(S)EN(S)E(s)

ars et iners

[freelance-philosopher]

We’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.

Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972-1990 (via freelance-philosopher)

[mothwood]

I would like there to exist places that are stable, unmoving, intangible, untouched and almost untouchable, unchanging, deep-rooted; places that might be points of reference, of departure, of origin:

My birthplace, the cradle of my family, the house where I may have been born, the tree I may have seen grown (that my father may have planted the day I was born), the attic of my childhood filled with intact memories…

Such places don’t exist, and it’s because they don’t exist that space becomes a question, ceases to be self-evident, ceases to be incorporated, ceases to be appropriated. Space is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, to designate it. It’s never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it.

My spaces are fragile: time is going to wear them away, to destroy them. Nothing will any longer resemble what was, my memories will betray me, oblivion will infiltrate my memory, I shall look at a few old yellowing photographs with broken edges without recognising them. The words […] will no longer be written up in a semi-circle in white porcelain letters on the window of the little cafe in the Rue Coquilliere.

Space melts like sand running through one’s fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me with only shapeless shreds:

To write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive: to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs. — Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces

[ardor-mohr]

Hope has nothing to do with optimism….It is in Hell where solidarity is important, not in Heaven.

John Berger, in The Seasons in Quincy (2016)

[troythulu-deactivated20190321]

[eddiesandwich]

[the-cinder-fields]

Julio Romero de Torres, The Sin, 1913

[elainexcastillo-deactivated2025]

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Agamben, “Notes on Gesture:

”In the cinema, a society that has lost its gestures seeks to reappropriate what it has lost while simultaneously recording that loss. An era that has lost its gestures is, for that very reason, obsessed with them; for people who are bereft of all that is natural to them, every gesture becomes a fate. And the more the ease of these gestures was lost under the influence of invisible powers, the more life became indecipherable… The dance of Isadora and Diaghilev, the novels of Proust, the great Jugendestil poets from Pascoli to Rilke and ultimately – in the most exemplary way – silent cinema, trace the magic circle in which humanity sought, for the last time, to evoke what was slipping through its fingers for ever.“

*

*

Jean-Luc Nancy, The Gravity of Thought:

“What intrigued me was the theme of weight. Why does this theme persist, in these two texts, but also elsewhere? Why does it function for me as an ‘obsessive metaphor’? In fact, I have to admit it, there is something in it that obsesses me–I might just as well say: something that weighs on me.

"This means at once: something that weighs me down, that pushes me toward the earth, that bends me, tires me, and something that troubles me, that concerns me. To think, or to want to think, is heavy. As one says in French, it is lourd de conséquences. One speaks as well of a ‘weighty silence’…

"This is intolerable, unbearable (one bends, collapses under the weight of what is to be thought, that is, of what just is), and yet this has no heaviness, it is lightness itself (one can think whatever one wishes). This is grave, the existence of the world is grave, but this gravity has the lightness of that which exists without any other justification than existing. As is also said in French: ça tombe sous les sens. Thought is such a meaning.”

“The weight of thought means that the world is grave enough by itself, Without any other consideration. Which also means: joyous enough. This equation is the very weight of weightiness: its impalpable lightness. This is what cannot be forgotten.”

*

*

Not possible, I’m realizing now. Not possible to write this long essay on dance and revolution, on choreography and resistance and being-with-other, being-for-other. Not possible this way, it’s stuck. It’s cramping. I’ve got a charley-horse where I write. In the leg of my head. In the leg of my heart. To essay, to write the essay, essayer, ben j'essaie quoi, fous-moi la paix, to assay, to attempt, to try, you’re trying me, it’s testing me, someone let me hold a number 2 pencil cos they testin’, exagium, a weight, I’m weighing it, I’m weighing on it, it weighs on me, ce qu'il exige de moi, ce que j'exige de lui. What I’m asking of it. What it’s asking of me. The same choreography, every time. A body to carry, every time. Sometimes it’s even my own.

In the documentary, before he begins speaking during his performance with Monnier’s troupe, Jean-Luc Nancy makes a mistake with the choreography. The choreography of pauses and silences before one may start, again, with words. He comes in too early, and he doesn’t arrive quite at the right place, either. “You could have taken longer, Jean-Luc.” “I got it wrong anyway, I had to be over there.” “It happens.” But that’s part of it, too. The part you always get wrong. The step or stone you’re always tripping over. The move you fuck up. Trauma is your faux pas. Your faut pas.

“to project, propel,” c.1300, from O.E. þrawan “to twist, turn writhe” (pt. þreow, pp. þrawen), from P.Gmc. *thræ- (cf. O.S. thraian, M.Du. dræyen, Du. draaien, O.H.G. draen, Ger. drehen “to turn, twist;” not found in Scandinavian or Gothic), from PIE *tere- “to rub, turn, rub by turning, bore” (cf. Skt. turah “wounded, hurt,” Gk. teirein “to rub, rub away,” L. terere “to rub, thresh, grind, wear away,” O.C.S. tiro “to rub,” Lith. trinu “to rub,” O.Ir. tarathar “borer,” Welsh taraw “to strike.”

What Derrida calls “a cut or incision that the poem bears in its body like a memory, sometimes several memories in one, the mark of a provenance, of a place and of a time.” The dance is a scratch. A cut in the world. And a body that knows how to cut and be cut—-a vulnerable body—-is a writing body. “On mine, in any case,” says Monnier. When I dance, I have a habit of putting a hand over my heart. When I write, too.

*

[coocoolah-deactivated20190601]

In the final analysis, the state can recognize any claim for identity… But what the state cannot tolerate in any way is that singularities form a community without claiming an identity, that human beings co-belong without a representable condition of belonging.

Giorgio Agamben, Means Without End (87)

[astranemus]

The self becomes aware of itself by means of the articulation of a zone of non-awareness.

Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies trans. Adam Kotsko (via astranemus)

[camelllito]

Faire l’amour

Peut-être faudrait-il dire aussi que faire l'amour, c'est sentir son corps se refermer sur soi, c'est enfin exister hors de toute utopie, avec toute sa densité, entre les mains de l'autre. Sous les doigts de l'autre qui vous parcourent, toutes les parts invisibles de votre corps se mettent à exister, contre les lèvres de l'autres les vôtres se mettent à exister, contre les lèvres de l'autre les vôtres deviennent sensibles, devant ses yeux mis-clos votre visage acquiert une certitude, il y a un regard enfin pour voir vos paupières fermées. L'amour, lui aussi, comme le miroir et comme la mort, apaise l'utopie de votre corps, il la fait taire, il la calme, il l'enferme comme dans une boîte, il la clôt et il la scelle. C'est pourquoi il est si proche parent de l'illusion du miroir et de la menace de la mort; et si malgré ces deux figures périlleuses qui l'entourent, on aime tant faire l'amour, c'est parce que dans l'amour le corps est ici.

Michel Foucault, “Le Corps Utopique”

[camelllito]

Là où nous sommes atteintes par le désir de notre amant, c'est dans cette cavité du vagin qui résonne comme un creux dans notre corps. Un endroit duquel la verge de notre amant est absente. nous ne pouvons pas nous tromper sur cet amant. C'est-à-dire que nous ne pouvons pas imaginer une verge étrangère dans cet endroit qui a été fait pour un seul homme, celui qui est notre amant. Quand un homme étranger nous touche, nous crions de dégoût. Nous possédons notre amant comme lui nous possède. Nous nous possédons. Le lieu de cette possession est le lieu de l'absolue subjectivité. C'est là que notre amant nous assène les coups les plus forts que nous ne supplions de donner pour qu'ils se répandent en écho dans tout notre corps, dans notre tête qui se vide. C'est là que nous voulons mourir.

Marguerite Duras, “La vie matérielle”

[camelllito]

Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.

Susan Sontag, On Photography

[camelllito]

On Western hypocrisy (yet again)

The epidemiological image appeals especially to policy makers in rich countries, reluctant to consider ‘new war’ a conscious adaptation in the South to global economic restructuring dominated by Northern interests. If war is a disease, then there are no sides; coordinated international action is needed to eradicate a common threat. The tools for ending war are no longer diplomacy and hard bargaining but the peace-keeping mission, ‘grass-roots’ conflict resolution, police work, and humanitarian aid. This is necessary immunisation without which poor countries cannot grow. The 2001 Genoa G8 summit (of the heads of government of the world’s largest national economies), addressing the problems of Africa, the poorest and youngest continent, resolved that dealing with the scourge of war was a precondition for the continent’s economic revival. Where thirty years ago Northern countries would have been quietly planning and promoting wars in Africa to protect economic interests or favoured political dogma, they now prefer to quaratine war, and strive to impose a ‘liberal peace’.

Paul Richards, in “New War: An Ethnographic Approach”

[specialbored]

The Circle of Slice….

[introspectivepoet]

Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression. Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man.

Margaret Mead (via introspectivepoet)

[artchipel]

Rob Gonsalves - Water Dancing

[crossconnectmag]

Rob Gonsalves born in 1959 in Toronto, is a Canadian painter of magic realism with a unique perspective and style. He produces original works, limited edition prints and illustrations for his own books.

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posted by Margaret.