[-empyre-] setting fire to avatars, collapsing realities

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all
thanks Christina for your encouraging remark, and I enjoyed your pun on the 空気さなぎ and the "1Q84",
as you also don't seem to think that last week's discussion was marked by Alan's or my reactionary disdain
of an overhyped interactivity. On the contrary,  I thought we were raising some questions about what it
(interactivity) does and how we have used it or recognized its limitations, and I still think it would be good
to start again, perhaps, by asking what we mean by embodiment and affect, or proceed to be critically aware
of the fact that relational embodiment may not be continuous at all (relational between what or whom?).
Alan asked "what does it mean to 'speak of embodiment' at all,  for example, in relation to the problems raised in Scarry's writing on 
pain?" -- which I gather means that some embodiments (for example when I mentioned the Texan sculptor's chronic back pain which he
never mentioned to me actually, I only infered it) are unspeakable. Kentridge's refusal of time interests me, in this respect,
as it is not claiming to be participatory. Nor does it evoke empathy. 
What are the whispered promises of the present? And what if such terms, as also, say, the idea of survival, as Althusser thought,
are always invoked but remain virtually uninvestigated as a concept. The concept of "interactive" (or feedback as I see Patrick
writing it in the article he quotes) seems effectively obscure, unless we start looking at the inconsequential groping of shadows. 

respectfully,
Johannes Birringer


[Christina McPhee schreibt]
>
This is a beautiful exchange. To borrow from the author Mirakami- it's like an ice chrysalis . It's abutting a thousand different possible phase changes.
>