--after Not An Alternative
To let it out so that [______]
Can’t use, blank that
Won’t produce, that for now
Won’t be a subject
Negates their using our
Emotions up in a public way,
Blocked by virgin forests
Participation reigns
Blocked by reified relation
Blocked by these tissues
The way this tear in the eye
Becomes commodity
An intellectual thing blocked
By the things we would share
So that [______] can’t use
So we communicate today
What images won’t remain
And names negated
By creative potential
Blocked by consuming the social
All that doesn’t remain
Will be let out,
The tear in your eye when it
Won't become.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Reenactment
A blank expanse we reenact
Because there is no beginning
To this rememory, no origin of
Your crying, how any one continues
Subtracted from this feeling
Of joy another monument, runs through
Our breath like green, like a lung hasn't
Taught / any / one / to / breath / yet
Incites horizons, green of what
Hasn't been said, punctures the world
One world-sized ear or lung
Undifferentiated with witness
Creamy expanses written before
A mark was, written before
A mark was the world.
Because there is no beginning
To this rememory, no origin of
Your crying, how any one continues
Subtracted from this feeling
Of joy another monument, runs through
Our breath like green, like a lung hasn't
Taught / any / one / to / breath / yet
Incites horizons, green of what
Hasn't been said, punctures the world
One world-sized ear or lung
Undifferentiated with witness
Creamy expanses written before
A mark was, written before
A mark was the world.
Friday, April 22, 2011
School Nite with the Commons Choir (@ Festival of Ideas)
MAY 7th & 8th
COMMONING MEETING,
a FILM and a performance by THE COMMONS CHOIR
This COMMONING event is part of SCHOOL NITE: a weekend long iteration of the Future City, inspiring reforms through art exhibition, lecture, performance and/or installation. Held in conjunction with the New Museum's Festival of Ideas for a New City.
LOCATION: School Nite will inhabit five stories of the OLD SCHOOL at 233 Mott Street
SCHEDULE:
MAY 7th
10:0PM in the Courtyard of the Old School with 30 performers:
The Commons Choir (conceived and directed by choreographer Daria Fain and poet architect Robert Kocik) will perform RE-ENGLISH. By means of choreoprosodia (the fusion of movement and prosody) the Commons Choir will draw upon hormonal hymns, movement-amulets, phonic garlands, spells, the optative mood, poetry and a reparative narrative to re-tune and de-delude our language. Is English an inherently commercial, mercenary, duplicitous tongue or is that just human nature? The premise of RE-ENGLISH is that today's ecological, economic, security and equity crises are direct consequents of the sonic and connotative qualities of superpower english.
Performed by:
Hadar Ahuvia, Christina Andrea, Lorene Bouboushian, Corinne Cappelletti, Jessica Cerullo, Chun-Chen Chang, Levi Gonzalez, Mare Hieronimus, Hazuki Homma, Akira Ito, Masumi Kishimota, Athena Kokoronis, Eliza Ladd, Martin Lanz, Melanie Maar, Douglas Manson, Mina Nishimura, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Eva Perrotta, Peter Sciscioli, Larissa Sheldon, Kensaku Shinohara, Samita Sinha, Hadley Smith, Jhon Sowinski, Despina Stamos, Julia Ulehla, Larissa Velez, Ami Yamazaki and Kota Yamazaki
MAY 8th
2:00PM
COMMONING MEETING with a talks by Robert Kocik and Thom Donovan. The focus of the meeting will be money as commons: what to do about the current income disparity crisis. Dozens of countries in the Global South have begun programs that simply give money to the poor, often unconditionally. Though the emphasis in the U.S. is on work-not-welfare and privatization, social programs yet account for over 40% of federal spending. (Clearly income inequality increases social spending.) How can we re-structure income and growth so that money is not inequitably distributed to begin with? This meeting is a call for discussion, proposals, actions toward a broader, more munificent prosperity.
4:00PM
Common: Filmic interpretations of "commoning" directed by Iki Nakagawa with contributions from Caterina Verde, Douglas Manson, Mike Taylor, David Thompson, Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik.
COMMONING MEETING,
a FILM and a performance by THE COMMONS CHOIR
This COMMONING event is part of SCHOOL NITE: a weekend long iteration of the Future City, inspiring reforms through art exhibition, lecture, performance and/or installation. Held in conjunction with the New Museum's Festival of Ideas for a New City.
LOCATION: School Nite will inhabit five stories of the OLD SCHOOL at 233 Mott Street
SCHEDULE:
MAY 7th
10:0PM in the Courtyard of the Old School with 30 performers:
The Commons Choir (conceived and directed by choreographer Daria Fain and poet architect Robert Kocik) will perform RE-ENGLISH. By means of choreoprosodia (the fusion of movement and prosody) the Commons Choir will draw upon hormonal hymns, movement-amulets, phonic garlands, spells, the optative mood, poetry and a reparative narrative to re-tune and de-delude our language. Is English an inherently commercial, mercenary, duplicitous tongue or is that just human nature? The premise of RE-ENGLISH is that today's ecological, economic, security and equity crises are direct consequents of the sonic and connotative qualities of superpower english.
Performed by:
Hadar Ahuvia, Christina Andrea, Lorene Bouboushian, Corinne Cappelletti, Jessica Cerullo, Chun-Chen Chang, Levi Gonzalez, Mare Hieronimus, Hazuki Homma, Akira Ito, Masumi Kishimota, Athena Kokoronis, Eliza Ladd, Martin Lanz, Melanie Maar, Douglas Manson, Mina Nishimura, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Eva Perrotta, Peter Sciscioli, Larissa Sheldon, Kensaku Shinohara, Samita Sinha, Hadley Smith, Jhon Sowinski, Despina Stamos, Julia Ulehla, Larissa Velez, Ami Yamazaki and Kota Yamazaki
MAY 8th
2:00PM
COMMONING MEETING with a talks by Robert Kocik and Thom Donovan. The focus of the meeting will be money as commons: what to do about the current income disparity crisis. Dozens of countries in the Global South have begun programs that simply give money to the poor, often unconditionally. Though the emphasis in the U.S. is on work-not-welfare and privatization, social programs yet account for over 40% of federal spending. (Clearly income inequality increases social spending.) How can we re-structure income and growth so that money is not inequitably distributed to begin with? This meeting is a call for discussion, proposals, actions toward a broader, more munificent prosperity.
4:00PM
Common: Filmic interpretations of "commoning" directed by Iki Nakagawa with contributions from Caterina Verde, Douglas Manson, Mike Taylor, David Thompson, Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The Phoneme Choir at St. Mark’s Poetry Project (@ Harriet)
Last Friday night I attended Daria Fain's and Robert Kocik's Phoneme Choir at St. Mark's Church. Here is a link to a write-up I did about it, including extensive video footage of the performance.
Something which strikes me seeing the Phoneme Choir perform together for the fourth time, is to what extent the group has perfected their blend of movement/dance, song, and gestural/proto-semantic poetry (what Kocik refers to as “prosody,” “phonemics,” and “choreoprosodia”). At certain moments the work’s ‘development’ would seem entirely dependent on movement and choreography; or, on the other hand, some combination of recitation and song. Yet the whole piece culminates at a few different moments in a kind of controlled frenzy in which moving bodies, voices/sound, and word (loosely defined) would seem to become interdependent–coextensive, coeval. In the tradition of the “total work,” Fain’s and Kocik’s somatic opera–one I would argue approaches the scale and virtuosity of a Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, or Robert Ashley–seems something both old and new for poetry. A return to things Greek–a Dionysian atmosphere redolent with 60s theatre and intermedia performance. But also a new way to conceive of poetry through modes of collaboration and group process in the interest of mutual care, healing, and a radical re/channeling of both proprioceptive and proto-linguistic energies. For a taste of Fain’s and Kocik’s choir, I encourage you to take a look at the video footage compiled (below) from the performance at St. Mark’s Church for the Poetry Project’s Friday Night Series (currently hosted by Brett Price).
Something which strikes me seeing the Phoneme Choir perform together for the fourth time, is to what extent the group has perfected their blend of movement/dance, song, and gestural/proto-semantic poetry (what Kocik refers to as “prosody,” “phonemics,” and “choreoprosodia”). At certain moments the work’s ‘development’ would seem entirely dependent on movement and choreography; or, on the other hand, some combination of recitation and song. Yet the whole piece culminates at a few different moments in a kind of controlled frenzy in which moving bodies, voices/sound, and word (loosely defined) would seem to become interdependent–coextensive, coeval. In the tradition of the “total work,” Fain’s and Kocik’s somatic opera–one I would argue approaches the scale and virtuosity of a Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, or Robert Ashley–seems something both old and new for poetry. A return to things Greek–a Dionysian atmosphere redolent with 60s theatre and intermedia performance. But also a new way to conceive of poetry through modes of collaboration and group process in the interest of mutual care, healing, and a radical re/channeling of both proprioceptive and proto-linguistic energies. For a taste of Fain’s and Kocik’s choir, I encourage you to take a look at the video footage compiled (below) from the performance at St. Mark’s Church for the Poetry Project’s Friday Night Series (currently hosted by Brett Price).
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Their reigns, my reigns, our reigns
When art does what they say
When art obligated them to move
When art fulfills this sense of movement
Into consent--is this a commons?
When art is a failure to move within the commons?
When the freedom drive idles?
Blamed by my sociality
This gift of war flames
Blamed by my locality
Three or four husband me
Like neighbors there is no
Connection between
Only proximity, only sounds
They make inside my insides
The scores of one displaced
Their movement there is a
Sound, of movement no one
Hears without a war
From which harsh gifts come,
That we were these gifts,
Their sharing and what
Can never be shared.
A deadened social potential
State name/shore up
The affect of “we have given up”
We are the robots and
No, no one will be given back.
We who play at waste
If at the end of this social potential, this potential of bodies in common and their common places in the language, there remained a rainbow--both covenant and broken promise.
Nothing will have been fair blow after blow. No awaiting holler inter(in)animating the time it took travel to undo. The upholstered air around our breath. The space left-over singing anything but me.
My voice like an area punctured by a wall of beats. What you can still feel as you swipe your card through the narrow slot. Feeling for the longed for beginning of feeling again. To create something other than “reaching your creative potential.”
For Dodie
No one comes back
But every one comes
Love cut-up again
Like a fantasy we project
In these states the asshole
The mouth we shared
Lips know their way only
Not where they’re going
The cunt like a fantasy
No thing returns as it was
All that was otherwise
Before our organs were.
When art does what they say
When art obligated them to move
When art fulfills this sense of movement
Into consent--is this a commons?
When art is a failure to move within the commons?
When the freedom drive idles?
Blamed by my sociality
This gift of war flames
Blamed by my locality
Three or four husband me
Like neighbors there is no
Connection between
Only proximity, only sounds
They make inside my insides
The scores of one displaced
Their movement there is a
Sound, of movement no one
Hears without a war
From which harsh gifts come,
That we were these gifts,
Their sharing and what
Can never be shared.
A deadened social potential
State name/shore up
The affect of “we have given up”
We are the robots and
No, no one will be given back.
We who play at waste
If at the end of this social potential, this potential of bodies in common and their common places in the language, there remained a rainbow--both covenant and broken promise.
Nothing will have been fair blow after blow. No awaiting holler inter(in)animating the time it took travel to undo. The upholstered air around our breath. The space left-over singing anything but me.
My voice like an area punctured by a wall of beats. What you can still feel as you swipe your card through the narrow slot. Feeling for the longed for beginning of feeling again. To create something other than “reaching your creative potential.”
For Dodie
No one comes back
But every one comes
Love cut-up again
Like a fantasy we project
In these states the asshole
The mouth we shared
Lips know their way only
Not where they’re going
The cunt like a fantasy
No thing returns as it was
All that was otherwise
Before our organs were.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Madeline Gobeil: Did you start writing to escape from solitude?
Jean Genet: No, because I wrote things that made me even more solitary. No, I don’t know why I started writing. What the deeper reasons are, I don’t know. Perhaps this: the first time I became conscious of the power of writing was when I sent a postcard to a German friend who was in America at the time. I didn’t really know what to say to her. The side I was supposed to write on had a sort of white, grainy texture, a little like snow, and it was this surface that led me to speak of a snow that was of course absent from prison, to speak of Christmas, and instead of just writing anything, I wrote to her about the quality of that thick paper. That was it, the trigger that allowed me to write. This was no doubt not the real motive, but it’s what gave me the first taste of freedom.
Jean Genet: No, because I wrote things that made me even more solitary. No, I don’t know why I started writing. What the deeper reasons are, I don’t know. Perhaps this: the first time I became conscious of the power of writing was when I sent a postcard to a German friend who was in America at the time. I didn’t really know what to say to her. The side I was supposed to write on had a sort of white, grainy texture, a little like snow, and it was this surface that led me to speak of a snow that was of course absent from prison, to speak of Christmas, and instead of just writing anything, I wrote to her about the quality of that thick paper. That was it, the trigger that allowed me to write. This was no doubt not the real motive, but it’s what gave me the first taste of freedom.
from Somatic Poetics (@Harriet)
Here
The poem has not yet determined what a body can do. Somatics? The poem sites the body’s (lack of) determination within a socio-political field. In this way is it both constructive and deconstructive. Feeling (affectivity) can over/indetermine any sense of the thing (poem) having been constructed or it having been taken apart. Lyric (what has traditionally been called lyric) is the typical mode of this over- or in- determination. Composition demonstrates (it exposits) but it is also a site where states of feeling, awarenesses, ‘being,’ and consciousness are undergone. Like a patient (or Orpheus) goes under. Eleni Stecopoulos: “Orpheus had to climb down the base of his skull because the message wasn’t getting through.”
The poem has not yet determined what a body can do. Somatics? The poem sites the body’s (lack of) determination within a socio-political field. In this way is it both constructive and deconstructive. Feeling (affectivity) can over/indetermine any sense of the thing (poem) having been constructed or it having been taken apart. Lyric (what has traditionally been called lyric) is the typical mode of this over- or in- determination. Composition demonstrates (it exposits) but it is also a site where states of feeling, awarenesses, ‘being,’ and consciousness are undergone. Like a patient (or Orpheus) goes under. Eleni Stecopoulos: “Orpheus had to climb down the base of his skull because the message wasn’t getting through.”
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