guyn-O-mer

"Under the Roman Empire, a man who committed a certain kind of crime was banned from society and all rights as a citizen were revoked. He thus became a "homo sacer" (holy man). In consequence, he could be killed by anybody - while his life on the other hand was deemed "sacred", so he could not be sacrificed in a ritual ceremony.
To a homo sacer, Roman law did not apply to anymore, although he was still "under the spell" of law. He was excluded from law itself, while being included at the same time. Now this figure is the exact mirror image of the sovereign - a king, emperor, or president - who stands, on the one hand, within law (so he can be condemned, e.g. for treason, as a natural person) and outside of the law (since as a body politic he has power to suspend law for an indefinite time).
Since its origins, Agamben notes, law has had the power of defining what "pure life" is by making this exclusive operation, while at the same time gaining power over it by making it the subject of political control. The power of law to actively separate "political" beings (citizens) from "pure life" (bodies) has carried on from antiquity to modernity - from, literally, Aristotle to Auschwitz. In a daring but plausible move Agamben connects Greek political philosophy to the concentration camps of 20th century fascism, and even further, to detainment camps in the likes of Guantanamo Bay or Bari/Italy, where asylum seekers have been imprisoned in football stadiums. In this kind of camps, entire zones of exception are being formed. Sovereign law makes it possible to create entire areas in which the application of the law itself is held suspended.
In particular, Agamben warns of a "generalization of the state of exception" through laws like the USA PATRIOT Act which would mean a permanent installment of martial law and emergency powers across our countries." (Laborlawtalk)
Every act of terrorism seems to increase this tendancy amongst our democratic systems.
Materials related to Agamben's Homo Sacer Project can be found here.

la suite - continue - weiter

... London. I agree that I can't help hiding a malicious joy. All this patriotic mass of "Paris 2012" had something obscene. And another belly landing for Jacques Chirac personnally involved and desirous to win some credit by going to Singapore pleading the french cause.

la suite - continue - weiter

"Silent Movie. To give an installation the name of something that never existed is probably less innocent than the average cat may infer. There was never anything like silent cinema, except at the very beginning, or in film libraries, or when the pianist had caught a bad flu. There was at least a pianist, and soon an orchestra, next the Wurlitzer, and what contraptions did they use, in the day of my childhood, to play regularly the same tunes to accompany the same film? I'm probably one of the last earthlings - the last, says the cat - to remember what themes came with what films: A Midsummer Night's Dream on Wings (the dogfights), Liszt's The Preludes on Ben Hur. A touch of humour noir here, to think that the saga of the young hebrew prince was adorned by Hitler's favorite music, which in turn explains why you hear it more often than Wagner on the German war newsreels - but I get carried away ..."

"OWLS AT NOON, night birds in the day, things, objects, images that don't belong, and yet are there. Leaflets, postcards, stamps, graffiti, forgotten photographs, frames stolen from the continuous and senseless flow of TV stuff (what I'd call the Duchamp syndrome: once I've spotted 1/50th of a second that escaped everybody, including its author, this 1/50th of a second is mine). Bringing into the light events and people who normally never access it. It's from that raw material, the petty cash of history, that I try to extract a subjective journey through the 20th century. Everybody agrees that the founding moment of that era, its mint, was the First World War, and that it was also the background on which T. S. Eliot wrote his beautiful and desperate poem The Hollow Men. So the Prelude to the journey will be a reflection upon that poem, mixed with some images gathered from the limboes of my memory."
Chris Marker

la suite - continue - weiter

A fictive writer from Patricia Duncker's novel Hallucinating Foucault in some kind a double of Michel Foucault. His real name was Paul-Michel Foucault.
It's about relationship between readers and writers, the question for whom a writer writes. This one seems to train one only reader's sights on: Foucault. After Foucault's death he stops writing and turns mad. Follows the exploration of the young student who first wasn't interested at all in his research subject's life - his thesis is about litterature, and then went to Paris to found out what happened to Michel during the ten years of his internment.
During the nineties only few intellectuals took Foucault's advice seriously:
"I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own (...) I don't write for an audience, I write for users, not readers." ('Prisons et asiles dans le mécanisme du pouvoir', in: Dits et Ecrits, t. II.)
So Duncker's novel can be counted among this kind of use.

la suite - continue - weiter

Daughter of Martha Bass, a great gospel singer, she started with a Rhythm and Blues hit in 1965: Rescue me. I don't know if Lester Bowie, her future husband, took this instructions litterally. Anyway her association to the Art Ensemble of Chicago made of her one of the great singers in New Jazz. So I discovered her on Thème de Yoyo, part of a film music (Moshe Mizrahi: Les Stances à Sophie) and allways one of my favorites.
"Your head is like a yoyo, your neck is like the string" and your hips are gone to dance.
This song has a very healthy effect on me and I'm glad to have this rare record in my collection.
(I.e. "rare" was at least true till the new release in 2000.)

la suite - continue - weiter

"There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks and perceive differently than one sees is about neccessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.
People will say, perhaps, that theese games with oneself need only go on behind the scenes; that they are, at best, part of those labours of preparation that efface themselves when they have had their effects. But what, then, philosophy today - philosophical activity, I mean - if not the critical labour of thousght upon itself? And if it does not consist, in place of legitimating what one allready knows, in undertaking to know how, and up to what limit, it would be possible to think differently?" (The Use of Pleasure)

la suite - continue - weiter

"Every time that you're playing you are trying to get into the center of the sound, bang, right there. That takes a minute, but once you developed that concept, every time you play, it's there. You have to be able to get right in there in an awaked trance state and immediately put yourself into a trance, getting to that area that just opens you up to the other, other worlds. If you don't have that, the music is not going to work, no matter what you are doing. The first time that I had that feeling was with ensemble Muntu at Rashied Ali's place, when one afternoon we played and the bass was lifting me off the ground. And many times we just break through into that area, the spirit area, it was a very elated period." (Everything is valid)
This bass "lifting you off the ground", it's nearly in every William Parker's tune, especially in "Sunday morning church" (with Mat Manieri and Hamid Drake).

la suite - continue - weiter