[-empyre-] ethicopoetics of sight, in the fog, immoderately

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all

It was interesting to me to hear the last postings, about an "american dream" (a reference to Obama?), a gold rush,  and Alan's reference to immoderation, which I identify as fear
on the part of succumbing to a politics of fear mongering or a perception thereof, a populist politics of fear?  Foggy, I would say immoderately, and this is the the sensation I tried to express these past weeks, not wanting to be drawn in here, so blame me for being ignorant of your fears. Not ignorant, actually, but impatient. To think that the Trump or Trumpism as you call it implies a global crisis I still have to see as presumptuous, as indeed the world is not decided in Washington. But before the month ends, and another subject takes over, am I then able to remind us that the US election, and the new governor there in the US, is only one election amongst many, or if you like, one coup amongst others? Are we debating the new governor of Serbia? the war in Syria? the referendum in Turkey? why not?  Washington's only one change among other changes and other continuities, of a political and of a cultural kind, never mind american dreams (many around the world could care less). My worry a few weeks ago was that there was a "Larmoyanz"  and a sense of shock that was then relayed to subscribers here, and I found it of course interesting that empyre would be assumed to remain a safe space, a "sanctuary" of deep reflection, a 'microteatre for the fifteen'? (compared to social media multitudes where things are changing, and folks may be afraid to say anything? or repost everything but not say anything?). 

Brian Holmes just wrote, I suppose critically, that describing the dance of Min Tanaka and the tremendous grace, love, and affection he generated in the witnesses has to be faulted if it neglects infrastructures and technoscience?

>>In my view, the Fukushima Daiichi reactors - or the one at Wilkes Barre, PA, for that matter - deserve as much sustained attention as Min Tanaka's dances. Politics is the recognition that human fate depends crucially upon machines, and indeed, on what used to be called "the forces of nature." Tragic beauty inheres to, rather than escapes from, the  technological infrastructures of capitalism>>

I don't think I pleaded for sustained attention to a dancer (in contrast to attention to whatever it does not escape from? technological infrastructures of capitalism? reactor failure?  Washington's governor in a white house?); I merely shared a tremendously positive moment of energy and sustenance with you; as one could draw many inspirations, for example, from other sculptures in the expanded field. (Min Tanaka, incidentally, teaches on his farm in North Japan, and those who study dance with him also work in the rice fields and know the forces of nature). A sculpture that interested me went up in Dresden a short while ago, by a Syrian-German artist, Manaf Halbouni, who planted three gutted tourist buses vertically into the ground in front of the reconstructed Frauenkirche on the Neumarkt (the Frauenkirche was destroyed by British bombing raids in February 1945, when most of Dresden was firebombed). Folks there remember the war and the destruction in February, so the artist chose a good time. The barricade sculpture was a transcultural memento, associating with the struggle in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2015, when citizens erected gutted buses to create protection against snipers; called "Monument,"  the monument of course divided public opinion and yet the controversy and subsequent discussions proved very productive, healthy  (i can send you german and swiss links, if you like to see a photo, here is one in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/07/dresdens-bitter-divide-over-aleppo-inspired-bus-barricade-sculpture

The norm (and Manaf Halbouni assumed this correctly) is that we have public discussion, contested debates,  in most societies or all societies I know of this is the case. When repression rules, other forms of protest will be developed, and emerge, or float subterraneously, as they did in Russia, in Slovenia, in  China, in Japan, in Korea, etc.  Nothing to scream about. Thank you Simon for citing from Pavel Haas’s "Study for Strings." Thank you also, Kyle Mckinley, for your courageous long post and good analysis (including sanctuary cities). Someone here, earlier, made a rather pertinent sarcastic remark, and i am not sure how it was received, about the need to prepare exit strategies . (We all found it liberating and tremendously humorous, back in the days, when Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña would quip that he could see the future, and the future would be bright, and also upside down, and gringos would run to the border south, to seek political asylum in Mexico).*

regards
Johannes Birringer



*Dangerous border crossing manifesto, I think it was. Part of the border workshops, later they came Pocha Nostra. 


+=

[Alan schreibt]

.. how extremity has become a norm at this point...
 And the weather reports on the tv network national news almost daily will say something like "Severe weather
in the mid-west; 40 million people at risk." The stakes keep rising; people are frightened.

I keep thinking about the kind of discussions - cultural and political
theory etc. - that circle around Trump etc., and whether theory itself
might not be bankrupt, whether something otherwise might be useful, a TAZ
(temporary autonomous zone) of theory might replace all those overarching
post-marxist/DG/accelerationist/etc. approaches that seem increasingly of
limited use and vision. We're always catching up...