if I mind a lover taking a shit in front of me (no, but it is not something I would request), etc. Both publicly (professionally) and privately (inter-personally), every attempt at openness is yet another fractured image held up for someone’s rejection or approval - including my own, of course - connecting every act of exhibitionism to morality like Benjamin wished for. Neurotic compulsion takes the form of civic duty, public and private.
“
To cry or see one cry is rather embarrassing to see:
between crying and seeing too many charms are interspersed
… But between seeing and crying are so many
connections that between crying and seeing we cannot
watch the tears.(He takes the woman’s head in his hands.)
Dearest head! What’s going on in there?
Dearest face! And what happens then?
A little globule pearls in the corner of the eye. Tepid,
salty … Clear, convincing …
(She smiles.)
This is how at times a face glows!
This is how at times one can gather from man’s head
something that reaches him from the deepest realities—
the marine world …
The brain, by the way, smells of fish! Contains a
good bit of phosphorus …
(She starts to cry again.)
Ah, if between seeing and knowing there is some
connection, then from knowing to crying there must be
still others!
“Between the water of tears and the water of the sea
there can only be a slight difference, if—in that difference,
all of man perhaps …”
Laboratory comrades, please verify.
1944
—
The Voice of Things, Francis Ponge, ed.& translated by Beth Archer,
1971, McGraw-Hill Book Company
(The Water of Tears, pp.141-142)
My text “Unearthing the Other New Belgrade: From Unfinished Project Towards Critically Re-evaluated City” publishedin Critical Cities vol.3, 2012, edited by Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield and published by Myrdle Court Press, London
“Bartleby’s strike, which in this sense is similar to that of the feminists, is a human strike, a strike of gestures, dialogue, a radical skepticism in the face of all forms of oppression that are taken for granted, including the most unquestioned of emotional blackmail or social conventions, such as the need to get up and go to work and then come home from the office once it’s closed. But it’s a strike that doesn’t extend itself out, that doesn’t contaminate the other workers with its negative preference syndrome, because Bartleby explains nothing (that’s his great strength), and has no legitimacy; he’s not threatening to not do anything anymore, so he’s still upholding his contractual relationship with the boss, he simply reminds him that he has no more duty than he has desire, and that his preference happens to be for the abolition of work.”
— http://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/tiqqun-2-sonogram-of-a-potential/#more-496
Robert Burghardt’s Denkmal für die Moderne
against architecture for architecture’s sake
“It is perhaps unfortunate that we cannot form and sustain radical groups by act of will. It is also a pity that communities are not the product of our design. Yes, it is unfortunate and a pity, but it is also a conclusion that seems to be supported by the evidence that almost all elective projects of communalisation fail despite the commitment of their memberships.”
—
- Hikikomori and Ham after the Thin Man
(via crazed-maddened-eyes)
