Wednesday, December 11, 2013

2H2K - June 2050 - Visual Remediation

Daniel Libeskind, “Leakage,” from Micromegas Drawing Series, (1979) 

“I hate my job.” Cory wasn’t talking to anyone, not that anyone around her would know. They’d assume she was “on the phone.” What does that phrase mean? she wondered. Telephone language is so strange. Why isn't my phone on me? She was idly twisting her pRime, worn on her left ring-finger, as an engagement ring. Shouldn't I be "in" the phone or "over" the phone? She looked down at her pRime, as slim gold band, its polished surface broken by a series tiny rectangular apertures and a thin stem. Like a tiny erection. It was her "phone" her "computer" her "camera"  ...my "secRetary." She pinched the band as hard as she could, almost as if she meant to bend it. Its everything to me, she thought with a flush of something like shame, or maybe pride. She pushed the feeling away, thought again about being on the phone - wondered how that had come to function as a statement of distanced speaking. The experience of being two places at once - "Hi, this is Cory. Where Are you?" - A physical problem solved by language.  She started to compose a queRy, knowing she'd be able to find a dozen scholarly papers and probably some good lectures on the history, theory, and comparative linguistics of "telephone language" - but then stopped herself. Stay in the moment.

2H2K - June 2050 - Bohème Rule: An Introduction

Luke Wilson in Idiocracy (2006) 

Last Monday I was getting on the elevator with my neighbor (an older artist), her daughter (a ballet dancer), and her grandson (a toddler). I asked after their Thanks Giving holiday, and my neighbor said it was great, that because her daughter took charge of cooking she had time to relax and "get some work done." It made me laugh, and I told her that she sounded like every artist I've ever met - a joke she and her daughter both understood. Unlike most worker who, Marx rightly pointed out, are "alienate from their labor" - who work in order to afford time to do things other than work -  artists work to afford to work. Marx argued that "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” But I am not concerned with what artists make as individuals, but how and why they work as a class. And what it would mean if the Bohème became societies new Middle Class.

Saturday, December 7, 2013