“Illegibility, then, has been and remains a reliable source for political autonomy.”
- James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1999)
it’s an easy preemptive manoeuvre, maybe as a way of saving face, because we have been so institutionalised that consciousness becomes a way of negating the negation. “let me tell you i’m a loser, let me tell you before you find out for yourself, and you can never get me.” what does it mean to precede and gestate one another?
if preceding was a manner of not being defeated by you (insertion of Super Mario anecdote here), gestation was a stalling grammar of potentiality, latent and shadowy, unbecoming. but how do we unbecome one another, with one another?
he says “欠” appears only when ego exists, but really i didn’t mind feeling indebted to you. the hat was out, and i wanted to ask you a favour because i knew you could ask me any time, even if you didn’t. i wanted you to know that i owe you a lifetime. that was my way of staying connected to you. it was only a pity that after i thanked you for that one, you simply left, without a thought in your mind. i was hurt and angry, i am hurt and angry …because i thought you owed me an apology? fuck!
we’re back to the peculiarities of voice, i guess (play with the pronouns)
“S. loved the paintings, but as she was praising them, she knew they didn’t stand much of a chance in the art world. If R. made the same work but was twenty years younger, had different friends and used different words to describe them, they would be viable.”
- Chris Kraus, Absolute Love (2016)
images above from notes initially taken to prepare for a talk given at the Collaborative Studies Program (CSP), organised by the Asian Culture Research Institute (formerly known as Asian Culture Information Agency in Asian Cultural Complex), Gwangju, South Korea, August 2014. This overloading of prepositions recontextualises a later refabrication of the notes into jpeg images called “(An) Open (and) Failure”, part of Squatting Knowledges: Failure/s in a constellation and as a tribunal, curated by DiscLab Research and Criticism (November 2014 until an unknown date when the site was removed from the world wide web for reasons not known)
－－－
何穎雅 Elaine W. Ho will be an adjunct lecturer at the Academy of Failure: Pedagogies for the Unsuccessful, 25-27 May 2018 in Beijing, PRC.
while waiting for responses
…something broke and something could put it back together
the glass lid of a pot fell to the ground, but only the spacing broke
“together” brand adhesive tape
and so it goes
truly, and related
writing oneself: the institute for spatial experiments
It could be said that these stammering movements begin egocentrically, not unexpected, as an awkward, unskilled dervish of thoughts, curiousities and flying trajectories (from me) of things trying to find their place. In other words, I am writing myself in this conversation, between you and me. What we do not know about one another has a context embedded in a structure known as art, or the institution, or the awkward banter of appointed meetings. I write myself in concentric circles that could fly through you or past you, and you may do the same, depending upon what could be put into words, where words may embody bodies and bodies circle around one another.
There is a book somewhere called Speech Matters, and in it an artist parenthesised as R.G. wrote this for his biography:
What is a biography, if not the markings of certain habits, born here, did that, a sentence or two about the ideas or questions one is concerned with, details, places of study, cities lived, a list of ‘accomplishments’. How to punctuate and elaborate a habit, until it breaks, cracks open, begins to stutter, bleed, set itself afire, and disappear into a crowd. She said, a word or two different, a small mark, to say, nothing more intimate in saying no, stopping, refusing. Why not have this book write a biography of itself. Why not a language give an account of its life. Here I said this. Here it did that. Here she died, at this date, at this time, at this place. Here she was, when everything came together and folded. Here she did this work which would never live up to anything but what an other would make of it. Where to find this other?
I have seen other versions written elsewhere. If we meet, of course it’s only one of any possible.
preliminary notes on ice house street
#今天学了什么# Realising today that we’re only speaking in colours, collaborations “no bad, only un-good”——meaning we work hard to reserve judgement, critique, oh, inauthentic observer, otherwise catty once becoming “a life-long association that would change the world”.
At the end of August, 1844, Engels passed through Paris, en route to his employment in Manchester, England, from visiting his family in Barmen (Germany). During 10 days in the French capital, he met Marx (for the second time).
Collaboration means meeting on occasion, sometimes intensively, we laugh at the easy jetset, asking lots of questions in diversion, desiring of the “tranquility of knowledge”. But that wasn’t it. This is non-knowledge, collaboration in colour, yes, Anastas/Gabri, Bester/Kishop or WoofShop, comparative studies as variations on a what, what you want, define and argue, get lost searching for the sea, in Elements, continue softer, what you want.
Would the ‘urban entropic conclusion’ require a certain withdrawal from the social, identity radii, we’re not obligated, her islands, come out only for exposure and/or discomfort. Rearrange the flat, morning study sessions, a cheap coffee maker and a broken electric stove. But it wasn’t really broken. Engage out of what you know, engage to counter what you know; they look similar, maybe, but stylistically…approach, a rationing, an investigation. What is continuity, in the end (har har har), but the careful arrangement of objects and the nice surprise that he even noticed?
Posted by 丫 | more »archival stuff: the elbows
pending other posts, possible posts, about loss and grounding, and journeys, and drifting, always drifting, of course. an old image from the last days with the scanner at 12 warmington tower. i left london for beijing the day after. to return and to leave. a last one from this series before the year ends. this series that brought together and parted. a conversation with the silence of one. a silence that had started then and is still a silence today. before the year ends. the elbows. the scratches are from a long bout of forgetfulness resulting in negatives and prints being left at the konica place on dongsinandajie for nearly a year. upon returning i had still forgotten and was lucky that the staff had still remembered. scratches possibly from the tea flask of the guy with glasses, or a pair of scissors, an ice-cream wrapper, a pencil, the edge of the drawer, a quick doodle of a bunny rabbit, a paper clip, shopping or to do lists, an enlargement order, the order of a ballerina portrait to be printed on stone, slate stone, or bassie en adriaan or weiwei and her husband who also grace the interior of this store. not far from tiananmen. tiananmen. we spoke of tiananmen today. here. away. “yeah, you know that market, behind there, behind tiananmen square.” “i can’t remember the name.” “the wholesale one.” “no, not tianyi.” “just a second, let me ask.” ….”xidan.” “i went back in august this year and bought loads of things there.” “there was this handbag i bought and everyone here thought it must be over a 1000 dirhams or something but it was only 70 kuai.” we speak of inflation at the dinner table. the elbows. the elbows resting on the edge. the elbows of a you i have left. a you who was not there on this day. a you who’s elbows are in a far darker place than merely the shadow cast upon us by someone standing behind.
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