“It was nothing of importance.” Cartoon: George Herriman’s long-running comic strip for Hearst newspaper syndicate, Krazy Kat, melded cartoon logic with metaphysical conjectures.
With a variety of examples of linear assemblages (from art, architecture, film, painting, music, etc.), this seminar aims to expand the idea of cutting and re-assembly, from Festarchitektur to Frankenstein. There is no plan, no outline of study, no program; only the concept of a free range of lucky breaks (Ersatz/Ansatz).
Read the original course proposal, by Camilla Mancilla Vera. “The essential instrument or resource of collage is cutting, not glue. From the beginning, the scissors, the razor, the knife, are related to a ritual of passage that reveals a new reality through the practice of cutting, and allows the entrance of the young body in the world of adults, in the sexual world, in the erotics of life. The cut inscribes the difference in life, in the body, in the figure, in the word. Scissors are an instrument of reason, a very sharp tool that, when cutting out phenomena inserted in the original context, not only tears them out, but also leaves them empty.”
The seminar meets weekly (mostly) and invites guests, watches films, digs up dirt, pays attention to dreams, reads at random, writes every day, tries to eat well and get plenty of fresh air. Members (“chefs”) contribute to their own pages:
Members are all teachers who recognize the difference between teachings and instructions, so there are no lesson plans or goals. The model of intellectual wandering follows the model of Sigmund Freud’s famous “Signorelli Parapraxis,” a moment of forgetting that led to a mapping of his Adriatic vacation based on a cartography of resemblance, sex/death issues, alliteration, and the theme of between-the-two-deaths, also known as “stranger in a strange land.” The pedagogy of the cloud, as a topology of monsters and metonymies, requires a principle of surprise.
proposal
With a quick refresher course on the idea of the zairja (a reverse-computer that, with any given data-base, creates questions and misunderstandings), DK proposes using the text of Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse as a basis for hop-scotching around. The text is on-line and either search terms or random scrolling can land the reader on a desert island, where there will be the inevitable footprint in the sand.
quick links (not yet)
- schedule
- guest speakers and special presentations
- next session
- materials
- notes (DK) from September 8, 2022 session.
- notes (DK) for September 15, 2022 session
the range
Even this list is too organized …
- katagraphs
- stereogram (figure/ground issues)
- Matta-Clarke (“going to the ground,” falling to pieces)
- tiles, sequences, frames, ø-effect (a.k.a. beta)
- parapraxis, suppression, repetition (ref. Anthony Wilden, “Freud, Signorelli, and Lacan: The Repression of the Signifier”
- parallax, “pronounced parallax” (Kant, Karatani)
- depth and desire
- cartoon excursions?
- George Herriman, Krazy Kat
- Tom Gauld, Log Princess, Department of Mind-Blowing Theories
- Antecedents: St. Jerome, Desmoiselles, Holbein, Hogarh
- musical excursions?
- the Flamenco compás and décimas
- the Tristan chord and Bernard Hermann’s Vertigo and Citizen Kane scores
- Bach’s Möbius-band canon and other endless musical compulsions
- repetition-compulsion, inside and outside the Symbolic
- zairja
- astrology
- Swedenborg parallax
- film excursions?
- Vertigo (thaumatrope)
- Veronika Voss (a big glass sphere)
- Double Life of Veronique (a small glass sphere)
- Strangers on a Train (voids, tokens, metalepsis)
- the unconscious
- puppets
- suppression
- metaphor
- the number 9
- palindromes, anamorphs, latency, stereograms
- “House of Asterion,” “Death and the Compass,” “The Aleph” (Borges)
- “Castle of Crossed Destinies” (Calvino)
- dreams, collective memory
- condensation and displacement
- Halbwachs and improvisation
- aleatory (Francis Alÿs, John Cage, etc.)
- new theory of time