Re: [-empyre-] poetics...

[Aliette <aliette@criticalsecret.org>]

I would like to return on my last post, as I fear that it can be the object
of misunderstanding.  (French below - but not of the colours, only in the
bad - sorry- Anglophone version)

Os Western culture, by Aristotle/Non Aristotle I understood the question of
the invention, of the evolution, and thus also of the progress (with the
materialist historical direction) - which could not be taken into account by
cyclic or circular universes, in what consisted the great battle of the
ideas of occident against the Aristotelian vision.

The question of generative or transformational syntaxes is a little
different, according to whether one tends to carry out its systemic or
semantic predictions, while the other can lead them to their transgression -
where are at the same time the most perverse systems or most advanced.

When Nelson Goodman raises the question of the predictable languages, he is
not in the question of prophesy, but in the pure question of the invention,
of poetic or artistic creation like process.  And from there he rules on the
statute of reality and of the fiction.  He answers it far from Greek tragedy
which said of the terror the emergence necessity of hubris to the harmonious
life and democratic development of the city.

On the contrary regarding Nelson Goodman strategy, question involves us in
one far from the duration and historical space times as symbolic or poetic
systems. He says, he shows almost, that there is no difference between the
reality and the fiction, since the fiction is thought like representative
language as thought and as communication to collective: tin what it is true
(even it would be fake).

Symbolically it would be the empire of reality equal to the conscience of
the illusion.  But there is no more metaphysical truth in the invention for
itself.  We are beyond the good and of the evil.

The question of the various disjunctions in between and into the various
cultures would be perhaps in the device of symbolic system integrating space
time otherwise that through the historical account and beyond the concept of
progress.  

One can find very well categories or cycles in topics of Hinduism, but the
response of the distance from Aristotle takes place there in the concept of
disjunctive transformation and generation, from which is based the diversity
and the multiplicity of the aspects of the world as mutation of symbolic
system of the species - that could be the singular concept of evolution in
Indian mythologies.

The gods never reproduce with identical, even it is the figure of the change
like appearance of time - and not that of the cycle, the cycle being in
Indian cosmogony only one very small share of general cosmogony but
characterizing the material life on earth itself (which is so poor regarding
all this cosmogony).  The only fixed thing is the social structure of the
castes - but one changes caste in his lives according to like before.

There is the concept of account well, but not an account: billion thousands
and more accounts.  There is the concept of evolution well, but not that of
progress.  There is always also the invention.  But not of History to be
strictly accurate in Indian cosmogony, or of the multiple but all
significant stories.  Etc...

The question of the colours, front, and afterwards, and listening, hearing -
which sounds also like that?  Here (white western culture : the red, in
Greece is the color of the smallest distance between the looking object and
who looks at it.  Red in the Indies:  energy.  Blue in Greece the color of
the longest distance between the looking object and who looks at it;  in the
Indies:  blue - the sign of the poisoning which wasn't fatal to Shiva - the
wound symbolic system?

And all that that becomes differently in Buddhism (the orange, yellow).  And
finally, very another cosmogony of the colours resulting from Indian
cosmogonies when they become living in the Antilles... And what is the blue
of Islam?  etc...  

What to say of the cultures where certain colours that we allot to the
spectrum of the light - thus we let us allot them arbitrarily but
traditionally - they do not exist in the words of these languages : is it to
say that they are not seen?

 The diverse role and statement of the dance..

The question is:  History, or innovation of the world to the image of
eternity - not of what is immutable but the eternity of the change.


---- 

Je voudrais revenir sur mon post précédent, craignant qu'il ne soit l'objet
de malentendu.

J'entendais par Aristote/ Non Aristote, en culture occidentale, la question
de l'invention, de l'évolution, et donc aussi de progrès (au sens
matérialiste historique) - qui ne pourraient être pris en compte par des
univers cycliques ou circulaires, en quoi consista la grande bataille des
idées en occident contre l'univers aristotélicien.

La question des syntaxes génératives ou transformationnelles est un peu
différente, selon que l'une tende à réaliser ses prédictions systémiques ou
sémantiques, tandis que l'autre peut les mener à leur transgression - où se
trouvent à la fois les systèmes les plus pervers ou les plus avancés.

Quand Nelson Goodman se pose la question de la prédictibilité des langages,
il n'est pas dans le questionnement prophétique mais dans le questionnement
pur de l'invention, de la création poétique ou artistique comme processus.
Et de là il statue sur le statut de la réalité et de la fiction. Il y répond
loin de la tragédie grecque qui disait de la terreur l'émergence de l'hubris
nécessaire à la vie harmonieuse de la cité. Au contraire, Nelson Goodman,
nous entraîne dans un qestionnement loin de la durée et de l'espace temps
symboliques historiques, ou poétiques, Il dit, il montre presque, qu'il n'y
a pas de différence entre la réalité et la fiction, du moment que la fiction
est pensée comme représentable dans un langage commun (collectif): alors
elle est vraie. 

Symboliquement ce serait l'empire du réel égal à la conscience de
l'illusion.

Mais il n'y a plus de vérité métaphysique dans l'invention pour elle-même.
Nous sommes au-delà du bien et du mal. Nous sommes dans l'indifférence
morale du bien et du mal.

La question des différentes dijonctions des différentes cultures serait
peut-être dans le dispositif symbolique intégrant l'espace temps autement
qu'à travers le récit historique et au-delà de la notion de progrès.

On peut très bien retrouver des catégories ou des cycles dans des thèmes
hindoux, mais la réponse de la distance à Aristote s'y opère dans la notion
de transformation et de génération disjonctives, à partir desquels se fonde
la diversité et la multiplicité des aspects du monde dans le transformisme
symbolique des espèces, dans les mythologies indiennes.

Les dieux ne se reproduisent jamais à l'identique, c'est la figure même du
changement comme figure du temps - et non pas celle du cycle, le cycle
n'étant dans la cosmogonie indienne qu'une toute petite part de la
cosmogonie générale. La seule chose fixe est la structure sociale des castes
- mais on change de caste dans ses vies d'après comme auparavant. Il y a
bien la notion de récit, mais non pas un récit : des milliers. Il y a bien
la notion d'évolution, mais pas celle de progrès. Il y a toujours aussi
l'invention. Mais pas d'Histoire à proprement parler dans la cosmogonie
indienne, sinon des histoires. Etc...

La question est aussi celle des couleurs, de l'avant, et de l'après,et de
l'écoute, de l'ouie - quels sons entend-on ? Le rôle de la danse sacrée dans
la codification d'un dépassement possible, exceptionnellement, de la
hiérarchie sociale, etc...

La question est : Histoire, ou innovation du monde à l'image de l'éternité -
non pas de ce qui est immuable mais l'éternité du changement.

On 8/01/06 13:11, "James Barrett" <jim.barrett@humlab.umu.se> probably
wrote:

> An excellent start to a new year on empyre.
> Thinking about the statement:
>> "while latter Javanese creations drawing on the Hindu epics
>> are very clearly localised, at the same time there are forms of sanskrit
>> used amongst dalangs that refer to literary links not to be overlooked -
>> without trying to undermine multidisciplinary "braiding" we're talking
>> about, but without eclipsing ostensibly literary strands for fear of
>> their dominance."
> 
> Brought to mind the description given by Derek Walcott in his Nobel
> Lecture of 1992 on how deep the braiding can be:
> 
> The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory
> 
> "Multiply that moment of self-conviction when an actor, made-up and
> costumed, nods to his mirror before stopping on stage in the belief that
> he is a reality entering an illusion and you would have what I presumed
> was happening to the actors of this epic. But they were not actors. They
> had been chosen; or they themselves had chosen their roles in this sacred
> story that would go on for nine afternoons over a two-hour period till the
> sun set. They were not amateurs but believers. There was no theatrical
> term to define them. They did not have to psych themselves up to play
> their roles. Their acting would probably be as buoyant and as natural as
> those bamboo arrows crisscrossing the afternoon pasture. They believed in
> what they were playing, in the sacredness of the text, the validity of
> India, while I, out of the writer's habit, searched for some sense of
> elegy, of loss, even of degenerative mimicry in the happy faces of the
> boy-warriors or the heraldic profiles of the village princes. I was
> polluting the afternoon with doubt and with the patronage of admiration. I
> misread the event through a visual echo of History - the cane fields,
> indenture, the evocation of vanished armies, temples, and trumpeting
> elephants - when all around me there was quite the opposite: elation,
> delight in the boys' screams, in the sweets-stalls, in more and more
> costumed characters appearing; a delight of conviction, not loss. The name
> Felicity made sense."
> 
> http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1992/walcott-lecture.html
> 
> Felicity is the village in "Trinidad on the edge of the Caroni plain". The
> "play" as we may call it in Europe is "Ramleela, the epic dramatization of
> the Hindu epic the Ramayana". Walcott writes (speaks) of the boundaries we
> erect (threads we weave) between what we make and who we are, between what
> we do and where we have been, the vision of our dream and the "history" of
> our "future".
> 
> Jim B.
> 
>> Hello all and a Happy New Year
>> 
>> with thanks for your ringing in some resonant ideas that get my head
>> spinning out of (usual) ruts... Reading and feeling intrigued, uneasy
>> about responding because not quite sure where/ how to pitch it but here
>> goes...
>> 
>> I'm interested to read Aleksandra your reflection/ comparison of shadow
>> theatre/ cinema, as this differentiation between live and mechanically
>> driven performance and the borders between these two sectors is something
>> I've been working on for a while, particularly with respect to puppetry,
>> automats, robots, etc. I think what amazed me when I first saw wayang
>> shadow puppets move (as a privileged witness of Jacques Pimpaneau's
>> collections/ demonstrations in Paris) was their voluptuous
>> three-dimensionality and their colourfulness, which belied my illusions
>> about flat shadows and challenged my hasty mental comparisons with black
>> and white cinema. Another question picking up on Jim's re the Balinese
>> acquisition of writing, I'd like to know Aleksandra how much importance
>> you  attribute to the Ramayana and Mahabarata epics as narrative threads
>> sufficiently commonly understood to allow for the high level of
>> "localised" adaptation, reappropriation, improvisation that you mention -
>> and also as eminently literary threads from Sanskrit which work/ed their
>> way into  Balinese theatre.
>> 
>> Many experts consider that while wayang theatre forms long predated Hindu
>> influences, and while latter Javanese creations drawing on the Hindu epics
>> are very clearly localised, at the same time there are forms of sanskrit
>> used amongst dalangs that refer to literary links not to be overlooked -
>> without trying to undermine multidisciplinary "braiding" we're talking
>> about, but without eclipsing ostensibly literary strands for fear of their
>> dominance.
>> 
>> This isn't meant to be a pedantic history question, and sorry it's so
>> unclear, but I often wonder whether our attempts to define work as
>> "narrative arc" or "multimedia texture weaving" aren't much more prone to
>> contextual readings/ cultural bias as 20-21st century thinkers than we
>> wish to admit. In other words, we've acquired historico-cultural distance
>> from some types of work that makes it convenient to consider them as
>> essentially linear narratives when in fact they may have been hugely
>> differently experienced at the time of their creation. Conversely, perhaps
>> today's tendency to conceptualise in terms of braided, rhizomatic,
>> equal-parts-interwoven, emergent and processual dynamics and let's skip
>> the rest of the rhetoric... leads us to view too exclusively in these
>> terms works that might be seen by others including our descendants as
>> conveying very different dynamics to those (we think) we're building?
>> Perhaps they'll see work that describes sweeping teleological curves and
>> narrative arcs where we reveled in the leveling effects of chance and
>> process?
>> 
>> Just an idle query from a (happily) tormented mind!
>> 
>> best wishes to all
>> 
>> sjn
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> 
>> From: empyre-bounces@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au on behalf of Kenneth Newby
>> Sent: Sun 08/01/2006 02:09
>> To: soft_skinned_space
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] poetics...
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Jim,
>> 
>> The poetics of form you imply remind me of a variety of interesting
>> alternatives to the Aristotelian narrative arc that have come up within
>> the Euro-American thread of culture.   Ars Combinatoria, the
>> Musicalische Wurfelspiel of Mozart, Haydn and others, English change
>> ringing of permutations on sets of bells, Schoenberg's serial
>> formalism, Cage and Cunningham's exploration of compositional process,
>> Oulipo to name a few... all interesting proposals for other ways of
>> doing it.
>> 
>> The south and south-east Asian examples are of particular interest in
>> that they are typically made up of profoundly integrated
>> multidisciplinary forms: music, narrative, dance, dramatic elements,
>> character, scenography, projections on screens, etc.  And in the
>> Balinese example all of this complexity  is orchestrated with an
>> openness that allows the work to respond to the local characteristics
>> of its performance.
>> 
>> Kenneth.
>> 
>> On 7-Jan-06, at 6:24 AM, Jim Andrews wrote:
>> 
>>> After I posted, I thought of Aleksandra's posts that talk about the
>>> process-oriented, braided 'poetics' of Balinese drama versus the less
>>> process-oriented poetics of Aristotle and much of western literature.
>>> Certainly writers involved in digital media have wrestled with the
>>> apparent
>>> disjunction between the structure of western narratives and drama, on
>>> the
>>> one hand, and the more process-oriented possibilities of new media. It
>>> may
>>> be that the sort of thing you and Aleksandra note--that useful
>>> paradigms for
>>> dramatic, process-oriented art exist (as in Balinese drama)--could be
>>> useful
>>> to writers and others. Interesting that the 'braided process' approach
>>> is
>>> not only of drama but song and dance...Greek theatre also had these
>>> elements...it seems likely that the roots of Greek drama go back to
>>> religious rites/rituals (so much work done on that matter by the
>>> 'Cambridge
>>> anthropologists' Jane Harrison et all).
>>> 
>>> I wonder if you know when the Balinesians acquired writing? Much later
>>> than
>>> their dramatic form? It would be natural for writing to be strongly
>>> influential on form emerging from cultures that have writing.
>>> 
>>> I'm currently reading one of the better books I've encountered in a
>>> long
>>> time, called Snow by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. Though there are
>>> conventional progressions between chapters in the narrative, you can
>>> pick it
>>> up at any point and its interesting to read from there. That's a fairly
>>> 'simple' poetics, in a sense, but difficult to achieve: excellence at
>>> every
>>> point. I suppose it doesn't hurt that the main character is a poet.
>>> 
>>> The approach is hinted at in the first paragraph of chapter one
>>> (titled The
>>> Journey to Kars).
>>> 
>>> "The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus
>>> driver. If
>>> this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he
>>> felt
>>> inside him the silence of snow."
>>> 
>>> A wonderful introduction to the character's poetics--and the
>>> novelist's.
>>> Poetics as what we mediate experience and language with.
>>> 
>>> ja
>>> http://subtle.net/empyre
>>> http://vispo.com
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>