For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell". Is a new world coming? We welcome it - and we will bend it to the hopes of man. Lyndon B. Johnson.
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Lyndon B. Johnson
Saturday, 30 October 2010
Civic Humanism
1. A Variant of Republicanism
"Civic humanism is generally taken as an equivalent or as a particular variant of republicanism, meaning a conception of politics in which government is in principle the common business of the citizens..."
i.e. UCF's attempt to "run DCA like a business". Their New World authority lies in our complicity and constant gratitude, Us, constantly refilling their coffee cup in the diner they own, but which we lease-hold, rent, daily, hourly, indebted to their overflowing generocity, to follow their orders, to heel at their feet, to drool at their bells, to snap to their fingers, the peanut shells crushed to pieces.
But how far is it 'out duty', to the Old Ways of the H(e)artland, to fight in resistance? Perhaps I misapprehend, you misunderstand- Our desire for separatism is of correlative interdependance rather than outright sanctions on both sides- that would do neither of us any favours. Please follow us, take your seats, as We, the hushed ushering serfs of Our own serfdom, show you to your ticketed destination in the theatre of Your hyperreal fortress.
The "city" provides the environment — a public space — for human fulfillment. If, on the one hand, the republic is contrasted to personal or authoritarian government it also differs from the liberal model, which sees society as a collection of atomistic individuals held together by common rules designed to allow them maximum freedom to follow their particular and varied values and interests.
[a shared emphasis[?] mine and theirs = Ours[?]]
...UCF in its own [pea]nut shell... or not! 'Maximum' freedom? we'll DCeeAbout that...
As numerous republican theorists, notably Montesquieu, have emphasized, the republic requires widespread civic virtue, i.e.,the active participation of citizens united by a concern for the common good. The virtues of citizenship are in turn developed and enhanced by being exercised in upholding republican political and legal institutions and making them work by being involved in their operation. Republican life is then thought to be formative of the public spirit on which it rests. Republican freedom depends on constant civic activity. The polity is taken to cohere by means of the common acceptance of standards of justice that are more than procedural rules. The purpose of the commonwealth is not so much peace and ensuring the rights of individuals, as the realization of human potentiality, encouraging the flowering of all forms of creativity and inegenuity insofar as they contribute to public welfare. The republic is the necessary medium of self-realization, not merely the condition of possibility of private endeavors. Indeed, a certain amount of conflict, properly contained, adds to the liveliness and vigor of the republic. There is a link furthermore between the freedom of the citizen and the independence of the republic. Citizen armies and the right to bear arms are therefore common postulates of republican theory.
Civic humanism is linked in principle to a classical educational program that goes beyond the formative capacity of participatory citizenship itself and involves the conscious revival of ancient ideals. Republican candor, simplicity of manner, opposition to ostentation, luxury and lucre, are common, though not universal republican themes. Some theorists also dwell on the millenarian aspirations associated with republican ideals responding to the fragility of the republic and the need to provide against its corruption and decay with the passage of time.
Extracted from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humanism-civic/.
Dynamic Semantics & Context
Dynamic Semantics
First published Mon Aug 23, 2010
Dynamic semantics is a perspective on natural language semantics that emphasises the growth of information in time. It is an approach to meaning representation where pieces of text or discourse are viewed as instructions to update an existing context with new information, with an updated context as result. In a slogan: meaning is context change potential.
Context plays a role in two distinct oppositions. The first opposition is the duality between context and that which modifies the context. Here the context is the information state, or, say, a suitable abstraction from the information state (compare the entry on semantic conceptions of information). The context modifier is the information received. The information cannot be received without the correct kind of presupposed information state. The proper analogues in predicate logic (compare the entries on classical logic and first-order model theory) are as follows. The information state is an assignment (environment) or a set of assignments. The information received is a set of assignments. The second opposition is the duality of context and content. Here the context is something like the storage capacity of the receiver. The content is the information stored. Thus, e.g., the context in this sense could be a set of discourse referents or files. The content would then be some set of assignments or, perhaps, world/assignment pairs on these referents.
Context plays a role in two distinct oppositions. The first opposition is the duality between context and that which modifies the context. Here the context is the information state, or, say, a suitable abstraction from the information state (compare the entry on semantic conceptions of information). The context modifier is the information received. The information cannot be received without the correct kind of presupposed information state. The proper analogues in predicate logic (compare the entries on classical logic and first-order model theory) are as follows. The information state is an assignment (environment) or a set of assignments. The information received is a set of assignments. The second opposition is the duality of context and content. Here the context is something like the storage capacity of the receiver. The content is the information stored. Thus, e.g., the context in this sense could be a set of discourse referents or files. The content would then be some set of assignments or, perhaps, world/assignment pairs on these referents.
3. Interpretation as a Process
Interpretation of declarative sentences can be viewed as a product or as a process. In the product perspective, one focusses on the notion of truth in a given situation. In the process perspective, interpretation of a proposition is viewed as an information updating step that allows us to replace a given state of knowledge by a new, more accurate knowledge state. Dynamic semantics focuses on interpretation as a process.
[Extracted from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dynamic-semantics/]Baudrillard arrives in NYC, declares heir to Hellenism
"You discover a feeling of glory in New York, in the sense that you feel wreathed in the general energy of the place - what you are part of here is not the lugubrious spectacle of change, as you find it in Europe, but the aesthetic form of a mutation".mutatis mutandis
(J. Baudrillard [trans. C. Turner], 2000, America. Verso ltd.)
1498, "with the necessary changes," from L., lit. "things being changed that have to be changed," from the abl. pl. respectively of the pp. and gerundive of mutare "to change" (see mutable).
Reminders to the initial and the final proposal attached to 'mutate'- need to re-member my enquiries into this mutation and these mutations.
Feeling that the mutuality of the PC being-as-it-is, must change.
The changes to be done, and being done, are necessary, have to be necessary though all the while, in their becoming necessary they will be changed. Rewrit as We see fit. Change, don't keep it.
Further research "from the aphorism to the soundbite- via the throw away comment; an anti-history of saying what you want to say in as few words as possible, in succint, but often opaque manner."
About time I moved my research and reading into the contextual specific work of America, further biting for the chew into the text of Monsieur Baudrillard. Should further compare and cross-reference bis texts and lexical flagposts e.g. horison, end, hyperreality across his works.
Again, how 'new' is postmodernism? If the cultural and contextual melting pot has been cooking since before that great landmark/flagstone of Our Lord, why such arousal in the critics of postmodernism?
The period of Hellenism as is known now emerged out of the conquests of Alexander the Great, the world's first great colonialist, it has been argued. However, for my research purposes, it is this cultural, increasingly urban 'side-effect'/consequences of his colonialism that interest me most with regards to my contextual enquiries into mutliculturalism, neo/new cultures, languages, 'ways':
What is also comparatively of interest to me along the threads of English becoming a Global Language (but in tern, being changes, adapted, assimilated and mutated by the other language communities that it attempts to impose itself upon; the premises I believe in), so Alexander's attempt to spread the
And now to weave D&G., left impatient at the back of the line awaiting their arrival, back into the 'line' of enquiry- above you read further theoretical~critical evidence of how NYC is a 'city without a language', without a culture, under its own self-imposed inquisition of unweaving all its citizens contextual backgrounds , but rather than replace them with the factitious seals of American approval, the city mixes/mezclaytes its citizens 'anew' from their constant attempt to understand each other and their selves being sew into the selvages of an urban past being perpetuated in an endless present...
Reminders to the initial and the final proposal attached to 'mutate'- need to re-member my enquiries into this mutation and these mutations.
Feeling that the mutuality of the PC being-as-it-is, must change.
The changes to be done, and being done, are necessary, have to be necessary though all the while, in their becoming necessary they will be changed. Rewrit as We see fit. Change, don't keep it.
Further research "from the aphorism to the soundbite- via the throw away comment; an anti-history of saying what you want to say in as few words as possible, in succint, but often opaque manner."
About time I moved my research and reading into the contextual specific work of America, further biting for the chew into the text of Monsieur Baudrillard. Should further compare and cross-reference bis texts and lexical flagposts e.g. horison, end, hyperreality across his works.
"...tomorrow I shall be carried directly by plane... -to the city that is heir to all cities at once. Heir to Athen, Alexandria, Persepolis; New York."Baudrillard arrives and leaves us with the comparative urban contexts of the ancients with the present. Athens, Alexandria and Persepolis in recent historical retrospect are now thought to be the first 'cosmopolitan' cities: "The word ‘cosmopolitan’, which derives from the Greek word kosmopolitês (‘citizen of the world’), has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moral and socio-political philosophy."
(ibid.)
Again, how 'new' is postmodernism? If the cultural and contextual melting pot has been cooking since before that great landmark/flagstone of Our Lord, why such arousal in the critics of postmodernism?
The period of Hellenism as is known now emerged out of the conquests of Alexander the Great, the world's first great colonialist, it has been argued. However, for my research purposes, it is this cultural, increasingly urban 'side-effect'/consequences of his colonialism that interest me most with regards to my contextual enquiries into mutliculturalism, neo/new cultures, languages, 'ways':
"Alexander the Great's conquests and the subsequent division of his empire into successor kingdoms sapped local cities of much of their traditional authority and fostered increased contacts between cities, and later, the rise of the Roman Empire united the whole of the Mediterranean under one political power. But it is wrong to say what has frequently been said, that cosmopolitanism arose as a response to the fall of the polis or to the rise of the Roman empire. First, the polis' fall has been greatly exaggerated. Under the successor kingdoms and even — though to a lesser degree — under Rome, there remained substantial room for important political engagement locally. Second, and more decisively, the cosmopolitanism that was so persuasive during the so-called Hellenistic Age and under the Roman Empire was in fact rooted in intellectual developments that predate Alexander's conquests."
(extracted from Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmopolitanism/)
"Greek dedications, statues, architecture and inscriptions have all been found. However, local cultures were not replaced, and often mixed to create a new culture." (Wikpedia, Hellenistic Civilization).It was from this pan-european&asian colonisation that the mutation of languages began, according to historical linguists. [more research to prove requiered]
What is also comparatively of interest to me along the threads of English becoming a Global Language (but in tern, being changes, adapted, assimilated and mutated by the other language communities that it attempts to impose itself upon; the premises I believe in), so Alexander's attempt to spread the
Note also that de Gruyter discusses further this koiné "a de Atticized Attic : It was based on the dialect of Athens, a city which had become one of the most important state in Greece ..." and beyond, undoubtedly. See how a dialect nurtured and raised in an urban context soon became an ancient global language?
"... Hellenistic Koiné (writ large), the koine glóssa 'common language' of the Greece of Alexander the Great and subsequent times. This language transcended the local languages (or rather, dialects) of the various Greek city states and confederations of such states, with their previously jealously guarded separate political, cultural and linguistic identities..."
(Walter de Gruyter, 1991, Principles of Historical Linguistics, published first in Issue 34 of Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs)
And now to weave D&G., left impatient at the back of the line awaiting their arrival, back into the 'line' of enquiry- above you read further theoretical~critical evidence of how NYC is a 'city without a language', without a culture, under its own self-imposed inquisition of unweaving all its citizens contextual backgrounds , but rather than replace them with the factitious seals of American approval, the city mixes/mezclaytes its citizens 'anew' from their constant attempt to understand each other and their selves being sew into the selvages of an urban past being perpetuated in an endless present...
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Fire Escape Prfmnc Rsrch UPDATE
Spent a few hours being 'in-the-space', or the site rather, experimenting with the few wool/thread/string materials I have/had brought with me to NYC on the CEP.
Began writing material shopping lists, some other snippets, bare threads of text for the performance, scheduled for mid-November.
The texts will be and are being written on Duplicate Sales Receipts- thereby continuing my usage and reserach into Derrida and the Mystic Writing Pad, postmodern notions of the 'origin' and the 'copy'.
This time, borne out of my mistake to use a soft ball pen insteda of a pencil, when first writing on the duplicate receipts, that the audience should re-write over the text I write, thereby placing both my handwritten text 'under erasure' but also allowing for their text to be impressed firmer onto the duplicates beneath. A double gesture still nacent but could prove fruitful as a means of re-defining the notion of 're-writing'- not as a deliberate, readable change to the a work from the text [remember Barthes] but rather how repetition can be deconstructive and subervsive to its apparent, illusiory intentionality through erasure...
My biggest convern so far is the 'clothes-shelter' I envisage constructing. Need to figure out exactly how it will be supported about how much 'washing line' I will need.
The texts will be and are being written on Duplicate Sales Receipts- thereby continuing my usage and reserach into Derrida and the Mystic Writing Pad, postmodern notions of the 'origin' and the 'copy'.
This time, borne out of my mistake to use a soft ball pen insteda of a pencil, when first writing on the duplicate receipts, that the audience should re-write over the text I write, thereby placing both my handwritten text 'under erasure' but also allowing for their text to be impressed firmer onto the duplicates beneath. A double gesture still nacent but could prove fruitful as a means of re-defining the notion of 're-writing'- not as a deliberate, readable change to the a work from the text [remember Barthes] but rather how repetition can be deconstructive and subervsive to its apparent, illusiory intentionality through erasure...
My biggest convern so far is the 'clothes-shelter' I envisage constructing. Need to figure out exactly how it will be supported about how much 'washing line' I will need.
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
WNYC: "Global English"
Been listening fastidiously to last week's The Brian Lehrer Show
On WNYC, the Radio 4 of the east coast by comparison, and his show "Global English"
Leslie Dunton-Downer, author of The English is Coming!: How One Language is Sweeping the World, explores some of the words and phrases from other languages picked up by the world's current lingua franca.
Discussed in the first episode is the word 'hellow', which I thought was a primarily English world, dtaing back to before the Victorian times- however, it appears, it has 'roots' in the American mishearing and mutation. And not just that, but also via the medium or remidiation of technology- as a result of technological progress and invention. Language being invented as a consequence of othe rinvention.
hello
Much of all this research befits my current theories and thesis into the parallels and comparisonsof the Twin Towers and NYC as the new city and tower of Babel- and the resulting consequence of 9/11 mirroring that of the fall of Babel and the division of tongues and the beginning fo new languages. However, in the late 20th Century this division was subject to a remediation and mutation through the use of telephone communication via the production and widespread use of mobile phones for both those in the towers, in the planes and on the ground to communicate through. The problem was not one of evberyone spekaing a new language or a different tongue, but rather that the single medium of communication at the time, the mobile one, crashed collapsed and became overload as soon as everyone attempted to use it at the same time to speak all their varfious languages. New York City is a city built post-Babel, where the myriad of languages prevail influencing the mutation tranformation and translation of English into it's eventual Otherness, it's future 'new' existence.
How apt it is then that the very beginning of a conversation, a word shared by millions aroudn the world helping to spread the rise of this so-called 'One World Language' as a globalized totalitarian language, was the byproduct almost, of a mishearing through the technology that also seeks to dominate, mobile telecommunication.
On WNYC, the Radio 4 of the east coast by comparison, and his show "Global English"
Leslie Dunton-Downer, author of The English is Coming!: How One Language is Sweeping the World, explores some of the words and phrases from other languages picked up by the world's current lingua franca.
Discussed in the first episode is the word 'hellow', which I thought was a primarily English world, dtaing back to before the Victorian times- however, it appears, it has 'roots' in the American mishearing and mutation. And not just that, but also via the medium or remidiation of technology- as a result of technological progress and invention. Language being invented as a consequence of othe rinvention.
Word Origin & History
hello
1883, alt. of hallo (1840), itself an alt. of holla, hollo, a shout to attract attention, first recorded 1588. Perhaps from holla! "stop, cease." Popularity as a greeting coincides with use of the telephone, where it won out over Alexander Graham Bell's suggestion, ahoy. Central telephone exchange operators were known as hello-girls (1889).
"Hello, formerly an Americanism, is now nearly as common as hullo in Britain (Say who you are; do not just say 'hello' is the warning given in our telephone directories) and the Englishman cannot be expected to give up the right to say hello if he likes it better than his native hullo. [H.W. Fowler, "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage," 1926]
{...}the National Convention of Telephone Companies. The first one was held at Niagara Falls, NY, from Sept. 7 - 10, 1880. And there, nearly at the very beginning, the newly elected president, George L. Phillips of Dayton, Ohio, spoke (somewhat awkwardly) to the delegates: "I haven't any speech to make to you. We are all in the telephone business. I can make a short speech to you which would express a great deal. The shortest speech that I could make to you and that would express a great deal to you, probably would be the one that is on all of your badges - 'Hello!' [Applause] ... We ... will present statistics showing the use the telephone is put to; showing how it has entered into the life of the public in such a way that if we are wise in the management of our exchanges nothing can drive it out."
Edison had written a short note on August 15, 1877 to T.B.A. David, president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company of Pittsburg, Pa., who was preparing to introduce the telephone into that city shortly after Edison had invented the carbon button transmitter. The brief - and now historic letter - which refers to a model Edison was making for him, reads as follows:
"Friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What you think? Edison - P.S. first cost of sender & receiver to manufacture is only $7.00."
Extracted from http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=800&id=1507
How apt it is then that the very beginning of a conversation, a word shared by millions aroudn the world helping to spread the rise of this so-called 'One World Language' as a globalized totalitarian language, was the byproduct almost, of a mishearing through the technology that also seeks to dominate, mobile telecommunication.
Towards A New Manifesto [part 1]
Extracted from a recent dialogue/discussion/arguements erupting over the
Xiipal Lapiix 26 October at 21:23
"[...] task (or one of them) must be to repurpose the building (and, indeed, UCF in general) in accordance with our own desires. To write over the rules that currently bind us from such simple acts as putting things on the walls or getting into the studios freely.Here is my responce, written over several days and reserach into the Separatist, Autonomous, National Liberation Movements, Non-Violent Revolution, The Singing Revolutions, Sovereignty, Reistsance Movements , Linguistic Right etc.
To this end, I want to produce some kind of text a bit like this from the Situationist/Lettrist bulletin Potlacht: http://www.notbored.org/improvements.html :But for the performance centre."
Xiipal Lapiix 26 October at 21:23
Apologies for the late reply to the continuing dialogue [flexes finger muscles]
We have stepped into the future. From living in the tight grip of the impossible, the unavoidable, the unchangable and the inevitable, we now have stepped through, are stepping through, into Our future of the open plains of possibility. Or so the thoughts are set to 'wishful' and 'idealistic' in my mind: and do not presume that we are not aware of the history, ethos and modes of production that UCF deploy. However, it appears you are still suggesting that we should accept defeat, surrender, 'give in'. sooner rather than later? And forsake such a deliciously affecting socio-political climes where change is a daily, hourly occurance?
No!
Yet I heed your signs of just how unsustainable the ravenous student satiation. I work through the medium of energy [hold it: no string-theory or quarks here, and no Totnesian earfulls either). The energy of the student corp.us at this very moment is still brimming with the vim and vitality drummed up from the Final Festival. How can we deny them their outlets of expression? Why should we suppress in our peer-less glances, their need to vent? I fear that any peer-enforced suppresion will only serve to cause a rising pressure in the youth of the Performance-Polis. The masses and the youth need such acts of spectacle and radical actions and statement in order to experience a catharsis of their own pent up energies. It is our duty and position to enact their repressed needs through controlled action. Their energy, like mine, needs to be channeled and diverted from the flow of an explosion towards constancy and progression- on Our and [future student] Theirs.
Surely The Old World taught us that though the World(s) continue to reign under the One True System of free trade, there are still and will continue to be, those whom seek to forge another path, a new way? [The Elmhursts, Karl Marx via Lenin, Rudolph Laban, Mahatma Gandhi, Commandante Marcos, Che Guevara, Superhero Vigilante Groups in the USA etc. and, last but not least, our great mother and father Leonard & Dorothy [and Tagore, yes let's not forget him just yet] who believed there was another way for society to function. Their success and failure is discussion whole a separate argument- but that is not the point I am raising- but rather that they TRIED. That they attempted what all others around them told them was a waste of time, impossible, it'll never take off etc.
Indeed, it should be Our concern and aimed target to find 'another way', other to, and perhaps steered from, the behemoth Capitalism- yet there is the taller giant upon which his side effects of alienation, disenchantment, exclusion et al crouch on- that of Order and its antithesis Disorder/Chaos. Granted, such dichotomies have little place now in our supposed 'fluid' state of post-modernity, thanks to the deconstruction of the forward slash, yet flash forward and the spectres of their once-dominance persist; bleed through the layered socio-philosophical wallpaper of whose presence we take for granted, without peeling back.
My continued research and practice into [reverse] Freemasonry and it's roots in the 'founding of America' have provoked the questions of the formation of the American psyche, the rise of Freemasonry in the US and its prevalent symbols in major advertising and global banks. The symbolic exertion of their power and influence is present everywhere (even on the god damn Oreo cookies I dunk in my tea). Their hierarchical systems of supreme patriarchy I also find present in the World of UCF and need to be addressed and realigned. We must hold Ourselves back from being subsumed and sublated into the 'progressive' dialectical march of Hegel's helmsmen in the upper echelons of the Tremough.
UCF aren't playing anyone's game but their own- Agreed, the European Regional Development Fund may have and still be pulling a string or two, but UCF are no passive puppets, no muppets- they are their own masters, directors, Jim Hensons- all major academic institutions become such behemoths of self-satisfied parochial autonomy- they become metropolis' of research and knowledge capable of wielding immense power in the community and are able to coerce every move of their context. How long will a suit-donning student agent survive in their systemic machinations?
However, the fortress walls of our particular UCF are crumbling, the very bricks are rearranging and the mortar is supple and prime for the reshaping of All Our Futures.
We should NOT lose ourselves in trifle squabbles when this precious time all around us is waving in front of our faces, beckoning progress and in its double gesture, smiling in signal of her desiring radical action AND responsible, rational interrelations.
And with this word, 'interrelations' I hereby make my sentiments, demands and battle lines clear; that DCA MUST retain its own sense of artistic, social and hermeneutic integrity- it must remain as a separate, autonomous entity, capable to making its own decisions and and choices as to its future. And with this line being draw, in the process of drawing itself but with Our hands, will We seek to engage with their World as a friend, ally and comrade, but never as higher authority whose claw controls Our World. This is what happened in the past, in the Old World. This was the cause- one of the many- of our downfall and flight from the paradise we once knew. Must this Future we find our selves in, repeat itself into dissolving Our Past, repeating a perpetual Present?
Forgive me for this ad hominem, all return gladly accepted with refund and refute, but are you suggesting that you would willingly, without grudge, start to fund your practice from the financial uptake of other commercial work?
@Harris~ You offer only the frame of the situation, which is known to all and understood as being the given- but you bring no directions, no supplications. no artillery of your own; what plans would you propose? How do we, as McDeath says, "work with the system, not within it"? You propose that we adopt the manners and customs of these 'natives' but at what price? At the sacrifice of artistic integrity; I hear a cry from the back there – a loss of historical links, attempting to plier-cut the chains of our now 'ancestral' heritage.
@Zoot~ Zoot- I'm am sure those cliff-hanging posing models we're chosen because they erected walls, but rather for the erection of other exclusive appendages...
We have stepped into the future. From living in the tight grip of the impossible, the unavoidable, the unchangable and the inevitable, we now have stepped through, are stepping through, into Our future of the open plains of possibility. Or so the thoughts are set to 'wishful' and 'idealistic' in my mind: and do not presume that we are not aware of the history, ethos and modes of production that UCF deploy. However, it appears you are still suggesting that we should accept defeat, surrender, 'give in'. sooner rather than later? And forsake such a deliciously affecting socio-political climes where change is a daily, hourly occurance?
No!
Yet I heed your signs of just how unsustainable the ravenous student satiation. I work through the medium of energy [hold it: no string-theory or quarks here, and no Totnesian earfulls either). The energy of the student corp.us at this very moment is still brimming with the vim and vitality drummed up from the Final Festival. How can we deny them their outlets of expression? Why should we suppress in our peer-less glances, their need to vent? I fear that any peer-enforced suppresion will only serve to cause a rising pressure in the youth of the Performance-Polis. The masses and the youth need such acts of spectacle and radical actions and statement in order to experience a catharsis of their own pent up energies. It is our duty and position to enact their repressed needs through controlled action. Their energy, like mine, needs to be channeled and diverted from the flow of an explosion towards constancy and progression- on Our and [future student] Theirs.
Surely The Old World taught us that though the World(s) continue to reign under the One True System of free trade, there are still and will continue to be, those whom seek to forge another path, a new way? [The Elmhursts, Karl Marx via Lenin, Rudolph Laban, Mahatma Gandhi, Commandante Marcos, Che Guevara, Superhero Vigilante Groups in the USA etc. and, last but not least, our great mother and father Leonard & Dorothy [and Tagore, yes let's not forget him just yet] who believed there was another way for society to function. Their success and failure is discussion whole a separate argument- but that is not the point I am raising- but rather that they TRIED. That they attempted what all others around them told them was a waste of time, impossible, it'll never take off etc.
Indeed, it should be Our concern and aimed target to find 'another way', other to, and perhaps steered from, the behemoth Capitalism- yet there is the taller giant upon which his side effects of alienation, disenchantment, exclusion et al crouch on- that of Order and its antithesis Disorder/Chaos. Granted, such dichotomies have little place now in our supposed 'fluid' state of post-modernity, thanks to the deconstruction of the forward slash, yet flash forward and the spectres of their once-dominance persist; bleed through the layered socio-philosophical wallpaper of whose presence we take for granted, without peeling back.
My continued research and practice into [reverse] Freemasonry and it's roots in the 'founding of America' have provoked the questions of the formation of the American psyche, the rise of Freemasonry in the US and its prevalent symbols in major advertising and global banks. The symbolic exertion of their power and influence is present everywhere (even on the god damn Oreo cookies I dunk in my tea). Their hierarchical systems of supreme patriarchy I also find present in the World of UCF and need to be addressed and realigned. We must hold Ourselves back from being subsumed and sublated into the 'progressive' dialectical march of Hegel's helmsmen in the upper echelons of the Tremough.
UCF aren't playing anyone's game but their own- Agreed, the European Regional Development Fund may have and still be pulling a string or two, but UCF are no passive puppets, no muppets- they are their own masters, directors, Jim Hensons- all major academic institutions become such behemoths of self-satisfied parochial autonomy- they become metropolis' of research and knowledge capable of wielding immense power in the community and are able to coerce every move of their context. How long will a suit-donning student agent survive in their systemic machinations?
However, the fortress walls of our particular UCF are crumbling, the very bricks are rearranging and the mortar is supple and prime for the reshaping of All Our Futures.
We should NOT lose ourselves in trifle squabbles when this precious time all around us is waving in front of our faces, beckoning progress and in its double gesture, smiling in signal of her desiring radical action AND responsible, rational interrelations.
And with this word, 'interrelations' I hereby make my sentiments, demands and battle lines clear; that DCA MUST retain its own sense of artistic, social and hermeneutic integrity- it must remain as a separate, autonomous entity, capable to making its own decisions and and choices as to its future. And with this line being draw, in the process of drawing itself but with Our hands, will We seek to engage with their World as a friend, ally and comrade, but never as higher authority whose claw controls Our World. This is what happened in the past, in the Old World. This was the cause- one of the many- of our downfall and flight from the paradise we once knew. Must this Future we find our selves in, repeat itself into dissolving Our Past, repeating a perpetual Present?
Forgive me for this ad hominem, all return gladly accepted with refund and refute, but are you suggesting that you would willingly, without grudge, start to fund your practice from the financial uptake of other commercial work?
@Harris~ You offer only the frame of the situation, which is known to all and understood as being the given- but you bring no directions, no supplications. no artillery of your own; what plans would you propose? How do we, as McDeath says, "work with the system, not within it"? You propose that we adopt the manners and customs of these 'natives' but at what price? At the sacrifice of artistic integrity; I hear a cry from the back there – a loss of historical links, attempting to plier-cut the chains of our now 'ancestral' heritage.
@Zoot~ Zoot- I'm am sure those cliff-hanging posing models we're chosen because they erected walls, but rather for the erection of other exclusive appendages...
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