v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Diagrams after Texts by Vilem Flusser

After Vilem Flusser: Change of Paradigms 2003

No nostalgia

From The Pinocchio Theory blog, some good insight into Vilem Flusser's philosophy of photography:

But unlike other critics of the rule of simulacra, Flusser evidences no nostalgia. He has no Baudrillardian yearning for a “real” that would have supposedly existed prior to photographic reproduction. And he explicitly criticizes the Frankfurt School, for the humanist nostalgia behind its attempts “to unmask the [class] interests behind the apparatuses.” Such approaches merely seek to reinstate the humanistic subject that photography and other post-industrial technical apparatuses have destroyed once and for all.

For Flusser — and this is part of what is so great about him — the only way out is the way through. “A philosophy of photography must reveal the fact that there is no place for human freedom within the area of automated, programmed, and programming apparatuses, in order finally [italics mine] to show a way in which it is nevertheless possible to open up a space for freedom.” It is only possible to invent a new practice of freedom, in other words, when we plumb technical programming (starting with photography, and moving on, today, to digital computing and communications) to the depths; when we take the full measure of what it has accomplished; when we give up our illusions of recovering a supposed pre-photographic, pre-technological mode of being.

Reconciliation!

Rami Khouri writes:

Sometimes you can almost physically feel the political earth shifting beneath your feet. One of those moments occurred in Cairo a few days ago, when the main Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas signed the Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement to reconstitute a single Palestinian government. This will be seen in retrospect as a historic turning point in the contemporary history of the Middle East -- not so much for what it means for the Palestinians, but more for what it tells us about the return of Egypt to its natural role in regional diplomacy. This is the first tangible sign of the return of sanity and dignity to the affairs of state and diplomacy in Cairo's foreign policy, after decades of emasculation, subservience, and marginalization. Others will follow quickly, including opening the Gaza-Rafah border, resuming normal relations with Iran, rational relations along the Nile Valley, more effective and realistic regional nuclear policies, and greater regional trade and economic complementarities.

(Egypt's relegation to the sidelines of contemporary politics and diplomacy since the 1980s was due largely to its foreign policy being captured by a combination of money-obsessed conservative Arabs and narrow-minded ideologues in Washington who were almost totally under the sway of pro-Israeli zealots. That is a fascinating tale that deserves its own accounting another time, so that other newly liberated and re-legitimized Arab governments can have a documented handbook on how to preserve your sovereignty and not to conduct foreign policy in the future.)

The Egyptian government's constructive and impartial mediating role that achieved the intra-Palestinian reconciliation stands in stark contrast with the pro-Fatah and anti-Hamas tilt of the Mubarak regime and its prime purveyor of political and intellectual dishonesty, former intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman. The bilateral differences between Fatah and Hamas were all related to political and security matters that had logical solutions, because they emerged from short-term political actions rather than long-term structural differences. Israeli-American-Mubarak/Suleimanian resistance to dealing with Hamas in power and giving Israeli concerns greater importance than Palestinian rights prevented a reconciliation earlier on. The agreement now, so soon after Mubarak-Suleiman have left the scene, is a telltale indicator of where the problems really were. So was the speedy, almost Pavlovian, comment by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu within hours of the reconciliation accord that Fatah could have peace with Hamas or peace with Israel, but not with both.

The implications of a unified Palestinian government and a re-integrated national political system for wider Arab-Israeli and Middle Eastern matters are enormous, and they will play themselves out gradually. The more significant development now is that Egypt's resumption of its traditional role as a regional Arab power will slowly influence some of the key other ideological and diplomatic confrontations that have defined the Middle East for decades, because the Palestinian-Israeli and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict remains at the heart of many of those regional and global dynamics. Four main ones will now be impacted by the Egyptian shift back to a rational foreign policy: the Arab-Israeli, Arab-Iranian, intra-Arab, and Arab-Western conflicts, or at least recurring tensions.

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Alejandro Muñoz Miranda

Alejandro Muñoz Miranda

 

Songdo Landmark City Block A4 by REX

Songdo Landmark City Block A4 by REX

Jarego House in Portugal

Jarego House in Portugal

 

Celia Alvarez Muñoz Interview

Oral history interview with Celia Alvarez Muñoz, 2004 Feb. 7-28, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution    :

MS. CORDOVA: Did you know early on you wanted to be an artist? Was that clear?

MS. MUÑOZ: Well, I wanted to explore, especially when we moved from the first neighborhood, which was closest to the border, what is now known as Chihuahuita. Canal Street, close to the canal and the river and the bridge, the El Paso street bridge. When we moved from there to Mom’s first apartment in government housing, it was not too far from grandmother’s. So I could hop on the bus and visit her. When grandmother moved from there, to what was the edge of El Paso, East El Paso. That’s where the Horse-ie, more country, the beginning of the Lower Valley started.

And at that time, it was a very lush, very interesting neighborhood. Some large properties were broken up into smaller plots and Washington Park, the big city park, was established there. So can you imagine, children having a park as the playground? The zoo was in that park and the rides, the kiddy rides and then the seasonal carnivals, and I was lured. Even from the early neighborhood, I was lured into this carnival existence and the circus, and the freak shows, all of that strangeness too. When the carnivals came into town, usually, gypsies accompanied that crowd. And they situated themselves on El Paso Street, put up their stalls, rented temporarily and they were exotic. And, of course, they were people you were supposed to be very guarded against.

One of my latest stories deals with that element too. But kind of Felliniesque. The early years, I remember, because of that big park, the rental bikes, I mean, there was no curfew. We could get up early as a band of children and explore that zoo, explore the carnival grounds, when they came, go under the tents. You know, just like the early cartoons, the kids – Alfalfa –

MS. CORDOVA: “The Little Rascals.”

MS. MUÑOZ: “The Little Rascals,” type of existence really. In the adjacent properties to Washington Park were properties that had grand houses, remnants of what it was before. The plots were big enough, where they had bulls, cattle, horses that mixed in, with this other element. It was exciting. It was new. Those were the years of empowerment. That’s when I started roller skating and riding the bike and spending hours and hours climbing the trees and developing into a little tomboy.

MS. CORDOVA: Was that all at that first residence, the closest to the border or this was the second?

MS. MUÑOZ: The second. The entrance to the park.

MS. CORDOVA: Okay. And why did your family move so often?

MS. MUÑOZ: Well, the early house that was close to the border was a good rental property for people coming across the border. Grandfather always rented part of the house. It had enough rooms to obtain extra income. After Grandfather died, my aunt and my grandmother wished to move out of that neighborhood.

As a matter of fact, it was overdue. The oldest children, my uncle Severo, who continued the taxi business that my granddaddy started in El Paso, the older sister Inez, who married by the time I was born, always begrudged the fact that they were never moved out of that area. There were long debates with grandfather, because they were of knowing age and there was no reason why he did not move them.

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Yone Noguchi

Yone Noguchi, 1903 / Charles W. Hearn, photographer. Miscellaneous photographs collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Interview with Darkstar

From Hyperdub records:

Kode9 interviews James from Darkstar

9: So, apart from 'Aidy's Girl', you've been keeping a low profile over the last couple of years. What have you been up to?

D: Learning how to write things we'd like to write. Once Aidy's was finished we had a choice of going one of two ways. We could of carried on in that vein and made some great tunes or we could of gone the way we did and developed in a different way. In the long run I think the way we went will be the more fruitful for us personally.

9: On the album, 'North', you depart a little bit from that vocoder sound that I love so much from 'Out of Touch', 'Need You' and 'Squeeze My Lime' opting instead for a real, male vocalist. But it seems like whenever you do vocals, they are always synthetic. You seem to like mangling vocals. The vocals on North are all heavily processed in a way that I love and that people won't have heard in your music before. Can you say something about working with a real vocalist, and why you guys love synthetic vocals.

D: Working with James has been a pleasure because his voice sounds so neutral on our material. Once we process it the way we do it becomes a layer in the track... It's part of the grain, interwoven with the synths, distortion and all the other things we like fucking with. I think we worked James pretty hard, we would have over 100 takes of every line because we needed to make sure it'd fit with our vision of the song. Synthetic and effected vocals just sound better on our tracks I think. We're in a place where we will probably lean towards a more natural take and recording on our next group of tracks, it stared completely synthetic and it's getting more human as we develop.

9: The first single from the album is a cover of rarely discussed Human League track 'Gold'. What kind of affinity do you guys have with the Human League?

D: The Human League track was given to me by a friend, he used to play the dub at 33rpm instead of 45 so the break would be real slow and crunchy, he lent me the tune and i put the flip on 33rpm too, the vocal line was how you hear it in the single, the original is much quicker and it's a pretty obscure one from the Mirror Man ep. The Human League are great. We paid more attention to them after making the track, throughout the album we listened to four or five albums regularly and Travelogue was one of them. I'm not sure if we are real fans to be honest, I listen to some of it and think that it's brave but sometimes they get it so right. They've obviously got a strong vision to create a sound so uncompromising. Even though they were consistently in the charts it's a very particular way of writing, mixing and arranging. I don't think I've heard anything like it before or since. I don't neccesarily enjoy listening to it a lot of the time. It interests me though.

9: I know that making this album has involved a lot of blood, sweat and tears. What else have you been listening too during the production process to soothe those frayed nerves?

D: I like listening to house, I like putting my headphones on and turning the volume up to listen. We wrote quite a few slower spacious tracks, some in different time signatures and some with no beat's at all so before I started in the studio I'd have a daily fix of something repetitive and big. Once I'd leveled out and had some breakfast I'd be ready to get back into the cycle of the album. But for about an hour a day I'd get into anything by Romanthony or Cajmere, people like that.

Later on in the evening I'd usually listen to full albums stuff from Tin Drum by Japan to Actress.

We'd also got into writing full blown ambient pieces, there's three beatless tracks on the album, I watched a shit load of films over the time we recorded the last 5-6 tracks and so Aiden was constantly re-working certain scores to see how they were structured and constantly playing with chords to see if we could get anything.

We listened to so many things, so many albums in a critical way, comparing and listening to how artists structure a group of tracks is interesting. The lull's and peaks of a group of tracks.

Pessoa

'Let's act like sphinxes, however falsely, until we reach the point of no longer knowing who we are; for we are, in fact, false sphinxes, with no idea of what we are in reality. The only way to be in agreement with life is to disagree with ourselves. Absurdity is divine. Let's develop theories, patiently and honestly thinking them out, in order to promptly act against them- acting and justifying our actions with new theories that condemn them. Let's cut a path in life and then go immediately against that path. Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't wish to be, and don't even wish to be taken for being.

Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or to see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.'

          Bernardo Soares, The Book of Disquiet , p.27