THING 001 : TERMINUS
MARGARITA ATHANASIOU
THE LIONESS ONLY SWIMS WHEN SHE HAS TO [EXTRACT]
The weatherman turned around and yelled:
“Can you not see I’m a woman?!?”
We gathered, eight or nine of us, that night.
We built houses out of live fire and sat to watch them burn into shape.
You said: “I wish I was an email so I could travel anywhere immediately.”
I said: “I wish the ground was all warm water, so we could sail through it together.”
Arthur complained about the veggie sausages.
CARA TOLMIE
PLATEAU FINDING, ONE AND TWO
So, if I am to feel anything. I should first try.
ONE & TWO: They were exhausted and they were bored. They were also angry. They were also frustrated. They wanted something else. It wasn’t working for them anymore. There was nothing left but struggle. They were done with this game. They wanted to make their own plans. They wanted to build. They wanted to have control. They did some research. It was time they faced facts.
They had been avoiding this because they didn’t know what it would be like once the inevitable came. Thirds could see that there was no inevitable, only ritual and trust in probability.
Time was up. Fourths had said that their time would run out. That they would both break, that it was in their nature. They were too alike. That’s what they were told. Thank you Fourths.
They should have asked Thirds. Thirds would have said that there was no nature. Only reaction. Only decision.
* * *
Now, here they were.
ONE comes in from left to right, straight down the middle.
TWO comes in from the bottom, stops, looks around, sniffs the air.
Cold the greeting. Facing forward facing to the side. Unforgiven. Charged, wanting fizz, wanting release, lying in wanting. Crying already.
ONE sits down. Forgetting. Now here, now committed. ONE is loyal to chronology, ONE wants things from life, wants to know that where ONE leaves ONE’s biscuit it will still be there when ONE returns from the toilet.
TWO leans against the wall. TWO sticks to things, they say ponder. Wants to believe, really wants this. TWO questions being here but trusts in the inevitable. But firstly TWO questions the stability of the wall now leaning against.
They both wait for the other. Cold the greetings. Tensing. In for the long wait. But then…
IT BREAKS. TIPPING. GOOD GOD WHAT A MESS. TEARS AND NOISE AND MUCK.
* * *
ONE: Oh shit, god…oh god… I didn’t think it would be this sudden.
TWO hyperventilates whilst trying to cry, vaguely manages neither. Has to keep moving, searching for the cry and the breath, keeps moving but can’t find either. Touches things. Picks up and looks under. Diverts, diverts, moves, gasps, grasps. Just wants to wail, can’t find it. Wants and then wants.
ONE rubs. Pushes. Fourths would say ONE pushes, presses, pressing eyes back into sockets. No tears, pathetic. What to do? No fourths here now. What did they say, think! What did they say? Push, try pressing. Press toes against ends of shoes, wanting pressure. Never enough. Not strong enough to re-break, take the breaking on. Stuck left pushing, can’t break. Stay calm. Oh yes, I have training. Pressings, curl and hold, hold – hold.
TWO panting. Fourths, where are they? They said I grab and wail. That’s wrong, I can feel the wail and the breath follow me, it’s here like fourths said but it’s not for me. I can’t get it near enough my mouth for a swallow. Not for me after all. Sniffing. I taste wail, I
want you, I want you, you here, me here, but you say no, you turn me away. This not faith, you and I. Grabbing hands, TWO.
* * *
Stuck in. Fourths said torture, TWO was afraid, ONE under illusion of preparation.
Thirds said fear is an opportunity to work, take, this is advice. Don’t listen to Thirds. Pure box. Energy still holding. This is felt ONE + TWO. Bodies feel, shapes are pushing in shoulders and chests and toes. Crude, turning against muscle and organs. Energy still
holding, shouldn’t have eaten. It takes long, running out is feelings, sore panic. Still here. Still here. Close eyes. Still here. Open eyes. Oh god, still here. Panic. Still here. Body bits in muck. No wipe – muck fills.
The privilege of time passed (only ours). Only cultured. ONE + TWO no liberty after all. Should have listened to Thirds.
Just to wait for change now. Catch up of sight to soggy shapes. Muck. Finding ONE + TWO, plateau finding. Thirds say no change. Thirds say no catching up without work, submission. And ingesting, trust no finding without patience.
ONE + TWO here. Saying no both.
We need to sweat, now. Please? No sweat without hard work to ONE + TWO.
We had no idea it would be this way.
Fourths dead. ‘You’ve begun to notice that its always in/on another stage that things are brought to their conclusion’. Fourths died.
THIRDS: But just when its time for the story to begin again, begin again “It’s Autumn”. That moment when things are still not completely congealed, dead. It ought to be seized so that something can happen.
ROSIE RIDGWAY
LOST IT
JEN CALLEJA
AN INTERSEMIOTIC MISTRANSLATION OF CHRISTIAN MARCLAY’S THE CLOCK (BOOK)
IMAGES OF THE CLOCK (ON TOUR) BECOME THE INCESSANT REPETITION OF THE MALE GAZE: PATRIARCHAL FOREBODING / CARTESIAN TRANSPHOBIA / PREOCCUPYING SEXIST DISTRACTIONS
MOVE THROUGH TIME AS A FLUID, FULL OF EMOTION – DISRUPT LINEAR (PATRIARCHAL) TIME – READ FROM A POINT OF VIEW – RE-ORDER AND MISREAD
TRANSLATIONS ARE ALWAYS (CONSCIOUSLY IN EXPERIMENTATION, UNCONSCIOUSLY IN TYPICAL TRANSLATION) PERSONALISED AND NOT DEFINITIVE
Day I Day II Day III 1 Two nineteen p.m. 14 Three twenty six p.m.
1“This is a song about the crisis of masculinity“
2We arrived in Sheffield on time / early
3A national radio station has a call-out for suggestions for a female playlist
4A major record label is looking for female musicians to forge the next big thing
5We enter a record shop and I stop at the circular table greeting us politely at the door that’s serving books, vinyl, CDs and a female identity crisis
6I imagine the staff wear gloves and finger the selection
7A friend of a friend’s keenness overspills
8We’re in Nottingham with time to kill
9The notice board reads STUDENTS TODAY – LEADERS TOMORROW
10Overlaying it, a line-drawn woman on all fours with ‘dot to dot’ in child’s scrawl, a gap where her backside, breasts, mouth, feet should be, a hollowed mutilation over gig listings to dig holes in, swell or stunt
11I put my glasses on while we write a set list – a quick install of reflectors –
12Now I can wryly watch the young men and women breaking pit etiquette in bleached out goggles
13I feel the presence of a guy next to me as he peers at my face from the side
2 One fifteen p.m.
3 One nineteen p.m.
4 Two sixteen p.m.
5 One sixteen p.m.
6 One sixteen p.m.
7 One ten p.m.
8 Three thirty four p.m.
9 One seventeen p.m.
10 Four fifteen p.m.
11 One twenty p.m.
12 Two oh eight p.m.
13 One thirty p.m.
15I’m a fortress of ambivalence behind these lenses, watching the verbose hardcorers take their time to clear out, only to perch on one side while we set up
16The legendary deejay is here looking on edge in a black coat and looped scarf
17The young support band have an emergency meeting in the roof garden
18On stage, right after playing – maybe with a tone still ringing –
19I’m patronised out of a boy’s personal frustration
20I try to throw him off with a handshake
21He leans forward then pulls back to reel me into an embrace over the drumkit, I try to keep my heart out of it
22In a stairwell to the bathroom, a man tells me the best bit was my hair, and reaches out to stroke it
23I descend quickly, quicker than I would have liked
24In front of the venue, holding a bag of sticks, the electrical tape and the kick, a guitar over my shoulder with a makeshift strap
25One of the pillars of exuberance puts a hand around my waist and tells me fleetingly I “slayed“
26It’s my disbelief that lingers, and a catalogue of distractions, of total crimes
27We’re in Manchester, late for an interview for local radio, gliding across tramlines.
15 Four p.m.
16 One fifteen p.m.
17 Three fifty nine p.m.
18 Two oh one p.m.
19 Two oh one p.m.
20 One seventeen p.m.
21 One p.m.
22 Three twenty-nine p.m.
23 Four twenty p.m.
24 One fifty p.m.
25 Three thirty five p.m.
26 Two fifty nine p.m.
27 One twenty nine p.m.
LOZ CHALK
WANNA DIE
+
UNTITLED
ALEX BRENCHLEY
MAXIME ITEN
THE FABLE OF THE IMMORTALS
The giant fuzzy rocks crumble down to the southern Cornish shore like the neglected playthings of some massive toddler. Soft and cushioned by lichens, they make for a padded descent to the sea. Near the bottom we (the famous five) spy a large resin statue lodged between the rocks, partially obscured by an eroded flip-flop.
It conjures the Ronald McDonalds of forgotten idyllic service stations to this salty afternoon, which would otherwise be timeless.
Warmed by the sun, the hollow fibreglass mesh emits a sticky faintly bodily smell that prickles and is so animal yet chemical at once. You can almost hear the friction of children’s skin squeaking
(fine hairs standing on end)
as they would clamber on top of it, hoping to animate it. I was never sure if that smell actually came from the material itself or from a coating of spit and grease left by these kids.
(the sort thing my mother would look upon with a horror turned inwards, demonic germs dancing on the insides of her eyelids)
Perhaps one day I’ll make a giant resin nose and get to the bottom of it.
Though in truth, this salvaged figure was not all that different from all the other plasticated beach-side detritus.
So if time were a sieve attempting to homogenise history into a fine powder, the ceramic crockery from the middle ages as well those from IKEA, would get caught in the mesh.
But it was positively ‘Druidesque’!
Sporting a hooded cloak that concealed its implied body entirely. An influential prop!
Perhaps used to convince some hapless-Discovery-Channel-watcher of an Atlantis where citizens have laser-cutting eyes.
But because it was resin, and because it was hollow, it was also light and we carried it with us along the coast path.
A biodegradable coffee cup is melting into the puddles of rainwater on a granite bench, bolted to a floor tiled with bricks in a brutalist estate that resembles a stylised version of a future half-submerged metropolis, built on the fallen bricks of the London Wall.
A duck ascends the stairs out of the modernist water feature, placing its naked webbed feet on the tiles where one imagines there is a murmur of residual heat, making a soft ‘pat’ at every step.
And they were born without skin. Organs and bones falling out of a body like a shopping list.
But the horror of surface area!
Tangling exposed veins connecting, living, like the streets of Naples.
Streets that branch off ever more intricately, to then just stop, as if at the border of some invisible membrane.
Sprawling and blind, spasms at the base of a volcano.
Pebbles cast into the abyss
In biohazard bins they grew skins.
Written off to the custody of biowaste with only morbidly curious doctors for parents.
Someone thought to skin them to see if they could grow some more.
They did.
The mortals poked the immortals and they both gasped at the feeling.
The immortals grew older, they realised that it was unnecessary, merely decorative, but they took a human form so as not to disappoint.
All the while, the mortals harped on about organs. And so the immortals taught them how to grow them. Rows of lungs, and what marvellous livers! And both did giggle in delight when the mortals fashioned their very first limb.
But somehow the flame was lost and they started to drift apart.
Without very much thought, the mortals set about building cornucopias of flesh without cadavers.
Ecstatically pasting bodyparts to eachother.
They really weren’t very nice to be around anymore, kind of rude even.
In fact, the immortals couldn’t see the point of even looking like them anymore.
There really wasn’t much else to say, so they hid their new forms under loose fitting robes and left.
Song for Winter at the Bus Stand/ Poem for the apocalyptic wet dream
The daylight is frail and uninterested,
Winter days here are like a stillborn squinting.
A crumpled grey eyelid peels itself apart slowly
Only to muster half a glance,
The size of an ashen Clementine segment,
Then wearily shuts again, returning to a dreamless sleep.
And in this dreamless sleep
the Evening Standard’s stack high in the corners of the evening,
With only one day to live.
Doomed to become some rain watered paste that plugs the holes of porous buses.
Freshly showered commuters stink of shampoo
Yellowed by instant coffee
And it’s hard to take a joke at a bus stand.
The whole world collapsed to span of one stretch of road. Like in old video games with static frames. Whatever vanishes from one horizon will appear at the other.
And the same boring litany of sounds.
Coughing drink tins
Other buses, clattering through other potholes like trapped metal in a welded frame.
Chafing receipts, Carrier bags scuttling
(Which no poetic eyes can gild)
And the pathetic rattling bone dance of the twirling leaves.
(Don’t they know that in the movies they prefer to use crisp packets for that sound)
Boris says I should get a bike.
And it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the bus coming around the corner.
And so mortality wasn’t even rushed to the hospital. It died in the middle of an Olympic stadium. Spasmodic convulsions captured in floodlights.
Its death rattling wheeze,
only just audible over the din of slightly perturbed murmurs.
Sweat and neon sports clothing pasted to its body, icy in the summer’s evening.
The other competitor’s pending in their positions, drawing with their feet on the Tartan Track™
unsure if the race will continue and suspiciously eyeing each others movements.
No one even attempted to revive it, and the paramedics sat there watching like lemons.
No one even thought about how this was the last time anybody would ever see anyone die.
(They probably did think about it later)
Mortality spent its afterlife frolicking in the animal kingdom where it would never die again.
But something here was a little amiss.
A metallic smell of dried blood in the air
Crusty bandages.
Harvest Clinics moving into vacant fast food shops. One resin mascot replaced by another
Something fetid and pink stinking
An intestinal cloud slumped on the dawn of this utopia.
(not quite the luxury yachts and fruit juice we had in mind)
And it’s the ‘give a man a fish’ proverb all over again
This technology is stilted in the hand of man,
Backward and verbose like
a shoddy sentence that one, try as they may, cannot make juicy.
It was then that they noticed for the first time that the immortals had left them. All ready, tail between legs to apologise, to beg forgiveness, to prove their maturity, to beg to be taught about what they didn’t understand, but it was too late.
And the sheepish cogs of their sheepish minds creaked.
“Perhaps they’d come back if we honoured them?”
said a voice, not even believing itself.
So they made half-assed resin statues.
(based on the eyewitness accounts of a handful that saw them go)
More pebbles into the abyss
Adorning each clinic’s parking lot.
And pumped up this Frankensteinian turn best they could.
Live for the Weekend feat. YOLO vs. Eternity
If hedonism tripped over a log in a wood, would anybody care?
Toilet Taoism for the teenage pot smoker
Nihilism couldn’t be more chuffed, puffing away with that ‘I told you so’ look on its face.
(my mother used to keep Being and Nothingness next to the toilet paper)
So what does happen when a late capitalist society simply cannot die?
(Providing, which is true for this fable, that everybody is extended this privilege)
Some sort of overjoyed singularity?
Where would we put the prisoners?
Banished to a Nutraloaf land, with Nutraloaf clouds that scuff their bellies on shrivelled volcanoes.
A reproachable mild breeze blows
the ‘lifers’ lazily graze
licking the ground
(trying to remember what salt tastes like)
outside the ostentatious immortal city.
TOM CLARK
BELLA MARRIN
WILD MEANINGS
AARON ANGELL
SOME IDEAS FOR RACEHORSE NAMES [EXTRACT]
Seaplane Spirit
Zardoz
Weekend Killer
Patio
Ancient Croydon
Dr. Horse
Croydon Gal
Tile Giant
Kebab
Doorknob Felon
Old Jug
Krautrock
Fishing Permit
Mr. Fist
Venus In Cancer
Earthworm
Mushroom Cult
Nightmare Essay
Early Reggae
Finger Time
Grave Concern
Sunny Side Up
Oil Creature
Breakfast Bomber
Horse Prison
Dreadlock Dinner
Universal Glue
Hedgehog Pie
No words
On Draught
Forbidden Feeling
Check The Oil
Turnoff
Rockpool
Haunted Mansion
Call Me Homer
Seatoshiningsea
Rooftop Speaker
Frienemy
Struggling Restaurant
Eat My Shorts
Moveable Type
Vegetarian
Lookatmycar
Virgin Prophet
Coconut Radio
Bull Venus
Psychic Postman
Orgiastic
Stop Shouting
Mt. Olympus
Followthatcar
Oarfish
Private Garden
Young Man
Poor Clare
Garden Goblin
Devilyoudont
Lonely Cloud
Keyhole Special
Mystery Surgeon
Metal Detector
Troy Dance
Stone God
Distant Posse
On Brown Hill
Once Bald
Turning Green
Witchfinder General
Sleeper Service
Doyouloveme
Wrong animal
Parrot Fashion
To Scale
Don’t Blink
Channel Ferry
Strange Request
Jail
Gentrify It
T.V. Terror
Variations
Gerontocrat
What Chance A Beggar
Jungle Jalopy
Policeman Sue
Diamond Tip
For Mum
Icehouse
Full Sentence
Aviatrix
Try Looking
Propinquity
Visibly Upset
Raggamuffin
Metalhead
Cannibal Comic
Impossible Image
Tramp Town
Tollsforthee
User Error
Second Income
Funnier in Horse
Freezer
Hirsute
Hardman
Unisex Haircut
Margarine
Punch & Judy
Area 51
Cold Gem
Expresident
Two Man Bob
Murder Mile
Cheese Harbour
Rokeby Venus
Community Centre
Groupie
Earth To Ian
Landscape Architect
Tattoo You
Tiranti
Monorail
Planning Permission
Caryatid
Wandering Jew
Toga Time
Model Railway
Watermelon Sugar
Bricabrac
Ameliorate
Mirror Monster
Ask The Ref
Trubba Not
Demon Dictionary
Nuisance Caller
Milk Manor
Icebox Poet
Squatter’s Rights
Fort Fun
Copper Oxide
American Spring
A/I MALLET
STAYING IN TOUCH:
I: SMALL QUESTION, ARE WE IN SPACETIME OR ARE WE PART OF THE CONTINUUM?
A:HEY ISABEL
EINSTEIN’S EQUATIONS (BASICALLY) ARE
CURVATURE OF SPACE-TIME = MATTER-ENERGY CONTENT
I.E. AS FAR AS OUR CURRENT STATE OF KNOWLEDGE (GENERAL RELATIVITY) GOES, WE ARE IN SPACETIME, WHICH IS CURVED BY OUR PRESENCE.
HOWEVER IT WOULD BE NICE TO FIND A THEORY IN WHICH MATTER-ENERGY CAN ALSO BE EXPRESSED AS PART OF SPACE-TIME (OR VICE VERSA), AND THERE ARE PLENTY OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUCH THEORIES… I WOULD RATHER THAT MATTER-ENERGY COULD BE EXPRESSED AS PART OF SPACE-TIME SINCE THEN EVERYTHING IS NICE AND GEOMETRICAL.
ETC.
27/02/2012 – PRESENT
A: I study the turbulence of the solar wind. The “solar wind” is a plasma which flows outwards from the sun throughout the solar system. “Turbulence” is the chaotic motion of a fluid (or plasma!) on a wide range of length scales. One everyday example is stirring milk into coffee: making a relatively large motion (on the length scale of a spoon) injects free energy into the system, which is “cascaded” to microscopic scales by turbulence, allowing the milk and coffee to mix much more rapidly than without stirring.
The turbulence in the solar wind is a little more complicated. It might be important because if a large solar flare goes off, we really want to know what we should do so that all of our communications satellites don’t get fried, causing the collapse of civilisation as we know it. The environment that the energetic particles emitted by the flare propagate through is the turbulent solar wind.
I don’t do “real” experiments or observations – I simulate things on computers, normally several thousand at once. This has some advantages over working with real world data, since you know exactly what equations you’re simulating, and you know the data much more precisely. But we still have to talk to the people who make real observations, to know what to simulate, otherwise the whole exercise would be pointless.
I:The collapse of civilisation as we know it! Sounds exciting… do you find it helpful (for your everyday sanity) to think about your work as being potentially ‘important’ to civilisation or could you not give a shit…?
A: Honestly I just like thinking about physics. But you couldn’t really justify giving money from the rest of society to science if it had no benefit to them. That benefit can be pretty indirect or far in the future and still be worth it, however. Probably the same with art, I guess, except you’re improving the quality of general thought, directly or indirectly.
I: Improving the quality of thought – what an abstract purpose! I think you’re rare, as a scientist, in that you are able to think about what you do and communicate it in broader and more philosophical terms than lots of facts and terminologies,. A few years ago now you gave me Italo Calvino’s Complete Cosmicomics, which made a huge impression on me. I wonder how you came across it first, and whether you feel there is a place for fiction in scientific thought?
A: I’m not sure I’m that unusual really – science is certainly not just a list of facts, they are all connected into an interlocking system. I would like to think all scientists exhibit “love of wisdom” in some sense. I first read Calvino when I was 13 or so, I probably didn’t really understand it but it made quite an impression on me too.
If there was no room for fiction, or, maybe a better word in this context, imagination, there would be no science. Anytime someone does something new I would argue they have imagined it beforehand, and at that point it is fictitious. So maybe science is the act of making the fictional real, in some way.
I: The artist Robert Smithson (1938-1973) has said that artists are not seeking the truth, but the fictions that reality will become…make what you want of that! There’s this psychologist/art theorist Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) who tried to classify a ‘psychology of creativity’, you could kind of apply his ideas on ‘visual perception’ to mathematical perception I guess…
A: Probably any attempt to classify human thought into several separate spheres isn’t very reasonable. Kind of like species (remember all that growing up?..), its probably just a continuum.
I: Haha of course – you love a continuum!
It seems as though the deeper we ‘look’ mathematically into the structure of our existence the more out of kilter the question/answer ratio becomes… Is a ‘General Theory of Everything’ (a term coined by science fiction author Stanislaw Lem) still a tangible dream for physicists?
A: I think a tangible dream is a slightly oxymoronic statement :).
But yes, its a dream. I think its a common occurrence that the more we know, the more questions we have. Imagine the sum of human knowledge is the interior of some 2D region. The neighbourhood of the boundary of the region is what we know we don’t know, but the space outside the “known region” stretches out for some distance, and we have no idea how far it stretches out, potentially forever. Learning something new pushes out the “known region” slightly, but most of the time this will just make the boundary longer, increasing the amount of stuff we know we don’t know about.
There is a theorem due to Godel which is (very roughly) that in any logical system as complicated as arithmetic, there are statements which can’t be proved true or false. For example the undecidable nature of the statement “This statement is false” is a related problem. So I don’t know if this dream of explaining the whole of nature is actually realisable, or if explanation doesn’t in fact rely on proof.
Another point: even if we were to understand all the basic interactions of particles, etc, we still wouldn’t understand the world. As soon as you have a few very simple particles their behaviour becomes chaotic and impossible to predict exactly. That doesn’t mean that its pointless to try – for example, turbulence is inherently completely insoluble mathematically, but there are quite a few things we understand about it now, by making approximate physical models.
I: It’s a strange thought; even if, potentially, we could observe everything from cosmic to sub-atomic; we’ll never be able to link it all up in our puny, insufficient brains. Although maybe its actually a relief…it leaves space for (as you call it) ‘imagination’ to kick into action, a kind of undefinable ‘leaping’ of the brain that I think is key to our survival as a species (there’s lots of this feeling in AN-ARCHaeologY). Perhaps the lack of ‘leaping’ will eventually be our downfall…
A: Actually we can’t observe everything, but that’s a different story… Yes I think it could be our downfall. I’d rather we went out with a bang and made something better at leaping than ourselves, than slowly becoming stupider and stupider. I don’t know which will happen or whether we’ve even started along either path. Probably not.
I: I’m sure I’ve told you before that I took this wild module at UCL called ‘Magic to Science’. It explored the shifting (and inseperable) relationship between religion, magic, the occult and present-day science. At some point in our history as intelligent bipeds, FACT became more important than FICTION (in science anyway). Thus, over half of Isaac Newton’s work is carefully ignored… I wonder what you think about the future of science as a technology (the ultimate fact-machine)? I.e. Does it go MAGIC –>SCIENCE–>TECHNOLOGY? I’m thinking of the kind of weird anti-climax of observing the Higgs Boson as a particle physicist at CERN…the grand manifesto of this ridiculously complex technology is kind of a dead end really once fulfilled, or is it?
A: Yes I remember that!
Like I already said, I think there is always an element of fiction in science. However nowadays with grant proposals, etc, people have to attack increasingly small and easily solved problems, sometimes to the point of not doing much new at all, which is quite sad. One interesting thing for me, as someone who’s maybe more involved in the theory side, is that you make an (educated) “guess” as to whats going to happen, and then, sometimes, it does… I think its undeniable that facts are really important: the earth rotates every day, and so the sun rises every day, and “facts” like these allow our existence (by the way, there is no reason to really regard facts as facts, we just have a really base intuition about induction – if something has happened before, it seems like it will happen again). But to understand things there has to be a model that formalises our inductive intuition in a more concrete way, like the model of the earth rotating. In some ways any model is fictitious, in my opinion.
Technology: I dunno how connected it is to science, really. I guess it uses the models that science comes up with. I wouldn’t put it in the same class as science or magic though.
Yeah, the Higgs boson thing is a bit odd, because it was always definitely going to be found by the LHC, so to me that whole thing seems a bit of an anticlimax, which doesn’t really appeal to me personally – CERN are very good at PR though :). Lots of the people who were working on finding the Higgs are also working on other things that the LHC does, so their work continues, in maybe more interesting areas. What put me off that kind of physics is that we are rapidly approaching the point at which theoretical ideas can’t be tested by machines like the LHC anymore… so either we are stuck at the fiction stage, or someone really smart will come up with a better experiment.
Also, to go back a bit, having the Higgs does raise other questions, which they are now trying to answer – like you said, the question/ answer ratio keeps getting more and more out of kilter…
One final thing: In some ways I kind of like your scheme of MAGIC —> SCIENCE—>TECHNOLOGY: first of all people make up some model for reality (magic or myth), then test it and if it works in more situations than the original one, it becomes science; later, someone can come along and use that model to actually make something; technology.
I: I guess what I’m trying to ask is, do you worry that physics will eventually become a kind of enormous technological experiment that doesn’t actually require humans apart from to operate it? I’m thinking of CERN as an example of the enormous effort required to design a technology that is only the enabler of a relatively small and specialised field of science. It seems to be more about the innovative technology than the actual ideas / theories in a way. There’s lots of art like this too I guess…my feeling in art is that this kind of stuff is just dodging the difficulties involved in actually using ones brain. Like, REALLY using it…like Pythagoras or Diogenes…Technology seems to be the kind of ‘useful’ excretion of science, which makes me think of the quite terrifying example of Los Alamos and the legacy of the Manhattan Project whose shadow Grandpa must have worked under.
A: If there were no humans involved the LHC would never have been built. Its like a modern day Great Pyramid or Stonehenge in some ways. I don’t think we can really say its just an enabler of a small field, most of the technology has other uses, for example similar superconducting magnets will be used to make fusion power plants, etc, which could save us when fossil fuels run out… But yeah I’d rather we found a smarter way to do the same thing. However actually scientific projects like this consume not that much resources compared to hyperconsumerism or the military (in the US), and I personally think its much better to spend money on projects like the LHC or a new art gallery that could potentially enrich human existence than wasting it on every person buying a new car every year or new stealth bombers…
SIMI THE CURSE
AFTER THE BASS AND BEFORE THE TEXT:
SPELLS AND VERBAL REMEDIES COMPILED BY SIMI THE CURSE
on dry leaves are not
like sounds of insults
between pedestriansThose women laughing
in the window
do not sound like
air conditioners on the brinkThe river turtle
does not breathe like
a slithering boa constrictorThe roar of a bull
is not like
the cackle of a hyenaThe growl of a sea-leopard
is not like the teething cry
of a babyThe slash of a barracuda
is not like
the gulp of a leaping whaleThe speech of a tiger shark
is not like
the bark of an eagle-fishThe scent of a gardenia
is not like the scent of a tangerineFind your own voice & use ituse your own voice & find it
In meinem Leben als Fuchs In meinem Leben als Fuchs Ich wusste nicht In meinem Leben als Fuchs Ich leckte das Fell
by Leta Semadeni
war ich alles und alles
war ich auch das Licht
war zum Beissen
die Sonne mein Antlitz:
makellos
meinen Namen
war nur immerfort da
wo die Pfote die Erde berührt
war ich Hunger und Kälte
war Spiel und Locke
im Fluss und der letzte Geruch
ein Wegweiser
auf meinem Weg
durch den Wald
der Hügel
und fiel ohne Angst
durch den Raum
in den Farn
Mein Name ist Mensch Ich habe viele Väter. Ich bin über zehntausend Jahre alt, Und ich lebe von Licht, Ich bin über zehntausend Jahre alt, Wir haben einen Feind. Er ist über zehntausend Jahre alt Ich weiß, wir werden kämpfen, Es wird keine zehntausend Jahre mehr dauern,
by Rio Reiser
Ich habe viele Mütter,
ich habe viele Schwestern,
und ich habe viele Brüder.
Meine Väter sind schwarz
und meine Mütter sind gelb
meine Brüder sind rot
und meine Schwestern sind hell.
und mein Name ist Mensch!
Ich bin über zehntausend Jahre alt,
und mein Name ist Mensch!
und ich lebe von Luft,
und ich lebe von Liebe,
und ich lebe von Brot.
Ich habe zwei Augen
und kann alles sehn.
Ich habe zwei Ohren
und kann alles verstehen.
und mein Name ist Mensch!
Ich bin über zehntausend Jahre alt,
und mein Name ist Mensch!
Er nimmt uns den Tag,
er lebt von unserer Arbeit,
und er lebt von unserer Kraft.
Er hat zwei Augen,
und er will nicht sehen.
Und er hat zwei Ohren
und will nicht verstehen.
und hat viele Namen.
Er ist über zehntausend Jahre alt
und hat viele Namen.
ich weiß, wir werden siegen,
ich weiß, wir werden leben,
und wir werden uns lieben.
Der Planet Erde
wird uns allen gehören,
und jeder wird haben, was er braucht.
denn die Zeit ist reif.
Und es wird keine zehntausend Jahre mehr dauern,
denn die Zeit ist reif.
Slavs and Tatars “One of the more misleading and, unfortunately, overused terms in our era is communication. Though it sets out quite nobly – to share and inform – what it inevitably does best is to make common and ordinary. In order to restore some of the solemnity to the act of sharing, we turn to a less profane precedent: transmission. Steeped in the oral, in apprenticeship, in lived experience, transmission trades as much in the immaterial as in the tangible and concrete.”
Adrian Johns “The word piracy derives from a distant Indo-European root meaning a trial or attempt, or (presumably by extension) an experience or experiment. It is an irony of history that in the distant past it meant something so close to the creativity to which it is now reckoned antithetical.”
ball’r (madonna-free zone) トランズジェンダー舞踏会(マドンナ・フリー・ゾーン) by DJ Sprinkles “When Madonna came out with her hit “Vogue” you knew it was over. She had taken a very specifically queer, transgendered, Latino and African-American phenomenon and totally erased that context with her lyrics, “It makes no difference if you’re black or white, if you’re a boy or a girl.” Madonna was taking in tons of money, while the Queen who actually taught her how to vogue sat before me in the club, strung out, depressed and broke. So if anybody requested “Vogue” or any other Madonna track, I told them, “No, this is a Madonna-free zone! And as long as I’m DJ-ing, you will not be allowed to vogue to the decontextualized, reified, corporatized, liberalized, neutralized, asexualized, re-genderized pop reflection of this dance floor’s reality!” マドンナがヒットソング「ヴォーグ」をリリースした時、それがトランズジェンダー舞踏会の終わった事を告げた。ヴォーグという踊り方は特にクイ アー、トランズジェンダー、ヒスパニックとアメリカ系黒人の間にあった独特な現象だったけど、彼女の曲の中の歌詞「あなたが少年であろうと少女であろう と、あなたが黒人であろうと白人であろうと、全く関係ない」は、そのヴォーグという現象に特有の意味と背景を消してしまった。その曲からマドンナはお金を どんどん貰っていた、一方、彼女にヴォーグを教えたそのニューハーフはクラブでわたしの前に座っていた… 薬の禁断症状を示して、鬱々と、無一文で。だか ら誰かが私のDJ中に「ヴォーグ」とか別のマドンナの曲をリクエストしたら、わたしは「いいえ、ここはマドンナ禁止地帯です!わたしがDJをしている限 り、情況が無視され、企業化され、具象化され、中和され、自由主義化され、無性化され、よりジェンダー化された、このダンスフロアにある現実をポップバー ジョンにしてしまった曲でヴォーグする事は認めない!」と答えた。
A veces me parece… A veces me parece
by Roberto Juarroz
que estamos en el centro
de la fiesta
sin embargo
en el centro de la fiesta
no hay nadie
En el centro de la fiesta
está el vacío
Pero en el centro del vacío
hay otra fiesta.
Poem no. 25 Come!
from Ovartaci’s Secrets
See
This world
In twilight
And incoherent as the night
In the beginning.
Where the mad and the wise women
Are outside time.
The World Turned Upside Down In 1649 We come in peace they said The sin of property They make the laws We work we eat together From the men of property You poor take courage
by Leon Rosselson
To St. George’s Hill,
A ragged band they called the Diggers
Came to show the people’s will
They defied the landlords
They defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs
To dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common
And to make the waste ground grow
This earth divided
We will make whole
So it will be
A common treasury for all
We do disdain
No man has any right to buy and sell
The earth for private gain
By theft and murder
They took the land
Mow everywhere the walls
Spring up at their command
To chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven
Or they damn us into hell
We will not worship
The God they serve
The God of greed who feed the rich
While poor folk starve
We need no swords
We will not bow to the masters
Or pay rent to the lords
Still we are free
Though we are poor
You Diggers all stand up for glory
Stand up now
The orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers
To wipe out the Diggers’ claim
Tear down their cottages
Destroy their corn
They were dispersed
But still the vision lingers on
You rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share
All things in common
All people one
We come in peace
The orders came to cut them down
Peter Bichsel, in Zur Stadt Paris
“In Langnau im Emmental gab es ein Warenhaus. Das hieß Zur Stadt Paris. Ob das eine Geschichte ist?”
Emma Goldman
“The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is “public opinion.” Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled “queer,” “different,” and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.”
Bonnie Camplin “One must be absolutely unafraid of being misunderstood, misinterpreted, derided or dismissed as stupid or ignorant or whatever by those who profess to being “in the know” of that system or language, whether it be the clueless Bourgeois Hipsterism of “art world”/ fashion/ media, or the teachers at high school. Continual improvisation is necessary; if you keep moving around it’s harder to be nailed, it’s harder for your meaning to be shut down, and it’s good to keep it always, always opening out.”
John Trudell
“Leaders know you can’t trust one who follows. Followers know not to trust one who leads. They say whoever has the most money has the most power. That’s not true. Whoever makes the most money, basically is greedy! They say whoever controls the political vote system that’s power. No thats not power. That’s exploitation and deceit! But if we believe these things are power then obviously we don’t know ourselves and we don’t trust ourselves enough to know that we are connected to the real power source which is life and earth.”
Ich – Wie es wirklich war Ich war dabei Ich war dabei Ich war dabei
by Jochen Distelmeyer
Mir ein Art von Verschwinden
Die den Tod bezwingt
Auszudenken
Und ließ mich nieder
Wo ich mich beherrsche
In den Liedern
Und in den Sätzen
Nahm ich kein Ende
Nur eine Wendung
Zurück zum ersten Bild
Das wäre zu erfinden
Geriet zum Strudel
In ein Recycling
Und sah das Ende
In sich verschwinden
Und es fragt sich
War das etwa schon alles?
Lügt denn die Welt
Und wenn nicht?
Ist sie am Ende
Im Rückstand
Gegenüber der Moral der Geschichte
Eine Art von Verschwinden
Die den Text bezwingt
Zu erfinden
Andere Reime auf die Geschichte
Nicht auszudenken
Und ich verlor an Gewicht
Genau wie die Gedichte
Geriet in ein Rauschen
Oder war’n das die Mittel
Mit denen ich mich bewegte
Die Erfindung einzutauschen
Und es fragt sich
War das etwa schon alles
Lügt denn die Welt
Und wenn nicht
Ist sie am Ende
Im Rückstand
Gegenüber der Moral der Geschichte
Eine Art von Verschwinden
Die schließlich mich bezwingt
Zu Ende zu denken
Gegen den Schmerz
Unter dem ich mich krümme
Zurück zum frühsten Bild
Von dem ich eigentlich komme
Ein New Age Poster
Ein Lebenszeichen
Auf der Reise ins Innere der Trauer
Komm ich zum Ende
Vielleicht ein Anfang
Einer Art von Verschwinden
Und ich frag dich
War das etwa schon alles
Lügt denn die Welt
Und wenn nicht
Ist sie am Ende
Im Rückstand
Gegenüber der Moral der Geschichte
Und bin ich am Ende
Im Rückstand
Der Moral der Geschichte
More Time by Linton Kwesi Johnson wi mawchin out di ole towards di new centri wi want di shawtah workin day more time fi leasha a full time dem abalish unemployment
arm wid di new technalagy
wi gettin more an more producktivity
some seh tings lookin-up fi prasperity
but if evrywan goin get a share dis time
ole mentality mus get lef behine
gi wi di shawtah workin week
langah holiday
wi need decent pay
more time fi pleasha
more time fi edificaeshun
more time fi reckreashun
more time fi contemplate
more time fi ruminate
more time
wi need
more
time
gi wi more time
an revahlushanise laybah deployment
a full time dem banish ovahtime
mek evrybady get a wok dis time
wi need a highah quality a livity
wi need it now an fi evrybady
wi need di shawtah workin year
gi wi di shawtah workin life
more time fi di huzban
more time fi di wife
more time fi di children
more time fi wi fren dem
more time fi meditate
more time fi create
more time fi livin
more time fi life
more time
wi need more time
gi wi more time
In Those Years In those years, people will say, we lost track But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
by Adrienne Rich
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I