Poussin's Humour

Jim Allen's 'NEWS'

This is a live performance piece that is not particular to the performer's aesthetic sensibility [as with traditional author role], but may be performed by anyone prepared to stick to the minimum of script-requirements.  Notes made watching the video version performed by Jim Allen. 

Material & not-expressionist gesture, repeated towards destruction of the material as bearer of news – but maintaining its entirety – refusal of reading-text value. http://vimeo.com/108515118 10mins58sec first tear. Doodle. Sculpture as bodily act in relation to materials spaces & those present with artist - “audience” – not aiming at transforming material into product for the aesthetic /moral appraisal – which maintains social-institutional power over labour & thought. 

 [Sunday] That's a direction away from 'language'-'discourse' to 'material'-'body' as discursive method, show without tell, 'enactment' not 'mimesis' -- however well or badly those were theorised in the hope that the arts were of value if they could work across cultures/languages - important in a multi-cultural educational set-up like NZ's. Problem is then theorising in 'language-discourse' in assessing effectiveness of art-work done -- the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty in 1943 [the likely model for this] had not fully enountered the problem of language. It's not indifferent to the News, but indifference to discourse that is most at issue.  

Terry Smith however presented a project work in Auckland that directly attacked the news content/politics of the sacking of Australian Premier Gough Whitlam  & made the Auckland City Art Gallery uncomfortable - referring to the NZ Prime Minister as Piggy. 

 

 

academies ruined

Corporate 'principles' ruin learning & teaching - substituting obedience training & low-grade versions of sophistry that never question principles - that's why it seemed to me absolutelky necessary to support Le Collège International de Philosophie [q.v.] which is as near independent of the system as is likely to be achieved now -- & a possible model for democratic education outisde corporate control -- the earliest model, the Republic of Letters mutual support & communication [letters by courier, a bit slower than email, but effective because slower for scholars & artits outside church & state control --[[ slow = time to consider responses] ]-- in the 17th century.