Monday, February 11, 2013

Attention, George Saunders


I preserve a tender spot somewhere in me for these missives from Russian bots.
Here's a recent one:

"From: Anna
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2013 4:47 PM
To: John Sandwich
Subject: your profile to produce on me greater impression
Hello my lonely heart! I liked your profile and I would like to learn you
better. To me of 25 years, my name is Anna. I the beautiful, kind, clever
woman looking of serious attitudes... If you wish to learn me better and you
were interested with my letter write to me on mine E-mail
kegedsdsdsdfsdsdisdsi60@ysdsdsasndddqwegx.ru [Not actual email]
Please Specify The
1 Full name
2 Date of birth
3 Your Country
I shall wait for your letter."
So she loves me, but with the love of a customs official. Just when I was getting warmed up.
My, that prose style is catchy. 
Will have to work on my wracked grammar to get it downright. Very endearing.

Department of Cognitive Dissonance



Straight from the email PR:

"The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism: Part Two"

"Conceptualized by Warren Neidich, TU Delft School of Architecture, and hosted by The ICI Berlin, Villa Aurora, Berlin, and The Office of Artistic Occupation, Los Angeles, “The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism: Part Two will bring together an international array of philosophers, critical theorists, media theorists, art historians, architects and artists to discuss the state of the mind and brain under the conditions of contemporary capitalism, in which these cognitive apparati have become the new focus of laboring."


"This symposium continues to ask many of the same questions posed in Part One held in collaboration with California Institute of the Arts and Art Center College of Design last November, but elaborates upon many of the questions left unattended. Questions such as: What is the future of mind in Cognitive Capitalism? Can a term such as Plastic Materialism describe the substantive changes in neural architectures instigated by this contingent cultural habitus? What about the Unconscious as it known to us in dreams and other implicit psychic phenomena? Is it also modified, mutated and modulated by these evolving conditions of global attention? Is there such a thing as Cognitive Communism, and does it have distinct patterns of pathological enunciation? How has the idea of the Post-Colonial mutated as a result of these conditions?"


"Is parametric design, which is computational and generative, an apparatus of cognitive capital? Is designed space an agent or platform in the production of subjectivity, and is parametrics complicit with its devices? Does architecture have a humane answer to its lack of empathy?; How does artistic research – the methods and practices of artistic production and the knowledge they produce – create new emancipatory possibilities in opposition to the overwhelming instrumentalization of the general intellect in Semiocapitalism?"

Whoops ! Still awake there? Sorry you missed Part I? Maybe you can buy the book. 

Hell, I'm no philistine, but sometimes the Ivory Tower should take a peek outside. 

And whoops, almost forgot the list of sessions. (This goes on for a while, but there seems to be no link for a full list on the web. Sorry).
 
Plenary 1 
Yann Moulier Boutang 
Mental quilombos in production of value. Flights and counter-forms of mania under cognitive capitalism in a postcolonial world. 

Plenary 2 
Abdul-Karim Mustapha 
Antinomies of Flight: Between Cognitive Capitalism and Postcolonialism

Plenart 3 
Ina Blom
Video and Autobiography Vs. the Autobiography of Video. Technicity and subjectivity in the Realm of Realtime.....

How do I get on these lists? Where was I when all this came up?

Didn't they learn anything from the French post-structuralists?  I mean, where is their Oedipal killer instinct? Let's out-ditz Daddy's ditz?

Actually, you read it over three or four times and it all starts to make sense.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Counting the Lavender

 A description of Steven Holl's plans to enlarge Washington, DC's Kennedy Center, which ran in Salon on January 29, talks about a Memorial Garden:

"It could include 46 Gingko trees to note the number of years Kennedy lived, 35 lavender rows for the 35th president..."

"It could include a reflecting pool the exact length of the PT-109 boat that Lt. John Kennedy commanded during World War II. Holl envisions a deck along the pool made from the same mahogany wood as the boat. It could also include inscriptions of Kennedy’s words."


Daniel Libeskind made a perfect ass of himself with his Ground Zero plan and Freedom Tower, 1776 feet high, which is just about the only feature of his design that survives. And now Steven Holl has caught the bug.

What is it with egghead architects and highly-visible public memorials? Do they think this number game is some kind of conceptual art? Are they being bamboozled by K Street public relations goons?

They seem to have overdosed on Patriotism, while at the same time find themselves incapable of covering up its naked, stupid vacuity with anything resembling intelligent thought.

All they can hope to accomplish is to give inane tour guides some nonsense to prattle away about as the tour bus slows down for a photo opp.

And what about the lame, repetitive prose of this quote, which most likely comes straight from the press release? Where is the independent critical judgement of the Fourth Estate? Do they think they have to faithfully repeat this stuff or be accused of being unpatriotic? Or of hurting someone's feelings?