2009/10/25

maturity

the maturity of man: rediscoverung the seriousness of a child playing.
(nietzsche: beyond good and evil)

play

"Play is a rite and a quality of mind in engaging with one's worldview.
Play refers to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment. Play may consist of amusing, pretend or imaginary interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions or interplay. The rites of play are evident throughout nature and are perceived in people and animals, particularly in the cognitive development and socialization of those engaged in developmental processes and the young. Play often entertains props, tools, animals, or toys in the context of learning and recreation. Some play has clearly defined goals and when structured with rules is entitled a game. Whereas, some play exhibits no such goals nor rules and is considered to be "unstructured" in the literature.
Concerted endeavor has been made to identify the qualities of play, but this task is not without its ambiguities. For example, play is commonly perceived as a frivolous and non-serious activity; yet when watching children at play, one can observe the transfixed seriousness and entrancing absorption with which they engage in it. Other criteria of play include a relaxed pace and freedom versus compulsion. Yet play seems to have its intrinsic constraints as in, "You're not playing fair."
When play is structured and goal orientated it is often presented as a game. Play can also be seen as the activity of rehearsing life events e.g. young animals play fighting. Play may also serve as a pretext, allowing people to explore reactions of others by engaging in playful interaction. Flirting is an example of such behavior. These and other concepts or rhetorics of play are discussed at length by Brian Sutton-Smith in the book The Ambiguity of Play. Sometimes play is dangerous, such as in extreme sports. This type of play could be considered stunt play, whether engaging in play frighting, sky-diving, or riding a device at high speed in an unusual manner.
The seminal text in play studies is Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga. Huizinga defined play as follows:
Summing up the formal characteristic of play, we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress the difference from the common world by disguise or other means.
This definition of play as constituting a separate and independent sphere of human activity is sometimes referred to as the "magic circle" notion of play, and attributed to Huizinga, who does make reference to the term at some points in Homo Ludens. According to Huizinga, within play spaces, human behavior is structured by very different rules: e.g. kicking (and only kicking) a ball in one direction or another, using physical force to impede another player (in a way which might be illegal outside the context of the game).
Another classic in play theory is Man, Play and Games by Roger Caillois. Borrowing much of his definition from Huizinga, Caillois coined several formal sub-categories of play, such as alea (games of chance) and ilinx (vertigo or thrill-seeking play).
According to Stephen Nachmanovitch, play is the root and foundation of creativity in the arts and sciences also as in daily life."
(quoted from wikipedia)

2009/10/24

birds and girls



sally rand (1904-1979)

ok computer

there are a few words i really don´t like when someone says them to me.
one is "ok" the other is "i don´t know" (when you expect a decision).
it drives me nutty and i´m always funky when someone will neither say yes or no to what is happening and being done but will delay and cede the decision to another time and another person, just waiting. it was hillel the elder, the old wise jew from babylon who spoke the word:
if i am not for myself, who will be?
and when i am for myself, what am 'i'?
and if not now, when?
i always make the mistake of forming a too strong opinion i´ll often have to change again the next day. but at least then you can discuss and something can happen. where there is no dissent, there is no development. oh no. there has to be at least a minimum of friction. i shouldn´t be afraid of formulating and expressing an opinion, and then i shouldn´t be afraid to admit i was wrong, if i was wrong.
let´s never wait any longer! let´s do it.
i wish i weren´t as lazy a bum as i often am.
my friend who expected an answer from me just a couple of minutes ago caught me when i answered: ok
he said: ok is a word for computers.
right he is.
and what also displeases me, by the way, is:
omg
wtf
:)
xoxo
i like the words. there is enough time to write
oh my god
what the fuck
makes me smile
hugs and kisses

my favourite words today:
ludicrous, luxurious, infantile, filigree, frozen, fumble, fart, moustache, bunch, chunk, dick, olive oil, curcuma, cucumber, botswana, girl.

an ode to the words. the strange and stranger strangeness of the words.
an ode to decision. to saying yes or no to this computer. do i want you on, or do i want you off?
he knows this language.

and in the end again hillel: trust not thyself till the day of thy death.

2009/10/21

sigalit landau



sigalit landau: video, installation, sculpture and performance artist, born 1969 in jerusalem.
i am completely fascinated by her work since i first saw one of her videos in the pompidou in paris last year that left me speechless for an entire day.
what a stunning, grand, great, superb, exquisite artist she is.
oh yes.

the gift of death

How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself and without my being able to see him in me? And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is "my" secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some "one," or to some other who remains someone? It is perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy, namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no-one. A secret doesn't belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place [chez soi]...The question of the self: "who am I?" not in the sense of "who am I" but "who is this 'I'" that can say "who"? What is the "I," and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the "I" trembles in secret?
(Derrida, The Gift of Death, 92)

refusal


(blanchot: friendship, p.111)

n´oubliez-pas

(Révolution...détruisant tout sans rien de destructeur, détruisant, plutôt que le passé, le présent même où elle s'accomplissait et ne cherchant pas à donner un avenir, extrêmement indifférent à l'avenir possible (la réussite ou l'échec), comme si le temps qu'elle cherchait à ourvrir fut déja au-delà de ces déterminations usuelles.) (Blanchot, "N'oubliez pas!" 11-12)

the writing of disaster

Last witness, end of history, close of a period, turning point, crisis--or, end of (metaphysical) philosophy...But if (since there is no other way of putting this) a decisive historical change is announced in the phrase "the coming comes," making us come into our "most proper," or "own-most" (being), then one would have to be very naive not to think that the requirement to withdraw ceases from then on. And yet it is from then on that "withdraw" rules--more obscurely, more insistently...Why does writing--when we understand this movement as the change from one era to a different one, and when we think of it as the experience (the inexperience) of the disaster--always imply the words inscribed at the beginning of this "fragment," which, however, it revokes? It revokes them even if what they announce is announced as something new which has always already taken place, a radical change from which the present tense is excluded.
(Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, p. 102)
And why the idea of the Messiah? Why the necessity of a just finish? Why can we not bear, why do we not desire that which is without end? The messianic hope--hope which is dread as well--is inevitable when history appears politically only as an arbitrary hubbub, a process deprived of meaning or direction. But if political thinking becomes messianic in its turn, this confusion, which removes the seriousness from the search for reason (intelligibility) in history--and also from the requirement of messianic thought (the realization of morality)--simply attests to a time so frightful, so dangerous, that any recourse appears justified.
(p. 117)
As the German expression has it, the last judgement is the youngest day, and it is a day surpassing all days. Not that judgment is reserved for the end of time. On the contrary, justice won't wait; it is to be done at every instant, to be realized all the time, and studied also (it is to be learned.) Every just act (are there any?) makes of its day the last day or -- as Kafka said -- the very last: a day no longer situated in the ordinary succession of days but one that makes of the most commonplace ordinary, the extraordinary.
(p. 143)

beuys

2009/10/12

prisoners do the hustle




i am probably the last one to notice, my lovely friend carsten told me about this one:
there is a prison, the CPDRC in the philippines, where the prisoners dance entire choreographies together from sister act to michael jackson and are filmed by their surveillance cameras who broadcast the show on youtube. this is one of the most obscure and cuckoo things i have seen in quite a while.