[-empyre-] Eddies, Whirlwinds, Trade Winds

[Julian Oliver]

..on Sat, Apr 04, 2009 at 01:28:02PM -0400, G.H. Hovagimyan wrote:
> 
> On Apr 2, 2009, at 10:54 AM, davin heckman wrote:
> 
> > Where I
> > think that critical theory has gotten off track is in the leap from
> > this observation--that signs are arbitrary and unstable and have no
> > inherent truth--into this view that whoever can assert power over
> > discourse can make language do whatever they want it to.
> 
> My group Artists Meeting is now taking theoretic tracks and using them  
> as scripts for a "theoretical soap box opera." Raphaele Shirley is the  
> director of these video soap operas.  The concept is to take soap  
> opera actor types and have them  mouth theoretical text in high  
> emotional states.  One tract in particular is absolutely hilarious.  
> It's a Derrida passage where he does a philosophical analysis of  
> trembling.  Theory actually performs well when high states of emotion  
> are introduced!

Without a grain of (intended) disrespect, much of the posts on this list read as
rock operas, musicals even. The authors dance from text to treatise in a highly
strung, bibliographic, "Around the world in 40 days" narrative whose
cliff-hangers are moments that sense is made - but only just - in a fine feat of
reference.

If this isn't performance art, I don't know what is.

Cheers,

-- 
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Madrid, Spain
currently: Madrid, Spain
about: http://julianoliver.com