[-empyre-] public lament and gardening

Fri Oct 5 12:26:56 EST 2012

mourning, lament, are acts, they're intended, they're cultural 
expressions - as long as one can mourn...

but what happens when mourning, lament, end, not through desire
but because the unspeakable becomes manifest - i think this is
where celan comes in for example, or the spaces in jabes' books
with the words themselves removed -

On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Ana Vald?s wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>

==
blog: http://nikuko.blogspot.com/ (main blog)
email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552
music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
current text http://www.alansondheim.org/rp.txt
==