[-empyre-] Sense as space

[Penny Florence]

Hi All
I am still en route, feeling displaced in so many ways that I find it hard
to focus. But I don't think this is the source of my feeling that the Making
Sense event in Paris was unsatisfactory in more ways than not, some of them
worrying.

There is an enormous amount of work in the general area of practice related
research, almost none of which was referenced. Participants including me
have long experience which could have been useful. I say this, not in the
spirit of territorial claims for a disciplinary approach, but rather in
terms of the proper academic research that the event ought to be. Academic
research is not the other to practice. It is in uneasy and contested and
sometimes productive tension with it. Potentially, Making Sense could have a
contribution to make to this work. But not in its present form, which is
highly questionable.

Why were there some overtly self-promotional and/or politico-social
presentations which had no reflexivity or critical reflection whatsoever,
and, worse, did not allow it? Why was there an attempt to suppress debate
when dissent was expressed? If there was little political discussion in the
formal part of the conference, it was because many participants quickly
realized it would be closed out, and, frankly, it wasn't worth the effort in
this arena.

I am not part of Making Sense. I simply attended a conference. Several
statements were made in sessions about what 'Making Sense' might become, and
if I'm being vague, it is because these statements were all completely
impenetrable. This event is forming a poltical agenda whether everyone
involved likes it or not. I do not like being co-opted into something
undefined with some unclear future.

Some straightforward questions, the answers to which most academic
conferences put up front in some way: Who exactly is on the collective? What
roles did they play in the selection of papers? What is the editorial
policy? How were decisions made? What exactly is the role of Cambridge
University and other prestige institutions, and how far do they sanction it?
What is the academic frame of reference, apart from keynote big names?

So I find myself in the unaccustomed position of defending academic
convention. Sign of the times, perhaps. When something is under such threat
as open academic research and debate now is, one come to realize its value.

I had been going to comment more specifically on the Stiegler contribution,
but don't know whether to do so now. I'll think about it.

And I'll say how much I got from meeting some participants, and from their
contributions, in spite of the stranger features of this strangest of
conferences.
Penny

On 25 October 2010 00:01, Alexander Wilson <01ek at parabolikguerilla.com>wrote:

> Hello Empyrecists,
>
> Thanks Renate for introducing me to the list. Though I have not yet posted,
> I have been following the discussions for a couple of weeks now.
>
>
> I'd like to write down a few thoughts, post Making Sense Colloquium, and
> hope they may spark some new tangent discussions.
>
>
> A lot of my theatre and art work has dealt with the idea that sense as in
> meaning and sense as in sensation, is inherently tied to a third homonym, at
> least with the french word "sens" : sense as direction or orientation. This
> lead me to conceptualize sense as space, space which is not only physical
> and through which our bodies move, but a heterogeneous space that also
> includes psychological space, that is, spaces through which our minds move.
> Sense as meaning and sense as sensation are etymologically derived from the
> idea of earlier words meaning "to find ones way" or "to orient oneself"
> (see proto indo-european base **sent-,* which means "to go"). So
> spatiality is extremely important if we want to look at sense holistically.
>
>
> If both are minds and our body are *in *sense, that is, if they orient
> themselves within sense in a holistic manner, then we must think of the mind
> and body as one entity. I have often used the term “topological body” to
> refer to this, though it is somewhat misleading. The idea comes from the
> topology of non-orientable forms in topology, like the mobeius strip and the
> klein bottle, the definitions of which give us a way of thinking how the
> outside, physical world, could be continuous to the internal mental world.
> If one were to stand on a gaint klein bottle's surface, one might get the
> impression that the ground on which he stands has an other side, below his
> feet, as it were, when in fact this “other side” is continuous to the “side”
> he is standing on : the klein bottle only has one side. Likewise, the
> topological body only has one side. The inside mental space of the subjet
> extends continuously into the physical world outside. The topological body
> is thus both mind and body.
>
>
> In my work with Parabolik Guerilla Theatre, I have often treated the
> question of the difference between “having sense”, that is, merely being
> determined by the space in which the topological body is embeded, and
> “making sense”, that is actively participating in the constant
> reorganization of that space. Merleau-Ponty wrote about the difference
> between *parole parlée* and *parole parlante* in this way.  It is possible
> to “use” language in a non creative way, whereas it is also possible to
> create through language, to reveal through language something other than
> what a word means on a merely semiotic level. This creative use of language
> is *poïesis*. But this distinction between having sense and making sense
> extends to areas which we don’t usually call language : gestures also adhere
> to this principle. The body is constantly involved in automatic gestures, it
> relies on innumerable unconscious gestures that “make” no sense but "have"
> sense, that is, the body is on constantly decoding sense which is already
> there, inscribed in the repetitive processes which make up our present,
> inherited from the past. However, there are ways in which the body can
> attempt to become *poïetic, *and take part in new encodings of sense,
> create new propagating processes, revealing new meanings, new ways to move,
> new ways to interact with the world (or be the world).
>
>
> In our practice with Parabolik Guerilla Theatre, Japanese Butoh has been a
> huge inspiration, and from the very beginning was part of our physical
> training regimen. Butoh deals with exactly this idea of transcending the
> usual gestural and postural automatisms that are only decodings of sense. It
> is and active attempt to not be determined by sense, but actually take part
> in producing it. The idea of a topological body and of sense as space also
> ties in with butoh’s sense of the body and space, where the exterior and
> interior are incessantly forced to exchange places. A common interpretation
> of butoh is that in it’s practice, the body no longer moves through space
> but that the reverse is happening, the space moves through the body.
>
>
> I could go on and on about these ideas but I’m already rambling. Renate
> said at Making Sense colloquium to try to keep our posts short, so I’ll
> shut-up for now...
>
>
> thanks,
>
> alexander wilson
>
> --
> Alexander Wilson
> http://www.parabolikguerilla.com
> http://www.encodagesdeloubli.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
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