TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

1:00 PM
Posted by jodi rose

notes from the road

escalating privilege meta-media caucus
discovered I am a 'self-authorizing artist'
which means 'to use a device against its manual'

and escalating privilege is an IT term for hacking into systems
exploiting the bugs to gain access to resources and permissions
that you normally wouldn't have. you can accept or challenge the notion of privilege, and maybe sometimes just ignore it completely. the borders are porous, although more for some than others.

woke up this morning to watch 'crossroads at the edge of worlds', a documentary by charles heller about the experience of sub-saharan transit migrants in morocco. extraordinary, powerful, sad, very real.

the notion of transparent vulnerability and inviting risk also came up.
being aware of the level of privilege you have but choosing to share it differently. not seeking to close all the gaps, but letting them open the possibility for a new relationship to power and access. is 'privilege for all' possible? could being deliberately vulnerable become a counter-concept for strategic engagement with the systems of power and control? Amplifying vulnerability. To become so open that it is meaningless to try and cross your borders... expose your privileges, to distribute them. We all live in precarity, jobs are not secure, nothing is for ever - what can you pick up and distribute from your position?

Intellectual strategies for vulnerability, instead of systems to reduce the known bugs or vulnerabilities, to consciously remain vulnerable.

"the essential philosophical task is never to consent completely to one's own evidences" quoted by the lovely jorella who happened to be sitting next to me, and our comments developed a nice flow and synergy.

***

All that intellectual stimulation followed by gorgeous evening, helped prepare food at Jacob's for his birthday, with Bjorn who was visiting from copenhagen - we met at JK's cd launch a few years ago. Had a great rave then, and last night very nice talking before the party started, about how you create a life of purpose and passion.

Wonderful chocolate chilli-con-carne with guacamole and fetta/yoghurt, and fantastic summer storms. Cycled over to find Tito's birthday party with Johan, a filmmaker who wanted to create the Serbian curling team as a documentary, and was very distressed to find there already is a team. They came last. Ah well. The party was over when we got there. Dropped into mr pong's to watch the end of round-robin ping pong, and then had to call it a night.

***

inspiration from DMT dansk musik tidssbaft article by brandon labelle:

"And with these, the sense of the world's concreteness, irreducible, immediate, tangible, of something clear and closer to us: of the world, no longer as a journey having constantly to be remade, not as a race without end, a challenge constantly having to be met, not as the one pretext for a despairing acquisitiveness, not as the illusion of a conquest, but as the rediscovery of a meaning, the perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors." Georges Perec, Species of Spaces.

***

And today's last words are from Bjork on her latest album:

Wanderlust

I am leaving this harbour
giving urban a farewell
it's habitants seem too keen on god
I cannot stomach their rights and wrongs
I have lost my origin
and I don't want to find it again
rather sailing into nature's laws
and be held by ocean's paws

Wanderlust!
relentlessly craving wanderlust
peel off the layers
until you get to the core
did I imagine it would be like this
was it something like this I wished for
or will I want more?

just for comfort
suffocates the soul
this relentless restlessness
liberates me
I feel at home wherever
the unknown surrounds me
I receive it's embrace
abourd my floating home

Wanderlust!
from island to island
Wanderlust
united in movement
Wonderful
I enjoy it with you

Wanderlust!
can you spot a pattern?
relentlessly restless
restless relentlessly

Bjork 2007

***

I used to think was this what I wished for
but now I have found the clarity to know
that this is already more than I could have imagined.