Where are the individuals of today? What has happened to original intimacy, the humanization of our being? How do we identify and actualise ourselves? How does one substantiate the originality of an encounter? Is there real worth in this new system?

There has emerged a technological system for living. Our beings are represented through symbols, logos and simulated reality. Society organizes and categorizes us then provides opportunities for encounters within a virtual context. Our existence is over-rationalized, over-politicized and over-consumed. This has become our system of living; our life-program. Rather than relationships with others we seek relationships with machines, simulated reality and reflections of being. Diversity of personality fades away. Social encounters become homogenized.

Nietzsche suggests that less-developed organisms are those that need to be in permanent contact with one another to exist. Rather than being able to reflect in solitude and search for meaning within oneself, these organisms must be connected for their own survival...surviving in a cyber-world attached by sensationalized sound bites and regurgitated images. We are connected, but the question becomes urgent, connected to what? We live enclosed by data, measurements and categorized existence. Most come to us without any clear-cut attribution of authorship. Reworkings of media society have become central aspects of how pop-culture operates. Reality has been transformed into mere statistics where computer programs determine our being.

Walter Benjamin discusses art in relation to this technology. He notes that "the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice--politics." This new technological system lends itself especially well to the political function of art, without the traditional confines of authorship or authenticity. Art is a way to reencounter this actuality in the search for understanding, communication and the reaffirmation of our identity. An artistic image is one that acts as a symbol of reality. It can make possible a new and intelligent social conversation.

Umberto Eco

derive a new way of seeing

“Every reception of a work of art is both an interpretation and performance of it, because in every reception the work takes on a fresh perspective for itself.” Eco, quoting Henri Pousseur, defines the "open" work as one that "produces in the interpreter acts of conscious freedom, putting him at the centre of a net of inexhaustible relations among which he inserts his own form"

can we categorize conscious freedom?

openness is a fundamental part of perception
openness is an interpretive freedom
open work is freedom

This is reflection upon the ideal. Open work represents an evolutionary difference in the whole experience of the world. It reflects the relativity, subjectivity and discontinuity of our contemporary world. Eco contrasts this concept with the traditional closed work, which allows the viewer far less choice in interpretation. The categories are ideal--no work can be completely open or closed--but they function well in making distinctions between different kinds of art. What is more important, adopting the proper attitude toward an open work has political and social ramifications: the open work denies conventional views of the world, replacing them with a sense of its discontinuity, disorder, and dissonance. Eco considers this alienation as beneficial, since from this feeling of crisis, one may derive a new way of seeing, feeling, and understanding a social order in which traditional relationships have been shattered.

art and interpretations are shattered
every viewer derives their own meaning
we can observe and interpret, but essentially never exhaust

For artistic creation, the artist’s role is to start a work, and it is the role of the viewer to finish it. The completed work, which exists from the interpretation of the observer, still belongs to the artist in a sense, but must also belong to the viewer. There is an internal mobility to form which sets up a possible dialogue or interaction between artist and audience. An openness emerges and evolves

in creating and making there is taking and replacing

Arts and creative acts are merged under the influence of analog and digital, commercial and noncommercial. A "mixed ecology" emerges.

artistinction

The Separation

Body
Shame
Artificial membrane

Eye undone by you

Chasm
Quiet
Sadistic violence

Teeth like shattered wood

Hush demon
Obstruct

Inviolate Judas
Be still

Let the essence and the Eye grieve

A stolen crimson flag
Scorched by a sun of dripping wax
My swollen throat opens

Hush Judas
Obstruct

Be silent
Listen hear

A syllable
(not a symphony)

A syllable I regret

A lovers death
Mutated breath
Premature dissemination

Detournement

It is important to step out of our own artistic disciplinary frames to understand and redistribute the relationship between space and time. Remix as media can either detract or enhance our art. I am reminded of the three regimes presented by Ross. The ethical regime which refers to art at the surface of community. The representational regime which encompasses form and is imitational - this seems relative to Debord's detournement. Lastly the aesthetic regime which suggests an art that is freed from the first two agendas...referring to works which take on life of their own and evolve far beyond the mere formal imitation or concept of the artists original intent.

Reflections upon these reading brought up questions about my own considerations on this subject:
Is there a link or historical connection between aesthetic judgement and the specificity of medium?
Is medium an art unto itself or a means to an end?
Can/does art ever exist apart from pop culture and media?
What is the relationship of art to capitalist culture?
What is the role of artist as consumer?




SITUATIONIST MANIFESTO
The existing framework cannot subdue the new human force that is increasing day by day alongside the irresistible development of technology and the dissatisfaction of its possible uses in our senseless social life. Alienation and oppression in this society cannot be distributed amongst a range of variants, but only rejected en bloc with this very society. All real progress has clearly been suspended until the revolutionary solution of the present multiform crisis. What are the organizational perspectives of life in a society which authentically "reorganizes production on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers"? Work would more and more be reduced as an exterior necessity through the automation of production and the socialization of vital goods, which would finally give complete liberty to the individual. Thus liberated from all economic responsibility, liberated from all the debts and responsibilities from the past and other people, humankind will exude a new surplus value, incalculable in money because it would be impossible to reduce it to the measure of waged work. The guarantee of the liberty of each and of all is in the value of the game, of life freely constructed. The exercise of this ludic recreation is the framework of the only guaranteed equality with non-exploitation of man by man. The liberation of the game, its creative autonomy, supersedes the ancient division between imposed work and passive leisure. The church has already burnt the so-called witches to repress the primitive ludic tendencies conserved in popular festivities. Under the existing dominant society, which produces the miserable pseudo-games of non-participation, a true artistic activity is necessarily classed as criminality. It is semi-clandestine. It appears in the form of scandal. So what really is the situation? It's the realization of a better game, which more exactly is provoked by the human presence. The revolutionary gamesters of all countries can be united in the S.I. to commence the emergence from the prehistory of daily life. Henceforth, we propose an autonomous organization of the producers of the new culture, independent of the political and union organizations which currently exist, as we dispute their capacity to organize anything other than the management of that which already exists. From the moment when this organization leaves the initial experimental stage for its first public campaign, the most urgent objective we have ascribed to it is the seizure of U.N.E.S.C.O. United at a world level, the bureaucratization of art and all culture is a new phenomenon which expresses the deep inter-relationship of the social systems co-existing in the world on the basis of eclectic conservation and the reproduction of the past. The riposte of the revolutionary artists to these new conditions must be a new type of action. As the very existence of this managerial concentration of culture, located in a single building, favors a seizure by way of putsch; and as the institution is completely destitute of any sensible usage outside our subversive perspective, we find our seizure of this apparatus justified before our contemporaries. And we will have it. We are resolved to take over U.N.E.S.C.O., even if only for a short time, as we are sure we would quickly carry out work which would prove most significant in the clarification of a long series of demands. What would be the principle characteristics of the new culture and how would it compare with ancient art? Against the spectacle, the realized situationist culture introduces total participation. Against preserved art, it is the organization of the directly lived moment. Against particularized art, it will be a global practice with a bearing, each moment, on all the usable elements. Naturally this would tend to collective production which would be without doubt anonymous (at least to the extent where the works are no longer stocked as commodities, this culture will not be dominated by the need to leave traces.) The minimum proposals of these experiences will be a revolution in behavior and a dynamic unitary urbanism capable of extension to the entire planet, and of being further extensible to all habitable planets. Against unilateral art, situationist culture will be an art of dialogue, an art of interaction. Today artists - with all culture visible - have been completely separated from society, just as they are separated from each other by competition. But faced with this impasse of capitalism, art has remained essentially unilateral in response. This enclosed era of primitivism must be superseded by complete communication. At a higher stage, everyone will become an artist, i.e., inseparably a producer-consumer of total culture creation, which will help the rapid dissolution of the linear criteria of novelty. Everyone will be a situationist so to speak, with a multidimensional inflation of tendencies, experiences, or radically different "schools" - not successively, but simultaneously. We will inaugurate what will historically be the last of the crafts. The role of amateur-professional situationist - of anti-specialist - is again a specialization up to the point of economic and mental abundance, when everyone becomes an "artist," in the sense that the artists have not attained the construction of their own life. However, the last craft of history is so close to the society without a permanent division of labor, that when it appeared amongst the S.I., its status as a craft was generally denied. To those who don't understand us properly, we say with an irreducible scorn: "The situationists of which you believe yourselves perhaps to be the judges, will one day judge you. We await the turning point which is the inevitable liquidation of the world of privation, in all its forms. Such are our goals, and these will be the future goals of humanity." 17 May 1960

In Response to Edible

Grief, ah this addiction. Amidst dirty laundry and filthy sinks I edge through the corridor past golden vapor ghosts.
Peril, this speculation. Boots come down crushing rotten green shag over the milky edge I escape my unholy skin.

I did it silently feeling my way toward perfection. I who committed feather pillow crimes entombed in the worthless duty of self-sacrifice.You noticed nothing. You who weighted. You the parliament. Periphrastic holy cleavage, subjunctive holy this. I sought neutrality within my wretched reflection but could not sustain the verity . I who remains muted. I the wholly profane.

This Voice I Speak With

people are programmed to accept a media construct
we are programmed to simply reuse elementselementselements
elementselementselementselementselementselementselements
reused, reduced, recycled,
reused, reduced, recycled,
reused, reduced, recycled
we are fragmented
I have become fragmented
(become f-r-a-g-m-e-n-t-e-d?)
my mind is burdened
I am haunted by the world around me
I fear I may become so unreflective there will be an implosion

is there such a thing as pure originality in this fragmentation?
I am in a delirium of saturation
my minds (minds? mind? multiplex mind)
my mind struggles to breathe in this mire...
struggle-s to breathe
struggle-s to move
struggle-s to survive

*breathe you fucker

...my over-saturated one-track mind

I must fight against this one-track mind
I must create a new culture that flows through my minds
flows through my bodies
gives new life to my beings

there is no fixed position
(except in hyprocrisy and sheer conservativism)
renewal takes a long time
a l--------o---------n----------g time
creativity rests in how I reconfigure
how I reconstruct the f-r-a-g-m-e-n-t-s
of my minds
of my memories
of my lives

discover your multiplex consciousness
multiplex consciousness
multiplex consciousness
multiplex consciousnesses

*breathe you fucker

writing is the only thing I can call my own
I want to learn how to communicate with my fellow human beings
BUT I don't know how to write
NOR do I know what to say
AND (even worse) this voice is not my own
YET...

*I can always squeeze something out of the past and
make it become new, call it MY own

is this originality? is this creativity? are these words then my own?
does my creativity rest in how I recontextualize
the previous expression of others?
does it rest in how I reuse, reduce, recycle
the f-r-a-g-m-e-n-t-e-d world around me?
(does this then become my f-r-a-g-m-e-n-t-e-d s-e-l-f?)

*breathe you fucker

this voice I speak with is not my own
these voices I speak with are NOT my own
this voice I speak with is all my own
these voices I speak with are ALL my own

women are not allowed to talk
tell them to shut up
I am not allowed to talk
tell me to shut up
shut up
shut up
shut up
SHUT UP SHANNON

*breathe you fucker

(it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others
as it is to invent my own)

Blood and Guts Cut-up, After Kathy Acker

we live in an m-TV society so we'd better worship it
we live in a TV society.
Good is bad

this writing is terrible plagiarism because all culture-stinks and there's no reason to make new culture-stink
make culture-stink
new culture-stink

women are capitalists' toys. so what?
this is your pain so concede it
cocks are capitalists' toys. suck suck.
your pain has no relation to their excitement and danger.
wars are capitalists' toys. fuck fuck.
this is your pain so worship it
Good is bad.

they want to step into the snow
they want to keep this reality
this nicey-nicey-clean-ice-cream society

they want to keep the child

everyone hates her. the woman who is her
the woman who lives her life according to ideals
terrible plagiarism is the only reality we've got left in our nicey-clean-ice-cream-TV society so we'd better worship it
Good is bad.

they want to keep the child so they can teach her
everyone hates her
the woman who is her
the woman who lives her life according to nonmaterialistic ideals
this wild antisocial monster
we live in prisons where your pain has no relation to anyone else's

women are not allowed to talk
tell them to shut-up
don't you know you can't step into the snow

Punk rock. S & M sex. crime is total excitement and danger
don't you know, you can't step into the snow.

Punk rock. S & M sex. crime is the only reality we've got left in our nicey-clean-ice-cream-TV so we'd better worship it
Good is bad.

they want to keep the child so they can teach her to suck
everyone hates her
women are not allowed to talk
tell them to shut-up

they want to keep the child so they can teach her to suck their cocks
everyone hates her
the woman who lives her
the woman who is her
the wild antisocial monster

Women are not allowed to talk.
Tell them to shut-up.

Lowry and I

Lowry is a stubborn one, I can tell you that much. Argumentative, bossy and demanding it seems I seldom live up to her expectations. Always wanting, expecting, pushing for more I often find myself exhausted trying to keep up with her. I suppose such is life when one befriends a cynical perfectionist.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not being disparaging, I do not dislike Lowry. On the contrary I find her company quite splendid! She is my most cherished of friends. Her sense of humor never fails to make me chuckle and certainly there is no lack of amusement in her presence. Always roaming around on random adventures, we have shared the most exhilarating of experiences. Life with her is rarely dull, always there is some new tangent to be off on, some great creative endeavor to pursue. She is compassionate and understanding, a kind and brilliant friend when she chooses.

"When she chooses" is the catch-phrase there. An isolationist, often she will disappear for days at a time, telling only me where she is going and how to contact her. She leaves the weight of responsibility on my shoulders to pay her bills, clean her house, care for her pets. I answer her email, open her correspondence, even talk to her partner and parents to assure them that all is well. Meanwhile she is off "finding herself" on some desert cliff or crumbling mountainside; or even worse, locked up in her studio creating art like some sort of mad woman.

Last night I met up with Lowry in a bar. She was rambling on about reality and fantasy. I was having trouble keeping pace with her racing thoughts and half-formed, half-assed ideas. She fully lost me when she began going on about alternate truths and historical manipulation. Politely I nodded my head and played the attentive listener, downed a few jacks on the rocks and thought fondly of my bed at home. I told her I was leaving - headed back to get some sleep. Bullheadedly, she refused to let me go, demanding I accompany her to her studio to work. Cursing under my breath I slapped down enough to cash to cover our tab and trudged out after her.

Yes, I trudged after her. Someone needs to keep an eye on her. Without me she would be wallowing in a ditch somewhere, living under a bridge in Portland (which is where I found her last time we split paths). I suppose you could say I have a love/hate relationship with her. She is my dearest friend yet my most cursed enemy. She tells me I'm not serious enough, too happy-go lucky...I tell her she is too somber and needs to be more optimistic. All in all, it seems we balance each other out; two incompletes making one whole. Or some sort of holistic, feel-good rubbish like that. Well, off to bed for me...that is if Lowry is finished in her studio yet...

Exercise in Style - Scesis Onomaton

Damn, cripes, confound-it, the midday bus was busy! The noon public transport was crowded, jam-packed, full of commuters. Luckily I found an empty seat and with a sigh, gasp, exhale of relief sat down hoping to get a quick nap, catch a few zzz's, grab a couple minutes of shut eye between classes. I tried to block out the commotion, bustle, noise in the vehicle. To my great vexation an annoying young man woke me from my slumber, the lad roused me from my rest. An odd college-aged fellow, he had a long, lithe, thin, skinny neck and was wearing a foolishly inane hat, was sporting a headpiece that had some sort of braided, plaited, intertwined cord. He was causing a scene, making a fuss, throwing a tantrum, accusing a young pregnant passenger of needlessly bumping, elbowing, shoving, bulldozing her way down the aisle. In a childish huff, fit, tizzy, tantrum, the young man flung himself into the nearest empty seat, hurled himself on the the closest available bench, heaved himself down beside me. Unfortunately, regretfully, lamentably adjacent to me.

The same afternoon, directly after class, a mere two hours later, 120 minutes further into my day, who did I see but this same juvenile nuisance? The exact sophomoric pest, lounging idly about, kicked back lethargically by the law building stairs. He was speaking with a professor, conversing with faculty, talking with an instructor who seemed to be commenting in regards to the young man's jacket. The educator was explaining the benefit of adding a button to his parka, stitching an additional fastener to the coat. The young man noticed me and enthusiastically waved, saw me and vehemently beckoned, gesticulated wildly, urging me in his direction. Feigning bewilderment, faking obliviousness, acting as if I hadn't noticed, I scuttled off in the opposite direction, moved rapidly towards the other end of the building, wasted no time in getting myself out of there as quickly as possible. Pronto, chop chop, lickety-split.

After Stein

On my exterior there is calm. On my interior there is chaos. In the mountains they say there is gold. In the desert they say there is nothing. In the desert they say there is nothing. In nothing all else is existing, in nothing all else dies. In nothing there is potential, in nothing there is exuberance, in nothing there is emptiness and the endless search for something. Some of you humans have souls; most of us wicked sell lies. All of my ignorance breeds discord while all of the hurt keeps hurting, all of the questions keep questioning. This makes being.

Mobius

http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_12975359

A human has passed on as they do every day, let us bow our heads in reverence and vow to live our own lives more fully. I do not speak for Winston's actions but can say that during his brief life he made mine more beautiful. To walk into my local coffee shop each morning and be greeted by his cheerful hello, chat with him regarding the ski conditions, talk about the local gossip while he made my regular quad red eye brought a smile to my face. If Winston was too busy to talk his chatty grey parrot always found the time to shoot out a derogatory greeting my way. Winston fostered life and community within this small mountain town. He lived passionately and shared that openly with those around him. The pain and suffering that the article described was something he more often than not bore alone, I rarely heard a negative word from his mouth unless it was muttering under his breath about the damn texas tourist -( which I dare say all coloradans do on regular occassions). Let us not pass judgement upon his actions. Rather let us celebrate what was his life, the beauty and kindness that he offered freely to those who knew him. Let us remember him through his art, his writing... Let us spread even a small piece of that magnificence to others around us in hopes that we may improve the society that he chose to turn away from.