bigpeltbigpeltbigpeltbigpeltbigpeltbigpeltbigpeltbigpelt

Comfortable Shoes

2011-03-04T19:52:00.000-08:00

Obama in 2007: “And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.”

SHOOT YOUR DARLINGS

2011-02-24T23:35:00.000-08:00

I have to talk about Justin C. Beckman, and in order to do this I have to talk about Mericah:

The world this art was born into was red stated - the thin webs holding our blue balls together. To make a vintage point, this not-never quite purple won't mix right now, the differing advantages sought here are cells dividing, or vinegar and water: a society without society where everything I damn well please comes without my neighbor having no right to talk shit, but also climb-to-the-top asslickin industryland where every man's on his way to being richer than god. In these words, our most metropolitan and most agrarian of all peoples are hopelessly drawn along by the latter tendency while fantasizing about the former. Beckman's objects were born into the family (it's always a family) of the red stated, or uncompromising America, driven by the id of the market. This is a show about him and his industrial dream implement, the gun:

He says of himself: "self-reliant, beer-chugging, oversexed, car-loving, god-fearing, bible-thumping, resiliently unfashionable, undefeatable" - he is a creature of hollywood, but always a past hollywood, because he was typecast long before birth, and the present hollywood is probably too lefty gay. He has left practical reality far behind him on the open road, and makes up his propulsive ideology as he goes along. He is less interested in what reality is than with how he is to master it.

"God made all man different, Samual Colt's 45 made them all equal" - a six-knuckled extension of the fist, a good pistol puts a lipstick-sized hole through anything in sight, and that's about how far distant every creature or cowboy ought to keep themselves. Before Hollywood, these arms were a symbol of the state and their histrionic wars and questionable police to much of the world. Only in the wide open mouth of the American west were they the proper implements of lawlessness, and by the 50s, we had shown the whole world how to use them thusly, even if only in dreams and fantasies of every little boy unknowingly rediscovering his penis in Clint Eastwood. Which isn't to say that the artist didn't handle a few, or that the object is all idea to us that still live in America: to some that unnervingly muscular recoil and hours spent honing one's aim on a tin can represent raw meat that we can strap to the hood of our car, or a necessary protection for one's storefront, above and beyond the heroic bringer-of-death that every wannabe soldier is hopelessly attached to.

It is significant that alongside our endless circulation of the image of the gun, we also sell more real guns than anywhere else in the world (guns that are paradoxically manufactured in pacifist Sweden for the most part). But if the latter might make us equal, it's the former that makes us think we are:

Shortly after Obama's inauguration, the then new 'tea baggers' held a coming out party, rallying a 'militia' to bring guns as close as they legally could to the whitehouse to support the second amendment. 40 years before, the black panthers pulled a series of similar PR stunts. For better or worse, the most effective implement of lethal force an individual can possess is firmly in the hands of either Sarah Palin types or foreigners, and if it doesn't find itself their, it is in the hands of nostalgia itself, which is the conservative's most heroic stance.

Everything above encapsulates what I saw in the work of Justin Colt Beckman, free of judgement or gallery-experiential adornment. I aimed at writing it not as a critic, because I feel far too free of the dynamics at work in his art, being a blue-stater myself, and thus I hope I am writing the work in such a way that he might see his art accurately and viscerally represented in it.

His show is at Punch gallery on 3rd and Perfontaine in the TK building. You can see it tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

2010-04-20T21:38:00.000-07:00

[Reg Johanson 3.21.10]

2010-04-20T21:36:00.001-07:00

[David Wolach 3.21.10]

2010-03-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

[Cris Costa & Emily Fedoruk's Feminist Poetics Statement 2.28.10]

2010-01-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

[my introduction 12.06.09]

Big Pelt came about when the thought of putting on a series of poetry readings had the feeling of a plateau or a dead end - it would give pleasure without provoking a culture to any new growths. To follow out a metaphor from Rosmarie Waldrom - it can always snow and still never accumulate.

I wanted to occasion a series of events that would be entirely outside the three sites of poetic production available in Seattle at the moment. Big Pelt is not:

a) a 'poetry community' whose only role is blind support

b) a celebration of individualistic killjoys that criticize everything while producing as a means to self-congratulation.

c) a colony for some fetishized elsewhere to be followed closely via the web.

But after excluding comfort mongers, village explainers and sneers from nowhere, Big Pelt warms to the spectrum of poetic practices by presenting the contentious and articulate social bonds that grow in and around poetry here and now. These come in the form of talkies, theoretico-critical essays alongside poetry readings, so that, discernibly, the conversation pushes forward.

[improvised from notes, changed when I realized I was wrong]

2009-12-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

[Robert Mittenthal 12.06.09]

Notes toward an ecology of the practice of poetry

What I want to talk about is Isabelle Stengers' notion of an Ecology of Practices as a tool for thinking -- and what the implications of this might be for poetics and poetry – ie, for those who write and read and listen to it.

First as a preliminary example, I want to say that Irrational Dude viewed immanently, that is, from within its own practice, is not exactly irrational. While it’s not a fully logical machine, and it is admittedly full of fits and starts, it was an attempt to cohere or to foster its own force.

The title is a nomination from outside (my nephew’s nickname for me) – which Nico Vassilakis and I freely adopted -- which might anticipate the responses of some readers.

But it is precisely this kind of external (dismissive or critical) naming or labeling that is rejected by an ecology of practices.

Coherence is not necessarily logical, but rather it is eco-logical. Something coheres in relation to its environment.

B. STENGERS

Briefly, Isabelle Stengers is a philosopher who lives and teaches in Belgium. She wrote a number of collaborative essays on philosophy of science with Ilya Prigogine. Her influences include Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Serres, Bruno Latour and Alfred North Whitehead.

Unfortunately, her recent books Cosmopolitics (Cosmopolitiques) and Thinking with Whitehead (Penser avec Whitehead) – have not yet been translated into English. In these later works she’s still distinguishing between good versus poorly constructed science – but she moves more towards philosophy proper – using metaphysical tools to explore questions of knowledge.

For Stengers, science is inherently problematic since it typically attempts to stabilize the world.

I should say that I find Stengers very rewarding to read, but also difficult -- maybe in part because of the translation, but more likely because science was never my strong suit.

I’ll try to outline some of her underlying ideas.

1. She believes after Whitehead in the primacy of feelings and experience. The number of feelings or prehensions we experience greatly exceed our cognitive activity. There’s a lot going on below the level of cognition. Our bodies process lots of activity without alerting our minds.

This numerical superiority of feelings helps to explain the next concept which is that: we don’t own our own causes. For me this is a deeply held belief. I’ve been saying for twenty years that the words write me as much as I might write them.

Decisions are made but we’re not exactly their author.

Thus, free will is a problem. As Brian Massumi says: The skin is faster than the word. Feelings are translated and we too easily accept what arrives as our own thought. Perhaps the only free will humans have is in exercising a suspension – that is, in deciding not to act on the thought that arrives.

2. She’s interested in the Constructive (or process oriented – focused on becoming or how things change), rather than the destructive or the deconstructive (more focused on critiquing “being” or presence).

“You never construct in general, [but] always in relation with … a matter of concern.”

She’s a constructivist. She looks at how propositions (or entities or things or objects) are produced, and how these productions can (sometimes) become autonomous...

3. Constructivism is non-foundationist. That is, truth is a construction – so there is no primacy of truth. She’s against either-or propositions. It’s not the chicken or the egg, that’s a false choice. She won’t accept claims that separate themselves from the actual practice, the actual becoming.

It is along these lines, that she argues for the minor stage (or minor literature) and against the major – because the “major” always appeals to Truth (-with a capital T -- which by history’s lights must lead directly to freedom, as in: “the truth will set you free”) The minor resists this traditional form of “enlightenment” – ie, this appeal to truth.

Working from examples in the sciences, Stengers is against universalization (ie, against any world view or model) that would deny the validity of other theories and practices outside its own practice/discipline. Universalization usually denies the validity of all other theories.

She sees innovative scientific propositions as (in part) making fiction – & if the fiction is accepted, it modifies the scientific reality – in a sense it makes history. The “what if” that drives the innovative proposition is accepted as truth -- not necessarily a good thing.

4. Stengers is very much with Latour & Whitehead & the Speculative Realists against the bifurcation of the world into two realms: the human (or culture) versus nature. This has vast implications. One way to think about this is as a denial of the distinction between how we conventionally think about subject and object. They are, in fact, hopelessly intertwined.

For Latour, it is modernism that tries to purify the world by splitting it in two. Of course this distinction gives special transcendental powers to the human: the unique ability to cross the bridge between these two worlds.

The implications for poetry here are interesting. What does poetry look like if there’s no split between human word and world? What does a non-anthropocentric poetics look like? Is it a celebration of the democracy of all objects? Along the lines of: “Hello! tree” And what would a non-modern poetry look like? A poetry that would not privilege (the human realm nor) its own language.

I’m trying to write an essay suggesting that one example of what the non-modern might look like is visual poetry, which might be enhanced by crawling out of its own pigeonhole.

C. Ecology of Practices – as a tool for thinking.

It is performative, an attempt to address itself to practitioners of a field. “To dream along with” – “in a mode that is not critical, which [does] not remind [practitioners]… of limits inherent to their activity.”

An ecology of practices addresses how practices relate to each other. (but they can only partially relate). There are no practices that can be independent of environment.

"An ecology of practices does not have any ambition to describe practices 'as they are’…. It aims at the construction of new… possibilities for them to be present or, in other words, to connect. It thus does not approach practices as they are… but as they may become."

“If there is to be an ecology of practices, practices must not be defended as if they are weak. The problem for each practice is how to foster its own force, make present what causes practitioners to think and feel and act.” …

The challenge is to think: "par le milieu" (with the milieu) which implies becoming THRU the middle (without grounding definitions or an ideal horizon—in other words, unmapped) and WITH the surroundings. No theory gives you the power to disentangle something from its particular surroundings.

Blaser’s definition of the poetic resonates here: “The poetic is the language of the mapless.”

The ecology of practices as a tool for thinking must be immanent – so to the extent that it’s a critique, it’s an immanent critique. It wants to contrast rather than oppose. In fact it wants to find the stubborn facts and (ala Whitehead) to convert oppositions into contrasts.

Finally, it wants to affirm the positive value of attachment – which is what obligates practitioners. So it asks how it is that one belongs, and how that belonging obligates you.

D. POETICS

So, how to translate all this to the practice of poetry or poetics? Can there be an immanent critique – from within the practice of poetry?

The first step would be to situate the relevance and limits of poetic practice without engaging in critique. In other words, where are the borders with other practices and what questions matter – what questions make us think rather than re-cognize?

For poets and artists, one of the biggest questions that matter may be: how does one produce objects or poems that have lives of their own?

The next step might be to ask: what are the obligations or “attachment(s)” of a poet practitioner. How am I obligated? Frankly, I don’t know the answer – and maybe it’s not knowable.

Maybe obligation is in part about affiliations or involvements – the more of these you have, the more autonomous you become? Or are these attachments related to tradition, community or methodology?

Stengers says: Attachments are what cause us to think. So it’s probably not really pencil and paper, or keyboard and screen that makes us think. I’d suggest that what makes us think is more of an aesthetic question. There is some mysterious allure or charm in my relations and interactions with other objects/entities that causes me to think. Like an aesthetic judgment it is singular and uncategorizable.

Looking at disputes within contemporary poetics – this does cause me to think and hopefully not just to recognize what I already like or dislike. For example, why so many hated and still hate L-poetry & why the same thing seems to be happening regarding so-called conceptual/flarf poetry. I think there are clues here about how what attaches poets to poetic practice.

Looking around, it seems to me that the notion of a poet’s obligation implies a real tension between ethics and aesthetics.

According to Latour and Stengers, moderns (and post-moderns) confuse attachments with universal obligations – therefore they destroy attachments. They “feel free to define themselves as ‘nomads’, free to go everywhere to enter any practical territory, to judge, deconstruct or disqualify what appears to them as illusions or folkloric beliefs and claims.”

If one takes (and this is where I think I’m going) aesthetics as “a primordial form of relation and interaction,” in effect a first philosophy, then the obligation may be to struggle – to relate and interact. To connect. And not just to words – but to all objects /entities that one meets in the world.

Modernist (and post-modern) poets -- the ones I have most cherished -- often answer the obligation question by moving away from aesthetics toward an ethical answer.

I’ll end by walking through some quotations about poetic obligation, but first I should say that the manifesto-like answer to this rift may be to try to convert oppositions into contrasts, a phrase which I seem to be repeating. In this case, it would be to try to find an aesthetic place for ethics; an immanent place for transcendence.

E. OBLIGATION On Poets and Vice Versa

First some examples that are not foregrounding ethics:

T. S. Eliot on the ineffable: "The poet has the obligation to explore, to find words for the inarticulate, i.e., to capture those feelings which people can hardly even feel, because they have no words for them. The task of the poet, is making people comprehend the incomprehensible…"

Brodsky: to write well…

Neruda: to listen – to become a conduit… to society/others.

Afraid I might prefer Shakespeare: “The truest poetry is the most feigning...”

To aim at unachievable totality, perfect sleep, rested totality, burnt toast… Sincerely, Louie Zukofsky.

And some that are foregrounding ethics:

For Pound (Gertrude Stein’s village explainer) the obligation is to act correctly – to make new. Right poetics lead to right action.

Oppen’s obligation to the other is ethical – to take responsibility. It’s a linguistically self conscious ethics – [“ethics as a structure of relationship between self and other”]

For Reznikoff, the obligation is bearing witness to things not seen.

Horace: uses Aristotelian principles to give specific obligatory advice (like the Koran): “there should not be more than 3 speaking characters on the stage at the same time” and… “we forbid the comic poet to ridicule our citizens, under a penalty of expulsion from the country and a fine of three minae.”

Plato: It is the poet's obligation, wrote Plato, to bear witness. But if you bear false witness three times, that’s punishable by death. That is, Plato requires a personal guarantee – he distrusts writing or rather, other writers.

2009-12-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

[Rebar Niemi 12.6.09]

Bey, no date [Hakim. Radical philosopher, Marxist-Sternist, deviant. “The Architectionality of Psychogeographicism…” Hermetic.com. http://www.hermetic.com/bey/grotto.html]

The Babylonian grid-city wants memory to persist thru time -- smooth & empty time -- but as Dali showed, memory persists only in the deliquescense of measured time. The medieval-hermetic city (like Blake's Green Jerusalem) preserves memory but in a "disordered" way -- like akashic marmalade -- time which is textured & full. "Babylon" preserves order (or else!) -- but what happens to memory there ? Isn't it transmuted into the poison formaldehyde of History, the re-iterated tale of our poverty & their power, taxonomic myth of the ruling class ? Who can blame us for harboring both a nostalgia & an insurrectionary desire for the narrow winding alleys, shadowy steps, covered ways & tunnels, middens & cellars of a city which has designed itself -- organically, unconsciously -- within an aesthetic of festive & secret conviviality, & of the curvaciuos negentropic mutability of memory itself ?

A. Kerner in 1971 [George C. “The Immorality of Utilitarianism and the Escapism of Rule-Utilitarianism.” The Philosophical Quarterly. Professor @ Queens University – Belfast.] The act-utilitarian can defend himself against these and similar criticisms with some air of success. He may point out that he does not have to say that breaking a promise may be right, or that self-sacrifice may be wrong, or that there are no human relations which create prima facie obligations, or that equality and freedom may be sacrificed, or that you may make exceptions for yourself, or that punishing the innocent may be right, except in only a few, indeed very few, instances. For in calculating the total effect of our actions, we must consider also their " hidden " consequences, in other words, consequences which are hard to predict. But why should we fear such consequences and why is their prediction hazardous? The essence of the explanation which the act-utilitarian gives is that our actions have psychological effects on both the agent and others as well as sociological effects on human institutions and practices, and all these, in turn, will have an impact on the realizability of the summum bonum. The relation of our actions to the greatest universal good is often dizzyingly complicated. On the other hand, so the act-utilitarian argues, we have good reasons to believe that actions which go against recognized moral principles and ideals all tend to have in general a dilatory effect on the realization of the greatest good. They do damage to the indispensable psychological and sociological conditions for the realizability of the total utilitarian programme. Any broken promise or contract undermines mutual trust, any failure to sacrifice oneself diminishes the spirit of self-sacrifice, any betrayal weakens the sense of loyalty, any violation of the ideals of fairness, equality and freedom causes resentment and insecurity, any exception made sets a bad example and corrupts one's own character. Thus the alternative requires

B. Bill Emmott, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, 2003 , 20:21 Vision, pp. 272-273 (HARVUN4145) The findings of history are quite simple, even if it is not becoming any easier to implement them. To believe them, however, one must first believe in capitalism and in the fact that it has been the only successful generator of sustained improvements in human welfare that has so far been discovered. The next thing is to work out what it is that makes capitalism tick. Or, put another way, one must find out what is different about the places where it ticks and the places where it doesn’t. That is what an international study, Economic Freedom of the World, has sought to do every year since it was first published, in 1996, by eleven economic think tanks around the world led by the Fraser Institute in Canada. The correlations it finds between sustained economic success and aspects of capitalist circumstances suggest that most of the explanations lie in how poor countries are governed, rather than in natural disadvantages or unfairness by the rich. Those suspicious of free-marketeers should note that conclusion: it is government, or the lack of it, that makes the crucial difference. The aim of the study was to see whether countries in which people had more economic freedom were also richer and grew more rapidly. But the study also sought to define economic freedom, in the hope of capturing and measuring the things that matter in making capitalism work. Broadly, economic freedom means the ability to do what you want with whatever property you have legally acquired, as long as your actions do not violate other people’s rights to do the same. Goods and services do not, alas, fall like manna from heaven; their arrival depends on property rights and the incentives to use and create them. So the issues surrounding those are what matter: Are property rights legally protected? Are people hemmed in by government regulations and trade barriers, or fearful of confiscation? Are their savings under attack from inflation, or can they do what they want with their money? Is it economically viable for parents to send their kids to school? The study’s authors initially found seventeen measures of these things, expanded in the 2001 update to twenty-one, and rated 102 (now 123) countries on each of them, going back, if possible, to 1975. They then had to find ways to weight the measures according to their importance, and used a panel of economists to do so. The conclusion was abundantly clear: the freer the economy, the higher the growth and the richer the people. This was especially so for countries that maintained a fairly free economy for many years, since before individuals and companies will respond to such freedom they need to feel confident that it will last.

today spent making hit lists

in this dirty fusion restaurant, my hollow space

crisp echoes bouncing off a mountain an atoll

the last island on the left, next to a lovely dime and a half

attacking the sun has sunk compassed on lone man crest or rooftop

catch a glimpse of each suspended white note confidence man they are all about taste

troll on the bridge, the same crest a tore up pastejob they want to design

iterations oh such numbers i'm flossing just for you today a dedication

call dedication for one, and things not being the same for two

kicked in the head you called it grinning we won the toss

in all interior spaces remember. see those things

nearly just the walls hold all our things - arch hold us up too

got to know that it's for both jet black earrings, we want part and parcel.

so this one dime on the left

to my friend the dealer from shrink no tom deal in reality

tom deal say hush on the phone

do not put that last name in your phone

chanting my little brother had heft and a voice

i think he can grow into a rock like me

we hate rockers, we'll spit black and sometimes lie down a little mild

forgive the crew to my left that dime i think i owned that

you mousy and clothes on the ottoman

be embarassed, it was cute, a fix

a dark story about corners on a light time screen

oh moon i wanted you blown up

rocks do not experience tragedy

nor goons impenetrable cretins

in a plot eliminate the moons

Technical manual

If the large end faces outside, the world comes in

If the large end faces inside, you have control

Pet the cat

If it is even, make sure the ends are packed precisely

Do not move too quickly

Do not move too slowly

Do not attempt to average the two

Scratch the cat and fall asleep

Turn ons

Don't carry it around

Making noise in public is wrong

Find specific spots, keep them

Have no illusion of safety

Moving like that will upset the cart

Appear without a reveal

Save the leftovers

Hard containers work best

Do not use too large a container

Never mix new with old

Learn to spot fakes and spot wrong amounts

Be attentive to details and volumes

Think about a cylinder or an Erlenmeyer

Dirt and grime don’t make you better

Props and routines are helpful

Stomping is wrong

Crushing is a situational action

Kari Ann Peniche, you absolutely have to get out of bed. No one is going to bring you juice. Get it on your own. Don't you dare be so lazy. This is your life. For god's sake, live it like it matters to you.

No, you can't have a 100 calorie pack of oreos. out of the question.

Commence Interview:

Is it true that you are in fact a longtime resident of the PNW?

[Meow]

The pacific northwest, it can affect people. I read a book on Jack Keruoac said so. Did it affect how you ended up?

[Lick on]

Do you think its appropriate to act like this, always sexing yourself up in public? Stop getting your lick on. Stop it.

[Scratch]

And to stay so filthy! Poor manners, Poor Taste! I expected better from a former Miss Teen USA. Oregon, not so much. I've been to Oregon. It is very tragic. But really Kari Ann, being like us, it's unbecoming.

And you're such a fake lesbian! Give up the ghost. I bet that hair's not even real. You think you're so butch. Look, we all know you're just attention starved.

[Meow]

Maybe you've just been depressed. Not gay, a sex addict, and depressed. but then again. The cat is definitely on drugs. The cat probably wants to party. It does want to party. Seriously. It is on drugs. It just knows when party time is.

I worry about you Kari Ann. I can't fix your problems. you wouldn't let me. of course not. I'm not all northwest queerness for you. You are familiar with northwest queerness of course?

[Grab tail]

Listen kari ann peniche. sit still when you listen to me. no bathroom no ores no juice and no more two toned hair. you look much better even all over. very handsome mr cat. Really no need to project on me.

I am laughing at you. Kari Ann Peniche and I are just magnetic interference between halves. That's a thought experiment. What do you think about that Ms Peniche?

And you’re not dead yet. Fuck no. Can’t kill what you can’t see. Gotta discern. Prostitution ring? No comment. Sex Tape? No comment, consensual, only naked. Giggles? Check.

So I am running and running clouded in smoke

Maybe a warehouse or fire or just pinions those alone

Bones, eagles, grips, clenches, unfound

I am doing this for you. I am doing what I am doing.

Badman badlands and we’re on a road out of town

Diesel sun cuts to wheels, speed, jugs, which cuts to not my car. I don’t own anything except garbage and I roll forth

To mystic boy’s house, to a T in path a square in T

At the house I sung him little snips little tips

Ignored me, kept them in a jar, dark drank and dank

Furrow’d a brow, the lark so hanged on bad covers

Had a album unique from Winston-Salem where there are only two or three things including car dealerships, a hotel, cookout

Broke my heart damn near in half in a bathroom with a pile of sour kids

This is where the smoke came from? A drag and leftovers from the wiz.