[-empyre-] Starting the Fourth Week: Chris Funkhauser, Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

Hi Sally,

Amazing the spelling errors I made. I just apologize. Yes, Marat! I even
had problems with my name in Turkey. Being in the original a Iranian name,
the "Nemet" part of my family name is very unusual in Turkey also. Because
of that, it was consistently miss[elled as "Mehmet" which is a very common
Turkish name. As Chris said, the spelling of names are very fluid and
fungible. My father, my brother and myself each spell our family name
differently. This is partly due to the sound shift in names that occurs
from Iranian to Turkish. "D"s become "t"s. Having born in Iran, my father
kept the "d" sound, etc., etc. I can go on forever on that subject.

Thank you very much for your response to my comments on your dancing. I
wrote them with some trepidation. I am not an expert on dancing. I wrote
about what struck me in your dancing. Critics are sometimes caught in their
habits, within the reference points from which they come. I am glad that my
words made a difference for you.

Starting with my essay *The Peripheral Space of Photography*, the majority
the work I do starts with a response to something else, a film *The
Spiritual Life of Replicants*), a play (*Animals of Dawn*), photographs,
someone else's writings ("Eleven Septembers Later: *Film Lumiere*, Readings
on Benjamin Hollander's *Vigilance*), etc. In that way, they are
collaborations. In fact, translations from Turkish poetry and the poetics
of *Eda* I developed from them, constitute an extended collaboration with/
meditation on the Turkish language.

I think you will find Chris's work multi-faceted, always developing, in
fascinating ways full of contradictions.

Looking forward to further exchanges with you and others.

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 10:11 AM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
christopher.t.funkhouser at njit.edu> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Murat,
>
> We were in the back room at St. Marks, where most of the readings/talks
> are held, which I may have flubbed the name on. It has been a really long
> time since I've been there!
>
> Personally I see imperfect ion & failure as 2 different things: failure
> implying having (set) a specific objective to achieve ( in advance ) & not
> being able to reach it, imperfection means things didn't go as
> planned/expected, perhaps as result of human error.
>
> I was truly enthused about working with the NJIT/Rutgers-Newark Theatre
> Dept. on a production of the code opera Sonny Rae Tempest composed once I
> heard Director Louis Wells' motto, "we're not afraid to fail". to me this
> meant they were willing to take risks, & if it didn't work out, so be it.
> new, exciting things might get born this way. the code opera is Pretty
> usual & ridiculous, VERY Dada, & the first musical scores we rendered were
> awful (white noise). I was imagining we might empty the house in 3-5
> minutes, so it was good & liberating to work w/someone who took this
> approach.
>
> I was thinking about glitch after my post yesterday, but even in something
> that is glitch (in any form), the code functions properly. usually these
> works are aberrations imposed by composer, hardware, or software. but it is
> the surface that contains something unexpected/distorted. the code is *able
> *to do what it is instructed/informed to do. glitch is a great cyborgian
> form, whether intentionally created, or not...
>
> It may be that my architect friend was saying that things minor adjustment
> could be required or made in the construction phase. He's not the lazy
> sort, I'll have to ask for an elaboration some time.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 3:35 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>> Chris, I apologize for the typo. I was writing the introduction six
>> o'clock in the morning since I had to be at Kennedy Airport very early. And
>> I did use "tent" metaphorically, but are you sure it was inside Parish
>> Hall? I remember it being somewhere in the boondocks. Like quite a few
>> others, I seem to have disappeared from the PoPro list a few years ago
>> also. Finally, I attributed my case to bad breath.
>>
>> Yes, perhaps the final struggle is "between algorithm/perfection) &
>> human/imperfection." We should pursue it further on. But in *Blade
>> Runner*, even the super human androids are imperfect. They must die.
>> That is the pathos of that film, and also perhaps our ultimate salvation.
>> If you have followed the discussions the previous weeks this month, I was
>> talking about the possibility of a poetics of "failure" or "inefficiency"
>> which may be close to what you mean by ?imperfection." We were also
>> discussing about "glitches" in the algorithmic structures. You say that can
>> not be. Do you mean they are impossible or not permitted?
>>
>> What that architect was telling you sounded more like "laziness," an over
>> trust of machines. That's why so many buildings are, as Jean Renoir says,
>> boring.
>>
>> Good beginning. Welcome to Empyre, Chris.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Murat
>>
>> --
> Dr. Christopher T. Funkhouser
> Program Director, Communication and Media
> Department of Humanities
> New Jersey Institute of Technology
> University Heights
> Newark, NJ 07102
> http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous
> funkhous at njit.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
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