[-empyre-] public lament and gardening

Monika Weiss gniewna at monika-weiss.com
Fri Oct 5 13:43:15 EST 2012 

Ana,

Thank you for sharing---I am reading your text tonight and thinking of silence, feeling the silence.

Monika

On Oct 4, 2012, at 9:41 PM, Ana Valdés wrote:

> The nearest I was from a massgrave was Jenin, 2002, people were eerie
> silent around the hole wich was Palestine's ground zero. Under the
> hole were dismembered people, restaurantes blown in pieces, ashes,
> bones, lonely shoes.
> I wrote some texts from there, http://www.this.is/jenin
> 
> In the total mourning people were silent and the silence were heavier
> than any shouting...
> Ana
> 
> On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:26 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 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
>> ==
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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

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






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