horsemouth has been sitting out in the sun LRB’ing it - mainly fredric jameson’s in hyperspace a review of david wittenberg’s ‘time travel: the popular philosophy of narrative’. (LRB, 10th september 2015 - hail people’s domestic recycling)
of course, if you know horsemouth’s writings, this covers a number of his key concerns - science fiction, utopian fiction, time travel and causality, ways and means of reaching a better future. and indeed he is not alone in this - this is ben seymour's territory - and indeed there's a showing of his film . Thu 10 May 2018, 7pm at the whitechapel gallery.
Dead the Ends, Trailer (2017) from Benedict Seymour on Vimeo.
here we are (reading) marker after wells - marker deploys his ‘I fell asleep and dreamed of a better world ...’ (a classic strategy of early utopias) as a technology, but wells provides us with an actual time machine - and a visual metaphor of time viewed from outside, from a kind of hyperspace. then there is the multi-verse...
‘modernity has in fact invented such a hyperspace from which to observe the observer: it is called the camera. and film becomes that logical extension of the time-travel narrative in that paradoxical sense in which... the world is viewed without myself...’
it’s a good(-ish) article - horsemouth will return to it when he has a little more time. (fabula - syuzhet)
last night horsemouth dreamed of being at a gig (hawkwind in a modern incarnation - thanks for asking) with john clarkson, as another concert goer went to leave he passed horsemouth a whole series of cartoon strips laid out on ribbons (it now strikes horsemouth that they were kind of like film - but still later it strikes him that it is not like a film because the successive images are read left to right rather than top to bottom).
Showing posts with label utopia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label utopia. Show all posts
Sunday, 22 April 2018
Thursday, 8 September 2016
the osea island temperance community
horsemouth (further to a link about essex architecture week and the group radical essex) has been reading (in the FTweekend supplement of all places - yes horsemouth has been enjoying reading physically-existing newspapers once more) about radical goings on out in essex back in the day. in particular about the osea island temperance community. a friend recounts parking up the boat just off there and rowing ashore for a picnic when he was growing up (now it is a reasonably plush holiday place).
Trail of The Spider from Hugo Baltazar on Vimeo.
once some friends filmed a western where the only way (out) was essex. of course horsemouth thinks this is just a plot to lure us all out there so we can be massacred on the mudflats. there are chances to visit this weekend.
other radical sites include the wickford anarcho-naturist commune (tolstoyan) - well worth a miss, silver end, and the bata shoe factory and workers’ estate in tilbury (based on the giant bata workers’ estate in ziln in the czech republic). a visit there would give horsemouth the chance to check out if it is true (as hoy shanty alleges) that ‘tilbury girls go round in pairs’.
horsemouth is still stuck in the meat world without a broadband collection only accessing the digital pleroma at the library (and then only when it is open). this was perhaps why he went and hid at his parents for a bit (in the green in the green).
the weekend may be busy (and horsemouth may be babysitting at some point in the middle of it). thereafter he is (probably) back to work. he attended the induction meeting for beachside donkey rides (winter season) and was comforted to hear of the governments new (donkey) race to the bottom charging schedule - two bids must be obtained for any donkey ride and the lowest of them must be taken (even if the creature is clearly not a donkey - or is only one donkey claiming to cover dozens of bookings simultaneously with their tardis. of course organisations with large resources would not do anything so low as to undercharge to deliberately crash the market and then raise charges later when a monopoly has been secured...
Trail of The Spider from Hugo Baltazar on Vimeo.
once some friends filmed a western where the only way (out) was essex. of course horsemouth thinks this is just a plot to lure us all out there so we can be massacred on the mudflats. there are chances to visit this weekend.
other radical sites include the wickford anarcho-naturist commune (tolstoyan) - well worth a miss, silver end, and the bata shoe factory and workers’ estate in tilbury (based on the giant bata workers’ estate in ziln in the czech republic). a visit there would give horsemouth the chance to check out if it is true (as hoy shanty alleges) that ‘tilbury girls go round in pairs’.
horsemouth is still stuck in the meat world without a broadband collection only accessing the digital pleroma at the library (and then only when it is open). this was perhaps why he went and hid at his parents for a bit (in the green in the green).
the weekend may be busy (and horsemouth may be babysitting at some point in the middle of it). thereafter he is (probably) back to work. he attended the induction meeting for beachside donkey rides (winter season) and was comforted to hear of the governments new (donkey) race to the bottom charging schedule - two bids must be obtained for any donkey ride and the lowest of them must be taken (even if the creature is clearly not a donkey - or is only one donkey claiming to cover dozens of bookings simultaneously with their tardis. of course organisations with large resources would not do anything so low as to undercharge to deliberately crash the market and then raise charges later when a monopoly has been secured...
Thursday, 18 August 2016
ruined utopia (between one book and another)
horsemouth had a plan to talk to you about two books (well three really) agota kristof’s novel the diary (and her autobiography the illiterate) and e.m. cioran’s history and utopia (in particular his musings on nationalism and democracy letter to a faraway friend.) he will have to do this largely from memory (and a few notes he made of more quotable passages - no he can’t even do this, he’s left his own diary at home) because the first and last books he has left at home and the third (the middle) book he has never read (only read about).
the diary ends with an afterward by slavoj zizek - he finds the twin boy protagonists of agota’s novel admirable - they are relentlessly honest and relentlessly ruthless and they ‘write’ (in their diary) a sparse stripped-down descriptive prose cataloging the(ir) horrors as they struggle to survive the second world war and perhaps bring a little justice along the way.
but the children are not meant to be wholly admirable - if they fail to participate in the xenophobic hypocrisy of their times, if they fail to acquiesce to the exploitation of the weak by the strong that society ( in times of peace and in times of war) requires hushed up, it is more because they are children of the book, of the idea, who have made the word strong within them and the flesh weak (by means of self-discipline).
it’s a theme probably better dealt with in j.g. ballard’s empire of the sun - here it is just a fantasy for an academic determined to inject some grit into the comfortable and self-satisfied world in which all passion has been spent and the fantasy of an exile in the west.
agota fled hungary in 1956 first to austria and then to switzerland, having survived the nazi occupation, the soviet liberation and the failure of the 1956 rising. in switzerland she found herself illiterate and struggled to learn french - eventually writing plays, novels and an autobiography (the illiterate) in it. just as her twins keep a diary recording their activities she emphasizes how much she was a reader, a child of the book.
e.m. cioran (from neighbouring rumania -a country under the domination of the hungarians at the time of his childhood) also learned to write in french - again it was a struggle,
‘how many hours, how many cigarettes, how many cups of coffee, just to write a half -decent sentence’ (here horsemouth reconstructs the quote from memory).
he too sees the savagery under democracy (he sees democracy as the result of the exhaustion of the political passions of youth rather than a positive achievement) - again we have an observer who can show us both sides of the division of europe and of political thought that structured the 20th century. on the one hand he sees an exhausted west (waiting for the next outbreak of passion to rise up from the depths - horsemouth is reminded of derrida writing on potocki - ok no, Patocka,
the twins survive because of their cruel grandmother (the witch as the locals call her) because she can grow food, and hoard it, and is smart enough to know that the liberators will come looting and raping and murdering. the twins also survive because they become harder, more evil and more determined than the 20th century.
it is a strange victory to be celebrating in the pages of the guardian (where zizek’s review first appeared) but that is the nature of the toleration under which we live.
horsemouth was never brave. but then conditions never consistently demanded it. yesterday he read (and snoozed) - hence this.
the diary ends with an afterward by slavoj zizek - he finds the twin boy protagonists of agota’s novel admirable - they are relentlessly honest and relentlessly ruthless and they ‘write’ (in their diary) a sparse stripped-down descriptive prose cataloging the(ir) horrors as they struggle to survive the second world war and perhaps bring a little justice along the way.
but the children are not meant to be wholly admirable - if they fail to participate in the xenophobic hypocrisy of their times, if they fail to acquiesce to the exploitation of the weak by the strong that society ( in times of peace and in times of war) requires hushed up, it is more because they are children of the book, of the idea, who have made the word strong within them and the flesh weak (by means of self-discipline).
it’s a theme probably better dealt with in j.g. ballard’s empire of the sun - here it is just a fantasy for an academic determined to inject some grit into the comfortable and self-satisfied world in which all passion has been spent and the fantasy of an exile in the west.
agota fled hungary in 1956 first to austria and then to switzerland, having survived the nazi occupation, the soviet liberation and the failure of the 1956 rising. in switzerland she found herself illiterate and struggled to learn french - eventually writing plays, novels and an autobiography (the illiterate) in it. just as her twins keep a diary recording their activities she emphasizes how much she was a reader, a child of the book.
e.m. cioran (from neighbouring rumania -a country under the domination of the hungarians at the time of his childhood) also learned to write in french - again it was a struggle,
‘how many hours, how many cigarettes, how many cups of coffee, just to write a half -decent sentence’ (here horsemouth reconstructs the quote from memory).
he too sees the savagery under democracy (he sees democracy as the result of the exhaustion of the political passions of youth rather than a positive achievement) - again we have an observer who can show us both sides of the division of europe and of political thought that structured the 20th century. on the one hand he sees an exhausted west (waiting for the next outbreak of passion to rise up from the depths - horsemouth is reminded of derrida writing on potocki - ok no, Patocka,
Jan Patočka).
on the other the ruined utopia of communism. utopia is closed off and no longer available.
the twins survive because of their cruel grandmother (the witch as the locals call her) because she can grow food, and hoard it, and is smart enough to know that the liberators will come looting and raping and murdering. the twins also survive because they become harder, more evil and more determined than the 20th century.
it is a strange victory to be celebrating in the pages of the guardian (where zizek’s review first appeared) but that is the nature of the toleration under which we live.
horsemouth was never brave. but then conditions never consistently demanded it. yesterday he read (and snoozed) - hence this.
Thursday, 7 July 2016
books\ gigs \ events june 2016
books
- eca de quiroz - the sin of father amaro
- jose saramago - blindness
- guy de maupassant - short stories
- edna o´brien - august is a wicked month
- jean genet - our lady of the flowers (introduction by sartre and dips)
- jacques ranciere - on the shores of politics (dips)
- jean jacques rousseau - political economy in discourses and social contract - introduction and dips)
- utopia: mitos y formos: colloquium 17-20 jan 1990 ed. yvette centeno (papers in french and english)
- gangster girl (thriller- part)
- alentejo folk songs\ brazillian songs - res de rua (vegetarian st. joao)
- reggae club porto
- kuduro and 80ies indie - virtudes outdoor pre-primavera festy gig
- primavera - soundcheck (shellac?) and gig (song of the siren - unknown singer)
- the drive across england, france, spain and portugal to porto
- being in porto for the month of june
- st. joao
- sunbathing (some wading and swimming) much walking
- open day porto (stomemasons co-operative, marques da silva´s home and office)
- brexit
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