(of a surface) tree

🌫 (of a surface) reflections 🌳

Notes towards a self-destructing manifesto:

The concept of community is imputed with consensus; of mutuality. In such circumstances, durable relations participating in shared values, vision, identity is negotiated alongside fissures, tension and nuances.

the necessity of struggle} to value challenges, discomfort in the search for new ways of being, to want to grow, learn and prosper.

interest and affection} to remain curious, engaged with other practices, research interests, questions. To empathise. To give. To take ownership.


Structural integrity:

Twitter•••The feeds, archive, chronologically scrolling-downwards as a resolution of the fragment within the totality of feeling; collectivised emotions. Honesty is recognising the moment, even when you appear unrecognisable. These tweets function as fractions of a manifesto that encompasses futurity, ambivalence and growth. A tendency towards eradication.

Instagram•••A visual repository exploring the sign, symbol, logo economy and turn towards a more image-based literacy. How can these images add a latitude to a project largely based on language and the discursive?

¡Notes! on Censorship

Julian Assange on a political society versus a fiscalised society:

“Correct, and optimistic about any organisation, or any country, that engages in censorship. We see now that the US State Department is trying to censor us. We can also look at it in the following way. The birds and the bess, and other things that can’t actually change human power relationships, are free. They’re left unmolested by human beings because they don’t matter. In places where speech is free, and where censorship does not exist or is not obvious, the society is so sewn up–so depoliticised, so fiscalised in its basic power relationships–that it doesn’t matter what you say. And it doesn’t matter what information is published. It’s not going to change who owns what or who controls what. And the power structure of a society is by definition its control structure. So in the United States, because of the extraordinary fiscalisation of relationships in that country, it matters little who wins office. You’re not going to suddenly empty a powerful individual’s bank account. Their money will stay there. Their stockholdings are going to stay there, bar a revolution strong enough to void contacts.”

When politics is deeply embedded with money, a ‘free’ society might just be deceiving, with less room for change as compared to a society whose power structure remains political and therefore more open to reorganisation:

“Censorship is not only a helpful economic signal; it is always an opportunity, because it reveals a fear of reform. And if an organisation is expressing a fear of reform, it is also expressing the fact that it can be reformed.”

In thinking about these in relation to Singapore, it is interesting to note how speech still matters here, how journalism and writing can invert power structures, how art can inflect reform. Perhaps, the condition to aspire here is to be censored.

How can knowledge and information be factually disseminated to the population? How can it circumnavigate censorship without the risk of being tainted by money, corruption and other exploitation by the power structure? How can we reinvent the power structure of society so that freedom is not illusionary but remain a core value, upheld by all?

...;;;...

ETA: December 28, 2016

"It is a myth that an art withdrawn from the realm of public inspection and disapproval is a freer and superior art. The impulse to evade censure can inspire raptures of ingenuity. (The passage of the prim Hays Code in 1932, which led to four decades of censorship in Hollywood, increased the sophistication and wit of American films by a magnitude.) We hear much about art enriching the human experience, which is an agreeable platitude. But it is the other way round. The human experience is needed to enrich art, and without a meaningful living connection to the society that nurtures it, art is a plucked flower."

Michael J. Lewis, "How Art Became Irrelevant," Commentary Magazine, July 1, 2015, accessed July 2, 2015.

 https://somerepository.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/111/

(of a surface) reflections2

on stamina> To endure till you get to a point of substance remains imperative. Ideas exist in abundance, the follow-through does not. Parts of sustaining an artistic practice involves searching for mediums that can deal with the dimensions of your question. If one were to know the ins-and-outs of a medium, there will be no motivation to continue as little growth or insight will transpire from the process. The process becomes nothing more than a cog within a machine, a kind of making for the sake of making–valueless. There is an important aspect of dynamism within stamina, to persist without being stale.

on conversing> What distinguishes ‘meaningful’ discursive forms from weather conversations? Under what conditions or behaviour does dialogue proliferates and transform? How can we better converse? Perhaps, paramount importance resides in the active process of encountering, interpreting and questioning the work at hand rather than making a conclusive or cohesive argument. Part of the transcendental potential of art involves being empathetic to position outside of yourself and these discussions should function as spaces to test out ideas, to be wrong and to destroy preconceptions, as opposed to promoting your agenda or reinforcing your beliefs. Experiences of the world are not limited to pithy statements of truth but remains a fertile (and perhaps, futile) struggle in one’s grappling of meaning. World-view is not a finite entity, but a speculative process in which arguments about the nature of reality is constantly being examined and investigated. We must be more inventive in our response, we must push ourselves to find new thoughts and structures, we must value risks, mistakes and the struggle.

ETA (December 21, 2016): Procrastination is rewarding in an increasingly content-laden, distraction-driven world. Attention span, extended period of time is a quality we should aspire to. 

∞venns∞ CommComm

Venns Foreground
Notes on No 3, – CommComm
non-occurrence


It fucks, it shits. bio-

We are alienated, distracted from the world, from each other, from ourselves. A life reduced to commodity exchanges. What does relationship mean today? How can we connect, interface and actually ‘live’? Perhaps, to combat this, we need a conception of the future on more biological terms: values that stems from and is grounded in nature and biology. We need to think about our shit.

We fuck and we shit, in that we proliferate. We consume and we dispose, yet in that it destructs. What becomes of waste when it is rethought of as nourishment, nutrients or fertlisers, when waste takes a life on its own and not be at the end of a life cycle?^1 In thinking more about our shit, man is widened and would be sensitive to what we devour and discharge, thereby affecting the nature of relationships–into something more biological, ecological and ethical.

A prefix to be added before man-made:
nature-man-made
man-made-nature
nature-made-man
made-man-nature

Read...
^1 In “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, the authors critiques traditional environmentalists’ urge for ‘reducing, reusing and recycling’ as an empty, shortsighted, mere downcycling gesture. In that, they call for a shift away from the current ‘cradle-to-grave’ manufacturing model to one of positive proliferation, capable of enhancing and propagating (similar to the gift economy).

“Every participant in the cycle literally lives off the others with only the ultimate energy source, the sun, being transcendent. Widening the study of ecology to include man means to look at ourselves as part of nature again, not its lord.”
– The Gift, p. 23


(of a surface) reflections

interdependence} I still maintain that the best conversations I’ve ever had in my life revolve around art. Discussions borne out of this domain are transmitted with staggering substance: there is something incredibly meaningful to listen and learn from people who imbue great magnitude of creativity, emotion, humanness in an endeavour that reaps little exchange value or affection. In many ways, art allows for individual autonomy whilst bringing people together. As we proceed, I hope that the space would afford us to intermix our individual practices, an entaglement-of-sort

capitalism} Reflecting upon the past session, we focused on a critique of capitalism as oppose to developing the concept, basis of capitalism. What exactly is capitalism? How can we better understand the mechanics of the system? And these readings cannot be insular, it must bleed just like how capitalism has managed to defy comprehension and remain formless (latching and co-opting upon existing and new forms). A reading about capitalism would not be thorough unless it is read with, against, alongside other specificities like gender, race, post-colonialism, the family, ecology, the news, pop culture, etcetera.

rigour and stamina} Uping the tempo. Reading more. Conversing more. Having the endurance to follow through, to come through. A level of intensity. A challenge.

on non-occurrence} I must admit that it is awfully disappointing. Perhaps, it wouldn’t hit that hard if you hadn’t thought that the dream of a community, incubator, catalytic environment was about to take off, was at its cusp, was just beginning to gain momentum. That you had many ideas, that you were excited to hear other ideas. It is lonely, but when have I never been? The project lives, even if it has to exists as a delirium or mumblings to oneself. In the echo chamber, reflected sounds can propagate, perhaps not as dynamic but we do the best with what we can afford.

unalienated labour} the engagement with art as a form of unalienated labour and in a lot of ways, !reading! as well. A reading group as a form of resistance against capitalism, against alienation, towards a peer-sharing community. The struggle of a text, the time required as threshold for committment. What is community without committment or belief?


Untapped potential
Watch: The Society of the Spectacle here
Watch: TedTalk: Cradle-to-Cradle here
Research: Situationist International’s technique of ‘Détournement’, often used by Debord in writing