[-empyre-] public lament and gardening

Fri Oct 5 11:49:20 EST 2012

I think mourning and lament are related to the ceremonies of the
death. When I did my research as anthropologist I travelled to Mexico
and did a fieldwork in Yucatan, the old Maya empire. Their funerary
pyramids, specially in Palenque, were very similar to the Egyptian
pyramids. Many scenes painted in Palenque's walls were about death,
mourning, ceremonies to placate the wrath of the gods. The gods mourn
as well, the Greek gods mourned lost sons, dead sons, lost wives. I
think mourning and the act of mourning is a very healthy state, when
the repressed grief comes ut and is shouted or cried.
Ana

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Monika Weiss <gniewna at monika-weiss.com> wrote:
> yes, if I understood you correctly Maria, you say that I am not trying to
> work with grief over ones own complicity or remorse. I am more invested in
> the notion and symbolic power as well as real experience of communal grief
> -- this is what oppressive systems fear most -- the symbolic "power" of the
> connecting tissue of our emotions but not those on individual level alone
>
> On Oct 4, 2012, at 6:41 PM, Maria Damon wrote:
>
> Yes, when I mentioned Lamentations, I meant the Hebrew Bible. Old. Grieving
> for ones city, ones polis, ones people. Also, it seems that this is *not*
> where you were going, Monika, a sense of grief over ones own possible
> complicity, real or imagined... remorse.
>
> On 10/4/12 5:55 PM, Monika Weiss wrote:
>
> While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such as Martha
> Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great respect for her) --
> what I am working towards is a connection with the older, before now, before
> any specific time, lamentation. My dancer actually took me to Wender's film
> about Pina Baush last Spring, and while aware of her name I never really
> knew of this work until quite recently (maybe even Alan mentioned her to me
> a long time ago) but it took a person whose body literally inhabited my work
> 'Sustenazo (Lament II)' to "discover" this work and a feeling of connection.
>
> Monika
>
> On Oct 4, 2012, at 4:05 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>
>
> which "Lamentations" are you refering to? (not Martha Graham's Lamentation?)
>
>
> Book of Lamentations in English
>
> All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the obdurate
> that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example of my mother
> shortly before her death, when she had been anesthetized to alleviate her
> suffering in the hospice. The silence is also the silence at the heart of
> the signifier; the signifier is both suture and broken suture, covering and
> dis/covering pain, naming it for those who are suffering, who can no longer
> hear the name, who are no longer with us, coffin or not - when my father
> died, there were issues at the cemetary about the burial of ashes.
>
> - Alan
>
>
>
>
>
> Alan schreibt:
>
>
>
> public lament and gardening
>
>
> On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
>
>
> Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
>
> order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
>
> lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
>
> Lamentations?
>
>
>
> Maria, I wonder what sort of critique would be possible? Lamentations
>
> seems to bridge the political and the obdurate. When pain becomes
>
> overwhelming, silence is at the core and the signifier dissolves; I think
>
> this is also the core of anguish. One is left speechless. On the other
>
> hand, how much clarity is necessary for political or 'rational' thought?
>
> In an odd way this also brings up mathematical thinking - which, from an
>
> outsider point-of-view, seems based on the manipulation of symbols, but
>
> from within is much more of clouded movements with indeterminate focus
>
> (see Jacques Hadamard). Thinking itself, in other words, may well have
>
> less content than its representations, and certainly its representations
>
> in virtual worlds, where everything, one way or another, is determinate
>
> and rationalized on a pixel-by-pixel level.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> empyre forum
>
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
> 456 Broome Street, 4
> New York, NY 10013
> Phone: 212-226-6736
> Mobile: 646-660-2809
> www.monika-weiss.com
> gniewna at monika-weiss.com
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s
> Assistant Professor
> Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
> Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
> Washington University in St. Louis
> Campus Box 1031
> One Brookings Drive
> St. Louis, MO 63130
> mweiss at samfox.wustl.edu
> http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s   S t u d i o
> 456 Broome Street, 4
> New York, NY 10013
> Phone: 212-226-6736
> Mobile: 646-660-2809
> www.monika-weiss.com
> gniewna at monika-weiss.com
>
> M o n i k a   W e i s s
> Assistant Professor
> Graduate School of Art & Hybrid Media
> Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
> Washington University in St. Louis
> Campus Box 1031
> One Brookings Drive
> St. Louis, MO 63130
> mweiss at samfox.wustl.edu
> http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/portfolios/faculty/monika_weiss
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

-- 
http://writings-escrituras.tumblr.com/
http://maraya.tumblr.com/
http://www.twitter.com/caravia158
http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/
http://www.scoop.it/t/literary-exiles/
http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/
http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0
http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/

cell Sweden +4670-3213370
cell Uruguay +598-99470758

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you
will always long to return.
— Leonardo da Vinci