March 2007 Archives
This week we endeavored to make a conversation between ourselves, Marshall McLuhan, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Robert Walser, and Raymond Williams. Walser was the most pleasant guest. His brief prose piece, “Parisian Newspapers,” was our keynote. In this short paragraph (written in 1925) he discusses the Parisian papers, “from which the scent of power emanates.” “The papers of conquerors,” he observes, “make the best society.”
Walser’s compelling synaesthesia and the beautiful English of translator Christopher Middleton enchanted us, and Stephanie Snyder wondered if he meant that the papers actually “make” the best society, by creating the social culture of power. Someone (was it Leslie Miller?) observed that one doesn’t glean information from newspapers so much as soak in them, bathe in them, acquire their perfume, so that one may walk out into the day properly groomed and acceptable for the society of others. While for Walser in 1925 this morning ritual meant “the Parisian newspapers,” for us, in Portland, 2007, it means The New York Times. The daily comedy, at Portland’s coffee shops, of scores of intelligent people grooming themselves behind fresh copies of that giant “Baby Huey” of a newspaper was observed and appreciated.
Walser’s “appreciation” of the Parisian papers was read by Erik Palmer, Abi Spring, and others as ironic, perhaps even sarcastic, and they felt he was mocking the newspapers’ self-importance. But Leslie Miller read him literally. With Leslie, we enjoyed the bracing vertigo of taking Walser’s indulgent submission to power on its face, as a real pleasure. We speculated that a commitment to read—and to conduct our own work—without irony might be a revolutionary position. By the end of the paragraph, Walser has “forgotten how to speak German,” and asks “I wonder if there is any harm in that?”
Marshall McLuhan entered the discussion with his distinction between “hot” and “cool” media. We speculated that Walser’s writing was itself “cool,” because he left room for such divergent readings (taking him literally or reading him as ironic or mocking). In McLuhan’s terms, this would be “cool” writing because Walser left the text “low definition” so it could be filled in and understood by the reader as he or she pleased. A “high definition” text might labor to fill in all nuance—or strip away ambiguity—so the reader is compelled toward one clear reading, as with newspaper writing. Also, Walser’s synaesthesia (he reads “the scent of power”) blurred the predominance of a single sense (visual reading) and thereby “cooled down” the otherwise hot medium of printed text.
Great hubbub and disgust was expressed about McLuhan’s text, on the one hand from Erik Palmer who felt that McLuhan has little or no place in contemporary media theory (because he lacks historical perspective or theoretical rigor) and on the other by Abi Spring, Leslie Miller, Melia Donovan, and Stephanie Snyder, who were put off by the declamatory tone of the text and McLuhan’s dated sexism. Scott Wayne Indiana professed to have little or no reaction to McLuhan. He found the distinction between “hot” and “cold” media clear and commonsensical, but he also doubted that it would ever be of much use to him.
Sergio Pastor, who has studied McLuhan in more depth than the rest of the group, reminded us that the terms “hot media” and “cool media” were what McLuhan called “probes”—images that he deliberately launched into the culture like fireworks, to both dazzle and illuminate. They were not intended to serve as reliable tools for theorists; rather, they clarify complexity the way a poetic image clarifies—which often means falsely—and thereby they set the stage for others to react by engaging and re-exposing the complex dynamics of media. Sergio also reminded us that McLuhan’s terms were neutral; McLuhan posed “hot” and “cool” as descriptions of media, not as desirable or undesirable qualities.
None of this dispelled the group’s general feeling of aggravation with McLuhan’s writing style, especially his fondness for such sweeping declarations as “the 'city slicker' is hot while the rustic is cool.” Erik Palmer agreed that this style of writing provoked strong reactions, and in this way was perhaps a useful strategy, but he regretted that McLuhan’s resulting celebrity also influenced the way academics function. McLuhan’s celebrity opened an era of pop scholarship that later gave us Camille Paglia, Rupert Sheldrake, and some would argue, Slavoj Žižek. As a PhD candidate himself, Erik feels that he faces career choices strongly shaped by McLuhan: should he court celebrity with provocative pop cultural pronouncements, or remain steadfastly working at the invisible, impersonal, cumulative labor of scholarship?
An interesting controversy erupted when the McLuhan probe of “cooling down” was brought to bear on the work of Melia Donovan, who herself had been so put off by McLuhan. I observed that McLuhan’s categories helped enrich my interaction with Melia’s PDX Window piece (discussed earlier) by letting me see that her transformation of a photograph into a sculptural analog of the photograph “cooled” this otherwise “hot medium” and gave the viewer radical agency and consciousness where usually (with a “real photo”) we hold little power. Stephanie Snyder pointed out that my use of McLuhan here had nothing to do with Melia’s intentions or hopes for the piece; I said that this was exactly what I liked about it.
In closing our discussion of McLuhan, I explained my reasons for assigning his text. First, as Sergio also pointed out, McLuhan’s interest (and sometimes horror) at the way electronics had altered the reach of human consciousness led him to speculations and analysis that are increasingly relevant as we shift more and more of our sensory interactions into the realm of digital media. His outré work is coming back into the conversation. Second, but more important, I like his writing. He’s an effective prose stylist. His texts are memorable and literary; that is to say he uses poetic imagery and ambivalent, unresolved meanings to provoke us to a kind of passionate engagement with his subject. His work leaves the reader in a sufficiently unresolved space that a great deal of thinking and further conversation results, as evidenced by his place in the popular imagination. In his own terms, he makes “cool” texts, ones that are low definition and so bestow agency on the reader. Ultimately, all media are political spaces—spaces of negotiated power—and it excites me to read a text that so democratically disperses power amongst all those who enter it.
McLuhan’s celebrity offered a further puzzle, in its contrast to the fate of Raymond Williams, the highly-respected British Marxist scholar whose own work on media, Communications, pre-dated McLuhan’s most famous text, Understanding Media, by two years. Why was McLuhan famous in popular culture and Williams not? We wondered if Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s analysis of mass culture, “The Culture Industry” (a chapter from their book The Dialectic of Enlightenment), could help us answer this conundrum.
Erik Palmer prefaced our exploration of this question by giving some background on Williams. He reminded us of Williams’s Marxism, and his hope that Marxist scholarship could be a useful instrument in the everyday lives of the working class (his own class). Erik said Williams was pursuing this hope in the 1950s and 1960s, when the horror of Stalin’s authoritarian regime had eroded the clarity and ideals of Marxism in Europe and North America. Williams broke with other British Marxists by suggesting that Marx's strict determinism (the “material base,” the infrastructure, generates the “superstructure,” that is the culture—thus the culture always expresses the values of the ruling class that controls the base) might in fact be less deterministic than Marx had described. Williams spoke of a “structure of feeling” within which different cultural expressions are possible, bounded but not strictly determined by the values of the ruling class. Within this structure of feeling there could be a revolutionary politics and, more crucially, there could be hope. Determinism, we concluded, was “a gentleman’s sport,” a game the truly disenfranchised cannot afford to play. They need hope.
Erik contrasted Williams to Adorno and Horkheimer and briefly located their work within the context of the Frankfurt School, and then, suddenly, it was 10:15. I officially apologize to the patient workshop members who have endured my failure to bring the class to a neat conclusion by 9:30, as intended. I pledge that our final three meetings will end well before 10 pm, at which point those who need to go elsewhere will be able to go.
I have saved the best for last. Leslie Miller brought us another beautifully produced zine, a graphic story and text called “A Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Like Melia’s PDX Window piece, it briefly became the unwitting victim of McLuhanesque analysis (cartoons are cool; text is hot) but survived this uninvited assault with all of its beauty, intelligence, and attention to craft intact. It is a lovely object, truly H-O-T and super cool. Thanks galore, also, to Melia Donavan for this week’s provision of exotic Japanese snacks, especially a pickled lotus root that she prepared specially, and the various leaf-capped rice balls imported from the far reaches of Beaverton, Japan. Scott’s Old Crow remains unopened, and will be on the table again when we meet next.
It’s Spring Break! The workshop will reconvene on April 4th, to continue our discussion of Adorno and Horkheimer, and to meet our next guest, film-maker Matt McCormick.
Though we always begin the workshop promptly at 6:30, it is sometimes difficult to start our discussion amidst such a bounty of good food and drink. On this evening, workshop members filled their plates with my father’s old camp-cooking specialty, “bangers ‘n’ mash quiche lorraine,” a pan-European mongrel that is simply mashed potatoes with swiss cheese, onion soup mix, and smoky links (the links had been cooked in whiskey and maple syrup). Melia Donovan’s fresh green salad and superb brownies rounded out the meal. Scott Wayne Indiana brought Old Crow whiskey. I tried hurrying us into the discussion by handing out a proposal from workshop-member Stephanie Snyder.
Stephanie proposed that we try speaking in public where we are not invited. She reminded us of the old Wobbly actions, where one or more Wobblies would speak up in a bank lobby or a store, a restaurant or the public sidewalk, to tell the truth about what they knew, in public. Abi Spring suggested that we should do so in a place or manner that would connect disparate communities (so, for example, not in a gallery on First Thursday, nor in Pioneer Court House Square, but in a place where many, varied elements of the public gather). There was general agreement that we hoped to speak without being immediately dismissed as either crazy or as artists (both designations being handy ways that uninvited public speech is neutered and then ignored by those who hear it). Erik Palmer said he hoped we would not be annoying, which led us to reflect on the thoroughness with which any act of uninvited or unauthorized speech is erased by the narrow categories into which speakers are immediately placed (crazy, annoying, or artist).
Sergio Pastor suggested that the MAX train was a place where one might plausibly speak without being dismissed immediately, and we resolved to gather and plan an action at which we will all speak uninvited in public, together.
We turned to Gertrude Stein, the American writer whose approach to publication exemplifies the savvy use of material media (in her case, the printed book) to extend a very idiosyncratic body of work to reach readers and communities throughout the world. The enduring presence of Stein’s work, not only in American literary culture, but globally, is an astonishing triumph of material media. How did such a peculiar and private writing practice become an integral part of so many divergent communities and conversations?
We discovered that Stein was catholic in her approach to publishing. She never flinched at small runs or obscure publishers; she was interested in any offer and focused only on two things—the quality of the physical book (good printing, good binding, long life) and the qualities of the publisher. If Stein did not like some one (or, more importantly, if her lover Alice Toklas did not) there would be no work together. Sergio Pastor observed that Stein seemed to trust the object, a well-made book, to do the work in the world. So long as the book went out as Stein had intended it, the rest would be taken care of by the object’s movement through the world.
Stein’s forty or so years as a published writer were peppered with fascinating, often hilarious relationships and missteps with the unusual men (they were almost all men) who tried to publish or represent her work. An editor at a vanity press, Grafton Press, hired by Stein simply to print her book Three Lives, traveled to Paris to meet the author and offer extensive corrections to "some pretty bad slips in grammar.” His help was not appreciated. A cheap printer in Paris produced a copy of Lucy Church Amiably that was a great disappointment, riddled with typos and poorly bound. Upset by the results, Stein and Toklas bit the bullet and decided to hire Darentiére, the Lyon-based printer whose higher fees had discouraged them, for the next book, How to Write. Darantiére was a craftsman whom Sylvia Beach (proprietor of the bookshop and imprint Shakespeare & Co.) used to print Ulysses. Darantiére was not amenable to advice from the two ladies and he, too, produced a disappointing edition that convinced Stein the French were no good at printing.
Much of Stein’s work was self-published under the imprint Plain Editions, which Alice managed (as she did everything in their lives). Stein paid for Plain Editions by selling a Picasso painting through her friend Carl Van Vechten, in New York. (The painting was "Girl Sitting On a Horse;" she sold it for $12,000.) She was not rich and never had been; Stein grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Oakland and San Francisco, orphaned at age 14, raised by her older brother Michael. But her acuity as a collector left her with some valuable capital that she occasionally “liquidated” to support her art.
Stein wanted a broad audience and worked hard to put her work in front of editors who could bring her one. The success of her 1933 “memoir,” The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, let her have her pick of the larger, more respected houses in the US and Britain, but Stein would not accede to their general request for “more of your open and public books.” She insisted that they publish her masterwork, The Making of Americans, a massive 1000-page “family history” that had only appeared in a very small subscription edition by Contact Editions. In the end, a brilliant young editor from New York named Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House, met Stein and told her we would publish anything she asked him to, and he did.
Stein’s tale (which is told in a dozen excellent books, not least of all Stein’s own Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and in her letters; though for class we relied on Hugh Ford’s wonderfully detailed and compact telling in Published In Paris) was uplifting because it showed us how one person of modest means and clear mind could make simple choices that resulted in a surpassingly effective use of material media. She reached communities near and far. Stein focused on people, not the dazzle and allure of a man’s position — If she liked someone, she worked with him; if not, not. She also never doubted the broad value and relevance of her work. Those who didn’t get her work, didn’t get it. But they would, eventually.
Stein was patient with the dull-headedness of others and neither railed against them nor subjected them to the drama of self-doubt. She simply did her work well and looked for partners to do the work of publishing well. She found partners in every possible circumstance: friends who liked her and would type or publish what she wrote; broke, talented men with printing presses; rich dotty men with no talent but with means; smart editors who could shepherd her most obscure work into enduring editions; distracted ones who could nevertheless pull the right strings to put her work in front of a large audience.
We discussed her surpassing confidence and agreed that it was an achievement; that is, she didn’t start that way and had to make a life in which she could be that confident. Her astonishing ability to sustain her focus amiably, indifferent to doubters, was a triumph we should all aspire to imitate.
Julie Mancini, the ex-director of Portland Arts and Lectures and, later, Literary Arts, was our guest this evening. She now runs a for-profit business, Lyceum, that arranges speaking engagements for writers, most of them well known and sought after (Tracy Kidder, Edmund White, Sue Monk Kidd, James Howard Kunstler, etc.). She also spends a lot of time fielding requests from people who want help finding support for new projects. Julie has a great Rolodex. As far as Lyceum goes, Julie confessed that when she fields requests from modest sized programs and non-profits that want to hire one of her speakers she is often “on the side of the venue.” That is, she figures out how to make the gig work, even though the speakers she represents command high fees. As we explored the other ways that Julie enables artists (and writers) to reach audiences — and the ways she helps people find collaborators who together can make big projects happen — we started to see that her work is very simply to make things happen. She listens to what people want and then she assembles those she knows who can help. This work of connecting people to people builds relationships that are the matrix of organizations.
Julie’s obvious pleasure in the capacity of creative people to get things done, and her enthusiasm about helping them by connecting them to sympathetic others, filled us with optimism and a sense of power and possibility. We were encouraged to think of ourselves as story tellers. If we can say what we want to do and how we want to get it done clearly, truthfully, compactly, we can make other people care and help. Beyond story-telling, Julie also seemed to be a great listener. To make these interpersonal connections work, we need to hear our collaborators as clearly as we hear ourselves. We were also struck by Julie’s ability to bring everyone together on common ground: she neither idolizes nor demonizes those who have money; they are equal partners in the collaborative organism of a project; they’re neither the magic ingredient nor are they an impurity.
This led us to discuss the problem of judging your worth in a project and making your worth clear to others. If what you’re contributing isn’t money it is often hard to give a clear account of your value. For example, what’s a writer’s mission statement for a new non-profit gallery worth? Should he or she be paid? Relatedly, how much should a painter ask for a painting? Luisa Guyer reminded us how important it is to present a clear assessment of your own value in any relationship with a funder. Don’t undersell yourself, thinking that’ll make it easier for the funder. It won’t. When an artist or an arts organization such as PICA (where Luisa raises money) insists on a realistic level of support — a level that often seems absurdly high to those in the arts who have grown accustomed to undervaluing their own labor — funders respond positively. A good example is P:ear (see the entry for second workshop #3), where the willingness and ability of its founders to tell their story well and make a realistic assessment of their worth has led to generous support from patrons. P:ear asks for and gets substantial donations, while similar organizations that under value their own worth do not. This returned us to Stein and her superb personal example. She maintained a steady, clear sense of the worth and value of her work, through thick and thin, and insisted that others, eventually, meet her there. And they did. We ended promptly at 10:05 pm.
For our first full session considering material media, Leslie Miller arrived with a pineapple-coconut chess pie, chicken salad casserole, and a modest orange pamphlet she made, called “Jes’ Eatin',” chronicling the history of these two delicious dishes (plus with easy-to-follow recipes!). Not a crumb was left at the end of the night, and workshop members are already attempting their own chess pies.
Amidst the casserole and pie, crudite from Melia Donovan, wine, champagne, and Abi Spring’s Johnny Walker, the evening was taken up with Show and Tell. Workshop members brought objects that had enchanted them—some enduring something that came out of the wide world and into a life to leave it’s mark. Objects can do this—as Frank O’Hara put it, objects enchant us by having “the courage to be what we are afraid to do.” Whether a book, freighted with its story (its vast, expansive interior), or a picture, pregnant with memories or meanings, or even a plain, reticent object like TJ Norris’s mysterious palm-sized puck of smooth, black stone…or so it appeared. This small orb of infinite patience (that TJ brought to share for Show and Tell) produced, on being lifted to the ear, an ethereal tinkling, like the sound of an astronaut urinating in space.
Luisa Guyer brought her copy of Conversation In the Cathedral, by Mario Vargas Llosa, the giant of 20th century Peruvian writing. It begins with Santiago (whose conversations comprise most of the book) ambling into the “cars, uneven faded buildings, the gaudy skeletons of posters floating in the mist, the gray midday,” of Lima and asking: “At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?” Luisa read the book when she was 12. It stays with her as memory, as life, as imagination, place, a kind of vast wing of consciousness that is peopled with ghosts and the living. We wondered if the two-volume Spanish set she originally read as a child held special meanings for her. It does, but it remains in Peru, to which Luisa travels more often through this object—by reading Vargas Llosa—than she does in body.
Sergio Pastor brought Finnegan’s Wake. The book was battered and worn by years of heavy reading, and Erik Palmer speculated that it must have traveled to Europe. Sergio said this copy had not, but the point was well taken. Books travel, sometimes alone, for decades or centuries. They accumulate history and link readers. In the wear and tear, or the marginal notes and exclamations, we even witness the internal travels of previous readers leaving the bread-crumbs of their own journey through the text we have now picked up to read.
Stephanie Snyder also brought books, but hers was a collection of early 20th century art instruction books for children. She studied the subject at Columbia, with Foster Wygant, in the 1990s. During a break back home with family in Portland, Stephanie grudgingly agreed to join her mother antique-ing in Aurora (Oregon) and there, amidst mom’s piles of beloved bric-a-brac, Stephanie came across a trove of worn, used booklets—the first-hand objects of her study back in NY! These artifacts of an ambitious pedagogy that had included drawing and craft, were overlaid with the trace of the work of the children who had used them. “Laura Brown” (in one case) inscribed her efforts to learn, nearly a hundred years ago, and we now held it. Stephanie also included a small drawing book of her own, from when she was a child, that depicted a dead bunny (in crayon).
Melia Donavan brought a camera, a Duraflex 120 that she had adapted so it could also handle 620 film and 35mm film. She found it in a thrift store in SF during a time when she needed cheap ways to make photos. Opening up the camera, she fiddled with the mechanism of production to McGiver more kinds of images from the tool she’d found. Workshop members who had seen Melia’s PDX window show recognized her enduring interest in the mechanisms for the production of photographic meaning: Earlier, we now found, she took apart the camera; in the PDX window, she took apart the surface of the photograph itself, refiguring tonal differences in each pixel as an analogous topography of spatial differences that could produce the same optical effect as the photo (when viewed from the proper distance). The Duraflex actually stood in for an Argus that had been more important to Melia, and she admitted that the Duraflex did not carry the same meanings for her as the absent Argus.
The Duraflex looked to be the same vintage as Leslie Miller’s View-Master set, a favorite possession from childhood which had been her window onto the bigger world outside Tennessee. Leslie’s aunt gave her the viewer and box of “reels” when she was small. Leslie was especially enchanted by the mysterious Eskimos whose incessant bone carving puzzled her. Cowboys were depicted both in life (roping, branding, riding) and in art (Hop Along Cassidy posing with a gun on his white stallion, and elsewhere). The real revelation, though, came recently, while Leslie was “free saleing” in Portland, and she found the matching projector that could turn her private “View-Master world” into a public show. Suddenly, all the interior dreams of childhood were thrown up against the wall before the eyes of all. Leslie demonstrated with a few selections from her reel library. We discussed the separation of these related objects—the View-Master and the projector—and their transit through the world to eventual reunification in the caring hands of Leslie.
Abi Spring showed us a beautiful rock her father gave her, which he had “polished” by carrying it in his pocket on many long walks. Rocks, and this approach to polishing, were a habit of his. Abi noted how the dense layering of geological time evident in the rock and the gradual wearing away, the softening and exposure brought by the action of “polishing” and handling, were analogous to her own methods of painting. The result—a cool, smooth surface—is the site of meaning in both cases. Stephanie, not wanting to be lewd, nevertheless pointed out that stones like these are, in many cultures “associated with various orifices of the body.” This led to a discussion of the linghams of Thailand, the pleasures of warm versus cool rocks, and an anecdote about a woman standing on a crowded subway who lost her grip on her sequestered Ben Wa balls, which fell to the floor. Helpful passengers instinctively turned and bent down to help, but then hesitated and let the woman handle the errant balls herself.
Our new workshop member, Scott Wayne Indiana, brought a springy, mushroom-shaped cigarette lighter that was expelled from a large motorcycle when it overturned on the Sellwood Bridge. Scott was standing nearby with his bike in stalled traffic when the inattentive motorcyclist had his spill. Scott reported that the man’s head (with helmet) smacked directly onto the pavement and began to leak blood. Scott and a handful of motorists rushed to the prone victim who staggered to his feet, said he was fine, and sped away. The alert rescuers were left standing alone, with each other, on the Sellwood Bridge. They stared blankly, made awkward farewells, and went back to their vehicles. Scott saw the lighter on the ground and took it. Despite placing an announcement about the incident on Craig’s List, Scott was never contacted by anyone, and the lighter has stayed in his possession ever since. He keeps it on his person.
Show and Tell closed with Erik Palmer’s two collections of The Dark Knight, by Frank Miller. Miller’s beautifully drawn Dark Knight, which Erik called “operatic,” had a big influence on some of Erik’s own work, particularly the photography of 2002-2003. He recalls anticipating each new issue, back when they were first published, but felt that the reprint he had brought to class was just as meaningful to him as the original issues that came in the mail (often after painfully long delays in the publication schedule). Erik called these, and other, comics “a critique of mass media,” and pointed out that his own interest (for example, in Richard Avedon) was in mass media more so than art. His doctoral studies are in the School of Journalism, at U of O.
Erik’s recognition that the systems by which objects gain meaning and circulate in our lives are shaped by the logic of mass media was a fitting segue to a quick review of the readings (all of which are posted on the workshop website under “workshop reader”) from Ronald Deibert and Raymond Williams. Both texts describe the historical development of a culture and economy of printed matter, from parchment to printing press to mass media. Sadly, our discussion of the readings was as perfunctory as this summary because time had flown by so swiftly during Show and Tell that it was already 10:15 pm, and time to race down to Holocene to see Matt McCormick’s new film and music performance, “Future So Bright.” Matt will be our guest in the workshop on April 4th.
In the meantime, the workshop will return to Deibert and Williams, who provide historical background to our consideration of Gertrude Stein. Stein’s remarkable efforts to see her own work into publication shaped an odyssey that took her into every part of the literary economy—from obscure small presses to mass market celebrity. A wonderful, detailed history of Stein and publishing, written by Hugh Ford for his book, Published In Paris, has also been posted on the website.
[This week's summary is written by workshop member TJ Norris, because I drank too much and forgot to take notes. It all ended poorly, with me yelling at our guests. But I leave it to workshop members to fill in the missing details. Please: we need your help. Contribute your accounts of the evening in the comments, below. Meanwhile, a hearty "thank you" to TJ. —Matthew Stadler]
The evening kicked off with the celebration of wonderful food, prepared and organized (separately) by Matthew Stadler and Melia Donovan. Matthew re-concocted a hearty Dutch dish called stamppot, which was something of a melting pot of earthy autumn veggies all mashed into one blended and tasty organism. There were potatoes, onions, greens and some mellow spices, alongside some fat, spicy sausages for the carnivores in da haus. This was in keeping with one of the evening's guests, former restaurateur Michael Hebberoy, who's latest Seattle-based project, One Pot, is a true smorgasbord of collaboration. Melia presented an array of Latin delights. She plattered a series of small bowls filled with chipotle, spicy baked seeds, guacamole, salsas, and some very interesting dried mangoes in chili powder. All was in delicately colorful form, as the table was set for an evocative, lively evening of discussion.
Stephanie Snyder brought a bottle of Medoyeff vodka which aligned the table alongside Abi Spring's contribution of Hennessey (a cognac), some bold red wines, and a splash of house champagne. So, in short, the spirits overfloweth. I simply indulged in a very tasty dark porter, myself, something of a rare micro-brew.
The next item passed was Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture & Society (published in 1976) — a book written by the Welsh Marxist academic Raymond Williams. From Wikipedia: "this work examines the history of more than a hundred words that are familiar and yet confusing." Abi recommended further viewing via "News War: What's Happening To The News,” a television special about the future of newspapers (available online). The series directly relates to two of the workshop’s external texts: "History," (from Communications) by Raymond Williams and "From Parchment to Printing Press," from Ronald Deibert’s Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia (with all its wondrous cross-referencing footnotes).
In true spirit of creative learning, we discussed the origins of the word "technology". Many people 'round the table had a different, but resounding personal or broad meaning for it and its presumed origins and ultimate (mis)interpretations. It comes from the ancient Greek techne (“technicos” — Modern Greek), which roughly translates into "explanation of the craft". Passionate discussion ensued about words that use its root, like “technocrat,” etc. Techne also means “cunning” and/or “deceptive,” which is fashioned from linguistics, rather than in its contemporary purposefulness, but it fed the group aesthetic of mobs, packs, group dynamics, and a sense of collective thought and power.
A book titled The Technological Society (La technique ou l'enjeu du siècle, 1954), by sociologist (and devout Catholic) Jacques Ellul, was mentioned as possible extended reading on such things. He was at once pessimistic and deeply hopeful about the possibility of man’s escape from technological being. Stephanie Snyder eloquently mentioned words about memory being the externalization of technology. This seemed particularly poignant given that we have become somewhat dependent upon the limited and certain mis/use of technology in the everyday. The fact that a more intricate human interface is now being seamlessly embedded into our forms of communication and creative (and mundane) activities, whether domestic or otherwise, seems fluid, albeit long in the making.
Next up Erik Palmer read Frank O'Hara's poem "Interior (with Jane)." Others followed suit by reading it a few more times, each using a different interpretation, whether assumed as cultural, learned, or otherwise. Some individual words read concretely, very physical, and others just rolled and caused for a bit of a "melodramatic" interpretation. Discussed were the parenthetical titling, the relationship between O'Hara and Jane (Freidlicher, a painter), and the emotional qualities behind the use of the word "sob." The conversation then led into a few different areas as our guests (and there were five of them) arrived, all too promptly. We touched on the concepts of deception and "ambivalent space," scratched the surface of appropriation, and opened the floor to further discuss the differences between open source (moving freely among people) and proprietary (negotiation/exchange) economies.
Then it was was time to open the doors to our guests: Sam Gould of Red76 and the aforementioned Michael Hebberoy (plus three of their collaborators, details forthcoming...). Both speakers were dynamic and have really interesting tales about how they operate social practices that are quite different, yet have so many interwoven similarities. Contrasting word-of-mouth publicity with a typical newspaper critic’s account, Michael Hebberoy distinguished "a personalized version of something” from “an editorialized version of it." Stephanie Snyder started to say something about artistry v. destruction and beauty v. destruction, or some-such. But there was a lot of cross-talk and controversy in the air, and I got sidetracked often.
Sam said he is not interested in permanence. I found that striking, given that he works with museums and institutions, and I alluded to it in my brief comments. Also, I didn't find it was necessary to reiterate that Sam is a “reluctant artist.” The funny thing was we never got to the root of the whole flare of the phrase "relational aesthetics.” They discussed their ad-hoc projects and businesses; the mythologies of appropriating spaces to re-channel their original guise; issues surrounding permanent records or documentation; if what they do is art at all; and much more. The discussion was fully interactive, filled with potential questions and problematics, for both the understanding of how to best deem or label what you do by keeping the ends loose and all-encompassing.