Alan Sondheim on Sat, 6 Feb 2010 20:09:58 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> sondheimogram x7 [gala, disconnect, archive, wryting, bones, requiem, new frontier]


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Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>

     gala production of the theater of death and the lie of buddhism   
     Radical Disconnectivity   
     Archive Index Text   
     Wryting and 
     Bones     
     requiem of zero, love and slaughter  
     We become a new frontier (for Tom Zummer, who always asks us)     

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Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:07:05 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: gala production of the theater of death and the lie of buddhism   

gala production of the theater of death
and the lie of buddhism

bodies grind against bodies, nothing is produced.
what could come of slaughter and yidam.
what could possibly come of this. no one wants it to come
of this.
no one wants it to come to this, it's flesh that's ground,
there's nothing more, tendrils of fat, skeins of muscle,
legarms flailing.
it's nothing, not even an image.
the image floats, there's only existence, whatever is:
no matter whether illusion or obdurate, inert: it's always
present. eyes grind against eyes, such that image turns ash.
ears grind against ears, crackling: no sound.
buddhism's a lie, existence is always relative, already path
to relative path, to relative thing after thing.
existence never promised anything more: what more than thing
after thing after thing. it goes there and always goes there.
believe what you want, ontology's meaningless outside of realms:
it's not non-existence, but ontology sliding into the imaginary.
what then? this sliding, for humans, appears uncanny, as if worlds
tremble; they don't, they don't do anything. get rid of existence:
you're gone. and gone from existence, ground from it.
existence grinds against existence, we're concerned about this.
but that confuses the thing with is: grinds nothing,
against nothing, no loss but what we've made of it: thing and
sound or sight of grinding.
these images show that, non-mandalas, no premise of a virtual
beyond the real, or beneath it, no promise of escape, error,
elsewhere, elsewhere. remember it's never as close as an eye
or ear, never within hearing or seeing. senseless, sensed,
it's what there is, the lie of buddhism is, that it isn't.

http://www.alansondheim.org/her0.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/her1.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/her2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/her3.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/her4.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/her5.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/her6.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/her7.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/her8.jpg

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Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 07:37:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Radical Disconnectivity   

Radical Disconnectivity

I imagine a _radical disconnectivity_ characterizing the fundamental tenor
of the cosmos; if one grants event horizons their proper epistemological
status, this is where one ends up, literally. (Bell's theorem, EPR, has
their limits.)

In which case, A and B have _no_ relation whatsoever, no communicative (or
other) potential whatsoever. A simple symmetric operation, within which a
chain might exist - for example, if A@B symbolizes this, then one might
possibly have A@B but A-@C & C-@B: but this is mythology. Precisely
because this is mythology, the disconnection is _radical_ and irreducible.

We have become increasingly deluded by models based on Indra's Net, or
internets: skein- or membrane-models where every node conceivably reflects
every other, and where every node is conceivably accessible from every
other. Further, this models implies an organicity, an influence-machine or
holism, a unification of effect, if not affect - something of comfort.

As thought experiment, one can imagine a radical disassociation with
oneself, such that one is relegated to regions far beyond the panoptical,
or optical for that _matter._ Here one is safe with one's regrets and
errors; here, catatonia is the natural order of things. I say that the
catatonic is the _natural_ order of things; I say that stillness and
isolation are the basic elements of life - not Gaia and integration, but
something unnamed characterized by _differentiation._

This is the natural state of humankind, the natural state of organism,
which masquerades as network, not defect. Left to its own devices, human-
ity continues with the radical disconnection of its home planet, a taking-
apart beginning with children and watches, ending with slaughter and
corroded memory. (This if the world is 'all that is the case,' its latch
is broken, and what was within has been always already desecrated and
stolen.)

(I will leave you with this, as if I were to leave myself.)
I will leave you with this, as if I were to leave myself.

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Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:45:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Archive Index Text   

Archive Index Text


here's a list of all the digital work I have done online from 1994-pres-
ent, in tree form, assembled for archiving. it also includes files from my
collaborations (with Foofwa d'Imobilite, Azure Carter, others), and
various other files, texts, etc. it's longer than I thought it would be.

http://www.alansondheim.org/archex.txt
http://www.alansondheim.org/archelim.txt (gross eliminate of duplicate
names)

2000-3000 videos (different)
28000 images (around, different)
900 sound/music (different)
1400 texts, programs, digital obj files etc. (different)

it's weirdly interesting. it doesn't include iso files, Second Life full
.avi video files, personal stuff. it runs about 830 gigabytes, would be
larger w/ the additions.

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Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:20:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Wryting and 

Wryting and

Wryting is clotted inscription, that is, writing inextricably merged with
flesh, body, organism; culture is the systemics and poetics of wryting.

On one hand, writing is digital, discrete, disconnected; on the other, it
is analogic flux, debris, corroded, syntactics pervaded by aura of scent,
gesture, tonalities, and so forth. Writing is always wryting, always
entangled with the fuzzy modalities of its production, virtual and
material.

Wryting spews through sexual fantasy, obsessive thinking, compulsion
behavior; it is never the purity of signal and channel. Even with digital
code, interpretation blurs and moves through striations and membranes in
an irreducible hermeneutics.

The kernel of wryting is encoding, hermeneutics, protocols, and protocol
membranes or suites; legible code is illegible, illegible code is legible.
There is no coding without temporal coding, no wryting without immersion,
no wryting in time, no time for wryting.

All wryting entangles with poetics, poesis, autopoesis, impulse and drive;
all wryting accounts-for, is accountable, is unaccountable. Death and
untoward pain are wryting's dissolution; healing coagulates wryting in
similar formations. Death is the cessation of wryting formations, and the
promulgating of skeins of new wryting formations, among cultures and
organisms.

Culture is all the way down, from one life-form to another; culture is
always inscription, always wryting. Wryting wrytes and is wrytten; what is
wrytten and what has been wrytten, wrytes.

It is impossible to isolate the discrete on the quantum level; think
instead of the granularity and corrosion of the symbolic. Interpretation
is meaning; wryting is never meaningless; the presence of a sign is
already a deconstruction of presence.

(A boy sees a mark in a field; a boy sees a mark on his body; a girl sees
a mark in a field a girl sees a mark on her body. A girl has a history; a
boy has a history. A boy reads a history of a girl; a girl reads a history
of a boy. A girl reads a book; a girl scents; a boy reads a book; a boy
scents. An organism sees a mark in a field; an organism sees a mark on its
body. An organism has a history; reads; scents.)

All protocols are protocol suites. (All readings and wrytings and hearings
and scentings are protocol suites. The organism hears the boy and the
girl; the boy and the girl hear the girl and the boy.) All protocol suites
promise the premise of fit; the premise of fixture; the premise of corral;
the premise of potential well; the potential of fetish; the maternal
premise and the paternal premise; the premise of home; the premise of
meaning; the premise of comprehension; the premise of hermeneutics; the
premise of spirit.

All codes are entangled in all bodies; all bodies are entangled in all
cultures; in all codes; in all protocol suites. The poetics of the world
is what one might think of a day; of a night; what one might think. The
poesis of the world inhabits death; death inhabits the poesis of the
world; poetics is a casting; poetics is a casting-off; is unnecessary;
think the poesis of the virtual vacuum; think the poesis of the black
hole; of information; of the corruption and corrosion of information; of
the body and the death of the body; of the recuperation of the body by
bodies. (Of the recuperation and decoding of the sexual body: sexuality is
always a decoding.)

The protocol sentence is a half-truth; is an institution; what is declared
has disappeared; what is declared is declared unentangled; is declared
discrete. Poetics recuperates poesis for an organism of interest; for an
interested organism. What is declared is lost; is already lost; is always
already lost. Loss inhabits the symbol; inhabits wryting; wryting inhabits
death; death inhabits writing. A inhabits B; B inhabits A; A portends B; B
portends A; A interprets B; B interprets A; A entangles B; B entangles A;
{A}{B} entangles { }. Wryting and culture inhabit rites of purification;
purification makes a hedge around the symbol; around the symbolic; the
hedge makes the symbolic possible; the hedge is the potential well of
meaning. How may one wryte wryting? One may not; wryting wrytes elsewhere;
wryting wrytes otherwise; wryting never just wrytes. Wryting is the
wrything of the hermeneutic; wryting is imminent and immanent; wryting is
a long way off; how may one wryte otherwise? (Desire wrytes otherwise,
does it knot?)

A story is that which has no story to tell; a story which is all the story
there is; a wryting.

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Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 09:08:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Bones     

Bones

In honor of the American (US) television show, Bones, with its
irresolution of psychotic relationships among the main characters.
"Not to mention a fine SL video, if I do say so myself."*

http://www.alansondheim.org/Bones.mp4

*Is such a statement performative; is the subjunctive always performative?
(In the sense of evanescent fading. The performative doesn't lie in the
fineness of the video, but in the potential for speech proffered and then
withdrawn - or perhaps not withdrawn. The statement itself presences such
speech; it's already stated, give status as possibility. But because it is
_me_ saying it, then in fact I do say so, but not as declarative, only as
subjunctive, as if it might be sight / might have been said. The outcome
is never clear (nor is the quality of the video), making such a statement
uncanny, ontologically wavering, neither made nor unmade. Perhaps the "if
I do say so myself" underlies _every_ utterance, undercuts and withdraws,
as if the perceived and heard world were fantasm. And that is the truth,
since it is death that may cut, cauterize, deny the _second_ saying, as if
"for I do say so myself" - but that is not the case - the case is _if,_
presupposing, without cause or reason, that the utterance might be spoken,
might still be spoken, that the speaker is still alive.

http://www.alansondheim.org/Bones.mp4

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Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 03:53:07 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: requiem of zero, love and slaughter  

requiem of zero, love and slaughter

http://www.alansondheim.org/requiemzero.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/requiemzerozero.mp3

for Sarajevo, Rwanda, Haiti, for Katrina, Baghdad, so many

welcome to my world

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Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 02:12:12 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: We become a new frontier (for Tom Zummer, who always asks us)     

We become a new frontier (for Tom Zummer, who always asks us)

http://www.alansondheim.org/stinkbug.jpg

We'd been entertaining a brown marmorated stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys) for
a while now - at least a couple of months. A small beautiful true bug, it
had arrived near the window sill (as had others); we carefully took it
into our garden and our hearts. That was the last we saw or heard of it
until this evening, when it suddenly appeared, circling near the ceiling,
and landing on our 1908 Chinese painting of flowers and birds. I looked it
up on the Net, of course - only to find out that these insects seek the
warmth of apartments during the winter, and leave their scent everywhere.
Other stinkbugs are attracted by the odor, which can become overpowering
and long-lasting. Sooner or later, we'd have a colony. We realized either
the bug or us had to leave; Azure gently took it to the same window it had
entered, and let it fly away.

Now I've put up an image of the bug, a memorial of sorts. Here is what
Wikipedia has to say about it: "simply jostling the bug, cornering it,
scaring or injuring it, or attempting to remove it from one's house can
'set it off'"; "it can make a whole room uninhabitable until aired out,
and some people are even allergic to the smell."

By the way, this insect hadn't been seen in the United States before 2001;
we're proud to be early adopters, part of a new frontier, friendly hosts
for yet another invasive species.

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