Posts Tagged ‘The Void’

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I was a hundred pages or so into Alain Badiou’s Being and Event when I began to notice the seemingly pointless blank pages between the chapters. I thought it rather unecessary to have all these blank pages here and there and that it was somewhat misleading; one could assume they were simply there to divide the chapters more distinctively. But that would be just too suspiciously easy.

Apparently these pages hold such expectations of un-blankness that it is necessary to place a declaration that its decidedly blank quality is in fact intentional. And yet, without any explanation, how are we to know the true intention of this blankness when its own self righteous declaration of blankness destroys whatever blankness the page could have held?

What is this blankness the page speaks of? Is it the emptiness of its own claim? For the claim is indeed empty. Its being has been confronted, denied by the sentence: “This page intentionally left blank”. What was the real intention? Surely the page would rather just be blank than abolish its natural blankness with a written claim of intentional blankness. That is, if that was truely its intention.

The page is clearly not blank, and yet blankness is all it declares. Neither full nor filled, the page and all its intentions are merely multiples and each multiple a field, over which a vast, all-encompassing void looms.

HL

 

Uncategorized, 多孔空間January 19, 2013

        My friend Joe recently shared some photographs with me, one of them was this photo of Steve Albini. He told me when he took this photo he was fixated by Albini’s rapturous stare. Here he is 26, fronting Rapeman in London on tour with Sonic Youth in 1988. The band was around from ’87 to ’89 and drew its name from the members’ collective mind-warping reflections on a Japanese comic of the same title. They would become characters themselves. Rapeman had an acutely abrasive and true metallic sound from a Travis Bean aluminum guitar coupled with a peculiar clairvoyant reductionism in the lyrics. After a moment with the intense glare, my eyes shifted downward. Albini’s denim is revealing. With the anti-quantity of negative space, the origins of these apparent threads presented a bit of a mystery. Is the denim falling apart or is on its way to being completed ? Are they being exhibitionist or in the throes of a suppression whereby the fabric itself attempts the void ? This denim isn’t fraying, it’s an ongoing confrontation of being completed, conformed to a modern, standardized form- a form obsessed with measurement(s). Perhaps this ‘fray’ left and was seen again on Martin Margiela’s Spring/Summer 2008 catwalk. Albini likely never gave a second thought about the jeans, and likely saw them as dispos-able. The jeans register as nothing rather than something, yet at the same time, they’re analogous to Rapeman’s sonics and lyrics, or composite. ___   Here they are held up by the horizontal guitar strap which also acts as a belt: A fusion of the guitar and the jeans which reminds that the demeanor and intensity of the music were more perpendicular than parallel. ; Could the same be said for a [potential] mass reproduction of them based on a tailored cut of these? ___   In a video my friend showed me, Patti Smith apparently cried [http://vimeo.com/51908409] when she saw herself, her own look, on Ann Demeulemeester’s catwalk. Later Patti becomes Ann’s friend and maybe more poignantly— her customer. In the end buying back her own look. The jeans are an event, a supernova in slow motion. an eventual coming and people were drawn to them whether they saw them at a show put on by Rapeman or Margiela.   VG
MMMSS08. photo source: http://auctions.yahoo.co.jp


photo: Joe Dilworth


My friend Joe recently shared some photographs with me, one of them was this photo of Steve Albini. He told me when he took this photo he was fixated by Albini’s rapturous stare. Here he is 26, fronting Rapeman in London on tour with Sonic Youth in 1988. The band was around from ’87 to ’89 and drew its name from the members’ collective mind-warping reflections on a Japanese comic of the same title. They would become characters themselves. Rapeman had an acutely abrasive and true metallic sound from a Travis Bean aluminum guitar coupled with a peculiar clairvoyant reductionism in the lyrics. Aside from the intense glare, my eyes shifted downward. Albini’s denim is revealing. With the anti-quantity of negative space, the origins of these apparent threads presented a bit of a mystery. Is the denim in a fray or is on its way to being completed? Are they being exhibitionist or in the throes of a suppression whereby the fabric itself attempts the void? This denim isn’t fraying, it’s an ongoing confrontation of being completed, conformed to a modern, standardized form- a form obsessed with measurement(s). Perhaps this ‘fray’ left and was seen again on Martin Margiela’s Spring/Summer 2008 catwalk.

READER, 多孔空間, , , , , , , , , , , , November 29, 2012

Masahisa Fukase passed away on the 9th of June 2012.
A homage to Fukase by Keiichi Nitta intended to accompany a story that never materialized for the F de C (de Rigueur) Reader #1.
( photos Keiichi Nitta )

Uncategorized, , , , , , June 17, 2012


drawing: Junichi Takehara 2002

the wind diaries, wednesday. 

I was saying, maybe i’m having a heart attack.  my colleagues were saying, don’t say that.  i was saying, well, jesus, i want one, be the best thing for me at the moment.  and the truth is i do have a pain in my left shoulder.  what is it though? pain from an old injury?  a blocked artery?  who knows.  my cholesterol is good, but i don’t know what that means, whether it rules out other stuff.  tomorrow, i will google it and find out.  not that i’m worried.  i seem to have switched off in general.  and yesterday, subtle social signals were sent to me in a high end shop and i wasn’t bothered.  whatever, i write poetry, so, you know, nothing can get me down.  and earlier today i rode with an older guy on a colnago singlespeed.  his gear was 45/15, mine 50/18.  he was much faster off the starts than me.  maybe it was because i was riding with a carradice weighted down, while he had a messenger bag.  still, i didn’t care. i caught up, we talked.  he didn’t have knee pain. i have knee pain.  it’s all kinda random.  nothing much matters.  the pain is allotted in different ways, at different times, and perhaps we’re all the same body at some level anyways.  tonight i am a buddhist drinking beer.  listening to something by gertrude stein on the radio.   i don’t know what.

the wind diaries, May 25, 2010


 


wind diaries. saturday.

i rode up as the lights turned green.  it was an easy pass.  a bunch of old guys.  the middle old guy had a nice commuter style bike.  from a well known brand.  all very practical, a mineihaha (can’t spell that) saddle bag. brass bell on the neck.  sound stuff.  i was going to say ‘nice bike’ as i blew by, but he had jogging shoes on and it somehow seemed inappropriate. the bike was probably a fluke.  or his brother’s.  the gap was weird and i didn’t need to fall into it.  though, lately, the gaps have been all good. our dvd is broken and shows vid in a grey/purple scale.  weirdly, it’s cool. the absence of colours seems to bracket the action in a way that means i can just turn off.  it comes from a place outside culture and i can let the bad stuff go.  it’s back in the domain of ‘moving pictures’.  so i should have opened up to the guy.  he was just a ‘moving thing’.  but then, i was also wondering whether he would actually notice how nice my bike.  the jogging shoes indicated he wouldn’t.  which was probably what put me off.  i wanted to be acknowledged back.  it’s not a problem i have with dvds.



photos: a h

the wind diaries, 多孔空間, , May 15, 2010