NEW(s)

methodological interstitialis

Schizoid Methodologies...n+n=bad dinner conversation.

The space between the dream state and the awake mode has often been the starting point for what can only be described as discomfort. Waking up to the knowledge that you dearest friend is moving interstate without telling you, the very fabric of your existence is become fractured, you have lost all the work you were doing for the last year and a half from your non-functioning laptop, and to top it all off you no longer have any feeling in your legs, but with some effort you can glide over the city like seagull with attitude. As you make that first cup of coffee, the trauma sinks in and the real takes a very coherent materialisation. The physicality of each passing moment is palpable, the sense of sickness can be overwhelming. What's going on ?, you ask yourself, knowing that you may never answer this question, it is a bid for reassurance of some kind. You have been places that are overtly familiar, yet there is no possibility of making the return visit, there is simply no way to get back, as hard as you try to regain some semblance of direction it is a pointless exercise which is adding to the discomfort at rapidly increasing increments. To be trapped in the in-between for half the mourning has put you in a place that resonates for the remainder of the day, or more often for days to come unless the subsequent nightly adventures facilitate further disruptive processes. A similar process of in-between occurs when trying to inhabit your latest preoccupation at a micro-level. The state of existing in a micro-frissure. The grand epistemological narratives oscillating at the neurological level which emerge from their submerged state, becoming manifest in behavioral patterns and affecting the basic mediations with other people - like asking a group of electrical engineer's, over a wedding table dinner, for there take on Nanotech, and being very disappointed with the response - which is essentially that they are extremely interested in the process, however the company they work for does not use that form of technology, and that there JOB is to do what the company needs done and don't ask questions, don't think beyond the job, The de-materialisation of any self interest beyond the basic material requirements. But hey, the job pays well, and with two mortgages to grapple with thinking beyond the chip is simply not an option. Subject choices made in the first couple of years of university prescribe a life time of research which will be made redundant at the same pace as it has come into existence, if not at a greater pace. It is like residing in a permanent state of montage, though in this case the clash is not on the screen it is palpable, it is made physical and it is not at all comfortable.

On a recent interstate trip I came across some paintings by a colleague and friend. The canvas had been split, by image. One side depicting an architectural form, a significant construction in the evolution of the cities skyline. The other inhabiting the aesthetics of the Suprematist milieu. Thin bands of red and yellow on a monocrome background, the subtle brush work activated by a layering of the paints materiality. These two subject matters had been applied with direct reference points, not as obvious as they first appeared I might add, these were reduced of obvious reference points through dialogue. Again direct references can be drawn between these two movements, Architecture/Suprematism. So the point of engagement with the image became its dissection, the fold, the splice placed between the two image/subject formations. This line became a potent line of flight, just as the splice of the film material is the potency of the montaged image, the canvas had become - not a depictive mechanism, but a physical navigation of image through histrionics. The question moved away, as quickly as it had appeared in relation to the subject matter, the (a) point of contact with the dividing line, what is this split all about?The connectivity of image sublimated at almost the same time as it is contemplated. The edges of the canvas too, needed to be consumed, what will they reveal in relation to the split between history and fact? These are not polemic exercises, they are highlighting the physicality of the canvas as object, through a clever depictive device. They pose a question of the relationship the artist holds to subject, which can often be extremely objective in the way in which it is chosen, inhabited. Now we see the big question come to light - how long must the artist keep his/her subject matter consistent, a life time, a month, a week? What if the objective became the negotiation of an ever shifting subject matter facilitated through the same medium, or is this in fact art history in a nutshell? Same subject differing mediums, which will make for the most potent outcomes, is this what the institutions want, how quickly will they sublimate there own critique to amuse the masses? The museum of popular culture in the disguise of the gallery.

We are taken directly to the sublime moments that the city scape often posits upon us. Stay up all night then go for a bike ride through the city, it is a very different experience to getting up early and doing this - cicadian indeed, add a night of coctails to the mix and the fun really starts. This is where these paintings partly reside, on the surface of the sublime structure of the modern city, the avenues of wonder. Yes, they are monuments to cash, we know this, we also know that street level is always the place from which the money makers will subsume their fodder, they are slow to react but quick to sublimate for a dense bottom line. The kids at street level know this, for this is the next battle in the culture wars that are on right now!

Are they before and after shoots of a quantum experiment in full flight, de-materialisation in full affect. The quantum gun let lose on the Melbourne skyline, now there is a New Years eve spectacle, particle refabrication as entertainment. Jump into the fold for it is all we have left. The interstitial is a zone to be navigated - it is a defiant critique of a world full to brim with the overtly obvious. The sublime fold, the crack in the fabric of space-time is the place of solitude and consistant discomfort for the artist, not an easy task but one taken on, inhabit with glee, and the result...perhaps more discomfort. In a world of consumed happiness, and in the habit of requesting constant happiness, which is of course blatant delusion, these zones of discomfort, become comforting, the inhabitation of the interstitialis becomes comforting - knowing what the options are is where the real discomfort lies.

a symposium of 'pata-noology...

So, in the 'desert of the Real' Lacan is the cell leader - the departure point for our highly reflective psychosomatic noo-ville. The master of ceremonies swinging from the mirror ball, neuroses embellished on a freshly screen printed T-shirt, under a 'nice' tweed jacket and a new pair of hemp shoes. The audience has become despondent, frantically checking, sending, and re-checking their PDA's for an emphatic reassurance that they are indeed still alive. No wonder the good Doctor has cracked, "they just won't listen anymore" he screams as the mirror ball lets go, sending him hurtling across the theatre crashing head first into the belligerently drunk Debord, freaking out Trocchi, high on acid as usual. Guattari sniggers and steps outside for a smoke with Deleuze, Leary seizes the moment to spike the punch while Foucault goes down on Barthes in the mensroom. Guyatat takes photo's then calls his pimp, and Manovich, the pragmatist as always gets the whole thing on film. "Artaud would have loved this" Sontag says to Lippard, who places her book mark back into the fold, turning to Derrida to see if he has noticed, he hasn't, he's to engrossed in the hyper-text Zizek has recently emailed him...

εμπειρισμός

WHAT IF... Ernst Mach was right?

NOT-SURE-YET...

WHAT IF... Levinas Chose the Wrong Other?

It has been quite a week since Nervemeter and its co-pilot left. At the start of the week I realised Levinas might be completely of false consciousness. During the week I realised that structuralism is almost everything. Today I realised Kant is responsible for the embrace that art and philosophy have shared for 150 years. I suppose it was the kind of week that should have run in reverse.

Why do we throw names around and console ourselves that what we make has a bearing on existence? Really, we are exercising a faculty that Kant initiated. In the heroic Critique of Judgment the subjective is objectified. It is a very old idea but it is perhaps the most instrumental in the relational aesthetic brought forth now with work like nerve meter. While it may seem like it inhabits an almost complete vacuum in mass society it does not. It might be in the *margin but if it were not for the possibility of bringing the names and ideas of continental aesthetics to bear on it would be very much more in a vacuum.

To consider that a work like Nerve Meter inhabits an almost-vacuum is for it to equally inhabit almost everything. What is the bearing of D&G on the work? Well, the work has a purchase on material relations. Or does it? As boxes, cables, transmission and reception its a synaesthetic/linguistic model of the mega-network shorn of its threat to engulf us. In this sense it is something like Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics of reassurance, that for a while, it all might seem simple that we cannot but occupy nodal points in a muddled net.

What if Levinas was looking at the wrong other? "What if" comics used always engross me as a child. As an adult the fascination has moved over to the continental squad. In my episode for this week I am folding up and unfolding the question "what if Levinas chose the wrong other...". Without exploding the question of WW2, what if the priveleged other was malicious? As I understand it, in a war crimes tribunal the soldier cannot be held responsible for what the general ordered him to do. The reverse is however true, that the head of control can be punished for the body committing the act. The same is true to some extent of a corporation. Is Levinas suggesting the soldier's priveleging of his commanding other is in fact an ethical position prior to exercising critical faculty, which in this case might have meant ommission rather than commission of a malicious act? I think this cannot but be a submerged iceberg in the work of Levinas. An ethical relation with the other that comes before an ontological position could be perilous. Of course, the other that Levinas speaks of is possibly not such elastic an idea to stretch around this scenario. After all, it is just a hypothetical exercise.

What is the relationship between the problematised relation with the other and Kantian possibility and Mearleau-Ponty's reassurance found in our Nerve Meter? Almost nothing. In other words, almost everything. All of this attention is focused toward that remaining question.

A welcome note...(The tale of two cities and one hungry mechanism)

So, the sojourn is over, The Nerve Metre is back in storage awaiting its time and place for continued interstitial negotiation. The inhabitation of Conical Inc made manifested some interesting outcomes - text, dialogue, interactions were accumulated, and continue to do so, databases were extended as were the territories of the installation itself. The frequencies drifted through Fitzroy, and the art pod that is Conical; and the frequencies of Fitzroy and Conical were re-fabricated through the modular apparatus. The 'modular' association took on a whole new realm, in a zone known or becoming known for its modularisms; readymade styling outlets provide the new money with their creature comforts, 'the look' to impress family and friends, signifier's of the upwardly mobile. The conductor decided to purchase his own wheeled apparatus, so as to negotiate the terrain in search of sonorous zones hidden in the cityscape. Underpasses, alleyways, interstitial realms ready to be sampled and re-applied. Grand gestures were admired, documented, however later deleted due to memory issues and the ongoing nature of the Nerve Metre, its hunger for fresh frequencies playing into the hands of the pan-capitalist war machine once again! The conductor was forced to make harrowing decisions about which outputs and previous creative responses were to be released into the either in a bid for megabytes, so as to feed The Metre. The moving image became the sacrificial, to make room for the new sonorities the NM required.
Again, The Nerve Metre tapped into the electric rhizome of the urban structure with apparent ease. Light switches, traffic lights, human presence, became modes of activation, implantation on the sonoral level. On opening night and very tired and some what delirious conductor let slip that the 'no-go-zone' of touch, would bring the mechanism to life. The 'director' was heard spreading the notion and several individuals were seen tinkering with the delicate antennae, some making a return visit for more 'play time'. The more subtle individuals realized the (NM) was already aware of their presence without the need for direct contact. They observed and listened, trying to situate the aesthetic into their favourite basket. The conductor, empirical by nature acknowledged the responses, always aware of the prescribed baggage that the artist/critic/viewer/curator will carry about like the turtle with its shell. The Nerve Metre was alive again...and up to its old tricks, though the conductor felt naked, where could he find a shell. Once again the (NM) had left him with explaining to do, and the one hour of sleep the previous night made this a some what excrutiating task. The 'oracle' made this somehow more bearable by engaging in the conductor's musings on the potential next phaze.