Showing posts with label Quote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quote. Show all posts
20090529
20080612
20080609
20080605
1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design
By Allan Chochinov
I don't like the word manifesto. It reeks of dogma and rules—two things I instinctually reject. I do love the way it puts things on the line, but I don't like lines, or groups. So a manifesto probably isn't for me. The other thing about manifestos is that they appear (or are written so as to appear) self-evident. This kind of a priori writing is easy, since you simply lay out what seems obviously—even tautologically—true. Of course, this is the danger of manifestos, but also what makes them fun to read. And fun to write. So I'll write this manifesto. I just might not sign it.
Anyway, here they are. Exactly 1000 words:
Hippocratic Before Socratic
"First do no harm" is a good starting point for everyone, but it's an especially good starting point for designers. For a group of people who pride themselves on "problem solving" and improving people's lives, we sure have done our fair share of the converse. We have to remember that industrial design equals mass production, and that every move, every decision, every curve we specify is multiplied—sometimes by the thousands and often by the millions. And that every one of those everys has a price. We think that we're in the artifact business, but we're not; we're in the consequence business.
...designers are feeding and feeding this cycle, helping to turn everyone and everything into either a consumer or a consumable. And when you think about, this is kind of grotesque. "Consumer" isn't a dirty word exactly, but it probably oughta be.
Stop Making Crap
And that means that we have to stop making crap. It's really as simple as that. We are suffocating, drowning, and poisoning ourselves with the stuff we produce, abrading, out-gassing, and seeping into our air, our water, our land, our food—and basically those are the only things we have to look after before there's no we in that sentence. It gets into our bodies, of course, and it certainly gets into our minds. And designers are feeding and feeding this cycle, helping to turn everyone and everything into either a consumer or a consumable. And when you think about it, this is kind of grotesque. "Consumer" isn't a dirty word exactly, but it probably oughta be.
Systems Before Artifacts
Before we design anything new, we should examine how we can use what already exists to better ends. We need to think systems before artifacts, services before products, adopting Thackara's use/not own principles at every step. And when new products are needed, they'll be obvious and appropriate, and then can we conscientiously pump up fossil fuels and start polymerizing them. Product design should be part of a set of tools we have for solving problems and celebrating life. It is a means, not an end.
Teach Sustainability Early
Design education is at a crossroads, with many schools understanding the potentials, opportunities, and obligations of design, while others continue to teach students how to churn out pretty pieces of garbage. Institutions that stress sustainability, social responsibility, cultural adaptation, ethnography, and systems thinking are leading the way. But soon they will come to define what industrial design means. (A relief to those constantly trying to define the discipline today!) This doesn't mean no aesthetics. It just means a keener eye on costs and benefits.
Screws Better Than Glues
This is lifted directly from the Owner's Manifesto, which addresses how the people who own things and the people who make them are in a kind of partnership. But it's a partnership that's broken down, since almost all of the products we produce cannot be opened or repaired, are designed as subassemblies to be discarded upon failure or obsolescence, and conceal their workings in a kind of solid-state prison. This results in a population less and less confident in their abilities to use their hands for anything other than pushing buttons and mice, of course. But it also results in people fundamentally not understanding the workings of their built artifacts and environments, and, more importantly, not understanding the role and impact that those built artifacts and environments have on the world. In the same way that we can't expect people to understand the benefits of a water filter when they can't see the gunk inside it, we can't expect people to sympathize with greener products if they can't appreciate the consequences of any products at all.
Design for Impermanence
In his Masters Thesis, "The Paradox of Weakness: Embracing Vulnerability in Product Design," my student Robert Blinn argues that we are the only species who designs for permanence—for longevity—rather than for an ecosystem in which everything is recycled into everything else. Designers are complicit in this over-engineering of everything we produce (we are terrified of, and often legally risk-averse to, failure), but it is patently obvious that our ways and means are completely antithetical to how planet earth manufactures, tools, and recycles things. We choose inorganic materials precisely because biological organisms cannot consume them, while the natural world uses the same building blocks over and over again. It is indeed Cradle-to-Cradle or cradle-to-grave, I'm afraid.
Balance Before Talents
The proportion of a solution needs to balance with its problem: we don't need a battery-powered pooper scooper to pick up dog poop, and we don't need a car that gets 17 MPG to, well, we don't need that car, period. We have to start balancing our ability to be clever with our ability to be smart. They're two different things.
Metrics Before Magic
Metrics do not get in the way of being creative. Almost everything is quantifiable, and just the exercise of trying to frame up ecological and labor impacts can be surprisingly instructive. So on your next project, if you've determined that it may be impossible to quantify the consequences of a material or process or assembly in a design you're considering, maybe it's not such a good material or process or assembly to begin with. There are more and more people out there in the business of helping you to find these things out, by the way; you just have to call them.
Climates Before Primates
This is the a priori, self-evident truth. If we have any hope of staying here, we need to look after our home. And our anthropocentric worldview is literally killing us. "Design serves people"? Well, I think we've got bigger problems right now.
Context Before Absolutely Everything
Understanding that all design happens within a context is the first (and arguably the only) stop to make on your way to becoming a good designer. You can be a bad designer after that, of course, but you don't stand a chance of being a good one if you don't first consider context. It's everything: In graphics, communication, interaction, architecture, product, service, you name it—if it doesn't take context into account, it's crap. And you already promised not to make any more of that.
So there's my manifesto. A little stern perhaps, but that's what editing down to 1000 words will get you. The power of design is an amazing thing. Let's wield it wisely.
link
via
20080519
An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth :: Bruce Mau (re)post#7
Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements that exemplify Bruce Mau's beliefs, motivations and strategies. It also articulates how the BMD studio works.
1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.
link
via
20080418
20080330
Die Zeit interview with Philippe Starck (translated)
Philippe Starck is the star designer of the past two centuries. Notwithstanding this, he claims today, "Everything I have designed is absolutely unnecessary."
An interview.
ZEITmagazin: Monsieur Starck, you have designed everything, from toothbrush to spaceship. What do humans really need?
Philippe Starck: The ability to love. Love is the most wonderful invention of mankind. And then one needs intelligence. Mankind, as opposed to animals, has managed to create a civilization based on intelligence. For this reason, no human can afford to not work on their intelligence. And humour, humour is important.
ZEIT: And you can't think of something material?
P.S.: We don't need anything material. It is more important to develop one's own ethic, and to stick to these rules. There is nothing else one would have to worry about.
ZEIT: You can't be serious. Isn't there so much else one needs to survive?
P.S.: If you want to talk about objects: one certainly needs some-thing to light a fire.
ZEIT: Can you think of anything else?
P.S.: A pillow maybe, and a good matress.
ZEIT: So why, then, have you become an industrial designer in the first place?
P.S.: That is an interesting question. And I haven't found an answer to it for myself yet. Look, I have designed so many things without ever really being interested in them. Maybe all these years were necessary for me to ultimatively recognize that we, after all, don't need anything. We always have too much (stuff).
ZEIT: So all the things you have created -- unnecessary?
P.S.: Everything I have created is absolutely unnecessary. Design, structurally seen, is absolutely voide of use. A useful profession would be to be an astronomer, a biologist or something of that kind. Design really is nothing. I have tried to install my designs with a sense of meaning and energy, and even when I tried to give my best it was still in vain.
ZEIT: So this is the balance you strike of all your creating?
P.S.: Those people with more intelligence than me would have gotten to this point much earlier. Perhaps I wasn't smart enough and had to learn it the hard way. Ever from the beginning I had the feeling that ultimatively, product design was useless. It is because of this that I have tried to change this job into something else; into something that's more political, more rebellious, more subversive. So maybe the most important thing that I have created is not a new object, but a new definition for the word "designer".
ZEIT: You said that we are undergoing a transition into Postmaterialism. What does this mean?
P.S.: Society is pursuing a strategy of dematerialization: it is more and more about intelligence and less about material. Take a computer, for example. In the beginning, computers were big as a house. Now there are computers in the size of only a credit card. In ten years from now they are going to be in our bodies - bionics. In fifty years from now, the concept of computers will have dematerialized itself.
ZEIT: So what else would designer create then?
P.S.: There won't be any designers. The designer of the future will be the personal coach, the fitness trainer, the nutritionist. That's all.
ZEIT: You have often stated that it was your goal to destroy design. How far have you gotten with that?
P.S.: It is accomplished! When I started out, design objects were but beautiful object. No one could afford to buy them; design stood for elitism, but elitism is vulgar. The sole elegance lies in multiplication.
ZEIT: Please explain this.
P.S.: If one is fortunate enough to have a good idea, one has the obligation to share this idea with others. That is how democracy works. When I started to design, a good chair would cost about $1,000. Should a family that needs six chairs and a table have to pay $10,000, just to be able to have dinner? What an obscene thought. Four years ago, I designed a chair that would cost less than ten dollars. If you just take three zeros off the price you change the whole concept of a product.
ZEIT: And yet you recently designed that motor yacht for a Russian millionaire?
P.S.: Exactly this is part of my Robin-Hood concept. I do use such projects like a lab. It allows me to try out new technologies and render them useful for the mass market. For this particular yacht, I developed a hull that wouldn't cause bow washes at 20 knots. I applied this concept to a solar boat, which in turn could be the prototype for a Venetian vaporetto.
ZEIT: And you don't want to stop designing?
P.S.: I do want to, for sure. I am definitely going to stop designing in two years. I will be doing something else instead, I don't know for sure. But I know that it will be a new way of expression; a weapon that will be faster, mightier and lighter than design. Design is really a terrible way to express oneself.
ZEIT: So you will only be switching the job.
P.S.: Exactly. I have been a producer of materiality. I do feel ashamed for this. What I want to be instead now is a producer of concepts. This will be much more useful.
ZEIT: Is there any object that you like, then?
P.S.: No.
Interviewer: Tillmann Prüfer
Translation: mlle a.
20080208
20080207
(re)post #6 "...just listen to your eyes."
© WIM WENDERS, "To Shoot Pictures", in "ONCE", NY, 2001
"
To shoot pictures.
Taking pictures is an act in time,
in which something is snapped out of its own time
and transferred into a different kind of duration.
It is commonly assumed
that whatever is captured in this act
lies IN FRONT OF the camera.
But that is not true.
Taking pictures is an act in two directions:
Forwards
AND backwards.
Yes, taking pictures also "backfires".
This isn't even too lame a comparison.
Just as the hunter lifts his rifle,
aims at the deer in front of him,
pulls the trigger,
and, when the bullet departs from the muzzle,
is thrown backwards by the recoil,
the photographer, likewise, is thrown backwards,
onto himself,
when releasing the shutter.
A photograph is always a double image,
showing, at first glance, its subject,
but at a second glance - more or less visible,
"hidden behind it", so to speak,
the "reverse angle":
the picture of the photographer
in action.
Just as the hunter is not struck by the bullet, though,
but only feels the recoil of the explosion,
this counter-image contained in every photograph
is not actually captured by the lens, either.
(Yet it remains somehow inextricably in the picture,
as an invisible impression of the photographer
that even gets developed within the dark room chemistry…)
What then is the recoil of the photographer?
How do you feel its impact?
How does it affect the subject
and which trace of it appears on the photograph?
In German, there is a most revealing word
for this phenomenon,
a word known from a variety of contexts:
"EINSTELLUNG".
It means the attitude
in which someone approaches something,
psychologically or ethically,
i.e. the way of attuning yourself
and then "taking it in".
But "Einstellung" is also a term from photography and film
signifying both the "take" (a particular shot and its framing),
as well as how the camera is adjusted
in terms of the aperture and exposure
by which the cameraman "takes" the picture.
It is no coincidence
that (at least in German) the same word defines both
the attitude
and the picture thus produced.
Every picture indeed
reflects the attitude
of whoever took it.
So the rifleman's recoil
corresponds to the photographer's portrait
that is more or less visible "behind the picture,
only instead of capturing his (or her) features,
it defines the photographer's ATTITUDE
towards whatever was in front of him (or her).
The camera therefore is an eye
capable of looking forward and backward
at the same time.
Forwards, it does in fact "shoot a picture,
backwards, it records a vague shadow,
sort of an x-ray of the photographer's mind,
by looking straight through his (or her) eye
to the bottom of his (or her) soul.
Yes, forwards, a camera sees its subject,
backwards it sees the wish
to capture this particular subject in the first place,
thereby showing simultaneously THE 'I'HINGS
and THE DESIRE for them.
Every second,
somewhere in the world,
someone releases a shutter
capturing something
because he (or she) is fascinated by a certain LIGHT
or FACE
or GESTURE
or LANDSCAPE
or MOOD
or simply because a SITUATION
wants to me captured.
The subjects of photography,
Obviously,
Are countless,
Multiplied to infinity by every second thet passes.
Still, each and every moment of picture-taking,
Wherever in the world it takes place,
Is a single event,
Its uniqueness
Guaranteed by the incessant progress of time.
(Even the zillions of tourists snapshots
at those specially assigned “photo opportunities”
are each a one-time only event.
Even in its most trivial and commonplace moments
Time remains irreversible.)
What is astonishing with each and every photograph
Is not so much that it “freezes time”
- as people commonly think -
but that on the contrary
time proves with every picture anew
HOW unstoppable and perpetual it is.
Every photograph is a memento mori.
Every photograph talks about life and death.
Every “picture captured” as an aura of sacredness,
Transcends the eye of its photographer,
And exceeds all human capacity:
Every photo is also an act of creation
Outside of time,
from God’s perspective, so to speak,
recalling that increasingly forgotten commandment:
“Thou shalt not graven images”
To take pictures
(rather: to have the incredible privilege of taking pictures)
is “too good to be true”.
But just as well it is
too true to be good.
Taking pictures is always an act of presumption
and rebellion.
Taking pictures thus quickly instils greed
And so much less often modesty.
(That is the reason why the attitude of “bragging”
is much more common in photography
than the attitude of “humbleness”.)
If, thus, a camera shoots in two directions,
forward and backward
merging both pictures
so that the “back” dissolves in tne “front”,
it allows the photographer
at the very moment of shooting
to be in front with the subjects,
rather than separated from them.
Through the “viewfinder”
The view can step out of his shell
to be “on the other side”
of the world,
and thereby remember better, understand better,
see better,
hear better,
and love more deeply.
(and, alas, despise more deeply, too.
The “evil eye”, after all, exists as well.)
Within every photograph
There is also the beginning of a story
Starting with “Once upon a time…”.
Every photograph is the first frame of a movie.
Often the next moment,
the next realease of the shutter a few steps further on,
the subsequent image, that is,
is already tracing this story’s progress
in its very own space
and its very own time.
So over the years, at least to me,
taking pictures has more and more turned
into “tracing stories”.
(This is why this book
contains more series of pictures
than single stills.)
With every second picture the “montage” is already on the way,
And the story that as announced itself in the first piscture
is now moving into its own direction,
defining its sense of space
and portending its sense of time.
Sometimes new actors appear,
sometimes the alleged lead
proves to be just a supporting part,
and sometimes no person at all is at the centre,
but a landscape.
I firmly believe
In the story-building power
of landscapes.
There are landscapes,
be them cities, deserts, mountains or coasts,
that literally cry out for “their stories” to be told.
They evoke them, even make them happen.
Landscapes can be leading characters themselves
and the people in it the extras.
I believe just as firmly
in the narrative power of props.
An open newspaper, casually lying in the corner of a photograph,
can relate so much!
A billboard in the background!
The rusty car
protruding into one side of the picture!
A chair!
Standing there in such a way
that someone must have been sitting on it only moments ago!
An open book on a table
With half of its title legible!
The empty cigarette box on the sidewalk!
The coffee cup with the spoon in it!
On photographs, THINGS can be serene or sad,
even comic or tragic.
Let alone clothes!
In many pictures, they are the most interesting part.
The sagging sock on a child’s ankle!
The turned-up collar of a man
Who can only see from behind!
Sweat stains!
Creases!
Patches darned and mended!
Missing buttons!
A crispy ironed shirt!
A woman’s life
all summarized in her dress,
Her entire life showing in the suffering of a dress!
A person’s drama
conveyed by a coat!
Clothes indicate the temperature of a picture,
the date,
the time of day,
Time of war or time of peace.
And all of it appears in front of the camera just ONCE,
and every photograph turns this ONCE into an eternity.
Only THROUGH
the captured picture does time become visible
and in the tome span
BETWEEN the first shot and the second
The story emerges,
a story that, were it not for these pictures,
would have slipped into oblivion
for the same eternity.
Just as we want to disappear,
at the very moment of taking the picture,
out into the world
and into the things,
the world and the things now leap out of the photograph
at the beholder,
seeking to survive and to last there.
It is “THERE” that the stories come about,
In the eye
of the beholder.
I hope
this photobook
will become a storybook.
It isn’t yet –
But it can become one
if you just listen to your eyes.
"
© WIM WENDERS, "To Shoot Pictures", in "ONCE", NY, 2001
20080121
20080115
20080103
(re)post #1 ALL ART IS QUITE USELESS
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor�s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
© Oscar Wilde
Prefácio
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1891)
20071228
Gary Hill
Site Recite (a prologue)
Nothing seems to have ever been moved. There is something of every description which can only be a trap. Maybe it all moves proportionally cancelling out change and the estrangement of judgement. No, an other order pervades. It's happening all at once, I'm just a disturbance wrapped up in myself, a kind of ghost vampirically passing through the forest passing through the trees.
The sun will rise and I won't know what to do with it. Its beak will torture me as will its slow movement, the movement it invented that I can only reiterate. Too much time goes by to take it by surprise. Bodily sustenance is no longer an excuse. The quieter and stiller I become the livelier everything else seems to get. The longer I wait the more the little deaths pile up.
A vague language drapes everything but the walls--what walls? The very walls that never vary--my enclosure, so glorious from a distance, stands on the brink of nothing like a four-legged table. What is it? An island with a never ending approach? A stopgap from when to where? Something to huddle over with my elbows like trestles without tracks, the bases of which are scattered with evidence of unsolved crimes? The overallness of it all soaks through, runs through the holes in my hands and continues to run amok, overturning rocks that should not be overturned, breaking bread that should not be broken.
So much remains. No doubt it can all be counted. Starting with any one, continuing on with any other one until all is accounted for, a consensus is reached. That it can all be shelved in all its quantized splendor, this then is the turf.
These sightings. This scene before me made up of just so many just views (nature's constituency) sits with indifference to the centripetal vanishing point that mentality posits so falsely. Brain, minding business, incessantly constructs an infinite series of makeshifts designed to perpetuate the picture--the one like all others that holds its breath for a thousand words, conversely exhales point zero zero one pictures. This insidious wraparound, tied to the notion "I have eyes in the back of my head," binds me to my double, implodes my being to a mere word as it winds the world around my mouth. A seamless scroll weaves my view back into place--back to back with itself--the boomerang effect, decapitates any and all hallucinations leaving (lo and behold) the naked eye, stalking each and every utterance that breaks and enters the dormitories of perception.
I must become a warrior of self-consciousness and move my body to move my mind to move the words to move my mouth to spin the spur of the moment.
Imagining the brain closer than the eyes.
Copyright © 1989 Gary Hill
20071210
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
