[-empyre-] bridging & flying machines

[Johannes Birringer]

this is a very beautiful evocation of bridges (in Gloria' Anazaldua's writing) and
the transformation you address, Christina. 
thanks for recallng Anzaldua, 
she was an inportant inspiration in the 90s for many for us.

thanks also for sending me a link to your video, "soda lake (unbound'),
which i first couldn't watch as our network here in the Mine was too slow,
and so it stopped, after a few seconds, a black and white ghostly panorama
of a figure, a women perhaps, or a man, trying to open some tent or sail
or heavy parachute that might have dropped her/him from skies to shores
of desert or ocean in white (salt lake) or outdoors somewhere,  frozen.

when the film started to move again (the network here being fickle) i am spell bound
by the movement in this film: broken up into  5 parallel (horizontally placed) film frames
in almost constant motion and some less so (slowed, then blurred forward),
the center frame seems a bit larger  (but changes place on occasion)
and over the rustling sounds (the parachute that  is being unfolded or the tent that is constructed or some not yet known
da Vincian flying apparatus or perhaps fishing device) are unfolding an
uncertain plot , uncertain emtotions, there is no resolution for this person there on this
beach-head or sky-line, the unfolding  seems unsuccessful but perhaps
it is the contrary as i do not know the purpose of the flying apparatus,
or modes of preparing the
flying machine,  

and at the end the breath of the dance of this effort
and the gliding motion of this split screen film finally become smaller and
smaller, a little windown in the black center of things, and pfffh, it is gone.


this is quite an unusual and thrilling, mysterious film noir dance video,
the protagonist is a woman, but one cannot be sure,
i recognize a tattoo  and the effort of the
labor in the sky, the effort seems real, 
the meaning of the dance osbcured and multiplied
in the segmentational transitions. 


PS
dear Robert,  thanks for your reply, i need time to answer, I think i was a bit casual on purpose,
as i am not in the filed you mention (for which you think October is relevant); I read Douglas Crimp
but not only in the autumn, 
and for AIDS activism, high academic jargon never much mattered, I'd think. 


regards
Johannes



-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au on behalf of naxsmash
Sent: Wed 7/29/2009 8:28 AM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] a last minute plea for discussion about transfeminism
 
>

For the longest time, a book called "This Bridge We Call Home" was in  
the bookcase by my bed. Every night I 'd see
that title and it would comfort me.  The image of a home on a bridge,  
and calling (naming ) , this imaginary sound , resonated
with a sense of power and hope.  Now for some reason the book has  
gone, missing.   I find it on googlebooks, though, in excerpts......

Opening the introduction, I find the late Gloria Anzaldua walking  
along the cliffs at Santa Cruz-- a walk I have taken so
many times as well, as I try to get ready to teach up on the mountain  
above us.

She muses on the natural bridges, huge limestone remnants of arches  
that rise just off the edge of the beach, and how
the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 brought down the closest to shore  
of three.

The tension in all writing and speech is a kind of bridge between 2  
unstable conditions , one/the nature of words as representations of real
and two/the nature of words as constructions of real.

Queerness, for me involves the exhilaration and hope in the ex- 
tensions between these.

It is a 'tentative' but also a tent, a mobile unit.  I pitch my tent  
on a bridge...  a sliver, just a shimmy, shimmer, of temporary  
architecture.

The real-- is an earthquake, it will come and change things, rearrange  
things, without warning. The natural bridge falls.  Unlike words, or  
my tent on the bridge,
The real is pure process, the real is that quake that will come. The  
limestone bridge will fall, the beach will disappear....my legs may  
break, my lungs may give out, I may not run fast
enough from the tsunami.  I know this which is why I can speak :  
because I can anticipate pure process.

There is no 'woman' but there is a place on the bridge 'for woman' .I  
mark it x, I stay there, it is my mobile device, my free phone ... I  
walk the bridge, my home.

I like Gloria's naming too, for this walker on the bridge:  
'nepantlera' : those who facilitate passage between worlds.


-christina




    Micha wrote:
>
>
> and i know the queer/feminist divide is long and painful and deep, not
> just from reading about sandy stone's experience but also from my own
> personal experiences with some second wave feminists...
>
> ....Really my own work even seek to sort of expand the notion of
> gender to the point that sandy stone said during one of our talks "i
> worry about the notion of gender floating away here". Of course  
> there is
> still gender based violence all over the world on a daily basis, and I
> struggle to get my students and nieces and sisters to understand the
> relevance of feminism even while I question its revelance to our  
> current
> /evolving ideas of identity...
>
> out of breath, stopping there...
>
>  m
>

_______________________________________________
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