Archive for the ‘All other bother’ Category

“Let me be plain: the semi-colon is ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly. I pinch them out of my prose.” a quote by Donald Barthelme I just read here; and Beckett was no milder in his judgement: “How hideous is the semicolon.” I always sort of felt the same; but maybe just because Beckett said so; anyhow; lately I’ve been making friends with it. Agree it’s not the prettiest punctuation mark, but I like the pause it gives.

I have been unhappily anticipating this moment: AAAARG – the endless online archive of theory/philosophy is down. The website now displays the super giant font announcement:  ”aaaarg doesn’t exist”, as if it never has. I’m hoping it will somehow get back on its feet again..

I gather from other blogs that one Mark Taylor of Macmillan Publishing has threatened with legal action before, and now again, somewhat more successfully it would appear. Here an interview with aaaarg architect Sean Dockray, an extensive background article by Janneke about the sharing of pirated theory,

That’s Charles Crumb, Robert Crumb’s brother. (Just watched Crumb again).

Now watching Ghost World (by same director, Terry Zwigoff). Two girls walk by a man who always waits for the bus on a spot where there has been no bus line for two years. And there is some Skip James:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtZ6DoeimP4&feature=related]

Dutch poet and composer Samuel Vriezen wrote a titillating piece about Dutch poetry and globalization, arguing among other things that Dutch poets could do with a bit more barbarism; start reading around more. He also talks about the role internet has played in the last few years: “If, once upon a time, Nijhoff could hold that Dutch poetry was among the world’s finest, we can today only excuse him on the grounds that he had no internet access.”; and about Leevi Lehto’s idea of writing in a second or N-th language as a the possible redemption from all this navel gazing (Dutch critics love using that phrase). Some extracts from Samuel’s essay:

If it took half a century before Vestdijk introduced Dickinson to Dutch readers, Flarf could make its mark on the Dutch situation within about five years. What gets noticed and picked up in The Netherlands and in Flanders has less and less to do with the institutional structures of major publishing and academic canonization, and more and more with the vitality of poetical discussion, which, in the States, generally is most vibrant in the “Post-Avant” general family of poetic directions

…

For myself, then, foreign poetry has become a more important factor than original Dutch poetry. About half the poetry I have bought over the past five years is in English; about a quarter is in Dutch; the rest is mostly in German, French, or Spanish. This has caused a veritable reversal in my relation to my own language: if, normally, one would read foreign poetry and evaluate it with respect to its relation to domestic poetic developments, today I increasingly find myself “testing” Dutch language poetry against what I know from foreign poetries.

I don’t read much Dutch poetry myself. Don’t buy much either. Read mainly online dare I confess. And from PDFs (which doesn’t mean I don’t love books, but have also sort of gotten used to reading PDFs). Really like his formulation of his view that the local should be read in relation to the global; reading different literatures as interconnected, not separate. It reminds me of a similar point Graham Harman frequently makes about writing: that it does not happen separately from, but in continual reciprocation with the rest of life.

To acknowledge globalization in literature would then mean both to read and write in any language that one has access to, one’s own as much as those of others, acknowledging the local at the same time as its place in the world.

Here some more about Leevi Lehto’s proposal for a barbaric poetry:

He observes that the most widely spoken language in the world today is “English spoken as Second – or Nth – Language”, but that this language does not yet have its proper literature. Therefore he advocates the production of “barbaric poetry”: that as a Finn, for example, he might write original work in other languages – including, perhaps, languages he can not even read himself (and in fact Lehto has done so). Internationalism, then, is not to be achieved by everybody speaking the same language, but by everybody coming to the same uncontrollable pluriformity of languages from an uncontrollable pluriformity of linguistic positions. Radicalizing a poetics of misprision, language and nation would then no longer be fundamentally linked. Instead there would be a “new kind of World Poetry not yet in existence”, a poetry that might involve “independence vis-à-vis National Literatures, including institutionally [...]; mixing of languages; borrowing of structures – rhythmical, syntactical – from other languages; writing in one’s non-native languages; inventing new, ad hoc languages; conscious attempts to write for more heterogeneous, non-predetermined audiences…”

My dear friend Johanne Ihle is working on a project to set up a cinema in the Al-Kharaz refugee camp in Yemen, and she is looking for films to screen. Please send films, or spread the word:

Dear filmmakers of the world,

We are a small group of people who are about to set up a cinema in the Somali refugee camp Al-Kharaz in the Yemeni desert, where more than 13.000 refugees reside. The project will be realized in collaboration with the United Nations and ADRA, and aims at establishing a creative learning environment for both refugees and aid workers. Screenings will be integrated in the general educational program, but there will also be screenings of films of a more entertaining character. We believe that living images from all over the world are inspiring to everybody and we hope you will share your love for films and contribute to this project by donating one or more of your works.

We are looking for a wide range of films on all kinds of topics; documentaries, feature films, animations and cartoons. We will send you a contract when we hear from you, which states that your film will only be shown in Al-Kharaz refugee camp, and only as a part of this project.

We would be grateful if you would forward this message to your network, and appreciate advice and suggestions on how to improve the project.

For more information and donations please email: johanneihle@hotmail.com

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Best wishes,

Johanne Haaber Ihle

Visual Anthropologist

Phone: +45 5288 5458