recorded at Lee Kit’s “Someone singing and calling your name”, december 2009
Posted by 丫 | reply »tuning out to tune in or tuning in to tune out
it starts out as almost inaudible. actually, it’s not even a sound at all, more of a sensation or suspicion. very minuscule but you know exactly what it is. even so, you have some time to bide. the distortions have yet to make their presence felt.
the frequencies change. the quiet rustling becomes a deafening roar. time comes into focus and the need to adjust becomes apparent. ignoring this sensation only prolongs the irritable. . . .
alter, adjust, adapt, amend, modify, revise, refine, redesign, rework, reorder, vary, transform, transfigure, transmute, metamorphose, and evolve.
“the observational aspects of photography were carried off into other areas…”
“i frequently go to sleep.” (during my concerts) -phill niblock
community building
(video courtesy of members of the Beijing Chaoyang Church)
Posted by 丫 | more »what is communication, what is imperial, what is revolutionary, what is natural?
debatable
Excerpts from 10 conversations that I have recently either been a part of or have overheard.
1. “so the 10 or less line is quicker?”
-in regards to a grocery line
2. “…you’re an artist, your tastes are refined”
3. “would you rather date someone with a head half the size of a normal one or twice the size?”
4. “…so 90’s…”
-in regards to photos of empty lots in an urban setting
5. “…let the audience fill in the blanks…”
-in regards to that anxiety-ridden moment when art leaves the studio and enters the public realm
6. “…pasta or beef?”
-on a recent flight
7. “…this country is based on individualism and the idea of not having to rely on anybody but yourself is still very much alive…”
-in regards to socialism and universal being 4 letter words in the U.S.
8. “…there is no good mexican food in NYC…”
-in regards to the most ridiculous/absolute conversation that constantly presents itself
9. “…i just learned that my new roommates entire country, that is 3 times the size of Texas, has about half the number of people than the 11211 zip code here!”
-in regards to Greenland. Not really debatable but that’s a nice combination of references
10. “…then maybe failure doesn’t exist?”
-in regards to learning from our mistakes
Posted by joe | reply »please don’t go, don’t go away
——
Research material from part of the PUBLIC project by Elaine W. Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga. Organized as a daily series of experiments, interventions and discourses, PUBLIC aims to examine the potentiality of latency and open spaces made possible in the relations between individuals and publics. Other activities are posted here. Some are open invitations to all, others are unannounced insertions in different locations throughout Berlin. PROGRAM – intitiative for art and architecture collaborations; 22 January – 1 February 2009.
what makes my vacation vacation
acommuniqué number one :: hiroaki
HK:丫:HK:丫:HK:丫:vitamin space studio behind the star city hotel, guangzhou sunday 15:00, before catching another flight. a conversation with 大明 turns out to be an exercise in grasping. As in holding on, we talked about it for so long, and in doing, he slapped at the computer and said “i hate this thing”, footage, a semantic exercise. It is not possible to ascertain whether one would have been more keen to remember naturally without it, as often suspected, but now all that is left are the remnants of feeling and machines. and oh yes the sparkle in his eyes.[PUBLIC BUS - a butterfly moving back and forth between the driver and the passengers seated in the front seats for the elderly or handicapped]one may have bored already with all that talk of archiving and documentation (“don’t say that! it’s something i’m interested in!”), but in the presence of the oversignaled conversation, or a small pale blue notebook with careful letters, “home for lost ideas”, it became interesting to juxtapose the falsely alluded stability of ARCHIVE with MOBILITY (the more cities we will meet in…)[MOBILE TELEPHONE picks up - "I'm driving, I'll call you later."]An illusion, yes—-the restaurateurs sweat, i pore over how to make more space on the hard drive—-for the reels will always start to decay, the paper yellows and becomes brittle or moist with mildew, the archived item, like memory, takes a half-life, conscious of what it once was, now less than. Temporal processes (cooking, growing, getting ready) bear a physicality. These, yes, are continuities. The act of documenting disPLACEs the documented object from its subject, in terms of the mediated action, reality from its image or copy, and its positioning within the consciousness of the documentary maker.[TAXI - after a long silence, he asks, "do people pick their nose in Beijing?"]If we are to keep the archive moving, imagine the scenario of various speeds traveling simultaneously side by side, the tour de france, the armoured truck. it was the memory that caught up with us, and that idea, it seems somehow fantastic, slips into the corner of your vision, up through to the tip of your tongue, already in momentum, such that, as the fear goes, if i were to stop, it would keep going, taking its own trajectory, its own lifehood. they were never yours or mine, and we are merely trying, you perhaps just a bit more gracefully, to keep up.[recreation of SUBWAY - ]“today on subway, she and i were talking about how we want to print our ribbons, with print on one end of ribbon or both. and i said that to put it on both would be more balanced.” “for sausage?” “yes. and she said, ‘different ideas of balance…’ we see the world in such different ways. she felt that if the print were all on one side, then the fullness would balance with the emptiness on the other side. and i said that’s not balance, that’s contrast. but that contrast creates balance for her, like positive and negative.” “yes, but contrast results to balance in the middle, no?” “and you know there is no original word for ‘logic’ in chinese. and i thought this amazing.” “you told me. oh, many japanese people here.” “the word is from english. but maybe it’s more true. because to think of logic is a kind of objectivism, maybe, which i should not forget is all too deceiving. i envy her a lot.” “oh. why.” “what do you mean about balancing in the middle?” “i guess what you were saying about outweighing each other.” “what was i saying about outweighing? what do you mean? trying to understand. …would like to understand something today.” “full and empty, positive and negative are not balanced, not symmetrical but the outcome in the center is 0. not sure if that makes sense…” “that’s a kind of balance, too, no?” “yes, so maybe hers is a kind of balance, too.” “i mean, i see what you mean in the sense that it’s also a kind of annihilation. and this is perfectly her, yes. it is a kind of balance, and that was a nice to see.” “a balance of difference and a balance of sameness.”no, grasping was not the point. and yet if not, if there were no continuity in these relations, no sense of fulfilling, then do processes become reduced to mere transaction? does the momentary require a sense of place any more or less than the sedentary? would it be important, to imagine for all these words passed between, a compiled identity of all the possible words of a certain past and an uncertain future? and if we were to do so, would i be really able to see the world as you do, and would i stop moving?
the grandview from guangzhou, if only it were even louder
退屈でしにそう, a collected series on boring in nine parts, 无聊死了
c, beijing>>
haxi, beijing>>
anyway, osaka>>i’ve tried thinking obout “boring”… it’s hard.this is CONBINI, but without any sign. they were middle of renovation or breaking down. it was on may way to work and wasn’t noticeable when it was still open… it was just one of CONBINI where i didn’t have so much to do with… it had very specific sign like other photos. but one day it lost its face and suddenly started appealing to me with its boringness. how boring building it is… it’s weird that to be very boring can be very visible.
f, berlin>>
so sorry i couldn’t send my boring things to you by 17.i tried to find something, but couldn’t.now for me, anything is not boring, but everything gives me some possibilities, or new feelings to me, i feel. i know that whether it becomes true or not depends on myself, the way i live. but now, i’m trying to get power for changing from small things. maybe, small things are “boring”, ne? yes, positive meanings of boring.[录像文件需要flashplayer和耐性来看,不好意思文件挺大的，还没学好怎么好好压小的。声音是haxi, a, 丫 和 strawberryshortcake做的。 kindly be patient with video files, flashplayer and patience to view, they are rather big, apologies, we have not mastered video compression techniques yet. audio tracks on all video files courtesy of haxi, a, 丫 and strawberryshortcake.]
Posted by o | more »
computer music
2. when she comes over, sit on either side of the bed from one another, both on the floor. both of your computers can be placed on the bed.3. open your laptops. now you don’t see one another’s faces.4. use your favorite voice messenging service, and call one another. do not use headphones. turn the volume to maximum, then back down again. then back up again.5. improvise.
Posted by o | reply »