Entering into this summer session ILC felt, in itself, a dream. I wrote the first draft of my contract all in one day… all in one sitting, actually… and it was as if I wasn’t even inside my own body. There was some other force controlling me and I could not contain myself. As soon as the thought had occurred to me, that I could write my own summer ILC and work on media projects for a whole month, I knew that I had to go through with it immediately. I had no real idea of how it would turn out, and it all seemed to be happening so fast, but once I got the confirmation that Naima wanted to sponsor my project, I felt a pang of relief amidst all of my anxieties.

The project work that I ended up dealing with for the majority of the summer session became somewhat a surprise to me. I knew that a lot of the ideas I was previously concerned with (biopower, surveillance/technology, intimacy/identity politics, and communicative affect/gesture) would transfer over to this ILC, but I wasn’t exactly sure how or in what ways. I had been working with these themes since the start of fall quarter (2014), and they have since carried out/over into every other project I have generated throughout the school year. It was with this ILC that I think I finally learned — this sort of work may very well be the kind of work that I continue to do for the remainder of my time at Evergreen.

I gave myself Adobe Flash CC as the primary means to making my project. Because it was a software that I had never used before, most of my process became about researching and experimenting with it. I spent the first week doing only this, and by the second week I had created my first (very short) text animation. The entire first half of the session went a lot like this — watching Adobe Flash tutorials, animating text, researching New Media topics, taking notes on surveillance and technology, and performing timed writings to generate poetry. Needless to say, with all this happening at once, I got frustrated and overwhelmed very quickly. By the time I submitted my first portfolio, I became even more discouraged. The portfolio included only research and prose-poetry elements, and not a single visual/media file. It was at this point in time that I switched over altogether, from working with the technical and contextual details to (solely) the act of making media.

My “final piece” (which I have loosely given the name TRAVERSE1) turned out to be a roughly three minute video and two minute audio file (existing separately). My original intent was to assemble them together in Adobe Flash, animate scrolling text, and add interactive features (such as click-able buttons) to allow the viewer to create a more intimate relationship with the work. Unfortunately, because of a lack of time and the difficulty I had in trying to navigate the Flash software, I wasn’t able to complete my vision. I was extremely upset about this at first. I was convinced that I had failed, but then the more I thought about it, the more I realized how important it was for me to have been able to create what I did. For the amount of time I had at my disposal, I committed myself to a great deal of work. I will be able to leave this ILC with the raw materials, ideas, and information to continue foraging in this territory where media-making meets literary practice.

//// CONTINUATION: / ARTIST STATEMENT / COMMENTARY ON PIECE ////

In the video, a lot of focus is put on my hand. Its thinness, whiteness, and perhaps also gendered-ness, is put blatantly on display for the entire first minute, and then less dramatically for the duration of the video as it is seen embroidering a white nightdress.

At the very start of the video, the hand is seen placed in the center of the screen, slowly exiting/pulling backward to the left side. Then, as soon as it is completely out of sight, it re-enters, pushing slowly back toward the center. It begins to flash, in and out of visibility, as it once again disappears. What is it about this sort of entering and exiting that evokes a sense of something lost or desired? What is it about this sort of entering and exiting that elicits fear? Of disembodiment? And consequently, how does the hand call attention to its owner? Who are they? Where are they? What is this space? Regardless of this space being real or imagined — one must ask, how does the hand’s existence, in all its whiteness and thinness, position itself as a “neutral” hand? A hand that can go “unseen” and unquestioned inside a society that values only thin, white lives? How does it position itself as an obedient hand? A hand that is unthreatening? A hand that is safe (to touch, to hold, and to be touched, to be held)?

It is impossible for me to watch these images of my hand without asking these questions about privilege and identity. As I think more about the gendered nature of this project, I know I must also ask, how may my hand be seen as the hand of a woman? What do women’s hands do? What are they capable of? What does it mean to be designated female at birth? How is my gender identity or expression coopted by social capital and cis/hetero-normativity?

I am thinking about my complacency within these violent systems.

(I am thinking about ways to be tender with myself.)

~*

A meeting takes place here, between various, complex and interwoven internal and external forces placed upon my body. In this multi-media exploration I attempt to interrogate these forces and their co-inhabitance. I continue to ask questions about my hands and how they operate in accordance with my self-interest for tenderness. How can they perform a radical self love and healing through the process of embroidering? With each pass of the needle through my nightgown, I meditate on this.

I meditate also on the connection that is held at the intervals of virtual and IRL space. What does it mean to animate text with software while simultaneously embroidering that very same text into a (soft) fabric? How do my hands travel on, in, between, and beyond these opposing realms? Traveling through time and space, a new narrative is born, unbeknownst to the text already present.

In this way, my hands (as vessels, travellers, healers, and writers) traverse my affective body and its own pain. They trace my traumatic memories and the collective historical landscapes of ache that surround it. I think about my nightgown as a garment that also holds a lot of this ache; it spends nights with me when I feel closest to departure. Enduring multiple panic attacks, nightmares, and incidents of sleep paralysis, this nightgown knows (just as well as I) what my body feels when it is at “rest”. And so, I spent hours at a time (in the dark, with a flashlight in my mouth) telling it this story.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/flmmloxduk8mpcp/MVI_8666.MOV?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xjao53e1w633jtx/MVI_8669.MOV?dl=0

These video clips are linked via dropbox because the files sizes were to large to share on vimeo. I’ve included them here mostly to show what DIDN’T WORK. It is important for me to think about my “failed” attempts and what made them “failures” to begin with.

In the first video you can see me attempting to hang a translucent piece of cellophane in-between the projector and white wall. This is a technique I have used in the past, but with multiple, larger CLEAR pieces of cellophane. The translucent-ness of the cellophane used here did not give me the effect I was hoping for.

In the second video you can see the embroidered nightgown hanging in-between the projector and white wall. I liked this method better than the cellophane, because it felt much more significant to have the recording — of the physical act and labor of me embroidering — literally projected onto (and therefore, also held inside of) the materiality and meta-physicality of the nightdress. In this video you can also see me playing with the aperture of the camera to create multi-color, multi-dimensional lines flashing on the screen. This confirms the digital/virtual nature of the project, and once again points towards questions about language and translatability.

Description of work:

Self-Evaluation:

Although I was not able to convert the video/audio components into a Flash animation, I feel that the two raw files exist on their own in a way that is still engaging. I am overall happy with the new techniques I used to edit the video in Adobe Premiere. It has been a while since the last time I used Premiere, so I was excited to start up with it again and teach myself some new skills. It felt like a challenge to reconsider the old ways I had thought about producing images and combining them with this software. It was also interesting for me to note how I interacted with this Adobe program in comparison to Adobe Flash CC, which I spent most of this summer session working with. I encountered less technical problems with Premiere, but felt that I was missing out on all the fun of problem-solving in Flash. Flash CC has definitely given me a lot of grief, but I am still exited to work with it in the future and continue to grapple with and (eventually) master some of the techniques I’ve discovered thus far. Overall, this was an explorative process for me. I am very critical of myself and the work I produce, but I don’t think I have failed. I may have started something new that I will never truly finish, but I am devoted to this kind of never-ending back and forth work.

Also, as a quick note on the audio production: it felt really gratifying to record this audio track. Recently I have been thinking a lot about what it means to create instrumental/rhythmic/vocal sounds meant to coincide with visual information. I’ve been really shy about my music making in the past and have kept most of my work strictly personal (for my own ears only), but including the audio in this project has really helped me to see the potential in bridging this gap (between my personal music making and video/media project explorations). A lot of untold power thrives within the sonic organization of a film.  I want to experiment with this more in the future, and I happy that this small project has made me feel more confident and capable of doing so.

A LINK TO MY FIRST FLASH EXPERIMENT

short, looping poem i wrote. the background is a distorted .img of the moon taken on my cell phone. this animation originally contained a video of shadow shapes moving about/interacting with the rising (fragmented) text, but the video did not export properly (this is why the animation turns suddenly white towards the end).

Reading to also check out:

New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative
disLOCATIONS __ Jill Bennett
Notes on Memory, Narrative, and New Media __ Pentimento

e-lit: (as mentioned in Katherine Hayles’ essay Timely Art.)

River Island __ John Cayley
Sinking __ Ingrid Ankerson
His Father in the Exhaust of Engines __ Bruce Smith & Marc Stricklin
Errand Upon Which We Came __ Stephanie Strickland & M.D. Coverely

— interactive narrative as a model of aesthetic transcription —

Transcriptive narrative integrates the temporal agency of narrative with the inherently multi-modality of digital information.

FISSIONS OCCUR WITHIN THE ORIGINAL DATA

rather, their meaning is revitalized into temporal, directional, and irreversible narrations, transcribing the functions such information is felt to cause and can be shown to perform.

“the dramatization of pre-existing forms”
:: Transcriptive narrative dramatizes the world instead of freezing it into schematic representations

DIGITAL ARCHITECTURE IS MULTI-MODAL
MULTI-MODAL ARTIFACTS ARE SHAPED BY SOFTWARE RATHER THAN SEMIOTIC CODES

(i want to challenge this)
(what makes up a “unit of meaning”)
?????????

In T_Visionarium — — – the beholder’s direct awareness of unfolding events is complicit in bringing the narrative to closure (but, this is also present in conventional cinema?)

T_Visionarium is ascriptive & episodic — a dramatized revivification of cultural information. subject and object become two dynamically inter-dependent durational systems.*

PERMUTATION : noun
1.
the act of permuting or permutating; alteration; transformation.
2.
Mathematics.
the act of changing the order of elements arranged in a particular order, as abc into acb, bac, etc., or of arranging a number of elements in groups made up of equal numbers of the elements in different orders, as a and b in ab and ba; a one-to-one transformation of a set with a finite number of elements.

*both objects and subjects are interactively defined by their temporal relations. “to measure the length of the shadow of a pyramid at a particular time of day, for example, is to express the interrelationship between an object in motion (sun) and an object at rest (pyramid)” … narration is intertwined which objective processes such as motion, whereby narrating becomes navigating and navigating becomes narrating.

NARRATING = NAVAGATING
NAVAGATING = NARRATING

physical mapping becomes a strategy applicable to both image and sound

there is an unravelling of “sub-visible links”

In T_Visionarium … the beholder can process new time currents in real time by physically navigating the projection window across the surface of the dome. it augments the investigator’s existing research into narrative as a form of dialogical interaction within virtual space. this provides a meta-model for transcriptive strategies & new logics for data inter-relationships.

THIS INTERWEAVING OF MATRIX AND BEHOLDER NAVIGATION W/ REAL & VIRTUAL TIME PROCESSING precipitates the emergence of unprecedented narratives

… thinking back to an artist lecture I attended winter quarter

Amaranth Borsuk shares her book Between Page and Screen
(love poems between the book and the computer)

~*~*~***~*~*~**~*

(timed, 10 mins)

who is the imaginary other?

“imaginary other”

can it be a version or maybe multiple versions of oneself?

how do we see our imaginary others

imaginary self as a

reflection

what is my reflected self mimicking?

how does one body entirely separate from its own effectual, living, viable body?
MIMIC ME

___

WREADING

rhythm cross coding like and unlike???

constitute

vessel

damaged by friendly

what can’t be said

acted

curved my desire

PROPER CORPERAL HIDEOUS BEAHAVIOR

do i want to lean in or lean out?

the luxury of falling in

(5 mins)

what is a viable identity?

what makes livable in this state of no resolution?

bodes are commodified
collected, made even more multiple
DELIVERENCE
“deliver me to wholeness” the promise of
DICIPLINE, DECIPLE, DEEP INTO
asking, begging
PLENTITUDE — I WAS NEVER PURE
whose history? collective,
unwhole, whole?
LISTEN TO THE SOUND IT MAKES IN
THE WAKE OF…

(choric syncopation??? of re-reading and re-reading…)

sheets of ice are being blown off the roof and at first there is no way to identify the sound — there is no way to know what this sounds is or what is does to me only that is reflects something metal and sharp and scraping i am sleeping in an apartment building that i’ve never been in before and the rooms are all furnished with white things i don’t understand the white things the ice is white but not the same shade — my heart is not mine — it is mine its just not telling me of my own experience this time. it tries to shake me it reminds me of what it feels like to exit slowly though the body of another i once loved — the song from the player is wrong the numbered tracks are out of order i can hear them play out in my sleep ice sheets raking the inside of me

(timed freewrite, 5 mins)

STRANGERS AT HOME :: ::

if i am sleeping am i inside my body — when am i floating above — when am i certain in my dreams — am i at home in strangeness the moment i awake — is my home inside my body or floating above, outside, somewhere in the doorway — am i watching myself — am i listening to my own strangeness or someone else’s — some culmination of many else’s — their strangeness next to me, making a mark, on top or somewhere inside — if i am asleep and walking backwards can i pass the strangeness as it walks forwards? — can i for a moment turn my head to face it — that moment in passing? — silent — can i listen inside it? — what spaces — what forms — what shape — what weight on my back — my weight is home because i can feel it, right? — i can feel it, right? — i can feel it, right? — i can feel it, right? — i can feel it, right?

actions of dramas expressing
CRISIS | SCHISM | CONFLICT

Eugenio Barba — performers specialize in putting themselves in disequilibrium and then displaying how they regain their balance psychophysically, narratively, and socially only to lose their balance, and regain it, again and again.

ALL FOUR DIMENSIONS ARE KEPT IN PLAY

— transformations of time & space

— performing specific “then and there” in a particular “here and now”

A THEATER REALITY
a necessity to live as if
“as if” = “is”

PERFORMANCE is an illusion of an illusion and as such might be considered more “truthful” or “real” than ordinary experience

aristotle said: theater does reflect living, but essentializes it, and presents paradigms of it.

PLAYING OUT WITH MODES
EXPERIMENTALLY, PROVISIONALLY
(thus letting the actions hang unfinished)

they stand unsteadily on slipper bases

SUBJUNCTIVE, DANGEROUS, DUPLICITOUS &

|

(LIMINAL) … relating to the point or threshold beyond which a sensation becomes to faint to be experienced — — moments that provide times of tension, extreme reactions, and great oppotunity

|

… thus forced into framings or ways of making the places, participants, and the events somewhat “safe” …

THEY ARE MAKE-BELIEVE PRECINCTS
(boundaries or limits)

(timed freewrite, 15 mins)

figure-ature

forgive-ature

i am thinking abt archive as pointing to the things we don’t know (loops + absences) so at least we know what we don’t know???

who lives and who dies…

and by what languages

(proverbial dark)

the only thing the earth produces is dead human bodies???

if there is an anger

than there is a body to experience it

maybe i’d have a family

B: “THE POTION IS IN MY BELLY.”
M: “YOU’LL BE FINE BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.”

the expression of bone and body lost in the connection w/ other bodies

COAL AT THE HEART TO BURN

• Flash professional CC
• Choose file type “WebGL”
• Create animation file & then save file in folder on Desktop
• (u have to write javascript code to add interactivity to the animation file) So before you write the script, you have to PUBLISH so that all the WebGL files get generated (and can be used for coding)
• Files that get published are .HTML, .LIB, and all the assets (named in asset folder)
• Before publishing, you should add linkage names so you can find these specific assets/files later on by searching for the name you gave them
• You can also add frame labels to allow ppl to jump to dfferent parts in the animation
• When you are done creating your animation, save the .FLA
• AND THEN PUBLISH:
  • Press COMMAND ENTER
  • This converts Flash to GPU friendly format
  • Check project folder (which you have saved to your desktop) to make sure all the files were generated properly (.HTML, .LIB, and assets)
  • Open publish settings in Flash CC
  • Uncheck overwrite HTML option (you want to do this b/c once we write javascript code we will be writing/adding onto the HTML file, so we don’t want the original HTML to be republished … THIS WILL ERASE ALL THE SCRIP YOU JUST WROTE! v important.)
• Now you can start writing code:
  • Open a text autoscript editor
  • Adobe Dream Viewer CC is a good option
  • Open the .HTML file generated by Flash CC in Dream Viewer
  • Look for the canvas stack (looks like this):
    • <canvas id = “canvas” style = “border : none;”></canvas>
  • After that line add this code (to add HTML content with ON CLICK ACTION):
    • <br>
    • <button> ADD </button>
    • <button onclick=”onAdd();”>Add</button>
  • You can also add a paragraph tag, which will show the amount of ___ getting added (where ____ is equal to the specific asset/image you wish to add to the animation)
    • <p id=”count”></p>
  • You are now ready to add a function
  • Look for “function handle complete” in the </head> section of the HTML
  • Right after the function —
    • }
    • {
  • Create a count variable
    • var count = 0;
  • Then create a function (this function controls the player/playback of the movie/animation)
    • function onAdd() {
    • var sgf = player.getScenegraphFactory();
    • var star = sgf.createMovieClipInstance (“Star”);
  • The last line in this function creates an instance of the movie clip using the asset name star which (in this example) would have been given to asset during the creation of the animation in Flash CC — so in this function you are create a reference to that asset
  • Next add:
    • player.getStage().addChildAt(Star,0);
  • In this line of code the “stage” is equal to the movie or animation and the “child” is equal to the movie or animation clip. This code brings the two together.
  • Next add:
    • var x = Math.random() * 540;
    • var y = Math.random() * 180;
    • var s = Math.random();
    • var mat = newflwebgl.geom.Matrix([s,0,0,s,x,y]);Star.setLocalTransform(mat);
    • count++;
  • In these lines of code the function of adding stars is played out. (Once again, “stars” are being used in this example, but in your animation it will be whatever asset name you have given the asset that you would like to add to the animation.)
  • Next, you will update the count (paragraph element you added earlier) by creating the next line:
    • document.getElementById(“count”).innerHTML = count + (count> 1 ? ” Stars” : ” Star”);
  • Then SAVE on Dream View
  • Test your new content by going back to Flash CC and hitting COMMAN ENTER
  • This will play your animation
  • In this example, an “add button” has appeared at the button of the animation. By clicking the button new stars are added to the night sky.

~*freewrite (lost and then found, exact date unknown)

“We live with our own borders just like how we live with our own images — images of the self exhausting its own essence. We live with our bodies, not knowing where begins and if it ends with our skin.”

(5 mins, interrupted)

YOU DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE THEN

HOW TWO ARMS SPREAD APART COULD COME

INTO A CIRCLE AROUND YOU

__

AND WITNESS??

(10 mins)

what images cannot be replicated? copied? multiplied? transferred? translated? transmuted?

i am imagining the image itself having feelings. i am imagining its feelings going both ways. 1.) wanting so badly to resist its very nature of being seen, understood, or talked about and 2.) wanting so badly to give up entirely. to stop trying to resist. to exist “freely” among all other images, constantly multiplying, layering, coming together and falling apart. allowing itself to be seen in any and all ways possible.

but what kind of image can resist? resist its own ability to be seen? or instantly … interpreted …

what is it abt the image that says “no”? is it a physical condition, of blurriness, a shadow, a light too bright — contaminating its “seeable” qualities?

is it a combination of image and sound that (together) they both can say “no”? — meaning, the noises present alongside the image somehow create a contradiction … some sort of complexity or confusion w/i the viewer? (somehow uneven parallels?)

is it a combination of image, sound, and text that says “no”? what limits can be tested when all 3 are present? does resistance happen when all 3 contradict each other? or contradict what is expected of them?

in contradicting each other (meaning, each element — image, sound, text — proclaims something different in a seemingly non-correlative way) are they also actually working together? in perfect harmony? doing what they do best?

(5 minutes)

Opening up to / Like / Unfurl or Furling somehow I Furl /taking swarm like Bathe / Soaked / I soaked once once soaking like I Soaked / there was There Was A Place to Soak? / like I Once was soaking? like i soak? like how the soaking was or felt? when it felt.
when felt soaking
how it did
how it was once / Once was

ALTITUDE SICKNESS / WHOLESALE
MADE ME DO IT
LAUGHING GHETTY / GLYPHIC

died w/o a vengeance
CANTEEN
word engine: calamine
word for — skip — next clue
behind the nose — no — the mouth
“ah, you got me!”

CAN A BREEZE DO IT? DID YOU FEEL THE BREEZE? DO YOU WANT ME TO OPEN A WINDOW FOR YOU?

~AN ARGUMENT AGAINST THE COLLAPSE OF CATEGORIES~
/ CODEWORKS ////////////

digital utopianism is w/ us
“new media” has aged
acquired a history thru the engagement w/ the reality principal

Also thru:
~ the net as accepted as a material & cultural given in the “developed world”
~ .coms have crashed
~ unsolicited marketing email & consumerism dominates network traffic
nontheless, artistic practice is still often driven by youths, escapists, utopian enthusiasms

net art: offering back the shock of the virtual-visceral banal at every possible juncture

other, more traditionally delineated arts, struggle to cope w/ the reconfigurations of their media … suddenly they migrate towards new media ~ they become inter-communicable ~ not long distinct

TEXTUAL MEDIA has always been subject to reconfiguration — as practitioners we must face reconfigurations that R seemingly catastrophic
MATERIALITY OF LANGUAGE = AFFECT & SIGNIFICANCE OF LANGUAGE

” […] in utopia, because you are nowhere you are everywhere at once. Transparency and translatability are key values of digital utopianism.”
we are concerned with NO-PLACE … and it’s values
are they indeed values?

language is presented as code /
code is presented as language
MUTUAL CONTAMMINATION:
the utopia of codework recognizes the symbols of the surface language (what yu read from yr screen) as the same as the symbols of the programming language (which store, manipulate, & display the text yu read.)

the transparency and translatability of this — combined with its recasting of postmodern visceral banality — creates a subversive (potentially progressive) utopian value
BUT THIS IS AS FAR AS THE WORK CAN GET
in making this simple point … abt transparency and translatability w/i in the context of something already “utopian” we more or less EXHAUST the significance and affect of the work ~*~*~*~*EXHAUSTED BY AESTHETIC*~*~*~*~

work that is not exhausted …
work that does generate significance and affect …
should not be assimilated into the utopia of code-language transparency

~* specialized appreciation of code does not equate to:
a mutual contamination of code & natural language
~* it simply acknowledges that each have their proper place

CODE AND LANGUAGE REQUIRE DISTINCT STRATEGIES OF READING
maintaining this ^^^ allows for critical understanding & more complex ways to read and write that are commensurate W/the practices of literal art in programmable media

THE FLICKERING SIGNIFIER IS NOT / CAN NOT BE SEEN AS SOMETHING THAT SIMPLY GOES ON BEHIND THE SCREEN
~it is the code @ work
~it is the code that transforms writing as the record of static or floating simultaneities into writing as the presentation of atoms of SIGNIFICATION (THEY ARE NOT WHAT THEY ARE W/O THEIR FLICKERING TRANSFORMATIONS OVER TIME, HOWEVER FLEETING.)
i.e. the static records alone are not the flickering signifiers — it is their transformation — which happens as the code runs that provides the flickering ………….

T.R.A.N.S.A.C.T.I.V.E.
M.E.D.I.A.T.I.O.N.
is brought into the scene of writing
at the very moment of creation
—
mediation can no longer be characterized as subsidiary or peripheral,
NO LONGER PARATEXT

_______________________________
NAMES FOR WHAT WE’RE DOING…

in order of preference, of what to call it???

“writing programmable media” >
textonomy > cybertext > hypertext, hyperfiction, hyperpoetry, etc.

“programmatology” may be thought of as the study of writing with an explicit awareness of its relation to “programming” or PRIOR WRITING in anticipation of a PERFORMANCE (including the performance of reading)

NOTES //

AND SCREENINGS FOR THE FILMS:
LIVING INSIDE, 4 mins, 1989
A NEW YEAR, 4mins, 1989
ME AND RUBYFRUIT, 6 mins, 1990

_______

frm an interview w/ Benning, November 2003

pixelvision (video designed to record on a cassette tape) has an abstract/animated quality to it … in this sense, it is kind of demanding of the audience

sadie says: speaking with intonation gives emotion, but reading the words alone (w/yr eyes) allows to the viewer to internalize what is being said

pg.11. “It seems like a criticism, that you have only your identity and nothing else — no conceptual ideas, no fantasy, no formal concerns. It’s seen as therapeutic and self-serving. I think that’s a reductive way of seeing work that has political or identity-based content.”

coexistences of love & hopefulness // abandonment & loss

What does it mean to inherit toxins and live amongst poison???

CREATING A BLANKNESS FOR THE AUDIENCE TO PROJECT EMOTION ONTO

If Every Girl Had A Diary (1990)
“TO BE ALONE IS TO KNOW YOURSELF FOR YOU
AND NOT WHO YOU’RE WITH”

pg.17. emotional immediacy created thru distancing (taking the form of an extreme close up, the eye, or other various parts of the face)
“Sometimes the truth is in moments that are never seen and can’t be captured.”
~* it is interesting to think abt the ways in which distance is created through the use of extremely up close imagery, seemingly contradictory, it is not at all b/c once confronted with such a close image you are given the opportunity to question your spacial relationship and closeness to the piece … you suddenly recognize yourself as separate entity, searching for your place to enter into and exit out of the film or vision
pg.18 FRAGILE not ust because of the emotional content but b/c of the technology being used to make it … pixels … transferring … you keep having to transfer … there is so much potential for loss … or disappearing completely

_________
Living Inside (screening)

parts of the face
i see a window, we are inside her bedroom?
“scooping” “mashed potatoes” “my dog is old so is my gramma”
my mom watches oprah every day
I SHOULD BE AT SCHOOL
close up of the eyes, “killed the plant”
msg on the answering machine?
couldn’t tell who was talking, who was speaking to whom
blowing bubbles with gum until i can’t see her face anymore
it all turns white

_________
A New Year (screening)

close up :: words i can catch on the newspaper :: HERNIA GRIEVE SUPER NERD
“girl i know go hit by a drunk driver / leg broken & twisted like putty”
suddenly we are inside a snowglobe …
“IT WOULD BE EASY TO DIE”
— we are reading her handwriting —
is it too much to say out loud?
“a friend of mine got raped by a black man, now she is a racist nazi skinhead”
suddenly we are looking thru the blinds, at construction work? …

i feel forced into listening to secrets i never asked to know about
why is it important that i hear them?
i feel forced into thinking abt the implications of this, sharing secrets, or sharing information that is disguised as something secret (MAKING IT SEEM ALSO DANGEROUS) … but is not secret or silent at all, it is all actually very loud, very real, and happening all the time, everywhere —

_________
Me and Rubyfruit (screening)

I WILL GET MARRIED LIKE MY MOTHER
ONLY MY HUSBAND WILL BE HANDSOME
why don’t you marry me i’m not handsome but i’m pretty
I CAN’T GET MARRIED
says who?
IT’S A RULE
GIRLS CAN’T GET MARRIED
does your stomach feel kind of strange?
KINDA

~* this is a dialogue between (seemingly) two selves
if it’s not just between Sadie Benning and herself, then who else?
who is she talking to …
i feel scared abt where it goes or is going

imgs of hetero porn flash onto the screen … from a magazine
i am thinking abt homoerotic desire???
“KISSING IN SECRET”
letters are cut out of black paper and taped to the window (her bedroom window)
~* once again i am reminded: i’ve been let into such an intimate space
i want to leave, i don’t want to forget what i’ve seen, but i feel like i don’t belong here
once again i am reminded of what Benning said in her interview, abt creating a sense of emotional immediacy thru distancing … this feels hyper present in her films, especially considering how short they are … SUCH GLIMPSES … the camera even follows the words on the paper like the eye would

pg.83. GENOCIDES

DIE ERMITTLUNG / THE INVESTIGATION (1965)
peter weiss

— at once a ceremony that recovers the truth, and a permanent mourning of death, indignity, and dehumanization

— rewrote/synthesized all 183 sessions of the real Auschwitz trials between December 20th 1963 and August 20th 1965 into ONE recording

A SOLID OBJECT COMES OUT OF EACH WITNESSES TESTIMONY
ACCUSED PARTIES’ ATTEMPTS TO CONTRADICT THEIR STORIES/THE FACTS ARE FRUITLESS
THE OBJECT AFFORMENTIONED IS CRUELTY, HUMILIATION, COLD, TORTURE, HUNGER, AGONY, IMPOSSIBLE LOVE, THE SHOOTINGS, INJECTIONS INTO THE HEART, POISONING, & ANNIHILATION.

pg.85. they were merely dealing with people that were already dead
they had stopped being people
when they crossed the camp gate they were no longer human beings
it was like no different than beating a dead body
EXTERMINATION BECOMES THEATRE

pg.101. HISTORY AND MEMORY

LIMITS OF ALTERITY, UNDERSOOD INDIVIDUALLY, AS JOINED BY THE LIMIT OF CULTURAL ALTERITY

what becomes shared?

passing through this?

in studying multiple genocides?

question of the day :::

CAN GOOGLE FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE RECOGNIZE THE FACES OF ANGELS?

___________________________________

how google uses pattern recognition: according to “privacy & terms”

googles sees data, shapes, and information abt color values — face detection “helps protect you” n yr privacy on services like street view —

your face will get blurred out.

google knows when a face is present ~* this helps you to tag your friends. facial recognition can compare “known faces” against “new faces” and see if there is a probable math or similarity.

__________________________

NO ANGEL
NOT PURE
OF COURSE IT CAN RECOGNIZE ME

purity//privacy

i am thinking a lot abt

`histories of trauma (w/i myself, my family’s female lineage, & our individual//collective memories, dreams…)

`histories of angels

`histories of ritual (some marked as highly sacred and others, quotidian)

`histories of linguistic and paralinguistic myth

`histories of surveillance and erasure (genocide & visual media as privileged windows through which we contemplate our world)

notes///////

FRM THE PREFACE, DE TORO SAYS:

“I felt it was important to introduce studies of this kind in Latin America, a continent where this field was totally unknown at the time. This is why […] I decided to write the book in Spanish, knowing full well that Semiótica Del Teatro would be largely ignored in the non-Spanish world.”

this book was not written for me ~
i am reading translated words
— what has been lost? within the act of rewriting? within the act of redirecting (or rather, expanding upon) the author’s original intent? within the act of my consumption & interpretation of something already reinterpreted?

—

—

pg.4. FRM THE INTRODUCTION

~ theatre is comprised of a multitude of signifying systems that each have a dual function: AS A LITERARY PRACTICE & AS A PERFORMATIVE PRACTICE

~ P A R A L I N G U I S T I C   C O M P O N E N T S
(aspects of spoken communication that do not involve words)

~ dramatic text and performance have equal weight

pg.5. FRM CHAPTER 1: THEATRE DISCOURSE

~ UTTERANCE is what is said that proceeds from la langue
ENUNCIATION is the means & place through which the utterance comes into being

~ producing an utterance is NOT EQUAL TO the text of an utterance

~ BEVENISTE SAYS:

for this act to occur there must exist three formal enunciative processes
A. THE ACT OF SAYING
B. THE SITUATION OF REALIZING
C. THE INSTRUMENTS OF REALIZATION

pg.6.

~ essential to the first part of the process consists of an appropriation of language — that is, the production of an utterance that reveals itself in the very making

Benning, Sadie. Retrospective. Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State U, 2004. Print.

Berlant, Lauren Gail. Intimacy. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2000. Print.

Brigham, Linda C. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Mothers?” Electronic Book Review. Mark Amerika, 29 Nov. 2006. Web. 09 July 2015.

Cayley, John. “The Code Is Not the Text (unless It Is the Text).” Electronic Book Review. Mark Amerika, 10 Sept. 2002. Web. 09 July 2015.

Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J. Seigworth. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010. Print.

Hayles, Katherine. My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2005. Print.

Kennedy, Barbara M. Deleuze and Cinema: The Aesthetics of Sensation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000. Print.

Strickland, Stephanie. “Born Digital.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 13 Feb. 2009. Web. 09 July 2015.

Toro, Fernando De, and Carole Hubbard. Theatre Semiotics: Text and Staging in Modern Theatre. Toronto: U of Toronto, 1995. Print.

glorious_maimu

dimensions: (X170.57mm, Y69.14mm, Z131.15mm)
volume: 70g (0.15 lb)

artist lecture reflection : :
thinking about time (as subject) (as form) (as content)

(in film) if time becomes the subject more-so than the subjects themselves, what then leads the artist’s decision in choosing specific (human, animal, or other) subjects? in what ways does time, in an attempt at claiming to be seen, consume the other subject? how do we compare (in film) the time-subject and human-animal-subject through understandings of recursivity and temporality?

TIME AS SPACE // SPACE AS A BODY

“If the myth exists in the world, then how do we see it?” -Ben Russel
(((( WHAT ABOUT MULTIPLE MYTHS? ))))

in ben russel’s first film showing of RIVER RITES i received very strong feelings of undoing, unbecoming, and uncleansing as i became a witness to bodies absorbing their splashes, fabrics folding and unfolding, a language spoken in reverse. my sense of time became heightened as i listened closely to the sonic organization of sounds. soft voices and the movement of water felt slowed on their own, whereas with the addition of music, movement and action felt suddenly fast and disorienting. as the minutes passed and i settled further into the film, i felt as if i myself became in control of the time.

time is constructed. on the individual level, i am affectively building it.

RIVER RITES is not a reproduction. it is a representation. so i too build upon it through my own affective interpolation.

so what about _e_t_h_i_c_s_?______

how does the film RIVER RIGHTS stimulate epistephilia (a desire to know)? what, specifically, do we desire to know about it? if documentary film conveys some sort of informing logic, persuasive rhetoric, or a moving poetics, how then are we (as spectators) promised information and knowledge, insight and awareness?

how does RIVER RIGHTS remind us that things share relationships in time and space, not because of the editing, but because of their ACTUAL, HISTORICAL linkages?

“documentary re:presents the historical world
by making an indexical record of it;
it represents the historical world by shaping this record
from a distinct perspective or point of view.” (Nichols, 36)

why africa? what does this place mean to ben russel? what are his intentions? by undoing time is he also seeking to undo colonialist ideological perspective? because these subjects are being treated as “social actors” remaining cultural players rather than theatrical performers, how then are their own lives embodied on the screen? why does the camera produce a sense of voyeurism?

a manipulation of hands. of bending and folding and holding. of stillness. i think, how will they grow larger or smaller? thinner or wider? will there be a transformation of texture? an exchange of flesh? i think, i am utilizing this machine. i am doing this, and in order to work intimately with it (as i sit, as i watch myself on the screen, as i am scanned, as i begin to hurt, as i objectify myself, as my bodily code is translated into a language i don’t yet understand, and as i learn to re:write it) i must be re:thinking. what does it mean to take apart the body and inscribe a new meaning? what do i feel when i see a disembodied limb on the workplane? will they still feel like my own fingers when they’re inside of my body? does my data flesh feel different? do i own my own data flesh, or can it just as easily belong to someone else? who would take that from me?

(no one can take it from me))))

by having my hand scanned, and by each of my housemate’s having their hands scanned, a collective agency is created through a complex agreement to objectify ourselves in the name of feminist work. in many ways we are not alone in doing this work. because of our similar bodily experiences of drift (working on and against dominant ideologies, operating liquidly amongst the ebb and flow of queer identity and sexuality) we occupy a new space that we have created together. this is a safe space for us, to individually confront our own bodies and re:write our own codes; to ask these questions: what does intimacy with myself feel like? in actuality? through material attachment and engagement? physically? emotionally? as a way of resurrecting almost-but-not-yet forgotten traumas, and transferring a past suffering into a present healing? we feel ourselves, we are the only ones to ever truly know ourselves, and because of this, we are also the only ones capable of healing the wounds.