P1010472

P1010472, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

P1010018

P1010018, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

P1010563

P1010563, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

"Instead of intersectional wedges, or islands, then, come situated moments of unity and divergence as we examine the lines that are drawnbetween andaround people, the points at which ‘personal experiences’ come together and split apart. The material, relational and embodied consequences of these shifts through time can take centre stage, and affiliations become more than an empathetic gesture. "

Margaret Gibson"Intersecting Deviance: Social Work, Difference and the Legacy of Eugenics"

Trauma and joy abstraction the self from the idea of the self. Both reflect though absences--in not knowing where one’s body is, in aphasia or aphonia, to feel physically separated from the corporeal. The absence or negation from “the real” marks their most explicit similarities.

Two of the most obvious examples of this negation, are Ida Bauer’s discussion of her traumatic history, to Freud who later canonized it in the case study Dora, and the 15rh century mystic Teresa De Avila Autobiography. These two texts are useful, in that they provide a chronological spectrum between early modernity and late modernity.

As Helene Cixious argues in her play Portrait of Dora, the creation of Dora as a narrative of trauma was the creation of a separate selfhood. This mark of isolating the self, could be found in how trauma followed systems like melancholy--moving from moods to states to problems elucidated by medicine, to biological systems.

If how trauma and melancholy have a remarkable similarities, then joy must have a similar narrative. But Joy is still considered strange, and it’s relationship to the body is still marked by a different kind of rupture. Comparing these two authors, centuries apart, becomes a way of noting both how the ruptures of joy and trauma can have similar shapes, but how that shape has been molded differently, and how joy’s linguistic presence might displace trauma and melancholy’s prioritized place in the depictions of the lived experiences of modernity.

:  also, can we talk about lucite

 Sent at 12:04 PM on Sunday

 me:  and how much io love mucite

or the luke bryan in nytimes

 Sent at 12:10 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  what's he doing there?

 Sent at 12:19 PM on Sunday

 me:  its an epic  takedown of him and country music in general

i think they are w rong

but its a br illiant peice

 Sent at 12:20 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  who wrote it?

 me:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/arts/music/luke-bryan-the-leading-gentleman-of-country.html

curracama

 Josh:  thanks

 me:  i think its much better than he does

 Josh:  i agree with his general negativity toward luke bryan

that spring break album was terrible

but i read on

 me:  i kind of loved it

 Josh:  HE WON FUCKING ENTERTAINER OF THE FUCKING YEAR?????

 me:  but it has a v. spec purpose

and that purpose is fulfilled

hes not justin moore

 Josh:  "there is perilously little to say about Mr. Bryan"

Caramanica is SO GOOD

 me:  he has three problems

a) he doesn't think that country ever had a pleasure principle

b) he thinks that Bryan should be doing something more than he is

c)  that Bryan is v. good at his limited range

d) he has a large, juicy ass

 Josh:  wait, are these caramanica's problems?

 Sent at 12:28 PM on Sunday

 me:  i think so

 Josh:  yeah, i guess suburban country's nothing new

but shouldn't Bryan be doing more than he is?

 me:  why

there are other people doing other things

 Josh:  like, picking songs his drummer might enjoy playing?

 me:  do you expect justin townes earles or jason isbelle to write about fucking soriroty girls

?

 Josh:  kenny chesney has written well about that

and sung well about htat

and luke bryan hasn't

i mean, his songs just sound thin and dead

 me:  define thin

 Josh:  the sound of the Spring Break songs seemed really tossed off

not tossed off in a rowdy garage rock way

just like everyone got into the studio and did the bare minimum

demo quality

(bear in mind, i listened to this once and grimaced and returned it to the library)

 me:  i dont know

 Josh:  the lyrical signifiers contained nothing new

 me:  its young, dumb, and full of cum

thats a legit market

and for a genre that has always been tense about explcit sexuality

i welcome that

he has a great voice

and the skeletal quality has a kind of solid quality

i mean its not genius

its often too easy

but ...

 Sent at 12:35 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  i mean, i was impressed by the significance that a Luke Bryan Spring Break album even exists

and he does have an appealing warmth to his voice

but the warmth just seems to sit there

i don't sense he can do anything outside a very narrow range

 me:  i think that blankness works as a channel for the audience

and the range is intended to function as a conduit

and i think the rship b/w the audience and the performer

is something new

 Josh:  really?

 me:  it foregrounds the audience

it tears down the fourth wall

 Josh:  what's different than kenny chesney's relationship to his audience?

oh, i see

 me:  chesney still maintians its authority as performer

i mean i think t hat what people read as blankness or thinness

is really a pulling back

to foreground the audience

to allow for the audience to have a live expereince

 Josh:  but

 me:  which sells records in a time when records arent selling

 Josh:  but

why can't you have a "live experience" with someone who's actually a good singer?

the spring break eps and album struck me as souvenirs

the kind of thing you'd buy to remember your hedonistic weekend where you saw the one third-rate country singer whose name you can't remember

 me:  but they remember his name

the artist of the year is votedo n by fans

 Josh:  because they bought the ep!

 me:  but the fan culture of luke bryan is strong

they love HIM

 Josh:  but why?

and wasn't your argument that they love themselves loving him?

 Sent at 12:42 PM on Sunday

 me:  my arguement

is that luke bryan's warm, congenial

quite smart perfomative quality

suggests a new kind of realtional aesthetic

that country has tried to foster and failed

do you want to pitch this somewhere?

 Josh:  i wanna pitch luke bryan into the roiling sea

no, but

and is his relational aesthetic defined by being warm, congenial, and smart?

(which, i don't get "smart" from him, but let's set that aside)

 me:  his metagame is hella smart

his game game is dumb

hes the judy holiday of country music

 Josh:  yeah, that's what i thought

black and white actresses are where you go over my head

but i'll trust you on that

 me:  born yesterday

 Josh:  but are you saying that country has tried and failed to develop a warm and congenial relational aesthetic with its audience?

and luke bryan has finally succeeded?

 Sent at 12:49 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  because dolly parton

 Sent at 12:50 PM on Sunday

 me:  dolly parton had tragedy

and no one every thot that they were dolly parton

except dolly

 Sent at 12:51 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  so are you saying luke bryan is the first country star onto whom an audience can project themselves?

by which you mean, "think they're as good as"?

 me:  http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/435617?rpp=20&pg=1&rndkey=20130812&ft=*&deptids=11&when=A.D.+1400-1600&who=Bartolomeo+degli+Erri&pos=1

exact opposite

no project

ion

(this is a ne w thesis i am still working thru

)

let me restart

four thots

a) country has always pretended to have this down home roots aesthtic

b) it held in tension t his need to be a performer

and a need to be part of the audience

c) for a bunch of reasons, countrys suburban roots right now have placed most of the money in audience participation venues that reward tailgating, and big auadiences, and partying and

etc

its a difft kind of work

d) so a few years ago a bunch of people asked questions--how do we rework this balance. i mean you see things like fanfair from the 60s that this balance always occured

but the fans now have all the power

and so, chesney, mcgraw etc

had pushed the balance a bit

but were still pretty heavily in favour of boundries

five thots

e) bryan and his ilk gave up on the boundries.

in that his work is entirely constructed to play w/ the fan culture

which i think might be new

and this might be pitchable

and i mean its obv. false--see erick church playboy fiasco

 Josh:  yeah, this is good stuff

 me:  but ITS FUCKING FASCINATING

 Sent at 1:00 PM on Sunday

 Josh:  but still, there's a difference between analyzing how Luke Bryan works

(and the inexplicable phenomenon of why people buy his albums)

and calling his music good

i can't fault caramanica for thinking he's boring to listen to

 me:  i do think hes good

 Josh:  and caramanica's no traditionalist

 me:  in the sense that he does what i need him to do

he makes me dance, he turns me on,

i mean do we get angry at pitbull for making fuck and dance music

why are we angry at bryan

 Josh:  PITBULL HAS A PERSONALITY!

(i do like "country girl shake it for me" -- THAT seems new, absolutely modern, etc.)

 Sent at 1:04 PM on Sunday

 me:  and it took me a long long way to get there

also, do you know

he respects the womens autonomy

this kind of libertine personae is hella more interesting and less dangerous than lets say justin moores new one or kip moores hey pretty girl

 Josh:  "hey pretty girl" is worse than "crash my party", it's true

ok, i should turn in

it's been a pleasure

 

i have spent a lot of time in the last few days just fucking around on the net, or sleeping or reading...and i'm happy, just calm and happy, but i'm really scared to do this, because to my brain this feels like depression behaviour--i have a really difficult time working the difference b/w this house is safe and nice and low key, and im not stressy, and so yeah, and the whole feburary thing--there is something atavastic in how depression reasserts itself w/o context--where paying attention to context doesnt matter. (i was going to say that i wasnt depressed, but the foundaitonal irony of depression is that even when you are happiest, the wolf is waiting in the parlour).

thirty  things i loved in the national gallery (going to include the first nations show, b/c my notes are a mess)

1. chardin's back  from market (two tiny chardins interspersed with the rest of the french 18th century stuff, got a little lost), but they were both genre scenes with children, the one w/ the market has two brown glass jugs the same shape and colour, as his jugs and plums, hidden in the far left corner. 
2. Blecher's Young Oak Tree,  another tiny painting (maybe 1 foot high) gilded back ground, perfect dutch tree, on a small side wall that had three other tree paintings--oil on gild must be hell to preserve, so badly lit.
3. the competing signs on Eworth's Lady Dacre from the 16th century, with painted text, a small painting w/i the painting, a background of tapestry, and various coded still life references, kind of reminded me of how angry critics got wrt mid peroid johns--the jumble and confusion of competing signs is one of the things artists do. 
4. The titian they have, handsome man, with a dark beard, wearing black against a v. dark blue bckgd, with a slash of red scarf, doubleplushott. 
5. The Sami artist Sontal Kelliker-Cowles makes these sculptures of reindeer and sheep guts, and porcupine quills, that are so tender, fleshy, and translucently grey, that they remind me of the best of hesse
6. christi belcourts large baize green painting, with traditional metis beading motifs painted on it, like large being 10x6 at the least. 
7. a couple of beading and embrodiery projects--Tersea Marguiles comissioning a group of women to overlay embroidery on the blood stained sheet that shourded a murdered activist, 
8. and Nadia Myre comissioning 230 friends to "bead the indiain act" literally, takign the pages of the government agency, and going over it in cimson beads
9. Edward Poirtas Louis Reil Rope--a complicated story, Poitras was part of thisreineactment group in regina, who had a line in one of their newsletters, that said that 2000 lbs of rope where shipped from ottawa to sell as souvineers--poitras bought 2000 lbs of rope to see what that would look like, piled in a corner, in this golden hue, it's so subtle, and such a difficult reminder of growing up on the praries, and reil still being alive. 
10. greg staats dark string, a wampum remake of brakhage style formalism. 
11. marie watt blanket stories, i have seen smaller versions of this, but this one went 50 feet tall, a monolith compiled of blankets carefully folded. 
12. monkman orgy 
13. Kwakwaka'wakw Ritual Object, of a raven riding an orca, in the middle of a room of Emily Carrs
14. An excellent Haida Cedar Box, with a large blue green moon motif, in the same room. 
15. Kurelek's Winter North of Winnipeg. (excellent use of v. little colour variation and white on white)
16. Brian Jungen's Gas Cans, were in the wrong gallery. 
17. Jeffery Gibson's paintings on elk skin--abstract, and in delicate pastels, whites, and greytones--how he chose to highlight or erase the tears in the elk, painting over, or starting a set of rays from one hole, or not reparing it at all, the formal choice and the problem of material. 
18. a violent and dark red, almost maroon stripe painting of newman almost overpowers voices of fire. 
19. a v. good, but textureally complex martin from 85 (the gesso is much bumpier) abuts a halley triptych made of dayglo and stucco--actually places martin in a unique context. 
20. tender diagonal sandback. 
21. how ugly jack bush was when he went fully ugly. 
22. jimmie dunhams encore tranquillity (i dont know if it was v. v. sad or v. v. funny.)
23. several erotic depictions of pan 
24. a white on white, enamel on steel, flavin 
25. another flavin named after oakham which really could mark the place of trinitrian theology. 
26. Peirro Di Cosimo Vulvan and Aleus from 1490 has a panther, two partridges, a camel and a MOTHERFUCKING GIRAFFE.
27. Prudence Howard:  two prudence heward's today at the national gallery, lots of thots about them, haunting, difficult work that they are, but i keep coming back to the one in montreal, with the mirros, and the one in the national gallery, of the girl in the pinafore, and her friendship with isabel mclaughlin, and the mysterious health complaints, and the glam death in LA...she's a dyke, isn't she?
28. Janvier signed some of his work from the 70s with his treaty numbers. 
29. Paranoid from Montainai, from the mid 70s, is too bright, too shiny, and too ugly, just two colours, weirdly the same as kodak. 
30. Vernon Ah Kees Three Channel video installations featuring custom surf boaards, one with barbed wire. 

ottawa list:

1. musuem stuff 
2. finialise budget with rachel 
3. pitch wendy peice to killing the buddh 
4. think about conference presentation 
5. work on memoirish thing 
6. email boisvert quesitons 
7. jukebox stuff 

P1010018

P1010018, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

P1010018

P1010018, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

P1010056

P1010056, a photo by PinkMoose on Flickr.

ray's bachelor party at the queen and beaver--rabbit, sweet breads, brandied peaches and sweat cream, and a negroni, old fashioned,  glass of south african red, mint julep, french martini, mai tai, and pimms cup.

Tagame’s fetishistic toolbox overflows: clamps, electrodes, chains, candles, gags, ropes, hooks, dildos, thumbtacks, blades, piercings, handcuffs, canes, vinegar, belts, needles, and a memorable Perrier bottle. Yet the ritualized, almost solemn staging of their employment distinguishes his comics from ero-guro manga, or “erotic grotesque nonsense,” to use the wonderful literal translation – an artistic phenomenon dating back to the 1930s, in which human bodies become props for extravagantly cruel theatre, aberrant and amoral. (from the hazlit article linked below)

the ritualizing of the body thru artificial phalluses (the candle, the dildo, the hook, the blade, are not cock) (to be stabbed is to have an orifice made, the artifical phallus creates an artifical oifice)  the flaccid rope against hard body, the hard chain or rigid cane  against pliable body, the size o the needle and the size of the cock--all of the collapsing of diacritical pairs in tamage's best work, is a ritualised grotesqurie borrowed not only from the ero-guero tradition, but an attempt to westernize it, no? and so this seperating porn from the bad old not art and the good new totes art, is intensely problematic? 

Imprisoned at Sainte-Pélagie (at sixty-three years of age), Sade, we are told, used "every means his imagination could suggest… to seduce and corrupt the young people (to slake his lubricity with young fools) who were imprisoned in Sainte-Pélagie owing to unfortunate circumstances and put by chance in the same corridor as himself."

barthes

On his part-Japanese, part-English website, Tagame has posted charmingly idiomatic lists of “horny things” from various periods of his life—The Thousand and One Nights, Story of O, Joe Gage films—and when I asked about the first one he could recall consciously taking in as erotica, he mentioned feeling intrigued by posters forSalò, Pasolini’s abject transposition of de Sade to the doomed fascist redoubt of the Italian Social Republic. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll go to the bookstore and look for the original book, ‘cause it looks like it’s based on something.’ And when I was looking for it I found by chance an issue of something with a picture of a naked man from the waist up, and I thought, oh, what’s this?, and opened it and went ‘ohhh!’, because it was basically a gay porn magazine. I have no memory of what happened after that, but somehow I obtained that magazine and went home with it.”

from here

thinking alot about tagame, who i have half dismissivley been referring to as bear manga, but i think is an important pornographer, and whose new book is vital. 

this might be a bit eurocentric, but reading it next to sade (because, seriously, the sheer overwhelming, formal attention paid to the extremes of viscera in this text, it's sadean), i was sort of willing to say, okay, this is like sade, this is like sade b/c its beautiful, this is like sade because it pays attention to rhetoric, this is like sade because its about ettiqutte and the heirarchy of sexual systems, and its like sade because as barthes teaches: ". Throughout his life, the Marquis de Sade's passion was not erotic (eroticism is very different from passion); it was theatrical" i suspect that tagame's interest is not erotic but aesthetic. 

sade's pornography is lapidiary, its excess is lapidary 8 or 900 pages, tamage tells his story in five or six. tamage writes for magazines, for small comissions, for the underground--so maybe its like the size of physique pictorial, the amount of time it takes for a quick wank--the 900 pages, are intended for a long stay, for the imagination to go free when the body is imprisoned (which is kind of ironic, because tamage is a master of the body being tied up, of bicep or cock or  throat  or pec pressing against a well tied rope, a rope that seems to have careful, almost diagramatic attention paid to how the rope works against the body--so the tightness of the narrative, the tightness of the accuracy of depiction, the tautness of the rope, and the tautness of the body, all narrow and deepn the tautness of the narrative story. 

what can be done in the short stories of tamage is what can be done with a willing partner or two or give or 10, and a rope. what can be done in the novels of sade, well little can be done in the novels of sade. 

which makes me think, maybe--of a taxonomy of porn. 

the philsophy, the lapidary, the endless repeating, the langauge interfering, the descriptions, the philsophy, as part of a eddy of unsolving or unresolving or unresovalble eros. 

the narrative, the quick shot, the collection of quick shots, the language receding to bodies, the lack of descriptions, the lack of phisophy...

i wonder if graphic porn (like pix, like comix, like the underground work that waugh marks in out/line or lust unearthed, for example, ie, etc...allows for a variety of informaiton sorting to occur--i wonder if the lapidary porn works better w/i the realm of written language for the sake of language, and if the quick shot porn works better w/ visuals. 

(is this why lost girls kind of failed--an attempt to make lapidary out of graphic images....)

if hosea talks to us about the problems of being obdient to those who are problematic, talks about a human failure of loyalty, then luke tells us the opposite--the gifts of being obdient to a god...and we can then talk about the split b/w the church and the gospel?

there is irony in the zimmerman trial. it might not have been murder. it might not have been manslaughter. these are legal technicalities. but, the stand yr ground laws was born out of centuries of white men killing black boys. the murder and manslaughter laws were constructed in an environment that were intended to police black bodies. there might be no legal justice, because in the american south, the history of policing black bodies, results in white men killing black boys. 50 years ago, there wouldn't have been a trial. and that is progress.

The governmentality Foucault describes in The Birth of Biopolitics does not seem sufficient for understanding what it implies from the 1990s on, when governmentality began to limit the freedom which Foucault made the condition of “liberalism.” The freedom in liberalism is always and primarily the freedom of private ownership and owners. When the “rights of man” are threatened – by a crisis, a revolt, or some other phenomenon – regimes of governmentality other than liberal governmentality are required in order to ensure their durability. In this way, the problem of “governing as little as possible” first created the conditions for, then gave way to, as has always been the case in the history of capitalism, ever more authoritarian politics. To read The Birth of Biopolitics in light of what is taking place today is to be struck by a certain political naivete, since the parable of “liberalism” always describes, leads to, the same thing: crisis, limitations on democracy and “liberal” freedoms, and the institution of more or less authoritarian regimes according to the intensity of the class struggle to wage in order to maintain the “privileges” of private property…

This is why the current crisis is not only a financial crisis but also a failure of neoliberal governmentality of society. This mode of government founded on business and proprietary individualism has failed Maurizio Lazzarato The Making of the Indebted Man Semiotext(e), 2012, pgs. 108-109