note_13.1 Les Chiens Nauman/ tears in the rain in the context of catastrophe/ DG-F TH.2058

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My young connoisseur -or collector of urgent life-impressions and artful invention- has begun school-life so close to the TM that a liquid-chocolate balm combined with ‘two rooms’ has become a fixture in our lives. In the process, he has elevated El Anatsui to quite a pedestal, but I continue trying my best to broaden his horizons. Bruce’s revolving head, tick, Bruce’s Violent Incident, getting there, Bruce’s dogs, well; there’s time…

not the nauman obvOf course, these are not Les Chiens de Nauman. But those in the Art Room selection reminded me recently of their spirited precedents in Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s TH.2058. I was led there by a number of things; my own work-in-progress (articulating or #Rivering the Roding), and thus echoes of the river-beggaring I did floodplain-to-floodplain in Rotterdam; a ruined world of mud to be embraced with curiosity, reminded of that when receiving Defne Ayas’ archive of her WdeW years; Blessing and Transgressing; A Live Institute, which includes that first use of ‘rivering’ as a way of trying to articulate muddy-footed actualities with urgent recognitions of coming urban life, by a recent taste of DG-F’s work which reminded me of how much there is to enjoy and admire in it (esp. with a clear view of its span), close rubbing-ups against Vila-Matas (about whom much more some day, the writerly intimacies are too elemental. Dostoevsky once more or less literally saved-by-enabling my life, a very long time ago. V-M is a similar interior intimate on an extremely short list). They, as you know, have been working together since 2007 (when only Bartleby & Co, perhaps Montano too had been translated into English), and so I found myself thinking about TH.2058, a work that has remained with me more as a puzzle, or query, than a settled memory, or answer. Continue reading “note_13.1 Les Chiens Nauman/ tears in the rain in the context of catastrophe/ DG-F TH.2058”

note_08 From Shumon Basar’s superhuman Couples Format; me on Gertrude & Alice #passionloveandwork

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Shumon Basar | Couple Format: The Identity Between Love and Work

 

“What was the identity between love and work,

or, the love found in working together?”

 

“Let’s draw focus on their passion: the love and work. The following is from Diana Souhami’s glorious book Gertrude and Alice:

‘“Our pleasure is to do every day the work of that day,’ wrote Gertrude, ‘to cut our hair and not want blue eyes and to be reasonable and obedient … Every day we get up and say we are awake today …’

… So we circle back to The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas, which wasn’t of course an autobiography. What was it? […] Primarily, it was also an autobiography, but not of Alice. It was a biography: not one authored from outside, but from inside, albeit in another’s voice… I linger with this because while this is one of the most conventional prose-like works of Gertrude’s it is also properly strange. That is, Gertrude adopted Alice’s recognizable voice, exorcising as many Gertrudisms as she could identify, though not all, to write a memoir of her own life and times.”

-extracted from my text/talk COUPLING | Gertrude and Alice | July 2016.

Click through for links to Shumon’s piece and the Superhumanity project above and for the recording of the original event on G&E and Marina Abramovic and Ulay click my Readings_Talks button (where you can click on through to see/hear the other Couple Formats too).

godard’s film socialisme [two], patti smith’s on board…

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I loved Godard’s new film on a first screening, with it’s refining of his late style towards pure -open/ambiguous- image [and away from the courts of filmedbook and bookedfilm]. I love it even more for having provoked grown boys to walk out of the screening at Cannes annoyed at the ‘lack’ of American cinematic narrative and even the abbreviated subtitles/quotes -so sure are they of the reliability of the English language in an age of peasprocess and warterror. It’s genuinely funny to observe what  upsets people like this when their expectations have sedimented so completely and they’re forced to face it.

In general I’m bored by cameo appearances in clever films by unlikely-but-credible people, yet Patti Smith [who is fallible too, btw] being on board for Godard’s mystifying journey was a real surprise and therefore to be celebrated. I look forward to Film Socialisme getting a good run at its London launch -ha! Godard says it’s his last film; not so funny.

Jonathan Romney is solid and true as ever in a short description for the LFF here. Or Gabe Klinger from Sight and Sound here.

The Village Voice ran a good piece here; “if you care about a living cinema, a cinema that asserts a blistering, confounding present even as it freights the past, then you should not be walking out on Jean-Luc Godard.”

More to come…

jean-luc godard interview 2010; a doubloon for ‘the courage to imagine your life’

Film Socialisme [site]

Godard’s new film is screening at Cannes today. I’m not there [except in a sweetly slight way] but then neither, it seems, is he.

GODARD: “They have the courage to live their life, but they don’t have the courage to imagine it.”

A long conversation with Daniel Cohn-Bendit appeared in Telerama on May 13th here [in French].  [Apr 2018: PDF just in case this long-maintained 🙂 link dies:  Jean-Luc Godard à Daniel Cohn-Bendit : “Qu_est-ce qui t_intéresse dans mon film ?” – Cinéma – Télérama.fr But remember; it’s rude not to click!]

An English translation is online at Cinemasparagus [which has other related links too] here.

[With thanks to Zir Shu and Telerama]