Antonioni (a point of indiscernibility)

Across Antonioni’s filmmaking, there is a recurrent moment of perception that may allow us to reflect on an emergent imagination after cinematic images. I believe that Gilles Deleuze touches on the potential of these perceptive moments when he considers Antonioni’s filmmaking in terms of what he calls “any-space-whatever” and Op and Son images in his *Cinema 2*:

"As for the distinction between subjective and objective, it also tends to lose its importance, to the extent that the optical situation or visual description replaces the motor action. We run in fact into a principle of indeterminability, of indiscernibility: we no longer know what is imaginary or real, physical or mental, in the situation, not because they are confused, but because we do not have to know and there is no longer a place to ask. It is as if the real and the imaginary were running after each other, as if each were being reflected around the other, around a point of indiscernibility."

The scenes of “any-space-whatever” that most interest me in Antonioni’s films, and which I would like to appropriate for this project, are ones construed too easily as hysterical. Beyond a clinical or “common sense” diagnosis of hysteria, the bodies of many of Antonioni’s most significant characters may be telling of a condition of psychic-bodily dissociation related to our present post-cinematic condition. What is sense and where is it located in space when the image one has of bodies related in space is elsewhere: withdrawn, discoordinated, psychastheniac (Roger Caillois)?

Continually this is the question I ask myself watching Antonioni’s films until his post-’68 work, Zabriskie Point (1970). Curious as a film after American counter-culture and social movements in the late-60’s (and not so different than any numbers of films in this regard: Hal Ashby’s The Landlord, Peter Watkins’ Punishment Park, etc.), Zabriskie is of particular interest to me as it presents a clairvoyant and senseless imagination in the face of social despair and political-judicial distopia -- the “states of exception” of the late-60’s/early-70’s American polis and a “globalizing” polis now.

Like any number of Antonioni characters, the female protagonist of Zabriskie puts the viewer into an ambivalent situation of perception, a point of indiscernibility (Delueze), in the final scene of the film: is she a terrorist in actuality, or does she only imagine the detonation of a bomb at the hotel? How does this scene form a mirror for the perceptive lapse earlier in the film that forces the viewer to adjudicate whether the male protagonist has in fact shot a police officer or if he is merely a hapless innocent? Moving from a meditation on such images shall we consider particular tactics for revolutionary violence not in terms of sensory-motor coordination achieved in purposive movement, but in terms of an eidetic imagination imminently destructive in virtuality *and* reality inasmuch as the real is increasingly determined by the virtual? If this project risks creating a critical fiction it does so only to mobilize factuality towards a new situation of demonstration and thought we currently bear witness to in the wake of “Terror” and other geopolitical quilting points.

Annunciation (Arise to Descend)*

Or why are we still working in this factory?
to Sasha Steensen

To come down by a movement in which gravity plays no part. . . . Gravity makes things come down, wings make them rise: what wings raised to the second power can make things come down without weight?
– Simone Weil

A pleasure to work
The stutter
The very veil of gravity
Do not fail me
Now these
Second wings
Work is a pleasure
To lovely
Innocents

Work is a pleasure
Blue work
No separate
Love
Of video monitor
How we really
Talk beauty
To make money
To make movies

To make money
The way we move
Blue collar blue
Of virgin pleasure
Huppert with
Hair cropped
The other
Like Falconetti
When is the face free
Of this feeling
When of this
Pain second
Wings to stutter
Of Weil verily

Moon bluish-white
When will we
Descend from
Lofty denials
From ascetic skill
Monitors of
Bourgeois pleasure
Work is pleasure
Don’t distinguish
Work from pain or love

To make money
To circulate power
Of this desperate snow desperate winter
Of this monitor
Design alights
Promising Delacroix
Such wings

The working sing truly
Arise to descend
On second wings
The working
The unworking
Sing truly
Will beyond will
Blowing harmonicas
The beginnings of sing

Beginning sound
Track
Beginning sound
Track beginning
Traces
Of blue rewind rewind
Defer a moment on
This unshepherded snow
Shadowing pleasant tolls

Our pleasure to work
Beginning with
This poverty of love
The fullness of love
Pleasures of debt
Blue makes everything
Seen and soon
Heard in this whistling
Track this harmonic noon
Heard by this harmonic blue
Difference between boss
And worker
Difference between
Factory and tv

Matters of these second wings
Descend arise
Point to pleasures of sky
Sky blue with no one trail
Noon shaped by silhouette

And love why are we
Separate
And why don’t we turn
Why do we
Still work
In this factory
Do we still love
The sight
Of paint as it lights up?

*composed Spring '05.

WHOF forthcoming

Currently I am trying to take WHOF off blogger.com. I am doing this out of want to not support a corporate site such as blogger, as well as to organize the blog more effectively. Here are two prototype images for the new weblog-site:

Hirschhorn Review at Fanzine

Check out my review of Thomas Hirschhorn's "Superficial Engagement" and other featured works at Casey McKinney's online journal, Fanzine (www.thefanzine.com).

Un-Sun*

Nearer to know less before afterward schism in sun.
– Susan Howe

Michael writes of sun, but all I can think
of is sunsickness, too much in the sun
never a daughter. As if God’s
light still shone on we who have shaded
our eyes.
– Charles Bernstein


Hardly veritic
a bold sun
moves below
(a sun, the son)
assuming place

Emptier
than light itself,
more weightless than any
two year old
mule.

Hardly
can we get
a rise noon sinks
to what we
sup

What wine won’t
pass and
bread any longer,
commoner solarized?

Return to ‘dark
rooms’, dark star, exposure
their
swashbuckling a
gnostic shadow show

But there won’t be
this reckoning,
pilgrim
let it be said ...
no birds surprised, no sun arrived
in this film’s unmaking.

Surprise us we are
still
trying to wake
up from ourselves this history
of night sunlight
burns
caesuras half-deferred
flies in the appointment.

Up-late with
Descartes
the owl flies by night
but we are still here
(We are
we are still
still here)
chiasmic as
the present is long
and hangs
like the hives of deixis
in hell’s
equal reverse.

We are still here ...
the bandage eventually
becomes
the face the mind
has concrete
for ears the better
to cover us with

Chiasmic as
a moment is never an ‘event,’
and an ‘event’
never
an ‘occurrence,’ and
an ‘occurrence’
never a
‘route’ of ‘concomitant parity'.

The poetry must give shade as well.
It was always gonna rain
(when it should not).

*Composed Summer 05

Our Music*

Making for the tears of newsreel
And the images with-
out
Tears enough
Reversed by equal hell

This piano music drifts-off
Resonant with
Our image people
Will tend to be
Two
As lovers they do not
Love the one
State strives to be

An equal hell reversed
In a reverse shot
Making for
The tears of glory
Eros
Everyone’s terrible here
All they do is
Cut our heads off

Nuns submit, children throw
Bunker stones
Striving
To love the one
An anti-love
Come to me and flee to come
Numeric bits of stones

Come to me resonant with
The broken skin
Of image blood
Come to me resonant with
Notes spent more ingloriously

*composed Spring 05

Others Letters: Aysegul Selenga Tasken

3.12.06

"Thank you for
telling

me about
the

Shakers it

sounds

interesting
especially combining

contemporary

art with this kind
of rituals

I will check
it out

I was reading
your blog yes the

life & death
percieved

in Islam is really

very different
from the Christian

world but

actually I
am not sure

if it is right

to generalize
it

as Christianity

or Islam
because

different countries combine

cultural traditions
with whatever

religion
they practise Turkey

is a secular country
but has extremely

strong ties

with ancient history

and traditions
in Turkey

the dead
are buried under

the soil
with no

coffin

no clothes

no make-up
just wrapped

in a white linen

the idea behind
is that

the flesh
doesn't

have importance

but the soul has
so the flesh

should combine
with the soil

as soon
as possible

if there are flowers
spread
from that soil

it symbolizes

'new life'

and the relatives
of the dead
water

these flowers
on the tomb

the faster
the body becomes

one with nature
the better
it is

I thought
this might sound

interesting for you

as for my project
being close to home

well yes and no

today's
Konya is a very

conservative

almost fundemantalist but also
a very political

place I was born
and raised in Ankara

the capital
which is a very modern

secular city
you wouldn't

believe the mentality

difference between these
two cities

although the physical
difference is only

3 hours

Sufism is
an other world

the 'Asia minor' then
was much
more

sophisticated

and much
less political

than the 'Asia minor'
now

many people
are happy to associate

today's whirling dervishes

with recent politics
and with

the so-called
liberal

Islamic political parties

something
I cannot stand

luckily enough
the ideals

of sufi mysticism

remains
the same

Rumi highly

mentions the issue
of life

& death in his poetry

as for the rahle

it is not
exactly a chair
but

a reading board

a reading table
it has

an X
shape

and you place
a book

in the center

the person who reads
from rahle

sits

on the floor

on the cushions
I don't know

if you can find one

in this country or

at least
for sale

but I
was thinking
of

creating

one DIY”

ing ear*

to Jalal Toufic




Silent demonstrations in a wilderness in a wilderness where we meet in the sea you meet me in the sea because the sea is calmed because the sea is calmed it is a violence they are a violence of these silent demonstrations the waves demonstrations of an atom splay the screen we always watch we watch in silence escaping an awareness of audience

The meaning of every adjacency not merely arbitrary because there remains a world because there remains a world in the world we are a meeting more or less violent of waves in the sea their silent demonstrations fact of our watching protect me without from a murderous scene murder an image turn another page

Of our own watching she gave her back to me on a postcard advertising our own watching a murderous fact of the waves the screen is here for everyone to see the same vision these two taken together yet how distant they are

On a postcard of paradise guarding the guarded so we mark this watching an image can be murderous or the lack of all distinction an extra sound to our voices in the sea those silent demonstrations seabird calls repeat

Her back to me means we must protect each other from power overhearing our own watching a murderous fact let’s retake seabird calls a calling before the sea to find for an image protection fulfill this nothing

Fulfillment of this nothing of this nothing of this blank repeatedly the fire what is called the fire the fire what is called by name but if you call us by our proper names do we respond to history what is called from fire from heavy fire in those hills

On the knees on the knees for the night and thin thin for this burden this burden the body won’t eat is it for want of names for murderous facts or other points in space

If we can advance points by these circles fulfillment of this nothing the futility of our travels discover nine planets begin on the knees for the night and thin thin for the image compared bursts into instant song calming a frame a frame of wildness flame from dry strips of cloth and twig











In the woods losing the name you would be called by or in the mirror presupposing no life of the name that would guide you through this night that must be left to other hands

To other hands heavy fire loss of boundaries and gaining gaining upon the image directly a beam a beam from the bulb of our guided hands

Guide of our hands the illusory plucked petals of this time resurrect me resurrect a name without boundaries and magic magic of those progressive reversals of springtime

Gaining the horse upon the sound of the gulls tape displaces all voices images of a voice out of synch the small atavisms of these ways

Presupposing Chernobyl Sarajevo Iraq Palestine Sudan Rwanda Hiroshima Auschwitz Armenia...

Misinterpolations taken as amnesia
The latest life of the dome
Of the dome accruing to it the life of the countryside
Of olives figs milk and tea
Of the last taste of honey in a collective time
Stutter the passage of this recurrence
Points on a shifting interval of travel
Guide of our hands the illusory plucked petals
Every moment is initial of this springtime
A renewed assuming of names


















For how long the guide the guide of our hands through the streets these bombs no longer touch the distance of our ways they must be a unity of form to have remained alive for so long

Bring me to my name again forgiving that I have been gone from myself a little monument of a larger unity I hope these bombs won’t touch

His bleeding feet the animal when we arrive has called to me to bring it food a project of these calls across these desert walls their functions

A forum of gravity be a unity of form the animal among the traces of these walls what gazes is always of ourselves lately we have come to guide the guide

But let the aura be the means of our geography therefore our memory multiplicities declaring no light has yet arrived

But let the aura be a light in the world again after none could be called by their true names in truth the stones failed us so we kicked them down substituting for each petal a similar blindness of sense
























It arrives to arrive the beloved not merely loved a bead of these ways in caravan to see a wall as a prism hope of new phases

She is walking away from me in that garden where the guards are guarded and don’t speak to demonstrate the violence of an image she walks away with a horse it turns three times slowed by the edit on a beach before the broken waves

She walks away from me from me so I may see her name as a back turned an injunction to turn to guide the guide back

Back to me if we could be a name for nothing for nothing presents this green of a name of petals what virtue in reverse reversing power a pride of fathers plucked kingdom within a kingdom inaugural

Here to hear to hear this violence not seen seizes the silence of a violent naming Lear of a drama of power silent again after images in paradise the lines went spoken














To speak those lines those lines weep

of which we are nothing
an argument
demonstrates the waves

of which we are
an unsaying
of these horses waves ways
drawn away after the storm

no violence can accomplish this
an unmaking of forces
in a painterly universe
the frames of nothing the
titles record







those horses waves turning spray
spray no books with no letters no pages
pages became undeveloped
no violence can accomplish this unsaying

to hear those lines those lines wink
drawn away after this blank space
perhaps no one truly listens anymore
an argument in silence demonstrates the waves
non-action of her point

non-action in a painterly universe points
a universe of the gaze the horse draws away
non-action in a painterly universe
a field for the high and forgotten
surviving the forgetting

of children surviving
the forgetting of these lines
generation does / generation does not
non-action in a painterly verse
obverse of the gaze
shade towards forgetting
a field

weep for the forgetting
forgetting of those lines that weep
generation unsays its lines
this horse breaks into
its reverse
so can the waves



waves silent violence
heard for every new love
playful spraying a book
longing to be heard
and therefore seen
seen and therefore
heard

substitute these lines
these lines these
petals for me

substitute these petals
these lines these
petals
these lines for me




In a blank time
*composed Spring '05