“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
Monday, December 12, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
All the world's memory
----------------------
(..) The cinema was also used to record events and even to shape the course of history. Hugo Munsterberg commented on the unique ability of the cinema to create a direct vision of the past. While in the theater we must recall past events to give present action its full force, in the motion picture we can be shown the past” (Kern). By the late 19th century, the emergence of the phonograph, cinema, and preservation societies had established an inherent obsession for the persistence of the past (and its profound effect on the present (..)
Unpacking the workings of memory
(..) The cinema was also used to record events and even to shape the course of history. Hugo Munsterberg commented on the unique ability of the cinema to create a direct vision of the past. While in the theater we must recall past events to give present action its full force, in the motion picture we can be shown the past” (Kern). By the late 19th century, the emergence of the phonograph, cinema, and preservation societies had established an inherent obsession for the persistence of the past (and its profound effect on the present (..)
Unpacking the workings of memory
Monday, October 10, 2011
Walter Benjamin
-------------------
"Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form -- it may be called fleeting or eternal -- is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
A literary critic, philosopher, translator and sociologist, cultural critic; he wrote on Goethe, Kafka, Proust, Baudelaire, and he was influenced by Bertolt Brecht. His essays and works have been hugely influential in not just how people think about modern culture and art, but also how art is produced and why.
Benjamin on collecting
"Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form -- it may be called fleeting or eternal -- is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
A literary critic, philosopher, translator and sociologist, cultural critic; he wrote on Goethe, Kafka, Proust, Baudelaire, and he was influenced by Bertolt Brecht. His essays and works have been hugely influential in not just how people think about modern culture and art, but also how art is produced and why.
Benjamin on collecting
On longing
-----------------------
Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection. By Susan Stewart
Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection. By Susan Stewart
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Marguerite Duras
---------------------
“The thing that's between us is fascination, and the fascination resides in our being alike. Whether you're a man or a woman, the fascination resides in finding out that we're alike.”
Duras's early novels were fairly conventional in form; however, with Moderato Cantabile she became more experimental, paring down her texts to give ever-increasing importance to what was not said. She was associated with the Nouveau roman French literary movement, although she did not belong definitively to any group. Her films are also experimental in form; most eschew synchronized sound, using voice over to allude to, rather than tell, a story; spoken text is juxtaposed with images whose relation to what is said may be more-or-less indirect.
On her tombstone at Montparnasse Cemetery (Paris, France) there are a small plant, a lot of white pills scattered over her sober gray stone, two flowers and two letters engraved: M. D. Two are also the images that could illustrate the unbridled process of her existence: the evocation of a beautiful girl full of eroticism... traveling by ferry along the Mekong River with a felt hat on, her lips in a dark red color, and, just at the other end, a woman with her face and body devastated by alcohol, that after four detoxification cures, went into a five months coma. Marguerite Duras leapt in just a moment from the beginning to the end of her life but, in the brief time of that moment, she did what she wanted to do: écrire. To write.
“The thing that's between us is fascination, and the fascination resides in our being alike. Whether you're a man or a woman, the fascination resides in finding out that we're alike.”
Duras's early novels were fairly conventional in form; however, with Moderato Cantabile she became more experimental, paring down her texts to give ever-increasing importance to what was not said. She was associated with the Nouveau roman French literary movement, although she did not belong definitively to any group. Her films are also experimental in form; most eschew synchronized sound, using voice over to allude to, rather than tell, a story; spoken text is juxtaposed with images whose relation to what is said may be more-or-less indirect.
On her tombstone at Montparnasse Cemetery (Paris, France) there are a small plant, a lot of white pills scattered over her sober gray stone, two flowers and two letters engraved: M. D. Two are also the images that could illustrate the unbridled process of her existence: the evocation of a beautiful girl full of eroticism... traveling by ferry along the Mekong River with a felt hat on, her lips in a dark red color, and, just at the other end, a woman with her face and body devastated by alcohol, that after four detoxification cures, went into a five months coma. Marguerite Duras leapt in just a moment from the beginning to the end of her life but, in the brief time of that moment, she did what she wanted to do: écrire. To write.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Robbe- Grillet hommage à Barthes
---------------
J'aime la vie, je n'aime pas la mort. Pourtant, j'aime assez ce qui demeure immobile. J'aime les chats, je n'aime pas les chiens ; j'aime l'impression d'éternité, les vieilles demeures de province aux décors immuables, les lourds velours rouges passés depuis toujours, la mousse dans les allées, les carpes entre deux eaux dans les bassins. Je n'aime pas le téléphone, je n'aime pas la voiture. J'aime les longs voyages en chemin de fer, Paris - Bucarest, New-York - Los Angeles, Istanbul - Téhéran, Moscou - Kabarovsk. J'aime aussi marcher, dans les rues ou à travers la campagne. J'aime les automnes humides et doux, les feuilles brunes, luisantes de pluie, en épais tapis spongieux sur les chemins. Je n'aime pas le bruit, je n'aime pas l'agitation, j'aime les belles voix, je n'aime pas les cris. J'aime les foules joyeuses, je n'aime pas ce qui plait aux foules. Je ne fais pas confiance aux masses populaires. J'aime les jours où je me sens plus intelligent, plus instruit, plus aigu, j'aime apprendre, j'aime enseigner. Je n'aime pas faire une conférence après un bon repas. J'aime bien les petites filles, surtout si elles sont jolies. Je n'aime pas trop les petits garçons. J'aime le joli, je n'aime pas la mode du laid. J'aime dire ce que je pense, surtout si cela ne se dit pas. J'aime connaître la règle, je n'aime pas la respecter. J'aime connaître les théories, littéraires ou scientifiques, j'aime la liberté, je n'aime pas le gaspillage, je n'aime pas la salade journalistique. J'aime mon papa et ma maman. Je me méfie des psychanalystes. J'aime bien agacer les gens mais j'aime pas qu'on m'emmerde.
[Alain Robbe- Grillet]
“I like, I don't like: this is of no importance to anyone; this, apparently, has no meaning. And yet all this means: my body is not the same as yours." [Roland Barthes]
Barthes died in 1980 after being hit by a laundry truck.. don't like.
J'aime la vie, je n'aime pas la mort. Pourtant, j'aime assez ce qui demeure immobile. J'aime les chats, je n'aime pas les chiens ; j'aime l'impression d'éternité, les vieilles demeures de province aux décors immuables, les lourds velours rouges passés depuis toujours, la mousse dans les allées, les carpes entre deux eaux dans les bassins. Je n'aime pas le téléphone, je n'aime pas la voiture. J'aime les longs voyages en chemin de fer, Paris - Bucarest, New-York - Los Angeles, Istanbul - Téhéran, Moscou - Kabarovsk. J'aime aussi marcher, dans les rues ou à travers la campagne. J'aime les automnes humides et doux, les feuilles brunes, luisantes de pluie, en épais tapis spongieux sur les chemins. Je n'aime pas le bruit, je n'aime pas l'agitation, j'aime les belles voix, je n'aime pas les cris. J'aime les foules joyeuses, je n'aime pas ce qui plait aux foules. Je ne fais pas confiance aux masses populaires. J'aime les jours où je me sens plus intelligent, plus instruit, plus aigu, j'aime apprendre, j'aime enseigner. Je n'aime pas faire une conférence après un bon repas. J'aime bien les petites filles, surtout si elles sont jolies. Je n'aime pas trop les petits garçons. J'aime le joli, je n'aime pas la mode du laid. J'aime dire ce que je pense, surtout si cela ne se dit pas. J'aime connaître la règle, je n'aime pas la respecter. J'aime connaître les théories, littéraires ou scientifiques, j'aime la liberté, je n'aime pas le gaspillage, je n'aime pas la salade journalistique. J'aime mon papa et ma maman. Je me méfie des psychanalystes. J'aime bien agacer les gens mais j'aime pas qu'on m'emmerde.
[Alain Robbe- Grillet]
“I like, I don't like: this is of no importance to anyone; this, apparently, has no meaning. And yet all this means: my body is not the same as yours." [Roland Barthes]
Barthes died in 1980 after being hit by a laundry truck.. don't like.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
A manifesto
--------------------------
Reality Hunger by David Shields
(..) The novel, for all the exertions of modernism, is by now as formalized and ritualized as a crop ceremony. It no longer reflects actual reality. The essay, on the other hand, is fluid. It is a container made of prose into which you can pour anything. The essay assumes the first person; the novel shies from it, insisting that personal experience be modestly draped. The flood of memoirs of the last couple of decades represents an uprising against such repression. So why have there been so many phony memoirs? Because of false consciousness, as Marxists would put it. Shields (echoing Alice Marshall) is disappointed in James Frey not because he lied in his book, but because when he appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show he didn’t say: “Everyone who writes about himself is a liar. I created a person meaner, funnier, more filled with life than I could ever be.” After all, just because the novel is food for worms doesn’t mean that fiction has ceased. Only an artificial dualism would treat every non-novel as if it were reportage or court testimony, and only a fear of the slipperiness of life could perpetuate the cult of the back story. “Anything processed by memory is fiction,” as is any memory shaped into literature (..)
Reality Hunger by David Shields
(..) The novel, for all the exertions of modernism, is by now as formalized and ritualized as a crop ceremony. It no longer reflects actual reality. The essay, on the other hand, is fluid. It is a container made of prose into which you can pour anything. The essay assumes the first person; the novel shies from it, insisting that personal experience be modestly draped. The flood of memoirs of the last couple of decades represents an uprising against such repression. So why have there been so many phony memoirs? Because of false consciousness, as Marxists would put it. Shields (echoing Alice Marshall) is disappointed in James Frey not because he lied in his book, but because when he appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show he didn’t say: “Everyone who writes about himself is a liar. I created a person meaner, funnier, more filled with life than I could ever be.” After all, just because the novel is food for worms doesn’t mean that fiction has ceased. Only an artificial dualism would treat every non-novel as if it were reportage or court testimony, and only a fear of the slipperiness of life could perpetuate the cult of the back story. “Anything processed by memory is fiction,” as is any memory shaped into literature (..)
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Exhibition at MFAPS Oslo
-------------------
"Now your body is like a wave"
Video projection and sound installation, 10 min.
The work is based on my private sound recordings from visiting 25 clairvoyants in New York City. In addition to the soundscape, animated subtitles were projected onto the wall.
"Now your body is like a wave"
Video projection and sound installation, 10 min.
The work is based on my private sound recordings from visiting 25 clairvoyants in New York City. In addition to the soundscape, animated subtitles were projected onto the wall.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
David Berman
-------------------------
Imagining Defeat
She woke me up at dawn,
I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.
Imagining Defeat
She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.
I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.
A bus ticket in her hand.
Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.
I reached under the bed for my menthols
and she asked if I ever thought of cancer.
Yes, I said, but always as a tree way up ahead
in the distance where it doesn't matter
And I suppose a dead soul must look back at that tree,
so far behind his wagon where it also doesn't matter.
except as a memory of rest or water.
Though to believe any of that, I thought,
you have to accept the premise
that she woke me up at all.
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