[-empyre-] public lament and gardening

Alan Sondheim sondheim at panix.com
Fri Oct 5 14:19:21 EST 2012 

Ana, thank you for this and for the site. I've spent some time with it; as 
with Monika's work, it's overwhelming.

I have never had these experiences; I've been shot at, but from a 
distance. My own grief is sourceless in a sense, and selfish.

I do understand about the silence. And the amnesia of cities, which is why 
it is so important that New York has been recognizing its own history of 
slavery and draft riots, and why the African Burial Ground National 
Monument in lower Manhattan is so important; I always sent my students to 
the site.

- Alan


On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Ana Vald?s 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
>
>

==
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
==

More information about the empyre mailing list