I've been doing a lot of reading lately and no so much writing, so for the moment please enjoy the words of persons-far-more-eloquent-than-I.
Manning Marable/The Great Wells of Democracy; Cornel West/Race Matters; Susanne Langer/Feeling and Form; Ellen Dissanayake/Art & Intimacy; Ta-Nehisi Coates/The Beautiful Struggle; Elizabeth Grosz (ed)/Becomings: Explorations in Time, Memory, and Futures
Cornel West on nihilism:
"...For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle."1
Elizabeth Grosz on Time:
"Time, or more precisely duration, is an extraordinarily complex term which functions simultaneously as singular, unified, and whole, as well as in specific fragments and multiplicitous proliferation. There is one and only one time, there there are also numerous times: a duration for each thing or movement, which melds with a global or collective time."2
"This is what time is if it is anything at all: not simply mechanical repetition, the causal ripple of objects on others, but the indeterminate, the unfolding, and the continual eruption of the new"3
Bergson as quoted by Grosz
"Thus the living being essentially has duration; it has duration precisely because it is continuously elaborating what is new and because there is no elaboration without searching, no searching without groping. Time is this very hesitation"4
Langer on music as the "Image of Time"
"The semblance of this vital, experiential time is the primary illusion of music. All music creates an order of virtual time, in which its sonorous forms move in relation to each other--always and only to each other, for nothing else exists there. Virtual time is as separate from the sequence of actual happenings as virtual space from actual space...Inward tensions and outward changes, heartbeats and clocks, daylight and routines and weariness furnish various incoherent temporal data, which we coordinate for practical purposes by letting the clock predominate. But music spreads out time for our direct and complete apprehension, by letting our hearing monopolize it--organize, fill, and shape it, all along. It creates an image of time measured by the motion of forms that seem to give it substance, yet a substance that consist entirely of sound, so it is transitoriness itself. Music makes time audible, and its form and continuity sensible.5
1. West, Cornel. 1993. Race matters. Boston: Beacon Press. 15
2. Grosz, E. A. 1999. Becomings: explorations in time, memory, and futures. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 18
3. Ibid 28
4. Ibid 25
5. Langer, Susanne Katherina Knauth. 1953. Feeling and form; a theory of art. New York: Scribner. 109-110
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Sunday, May 22, 2011
experiencing firstness in portugal
I'm currently sitting in a perfectly bizarre hotel in Porto. Positioned squarely between Ikea and Jumbo, Tryp Porto Expo reeks of newness and impermanence. Over the next couple of days, I hope to explain why this bothers me so, why I have come to find new construction--new things--aesthetically and philosophically offensive.
There are pages and pages to be written about my experience at Performa, but first, today, allow me offer you a litany of topics and thoughts provoked by the conference, the city, and new colleagues. 1. Taruskin is a total hipster, Turino is a total nerd. 2. More seriously, Turino offered the most lucid explanation of Peirce I have ever heard. I am waiting on bated breath for his newest book, but until then I'm looking forward to diving into his 1999 article, "Signs of Imagination, Identity, and Experience: A Peircian Theory for Music." 3. Iain Foreman presented a completely brilliant paper entitled "Performance as Resonant Listening." I have spent some time thinking about music as something intrinsically violent, but Foreman pointed out that indeed sound can be something violent in and of itself. The more I ruminated on this point, the more I agreed: sound is uninvited, unexpected, it violates our bodies in an intimate and invasive way. In a sense, we are powerless to protect our bodies from what I have been calling internal sonic micro-colonization. As I write about the presentation, all kinds of observations are coming to mind. Basically, it was brilliant. I can't wait until I can read his books. 4. At some level, almost all the papers I saw addressed the paucity of communicative relationships between audience and performer. While no one said it explicitly, it seemed that they were all getting at the following. We exist as plural entities comprised of numerous virtual, disembodied identities in combination with an embodied identity so coded and bogged down by tradition it can barely see straight (metaphorically speaking of course). Because music can be understood as a heightened form of intimate, physical communication--touch (in a very literal sense) initiated from a distance and experienced from the proverbial stem to proverbial stern--it is indeed, deeply effected in its perception, reception, and transmission by such a cultural context. 5. Speaking of disembodiment and Peirce, who has two thumbs, a scholar-crush on Turino and had a moment of firstness in the Church of Jesus? This girl.
But Performa, and Aveiro, were wonderful.
figure wonderful: Aveiro city park
figure firstness: Church of Jesus, Convent of Jesus Aveiro
But it didn't stop there. I went upstairs to the choir loft and was moved to tears.
figure secondness: Choir Loft, Church of Jesus, Convent of Jesus Aveiro
On the heals of Turino's laudable and if you'll forgive me, awesome, Peirce-a-thon, my experience at the convent brought up all kinds of questions regarding the phenomenology of religious architecture. I am not a Christian, but I have to admit the incredible coercive force of this space; was it a moment of spiritual awakening? Doubtful. Was it a moment of emptiness and openness that left my body and psyche vulnerable to suggestion, co-option, and unmitigated joy? Likely. Is my experience something that has been utilized by the institution of religion over time? Absolutely. However, I should note that despite using words like coercive, vulnerable, co-option, I did not feel violated by the experience--on the contrary, I am deeply grateful for my moment of firstness. 6. The American fetishization of that which is ancient. When I arrived in Portugal, I found myself attracted most to buildings in decay: missing walls and roof tops, proudly displaying elemental wear, these buildings fascinated me. As the week progressed I attempted to articulate my interest-turned-obsession: was it their aesthetic value? Was it the mystique and probable plurality of their history? It wasn't until last night when a colleague expressed a similar fascination. We discussed our American-ness hoping to come to some sort of conclusion, eventually realizing that the allure of these structures was generated by their perceived permanence. In a fundamental way, these buildings comforted us, "grounded" us. My colleague articulated it quite well by saying that in America, architecture is not only transient, but also apocalyptic.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
bad dress rehearsal = good performance?
Yesterday, I presented a rough draft of the big paper and in doing so several facets of my project were illuminated. 1) "Rebellion and Reclamation" is not a twenty minute paper. 2) R and R is no so much of an answer to the question of performing eighteenth-century music in the twenty first century, but rather a series of questions regarding the body and its relationship to musical and artistic practice. This, clearly, is the problem: "the body and its relationship to musical and artistic practice"?! I may as well call it 'On Being Alive: Aesthetics, Phenomenology, and Subjugation.' Right. More specifically, I completely bumbled what I wanted to say about the evolution of time (manipulation/experience of, use as disciplinary practice, connection to late-twentieth century "un-reality") from the monastic tradition to the enlightenment, to nascent and modern capitalism. For my own piece of mind:
The body, Foucault tells us, provided a primary locus for political and social control in the eighteenth century. Appropriating temporal controls from religious sources, the eighteenth century establishment utilized various mechanisms to manipulate behavior and create ideological norms that would function as disciplinary practices. Bodies were thus disciplined not only by observation and classification, but by a system that intentionally manipulated the perception and utilization of time.
Indeed, it was not enough to merely exist in time, rather the concept of disciplinary time required purity and "precision." [1] This urge to temporal cleanliness belies the epoch's predilection for order: a purity of form and function, of purpose and execution. Structure--spatial and temporal--is espoused; filigree eschewed.
Foucault describes a "anatomo-chronological schema of behavior" Noting that in these disciplinary practices, "the act is broken down into its elements; the position of the body, limbs, articulations is defined; to each movement are assigned a direction, an aptitude, a duration; their order of succession is prescribed. Time penetrates the body and with it all the meticultous controls of power." [2] In this instance, Foucault references the disciplinary practices associated with military training, however, one could just as easily apply his description of a deconstructed act to a musical practice. [3]
In the nineteenth century, Marx observed the insidious collusion of time and work. The mechanized temporality introduced via conventions and inventions of the eighteenth century functions not only as a disciplinary practice, but also a means by which the individual worker is dehumanized. Man is both deindividualized and transfigured. Becoming an interchangeable part in a vast capitalist machine, the work and the worker coalesce in a modern manipulation of temporality and meaning. This hybrid of form and functionality is monstrous; its post-modern manifestation rife with myriad implications.
For Baudrillard, time--in its perception and utilization--mimics our present relationship to materials and information. Technological advances have collapsed our perception of time. Intoxicated by speed and the absence of temporal mediation, our virtual personae exist not only outside the body, but also outside linear time. Time, like information and material, has proliferated into an omnipresence of static sameness.
[1] Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. 151
[2] Ibid, 152
[3] When I originally wrote this, I gave myself a good hearty pat on the back for original thought in my observation. Last night, I dove into Paul Virilio's The Art of the Motor, only to find this passage waiting for me: "...that quasi-military conditioning music allows with its rhythmic codes, regressing to the classic scales of archaic music, associated with notions of distance, timbre, and echo." (48) Similar, no?
The body, Foucault tells us, provided a primary locus for political and social control in the eighteenth century. Appropriating temporal controls from religious sources, the eighteenth century establishment utilized various mechanisms to manipulate behavior and create ideological norms that would function as disciplinary practices. Bodies were thus disciplined not only by observation and classification, but by a system that intentionally manipulated the perception and utilization of time.
Indeed, it was not enough to merely exist in time, rather the concept of disciplinary time required purity and "precision." [1] This urge to temporal cleanliness belies the epoch's predilection for order: a purity of form and function, of purpose and execution. Structure--spatial and temporal--is espoused; filigree eschewed.
Foucault describes a "anatomo-chronological schema of behavior" Noting that in these disciplinary practices, "the act is broken down into its elements; the position of the body, limbs, articulations is defined; to each movement are assigned a direction, an aptitude, a duration; their order of succession is prescribed. Time penetrates the body and with it all the meticultous controls of power." [2] In this instance, Foucault references the disciplinary practices associated with military training, however, one could just as easily apply his description of a deconstructed act to a musical practice. [3]
In the nineteenth century, Marx observed the insidious collusion of time and work. The mechanized temporality introduced via conventions and inventions of the eighteenth century functions not only as a disciplinary practice, but also a means by which the individual worker is dehumanized. Man is both deindividualized and transfigured. Becoming an interchangeable part in a vast capitalist machine, the work and the worker coalesce in a modern manipulation of temporality and meaning. This hybrid of form and functionality is monstrous; its post-modern manifestation rife with myriad implications.
For Baudrillard, time--in its perception and utilization--mimics our present relationship to materials and information. Technological advances have collapsed our perception of time. Intoxicated by speed and the absence of temporal mediation, our virtual personae exist not only outside the body, but also outside linear time. Time, like information and material, has proliferated into an omnipresence of static sameness.
[1] Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977. 151
[2] Ibid, 152
[3] When I originally wrote this, I gave myself a good hearty pat on the back for original thought in my observation. Last night, I dove into Paul Virilio's The Art of the Motor, only to find this passage waiting for me: "...that quasi-military conditioning music allows with its rhythmic codes, regressing to the classic scales of archaic music, associated with notions of distance, timbre, and echo." (48) Similar, no?
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