TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Monday, May 28, 2007

2:06 PM
Posted by jodi rose

I've had two responses to this writing in the past week, the first saying: 'I like that you don't explain everything', and the second 'more down-to-earth information please'. I guess for me the esoteric and oblique is necessary to protect both my own privacy and that of the people who are alluded to in these pages; while the sudden influx of highly theoretical content is actually directly related to the very pragmatic realiity of my day-to-day existence in ways that aren't necessarily obvious to anyone else. Maybe a pattern will emerge over time and these links will come to light, or else it will remain an opaque and uncertain experience. Which leads me back to the latest in high-end art/activist/radical/socialist theory from the frontline:

'taking time'
susan pui san lok talked poetically about how the word for 'day' in cantonese is also the word for sky and earth. working in performance with a chant to open up a space for the pre-recorded to transition into the live.

DIY ballroom dancing lessons, standardizing vocabulary and technique.
'Mobile Ballroom' invited anyone to 'dress up; show up and make the world your ballroom' at vauxhall station, London in peak hour. Beautiful video of people dancing to their own private music, amongst the harried commuters, one girl in a bright green charleston fringed dress, another in pink frilly ballgown. A space opened up for the amateur and spontaneous performance. Not having to be validated or given permission to declare one's right to take part in a particular act.
(in response to a comment about how the dancing was not 'ballroom' dancing as it is usually understood or experience or performed)

Leisure and leisureliness, countering or interrupting a space that is dominated by professionalism and commuters. The presence of the ballrooms dancers in this space was for some annoying, others amusing, and yet more ignored. It doesn't even register as an interruption, just another obstacle to walk around or shut out.

Rob Stowe talked about working with first year art students, trying to get some kind of purchase on moving from being this kind of person to that kind - the kind called 'artist', not 'teaching people how to be artists'. How do you get through the points from here to there?
The musical idea of 'portamento' one tiny movement in semi-tone.

A history of voices, fragments, producing the idea of an archive.
The only way you can be honest to an archive, to produce yourself as a speaking subject, is to maintain a nervousness, a sense of anxiety.

Once you 'think you know' all is doomed.
The uninfluential, delinquent, fallible...

How long does it take to make a work?
To become an artist?

The necessity of finding your own timing, your own rhythm.

A very long silence precedes the moment of speech. You don't know when that first mark will take place, that space between there being nothing and something, then something and something else.

Loss of control, letting go of control, standards, boundaries to create open spaces in which participation or performance is enabled. Not necessarily to valorise or take on the taks of validating one's own practice. The expectation to speak 'about' not alongside your work.

The blog as a form of it's own poetics. To produce yourself as a person (speaking subject) who doesn't know. Who is uncontrollable.
And because of that, you can find a libidinal power and joy. Happy if the work doesn't succeed, but produces a narrative effect between yourself and society.

To make some kind of gap in the urgency of cultural production.

Non-alignment as the 'to come', the condition of [what is] to come, that is not bound in identity, not bound in the accrument of identities and relationship to them. Temporal gaps, interruptions in the notion tof the 'to come'.

'Migrant Epistemologies'

Producing collective share knowledge based on lived experience.
That the desire and motivation to migrate is similar between transit workers and artists. The specifics are different, but in essence very close. 'They do lead a very precarious life, but they are always very well-dressed'. Social formation of an expanded belonging. How can you produce a knowledge that does not serve control?

* overnight break for some nice music from turkey, spain and russia *

I am starting to dream now possibilities for the future which were unimaginable before this moment.

'Urgent Thought'

1. hegemony
2. exhaustion
3. bologna

1. 'In order to understant our current social position: "You should turn your face violently towards whatever exists now." Don't think about what you want it to be, think about what IS. Only by thinking about 'what is' will you find certain strategies to overcome this disjuncture.
What you will see, most likely you will not like, hence the pessimism of the intellect, and the optimism of the will.
Whatever you do see, the reality which exists is not all powerful, there are spaces and fissures which allow for change - through the optimism of the will.

The actuality of the existing is never absolute, or fixed. These gaps and spaces allow for resistance. There is resistance where there is power.
Resistance already IS power in a different mode. As soon as you start to resist, your actions are already invested with power - so there is reason for optimism in the world.

If you turn your face to what exists, the recipe to get out of it will also be found there. You are in this mess; and finding the tools you need to get out of the mess are already there. A strategy which is not escapist starts from where you are. Doing the same thing, but doing it slightly differently. A shift in perception, rather than a radical revolutionary act. A revolutionary form of gradualism. Shifting the real step by step.

in the liberated redemptive state, everything will be the same but very slightly different. Instigating a minor change for me can be a whole lot of change for others. If we think about politics, not a revolutionary break, but through the process of realignment, small changes.'

2. exhaustion

'The limits to a culture of compulsive performativity. The pressure to perform and when it breaks down. What would it mean to resist the need to perform. Strategies of non-performance. What form of unwillingness, non-compliance, reluctance.. to not perform when you are asked to perform. Can we embrace these forms in our art and thinking? Does it take other people, a breakdown, to make you stop performing? When and how do you stop yourself? Utter the magic words: 'I can't'?

Do you ever feel you have been cheated?
Are there ways of confronting people with the 'I can't'. Other ways of putting it to work, by creating moments where meaning remains latent because you can't spill it out completely.

The logic of latency goes against the grain of a compulsive performativity. Leaving things unsaid, unshown, unrevealed; refraining from actualising and putting all things into your performance. Rediscover the power of latency. Art career and timing. In comedy, music, career timing is everything. You need to be at the right place in the right time. When is a good time to talk? Just in time, ready in no time at all...

Leaving space for interpretation and poetry.
Performance is pure porn.
You always have to be up for it, ready for anything.

We are living in times now when time is radically disjointed. Who is setting the time? Email, the constant pacemaker. That we all have to respond to in no time. However there is also a sense of power through creativity, that lies in the ecstatic moments of creative performance - adrenaline rush. To face up to your own potentials might be one of the most challenging tasks of your life, and your greatest responsibility.

The 'I can' is both empowered and indebted. The link between empowerment and debt is at the heart of creative performance.

How could we perform differently?
Freely?
How could we create a condition of unlimited performativity?
Restoring dignity to 'I can't' and performing differently.

Who cares?

You perform because you care. When you care for someone or something, this care means you must act because it is impossible not to. You will find that you can act, even when you thought you couldn't.

When you care, for yourself and others, you may have to turn down work. When you need to care for your friends, family or lover, this can constitute a reason to turn down the offer to perform. The 'I care' is a question of welfare, there can be the 'I care' leading to 'I can't'.

We are liberated - what we need now is a better life.

How do you want to live a better life - in a way that another form, another ethics, and another attitude to social care becomes possible.

***

I'll leave 'rethinking the art academy' and run off now to hear andrew's presentation on special embassies at bootlab.