{"id":36,"date":"2022-09-13T14:11:05","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T18:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/?p=36"},"modified":"2022-11-30T14:03:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T19:03:14","slug":"samuelle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/2022\/09\/13\/samuelle\/","title":{"rendered":"Samuelle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Shit Happens Notes on Awkwardness – Amy Sillman <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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”I know we are no longer making things for the Beaux-Arts, for truth, beauty or elevation” All I can say about this quote is Fuck Yes!!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In French, awkwardness translates to \u2018\u2019maladresse\u2019 but to me, they mean different things.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me \u2018\u2019maladresse\u2019\u2019 translates to clumsy. Clumsiness involves an action whereas awkwardness is moody and doesn\u2019t necessarily involve an action the way clumsiness does. But both involve a certain amount of vulnerability. Clumsy people are clumsy for many reasons, maybe they are tired, maybe they drank too much, maybe they\u2019ve been clumsy since they were a kid, or maybe they should wear glasses…\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I speak French, I use the word \u2018awkward\u2019 all the time and so do my friends. I never use the word \u2018maladresse\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I found out about the Great Auk recently while walking my dog on the Great Auk Trail<\/em> in Guelph. Here is what I found out: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Auk was a flightless bird that once existed in great numbers off Canada\u2019s East Coast. He was a great swimmer that travelled vast distances underwater in search of fish. On land, however, this bird was slow and awkward. His inability to fly and his clumsiness on land were distinctive features of his. He also did not fear humans which sealed its fate when Europeans arrived on the coast in the 17th<\/sup> and 18th<\/sup> Century. They hunted the Great Auk mercilessly and killed its last one in 1852. The Great Auk is the first known case of an entire species being wiped out after the advent of Europeans colonization. While walking this trail, I began the trail feeling sad for this beautiful clumsy instinct bird. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I walked, I thought of feminicides, Witch hunts, and of all the women throughout capitalist history with great wisdom who got silenced and killed mercilessly just for being women. Like the Great Auk, women were exploited and abused. As I was walking, I asked myself why I was associating the Great Auk and women? Like the Great Auk, I began to imagine all the swollen tummies of pregnant women of the 17th century walking slowly and awkwardly like the Great Auk… As Silvia Federici puts it: \u2018\u2019Women, in capitalist development, have suffered a double process of mechanization. Besides being subjected to the discipline of work, paid and unpaid, in plantations, factories, and homes, they have been expropriated from their bodies and turned into sexual objects and breeding machines\u2019\u2019(Federici, 14). I think the only reason why women were ever kept alive throughout capitalism is because women bare children…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the great Auk, my art practice is clumsy, slow and awkward. I know how to swim and I dive in new waters and often surprise myself. I’ve always made my art before I have any clear idea of what I am doing. The process is what I’m after. In University context, I’ve often ashamed of my intuitive process. To me, this way of working requires a certain amount of vulnerability and willingness to make mistakes and fail. Sillman writes how artists ”try to surprise” themselves and how ”it’s hard to do”. I think that Awkwardness is a great way to surprise yourself and others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As Thomas mentioned during his presentation, \u2018Awkward\u2019 was first introduced in the English dictionary by John Ayto in his dictionary of Words of Origin in the 1300s in Scotland and northern England, where it meant \u2018\u2019turned the wrong direction\u2019\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In my art practice, I always feel like I’ve gotten lost or that I turned in the wrong direction… What have I done? What the hell am I doing? is how I often feel when I show my work to people and realize what I’ve done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u2018Awkward\u2019 comes from a combination of the Middle English adjective \u2018\u2019awk\u2019\u2019 (the wrong way round, backhand) and the directional suffix \u2018ward\u2019).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meaning of \u2018Awkward\u2019 as an adjective appeared in the 16th Century when \u2018awkward\u2019 also mean \u2018\u2019not straightforward\u2019\u2019, \u2018\u2019backhanded\u2019\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first adjectival citation of Awkward appeared in the Scottish translation of Virgil\u2019s Aneneid sometime before 1522 : <\/p>\n\n\n\n

the grief-strike Dido beholds the departing Aeneas with acquart luke (with a sideway glance). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A sideway glance… what a clear image. Dido was the first woman to embody awkwardness in the English language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Aeneid by Virgil, Dido is represented from the vantage point of a 3rd person, removed (Dido is the ruler of a kingdom and she wages war).\u00a0 She betrays the memory of her deceased husband and her duty as a widow, and by doing so, she delays the illustrious founder of Rome from his destined path.\u00a0 In this story, Dido commits suicide because she stepped above the appropriate position of a woman. It makes so much sense how in the English language, ‘awkward’ also had to imply that this sideway glance<\/em> was induced by a lover departing (who also kills herself because she stepped above the appropriate position of a woman). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is Dido before she kills herself…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Western culture has this pervasive way of categorizing women as either good or bad which makes me sick to my stomach. An example is how women are depicted in the Film Noir movies. Noir movies emerged during the second world war in 1941 and was used as a propaganda tool to keep women from becoming independent workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Due to husbands being away at war, women were increasingly gaining independence as many women began working (and enjoying it). In Noir movies, a woman is either portrayed as the wife or the femme fatale. These movies were implicitly created to show how \u2018\u2019bad\u2019\u2019 the independent femme fatale was. At the end of each movie, after a man has had an adventure with the femme fatale, he always returns to the wife a.k.a patriarch. This return, towards patriarchy and the \u2018\u2019good\u2019\u2019 was a way of making the liberated woman into the enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that Sillman’s take on Contemporary Art is refreshing as it moves away from constricting binaries in favour of bleak monumental art and virtuosity. I’m all for embracing awkwardness, shame and vulnerability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chromophobia David Bachelor<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’ve always loved colours and have often been told that I overdo them. This is because when I am in contact with colours, I feel possessed and I want to see them all, all at once, everywhere. They seduce me and I can’t help myself but splurge. In one of her talks on Colour<\/a>, Amy Sillman compares painters to drug addicts. A painter can spend 90$ on a single tiny tube of paint… Why is it so addictive? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I had never heard of Chromophobia until I read this book and was eye-opening to read this as I’ve often felt ashamed of my use of colours. This reading helped me understand where this shame came from. I now see my use of colour as a resistance against this ”purging of colour”. It has allowed me to erase all of the teachers who told me to tone it down… I won’t!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colour and its association with the senses and the primitive maintain an uncivilized status. They are ”a core of resistance to cultural domestication”. Chromophobia is \u2018\u2019this loathing of colour, this gear of corruption through colour\u2019\u2019(Bachelor, 22) This \u2018\u2019purging of colour is usually accomplished in one of two ways. In the first, colour is made out to be the property of some \u2018foreign\u2019 body – usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or the pathological\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chromophobic culture is similar to the history of ‘aesthetics’. Originally, the word \u2018aesthetics\u2019 derived from the Greek \u2018\u2019aisthetikos\u2019\u2019 meant a sense of perception sensitivity of the body\u2019s sensations. Throughout Western Art history, the relationship between Aesthetics and bodily sensations was ruptured. The German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten was the first to use the term aesthetics in its modern sense. In 1735, he developed aesthetics as the study of good and bad “taste”, thus good and bad art, linking good taste with beauty. By trying to develop an idea of good and bad taste, he also in turned generated philosophical debate around this new meaning of aesthetics. Aesthetics\u00a0 became lifeless and like\u00a0 a doll, who\u2019s orifices are closed, art was removed from the body\u2019s senses. Like chromophobia, by disassociating ‘aesthetics’ from the body, they categorized the abject, the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or the pathological as ”bad” art. Like color who was been devalued and diminished in Western Art, the way we think of ‘aesthetics’ is problematic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Teju Cole – On Being<\/strong><\/em>

The afternoon of the election in 2020, Teju Cole was taking pictures of a \u2018\u2019sliced persimmon [\u2026] on the chopping board\u2019\u2019. His idea was to \u2018\u2019divert [his] attention away from the stupid news and towards something life-giving and lasting\u2019\u2019. 

On Being<\/em> combines a found cookbook from 1780s with diaristic photographs of Cole’s kitchen. Diaristic work is similar to cave paintings. Marking time and marking your existence. I have a lot to learn from old objects\/artifacts. They can act a vessels through which I learn parcels of who I am at a particular time. For Cole, this cookbook creates a setting, a mood in which he can ask questions about his own identity, family and body.  

His experimental approach and intentional uncertainty speak to me as experimentation is also part of my process. When overwhelming external events happen, like Cole, I shift toward things most would consider useless or a waste of time. Art has the power to sublimate a slice of time and space. It can become a gift in which the audience finds something. I like relating to the world and current events through old objects. As Zoo writes, \u2018\u2019objects are not neutral, and the truth of a thing or a person or a period of time is not straightforward\u2019\u2019. I am drawn to the tactility of old objects and their smell. Through them, I feel the fragility and heaviness of lives that have passed before mine. 

On Being<\/em> speaks to me of the possibility of the human mind to imagine. When we are kids, we can create our own reality. We all have the capacity to transgress reality using very basic technologies such as sticks and rocks.

While it\u2019s true that terrible events happen everywhere and all the time, a kid somewhere is playing with rock hours on end. When children grow up, most lose these world-building capacities. Cole\u2019s instinct to turn to photography, to his surroundings, the afternoon of the election in 2020 hint to the necessity of creative adjustment as a survival technique. When terrible things happen, artists have tools to make something out of it. As Zoo writes, Cole\u2019s images \u2018\u2019requires [us] to work, just as reading does: we bring our imaginative effort to the experience, co-constructing the work with Cole as it proceeds\u2019\u2019.  

Cole speaks of the \u2018\u2019grand success of photography\u2019\u2019 as it is practiced by so many on social media. He points out that most of these photographers are not skilled, but a vast number of them are good. I also find friction in photography interesting. The question: can an Instagram photograph be a work of art? Generates friction itself. 

To make his piece Golden Apple of the Sun, <\/em>Cole brings up the necessity of de-skilling as a way to arrive \u2018\u2019at a greater openness\u2019\u2019. De-skilling in photography is appealing as it requires everyone to rethink what we consider photography and photographers.  Especially on Social Media. As Zoo mentions, we are \u2018\u2019users\u2019\u2019 on these platforms and I find the idea of friction appealing. What’s a professional on social media?

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Living Sweetgrass Population (Hierochloe odorata)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Mishkos Kenomagwen The Teaching of Grass<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the wrong questions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrong questions in science as Kenomagwen writes, are only wrong because they were never included in Western science. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are pre-established norms in academia, especially in science about what a theoretical framework is. Asking a felt question, one that comes from the heart is important. It\u2019s easy to ask the wrong questions out of being afraid of not fitting within a certain framework. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on ancient indigenous knowledge, Laurie provides a new way of approaching science. This new way is very old and has been dismissed as ‘real science’ by western thinkers\/academics. As Kenomagwen writes, \u2018\u2019There is a barrier of language and meaning between science and traditional knowledge, different ways of knowing, different ways of communicating\u2019\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This project was a way for Laurie \u2018\u2019 to write a thesis that would \u2018\u2019mean something to someone\u2019\u2019 instead of just sitting on the shelf\u2019\u2019(158). Like Laurie, I also think a lot of the academic thesis rot on shelves because they are so boring to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wanted to conduct this study because sweetgrass is \u2018\u2019disappearing from its historic locales, so the basket makers had a request for the botanists: to see if the different ways of harvesting might be the cause of Sweetgrass\u2019s leaving.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, no one took her proposal seriously. The dean \u2018\u2019looked over the glasses that has slid down his nose, fixing Laurie with a pointed stare and directing a sidelong glance toward me. \u2018\u2019Anyone knows harvesting a plant will damage the population. You\u2019re wasting your time. And I\u2019m afraid I don\u2019t find this whole traditional knowledge thing very convincing\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Kenomagwen writes, \u2019\u2019this was nearly a rite of passage for women scientists- the condescension, the verbal smackdown from academic authorities, especially if you had the audacity to ground your work in the observations of old women who had probably not finished high school, and talked to plants to boot.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One professor \u2018\u2019shuffled through the proposal pages and pushed them aside dismissively. I don\u2019t see anything new here for science, he said. There\u2019s not even a theoretical framework\u2019\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the professor says that he doesn\u2019t \u2018\u2019see anything new here for science\u2019\u2019, Laurie\u2019s approach to writing a thesis is in fact a novel way of approaching academia altogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s overwhelming to think of all of the indigenous knowledge who have been lost because it wasn’t considered real knowledge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presentation notes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How to do nothing Chapter 1: The Case for Nothing<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to do nothing was written by Jenny Odell and published in April 2019 (A year before the pandemic).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Odell is a multidisciplinary artist from Oakland California<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 She wrote this book not long after Trumps inauguration<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her work involves acts of close observation, whether it\u2019s birdwatching, collecting screen shots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She is compelled by the ways in which attention (or lack thereof) leads to consequential shifts in perception at the level of the everyday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 To her, we live in a world where engineered satisfaction is the streamlining and networking of our entire lived experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this book, she wants to trace a series of movements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

dropping out, not dissimilar from \u2018\u2019dropping out\u2019\u2019 of the 1960s;
A term popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs.
Leary believed that LSD showed potential for therapeutic use in psychiatry.
He took LSD and developed a philosophy of mind expansion and personal truth through LSD. Nixon named him \u201cThe Most Dangerous Man in America\u201d. Mostly because he is very convincing and what he is proposing is a giant blow to the establishment and great potential for upsetting society.
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LTCxINKT7l4<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) she wants to trace a lateral movement outward to things and people that are around us<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) a movement downward into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 She states that unless we are vigilant, the current design of much of our technology will block us every step of the way, deliberately creating false targets for self-reflection, curiosity, and a desire to belong to a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quote from the introduction<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2019\u2019Nothing is harder to do than nothing. In a world where our value is determined by our productivity, many of us find our every last minute captured, optimize, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily. We submit our free time to numerical evaluation, interact with algorithmic versions of each other, and build and maintain personal brands\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2019Much of what give\u2019s one\u2019s life meaning stems from accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous encounters: the \u2018\u2019off time\u2019\u2019 that a mechanistic view of experience seeks to eliminate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1877 Robert Louis Stevenson
Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child\u2019s Garden of Verses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Stevenson called busyness a \u2018\u2019symptom of deficient vitality\u2019\u2019
\u2013 He observed \u2018\u2019a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scary conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Seneca, stoic roman philosopher in \u2018\u2019The shortness of life\u2019\u2019 describes the horror of looking back to see that life has slipped between our fingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Odell compares it to spending an hour of our life on a social platform like Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 \u2018\u2019In an endless cycle where communication is sounded and time is money, there are few moments to slip away and fewer ways to find each other\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 I think this is interesting to artist as in a way, that\u2019s what a lot of artists are doing \u2013 finding the moment to slip away and find each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 The surrealist painter, Giorgio de Chirico foresaw a narrowing horizon for activities as \u2018\u2019unproductive\u2019\u2019 as observation. He wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2019\u2019Given how poorly art survives in a system that only values the Botton line, the stakes are cultural as well. What the tastes of neoliberal techno manifest-destiny and the culture of Trump have in common is the impatience with anything nuanced, poetic, or less-than-obvious. \u2018\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So What is \u2018\u2019Nothing\u2019\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 The \u2018\u2019nothing\u2019\u2019 she proposes is only nothing from the point of view of capitalist productivity explains the irony of a book called How to do nothing and is a plan of action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 The point of doing nothing isn\u2019t to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Her argument is anticapitalist, especially concerning technologies that encourage a capitalist perception of time, place, self and community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 She is not anti-technology but opposed to the way that corporate platforms buy and sell our attention, as well as to designs and uses of technology that enshrine a narrow definition of productivity and ignore the local, the carnal, and the poetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 She is concerned about the effects of current social media on expression \u2013 including the right to express oneself \u2013 and its deliberately addictive features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 To her, doing nothing in the sense of productivity and stopping to listen entails an active process of listening that seeks out the effects of racial, environmental, and economic injustice and brings about real change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Doing nothing is a kind of reprogramming device as sustenance for those feeling too disassembled to act meaningfully. On this level, the practice of doing nothing has several tools to offer us when it comes to resisting the attention economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commercial Social Media<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commercial Social Media is the financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy and distraction.
It is the cult of individuality and personal branding that grow out of such platforms and affect the way we think about our offline selves and the places where we actually live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 She writes this book in San Francisco and notes how there\u2019s this mix between technology companies and nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sandhill Road<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Epicenter of Venture Capital
\u2013 This stretch of roadway serves as the home to firms that have funded some of the largest tech companies in the market. Considered the \u201cWall Street of the West Coast,\u201d Sand Hill Road is where ambitious founders have connected with funding partners for decades.
Slide 10 Facebook Campus
Facebook\u2019s campus feels almost like a city, where staff commute in on private buses and can access free laundry, meals and snacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-In her intro, she begins by describing the hills overlooking Oakland where she currently lives.
\u2013 She names the trees surrounding her<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jack London Tree
\u2013 Jack London was a writer. He spent his short life\u2014he died at forty\u2014 In his writing, which ranged from realist novels to memoirs and science fiction, he became a psychologist and economist of extremity. He was particularly fascinated by the idea of freezing and starving to death. He chose settings where life is hard to sustain\u2014the Arctic, the urban ghetto, the sea, a plague-razed future\u2014and where heroes must defy the odds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2019Old Survivor\u2019\u2019 or also called \u2018\u2019the Grandfather\u2019\u2019
Too weird and too difficult to proceed easily to the sawmill<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Symbol of a tree that shoes resistance<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-The legendary status of this tree has to do not only with his age and unlikely survival. But it\u2019s a mysterious location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-When you spot Old Survivor, you still can\u2019t get that close because it sits on a steep rocky slope whose ascent would require a serious scramble.
That\u2019s one reason why it survived logging the other reason has to do with its twisted share and its height; ninety-three feet, a runt compared to other old-growth redwoods.
In other words, Old survivor survived largely by appearing useless to loggers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Begins with \u2018\u2019Wakes up and looks at phone\u2019\u2019 \u2018\u2019let\u2019s see what fresh horrors await me on the fresh horror device<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Context in which her book is written after the 2016 election
The constant connection and the difficulty of maintaining any kind of silence or interiority was already problem but after the 2016 election it seemed to take new dimensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 After the election, she started noticing how we assault ourselves with news and she is not saying that the solution is to stop listening to the news completely but that we could use a moment to examine the relationship between attention span and the speed of information exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-When she wrote the book, the Ghost ship fire on Oakland has just happened which<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Took the lives of many artists and community-minded people on the first floor of a 31st Avenue warehouse in Fruitvale.
Residents of Satya Yuga art collective awoke to a haze of thick smoke and a fast-moving blaze. Some tried to extinguish the growing inferno with water bottles and a fire extinguisher. It was no use.
The intense fire gobbled up a wooden staircase, trapping dozens of people attending an electronic dance party upstairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-She grounds her book in a specific space: Rose garden amphitheater built in the 1930s and was specifically chosen because of the natural bowl shape of the land. The space feel physically and acoustically enclosed, remarkably spectate from everything around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Almost got turned into condos in the 70s it took concerned efforts from residents to prevent that from happening<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2019the garden encompassed everything she wanted to cover<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 the practice of doing nothing
\u2013 the architecture of nothing
the importance of public space
an ethics of care and maintenance<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-It\u2019s an Attention holding architecture. She\u2019s observed that everyone moves slows and stop to smell the roses<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Labyrinths operate similarly \u2018\u2019enabling a dense infolding of attention\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 She began going to the garden everyday
\u2013 Felt like a survival tactic to do\u2019, nothing \u2018 in the garden<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Odell is drawn to these kinds of spaces \u2013 libraries, small museums, gardens, columbaria- because of the way they unfold secret and multifarious perspectives even within a fairly small area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 This unfolding of spatializing or visual doesn\u2019t need to be visual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deep listening by Pauline Oliveros<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal and the reward of deep listening was a heightened sense of receptivity and a reversal of our usual cultural training, which teaches us to quickly analyze and judge more than to simply observe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Oliveros, Listening is an inherently empathetic act, requiring receptivity to the intentions of others and the natural world<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of \u201cdeep listening\u201d and \u201csonic awareness\u201d, drawing on metaphors from cybernetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cybernetics is concerned with feedback processes such as steering however they are embodied, including in ecological, technological, biological, cognitive, and social systems, and in the context of practical activities such as designing, learning, managing, conversation, and the practice of cybernetics itself.
Cybernetics\u2019 transdisciplinary character has meant that it intersects with a number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse interpretations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Gilles Deleuze wrote this in 1985 but still relevant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 \u2018\u2019nothing\u2019\u2019 is not a luxury or waste of time rather its a necessary part of meaningful thought and speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Press play to video of Black Crowned Night Heron<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bird watching
To her, stopping to listen is like a labyrinthine quality of attention-holding architecture like the rose garden<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2019a cross between a penguin and Paul Giamatti\u2019\u2019 says her bf<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to her, bird sounds are life languages and she finds comfort in watching them<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Sometimes inventor and Famous observer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Called himself a \u2018\u2019poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist naturalist etc. etc.,\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had an accident which confined him to a darkened room for six weeks during which he was unsure if he would ever see again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He determined that life was too brief and uncertain and time too precious and that he would devote the rest of his life to a study of the process\u2019\u2019
When he regained his vision, he reevaluated his priorities<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 She writes, \u2019\u2019Most people have, or have known someone who has, gone through period of \u2018\u2019removal\u2019\u2019 that fundamentally changed their attitude to the world they returned to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2019Sometimes it is occasioned by something terrible, like illness or loss, and sometimes it\u2019s voluntary, but regardless, that pause in time is necessary for change.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Privilege of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1886 in U.S , the Federation of organized trades and labor union requested 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of work and 8 hours of \u2018what we will\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2019Rest, thought, flowers and sunshine \u2018\u2019 These are all bodily human things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 The removal of economic security for working people dissolves those boundaries of 8 hours of what we will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Under capitalism, there\u2019s no more 8 hours leisure or education, 8 hours of what we will\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public spaces vs scripted spaces<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 The most obvious difference between public space and others spaces is that you don\u2019t have to buy anything of pretending want to buy to be there<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-City Walk exists somewhere in between almost like a movie set where visitors can consume the supposed diversity of an urban environment while enjoying a feeling of safety that results from its actual homogeneity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 A scripted space<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 A space which excludes, directs, supervises, constructs and orchestrates use<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Spaces deemed commercially unproductive are always under threat, since what they produce can\u2019t be measured or exploited or even easily identified<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Just as public spaces give space to \u2018\u2019faux spaces\u2019\u2019 we are sold the idea of compromised leisure which is very far from \u2018\u2019what we will\u2019\u2019
\u2013 And results in the colonization of the self by capitalist ideas of productivity and efficiency<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Franco \u2018\u2019Bifo\u2019\u2019 Berardi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Marxist theorist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Ties the labour movement of the 80s to the rise of the idea that we should all be entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

he writes that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past, economic risk was the business of the capitalist, the investor [\u2026] Today, though, \u2018\u2019We are all capitalists\u2019\u2026 and therefore, we all have to take risks\u2026 The essential idea is that we should all consider like as an economic venture, as a race where there are winners and losers\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boundaries of 8 hours of what we will are now dissolved. We are expected to work all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2019Every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living, and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook and Instagram, constantly check on its performance like one checks a stock, monitoring the ongoing development of our personal brand, time becomes an economic resource that we can no longer justify spending on \u2018\u2019anything\u2019\u2019[\u2026] it is simply too expensive\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gig economy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Celebrates working yourself to death p.17<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gig economy is dressed up as an aesthetic
She gives examples of Fizzer ad<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 She then talks about ROWE \u2013 Results Work Only Environment which meant to abolish the 8h workday by letting you work whenever from wherever<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Why work sucks and how to fix-it : The results-only Revolution by the creators of ROWE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 As she points out, there\u2019s nothing to be admired about being constantly connected, constantly potentially productive the second you open your eyes in the morning- and no one should accept this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Groundedness requires actual ground and direct sensuous reality which is why she gives birdwatching as an example<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Observing other animals allows us to feel more grounded<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she suggests #NOMO instead of FOMO<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1st tool is Self Care as<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audre Lorde in 1980<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self preservation and that an act of political welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-\u2018\u2019self-care\u2019\u2019 has now been appropriated for commercial end\u2019\u2019 and has been wrenched away by activists and turned into an excuse to buy an expensive bath oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2nd told<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Deep Listening<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018\u2019to hold yourself still until you can perceive what is actually there. \u2018
Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening to our bodies, bodily sense<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would \u2018\u2019back to the land\u2019\u2019 mean if we understood the land to be where we are right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could augmented reality mean simply putting our phones down?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does it mean to construct digital worlds while the actual world is crumbling before our eyes?
Do you usually have FOMO?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shit Happens Notes on Awkwardness – Amy Sillman ”I know we are no longer making things for the Beaux-Arts, for truth, beauty or elevation” All I can say about this quote is Fuck Yes!!! In French, awkwardness translates to \u2018\u2019maladresse\u2019 but to me, they mean different things.\u00a0 To me \u2018\u2019maladresse\u2019\u2019 translates to clumsy. Clumsiness involves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":815,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/experimentalstudio.ca\/gradseminar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}