a perseverança do propósito: junho 2011

“When the starry sky, a vista of open seas, or a stained-glass window shedding purple beams fascinate me, there is a cluster of meaning, of colors, of words, of caresses, there are light touches, scents, sighs, cadences that arise, shroud me, carry me away, and sweep me beyond the things I see, hear, or think, The “sublime” object dissolves in the raptures of a bottomless memory. It is such a memory, which, from stopping point to stopping point, remembrance to remembrance, love to love, transfers that object to the refulgent point of the dazzlement in which I stray in order to be.”

in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

books are the natural food for thought

Johann Hari:
" The book -- the physical paper book -- is being circled by a shoal of sharks, with sales down 9 percent this year alone. It's being chewed by the e-book. It's being gored by the death of the bookshop and the library. And most importantly, the mental space it occupied is being eroded by the thousand Weapons of Mass Distraction that surround us all.
[...]
A book has a different relationship to time than a TV show or a Facebook update. It says that something was worth taking from the endless torrent of data and laying down on an object that will still look the same a hundred years from now.
[...]
That's why we need books, and why I believe they will survive. Because most humans have a desire to engage in deep thought and deep concentration. Those muscles are necessary for deep feeling and deep engagement. Most humans don't just want mental snacks forever; they also want meals.
[...]
We are the first generation to ever use the internet, and when I look at how we are reacting to it, I keep thinking of the Inuit communities I met in the Arctic, who were given alcohol and sugar for the first time a generation ago, and guzzled them so rapidly they were now sunk in obesity and alcoholism."

no protection

junji

klein blue

CLOROX BLUE by Steven Klein from atas_komunne on Vimeo.

t. ott

A man sits in a pub as his cigarette slowly burns. The end.

[...]
What has changed in The Last Century is time itself; in a reversal of cinematic norms, filmic time is transformed into photographic time: movement becomes stasis. The familiar notion that photography is a ‘frozen moment’ or a ‘point’ along the time-based ‘line’ of film has only been challenged relatively recently by moving images of motionless subjects in avant-garde films by Andy Warhol or Straub/Huillet and by Chris Marker’s stop-motion movie of photographic stills, La Jetée of 1962. Yet Taylor-Wood’s impulses are just as close to Caravaggio’s desire to subvert his medium’s inherent limitations, in his case by painting dynamic compositions that have the potential to destroy the picture’s stillness with imminent movement.
[...]

numinosum

“It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole. For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable.”

Carl Jung

Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final

any moment

0
ANY MOMENT PREVIOUS TO
THE PRESENT MOMENT

1
THE PRESENT MOMENT AND
ONLY THE PRESENT MOMENT

2
ALL APARENTLY INDIVIDUAL
OBJECTS DIRECTLY EXPERIENCED
BY YOU AT 1

3
ALL OF YOUR RECOLLECTION AT 1
OF APPARENTLY INDIVIDUAL OBJECTS
DIRECTLY EXPERIENCED BY YOU AT
0 AND KNOWN TO BE IDENTICAL
WITH 2

4
ALL CRITERIA BY WHICH YOU MIGHT
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN MEMBERS OF 3
AND 2

5
ALL OF YOUR EXTRAPOLATION FROM
2 AND 3 CONCERNING THE DISPOSITION
OF 2 AT 0

6
ALL ASPECTS OF THE DISPOSITION
OF YOUR WON BODY AT 1 WHICH
YOU CONSIDER IN WHOLE OR IN
PART STRUCTURALLY ANALOGOUS
WITH THE DISPOSITION OF 2

7
ALL OF YOUR INTENTIONAL BODILY
ACTS PERFORMED UPON ANY MEMBER
OF 2

8
ALL OF YOUR BODILY SENSATIONS
WHICH YOU CONSIDER CONTINGENT
UPON YOUR BODILY CONTACT WITH
ANY MEMBER OF 2

9
ALL EMOTIONS DIRECTLY EXPERIENCED
BY YOU AT 1

10
ALL OF YOUR BODILY SENSATIONS
WHICH YOU CONSIDER CONTINGENT
UPON ANY MEMBER OF 9

11
ALL CRITERIA BY WHICH YOU MIGHT
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN MEMBERS OF
10 AND 9

12
ALL OF YOUR RECOLLECTION AT 1
OTHER THAN 3

13
ALL ASPECTS OF 12 UPON WHICH
YOU CONSIDER ANY MEMBER OF 9
TO BE CONTINGENT

Victor Burgin, "Any Moment," (1970)

has the world pushed us too far?

"The principal focus of The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is the sexual arousal of the central character at both the idea and the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, and murder of his naked victims.
(...)
It is the Board’s conclusion that the explicit presentation of the central character’s obsessive sexually violent fantasies is in breach of its Classification Guidelines and poses a real, as opposed to a fanciful, risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers."

"Is there such a thing as self-exploitation? And what's to distinguish simple exhibitionism, and those who would leverage it for profit, from a legitimate, artistic, and maybe spiritual exploration of the body's limits? (I'm including "spiritual" because ecstatic states similar to those depicted in the horror flick Martyrs are briefly, but convincingly, touched upon.)
(...)
It's interesting, for example, that the height of Insex's popularity overlaps with the rise of bondage and fetishistic torture in U.S. horror films--just a coincidence? And don't forget that this was also the age of the caught-on-camera sexual humiliations at Abu Ghraib and U.S. debate over the "soft" tortures of Guantanamo. Again, maybe these specific historical and political items aren't that relevant to the events and ideas presented in GSH, but the fact remains that while watching the film you'd never know that any of its compelling themes might intersect with the wider world."