CLINIC FOR VESTIGIAL ORGAN STIMULATION
DEFINITION Recovery of the senses and physiological functions excluded as the body sealed around itself. Trace physiologies engaging faint physical environments.
Online I titled this lecture “The Poetics of Spatial Practice,” but I might as well have borrowed from Robert Kocik and titled it So very little longing for that which is not.
Untried verbs
Comic Warfare Training Center – Appropriating the zero sum terms of military strategy for expediting comic (drastically fortunate) civilian outcomes.
BUREAU OF MISSING BEHAVIORS
DEFINITION Just as certain building types remain missing because their functions are yet unknown, certain functions are unknown because their behaviors are still untried. Which way of acting will bring about an unbelievable benefit? All the disciplines of the fictitiousness of theater used to attain real being.
Overcoming Fitness, while in some ways entirely unique to any history of poetry & poetics, has its roots in Situationism, which has its roots firmly planted in Marxisim, or, for our purposes, Adorno’s ideas about the Schema of Mass Culture and the Culture Industry in paticular:
PRIOR TO GIVING A BIT OF BACKGROUND ON SITUATIONISM and THE OTHER WORK YOU’VE READ, let’s take 5 mintues to write:
–First, write down what is for you an “untried verb”
–Now, use this verb to respond to the question: What untried behavior, or, as Kocik puts it also, what is it that is not, that you long for—or upon reflection now, just now decide you should long for?
TAKE A FEW RESPONSES
Remember I put on the board last Thursday 2 spectra:
1) ‘POLITICAL’ POETRY’S FORMAL STRATEGIES OF CRITIQUE, AFTER ADORNO
(MIMESIS and AMPLIFICATION of the NORMATIVE) —————– (ANTI-MIMESIS)
Completely Found/Appropriated Language—————————emancipatory linguistic forms
2) ‘POLITICAL’ POETRY’S ENVIRONMENTAL/SPATIAL PRACTICES
Guerilla Poetry———————————————————————-Poets Theater
(unknown audience, accidental
audience, usually public, eg street theater)———————————-(the coterie, priv. aud. house
theater that is in a constant state
of becoming, re-imagining/re-
radicalizing one-another)
This is NOT a pair of dichotomies, but what can be thought of as a working model, a pair of spectra that both captures a lot of what contemp. political poetry wrestles with, and yet also this framing, like any framing, omits, leaves out, or otherwise constricts other practices—in this way the model also CALLS ATTENTION to that which it omits.
THIS MAPPING PROCESS, SIMPLE THAT IT IS, CAN BE THOUGHT OF AS SITUATIONIST-LIKE INSOFAR AS IT IS NOT MEANT TO EXPLAIN OR TO BE A FINAL THEORY BUT IS MEANT TO BE CAST ASIDE ONCE MADE, CAST ASIDE IN FAVOR OF NEW MODELS AND NEW BEHAVIORS. KOCIK expresses interest in POETRY RE-THINKING ITSELF THIS WAY TOO.
SITUATIONISM:
–Reached apex during 68 Strikes, started as tuition hike strikes, fyi
–Guy Debord was one of the founding members, and was the last remaining Situationist prior to the collective’s dissolving in the early 70s.
– ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20th century European artistic avant-gardes, very much taking on board Adorno’s writings, especially his imminent critique of the culture industry, sought to take this work into a sphere of activism.
When one thinks of what Debord describes as the Spectacle, one might—and one would be right to—think of the Culture Industry, now psychologized, and now yet potentially not as impervious to revolutionary thought thru art as Adorno seemed to feel. Thus the quote at the beginning of Preliminary Problems:
“The construction of situations begins beyond the ruins of the modern spectacle. It is easy to see how much the very principle of the spectacle — nonintervention — is linked to the alienation of the old world. Conversely, the most pertinent revolutionary experiments in culture have sought to break the spectators’ psychological identification with the hero so as to draw them into activity. …The situation is thus designed to be lived by its constructors. The role played by a passive or merely bit-part playing ‘public’ must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors, but rather, in a new sense of the term, ‘livers,’ must steadily increase.”
–advocated experiences of life being alternative to those admitted by the capitalist order, for the fulfillment of human desires buried by capitalist (or for Kocik, fitness-obsessed) cultures, and the pursuing of a superior passional quality.
–For this purpose they suggested and experimented with the construction of situations, namely the setting up of environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study for the construction of such situations, like unitary urbanism and psychogeography.
–I had us look at psychogeography, because here, the simple ideas of the Derive, the “controlled drift” emphasize very clearly that the page, the written, is a crucial site of activation for poets influenced by Situationist practices, learning, and radicalization, but it exists in, facilitates, and results from, the setting up of a larger AESTHETIC ECOSYSTEM, an environment that would or will be favorable to exchanges that are divorced from, as we talked about during the Adorno lecture, pure exchange. To get outside of that system, one builds another system, one that is temporary.
–What are some of the features of the situation—the derive for example, or the situation generally as outlined by Debord?
–Watch Elrick VIDEO
Write about some of the features of this film: what are some of the formal strategies being employed here, the form and content of the video poem that COMPLICATE OR EVEN FALSIFY THE 2 SPECTRA ABOVE?
–How do Bey and Kocik relate here? From Bey’s Poetic Terrorism:
PT is an act in a Theater of Cruelty which has no stage, no rows of seats, no tickets & no walls. In order to work at all, PT must categorically be divorced from all conventional structures for art consumption (galleries, publications, media). Even the guerilla Situationist tactics of street theater are perhaps too well known & expected now.
–(We have so far, up till now, been conceiving of the poem, or the players in a poets theater piece, as not actively part of a constructed situation, a place, an environment, a larger AESTHETIC ECOSYSTEM). But what ELSE does this imply, from Bey?
–Enter Kocik. How might Kocik’s notions here, these omitted behaviors here, STARTING WITH THE UN-NAMEABILITY OF THE TEXT ITSELF (its newness) address or expand upon the political-poetic ideas in Situationism such that they stand less of a chance of falling prey to commodification? Or are we back to Adorno’s deep uncertainty about whether the world is fixed, the order of things too strong for any change?
–Feedback loop: the transitory décor of the situation serves as a feedback loop in some sense. The poem is constructed along with a situation favorable for it; the total environment serves to ideally radicalize and activate participants, and from there participants will or might create other writings, behaviors, situations, and so forth.
–This is a kind of re-mapping the known world, or MAPPING OF THE OMITTED, and as such, it’s a KIND OF ORGANIZING—Where political and aesthetic actions meet or blur.
–commit one act of poetic terrorism and record this down—write about it before and after, in the form of poetry, notes etc; take up to 1 page to add to Kocik’s list of omissions.
———————-
Dear All,
Here are the numerous but (each of them) very short readings for Tuesday lecture. PLEASE CAREFULLY READ ALL THE READINGS, including VIEWING THE ELRICK VIDEO. Be prepared to discuss both Debord articles, the Kocik article, the short excerpt from Haikm Bey on “Poetic Terrorism,” the Elrick video, and, if we can get to it on Tues, the Templeton. If we can’t get to the Templeton on Tues, we’ll get to that work on Thurs. and Sat., working with that text in various ways.
Please be on time and prepared for Tuesday’s lectures. Too many of you were absent Sat. Attendance is what makes this program possible–this is a COLLABORATIVE EFFORT, where collaboration is key, so your peers are counting on you. If you cannot make it to class, email your peers, not me. And some of you have missed more than yesterday already. As we enter a phase of settling into fixed collaborative groups, your participation is essential. Please email me if you are concerned about your situation in this program.
Meanwhile, in addition to the readings, remember to send me a) your preferences regarding who you are interested in working with for your group work, etc., and b) your short, 2pp response piece to this week’s materials, starting with the Adorno lecture, ending with yesterdays work.
See you ALL on Tuesday.
Solidarity,
David
Preliminary Problems in Constructing a Situation: HERE and below:
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/313
Theory of the Derive: HERE and below:
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/all/en/display/314
Laura Elrick, “Stalk” (video): HERE and below
Robert Kocik, from Overcoming Fitness: PDF attached to your email ( starts on pg 62 till end of article in the Ecopoetics Journal pdf). Below, as optional/additional reading is the introduction to that same work, so that you have 2 excerpts from what ended up being a very short but very generative book under the same title, Overcoming Fitness.
FOR THURS AND LATER:
Toscano, Donovan, and others on “What Poets Theater Is/Might Be (Now) – this article I will not discuss on Tuesday, but we’ll work with it some on Thursday”:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/what-is-poets-theater/
INTRODUCING OVERCOMING FITNESS (part of same book as the pdf excerpt)
Robert Kocik
What do I have against fitness) Hash’t fitness gotten us this far? It must be doing something right. Why would I rule it out) Why would I claim that its contrary is as credible) What’s so bad about being adept) Why promote ineptitude) There are different types of fitness:
* evolutionary fitness. As in survival of the fittest, life’s inherent eugenics which goes by the name of Natural Selection. The lifeform editorial tasks that meddling, sentimental, error prone, self-interested, low fidelity creatures have naturally been spared. I place evolutionary fitness at the top of the list because it often serves as general model for other phenomena-as indubitable evidence for the ways in which things work, why things are the way they are and why they can’t be otherwise-ohen corroborating questionable social behaviors such as
‘getting ahead’ ‘watching out for number one, ‘dog eat dog’ and ‘free trading’.
* social fitness. The view that the bright and strong and qualified rightfully find their way to the top. Today we say “survival of the best-informed”. Equal opportunity as enlightenment.
market fitness Or capitalism. Business behavior is self-regulating because the best product at the bestprice will prevail. Anywhere prices are going up, the market has been restrained. Market fitness is an incentive safeguard and spur (in sharp contrast to the sluggishness of social isms).
* fitness fusion. Fusion of social/politicaVeconomic sectors as Market Democracy. With the demise ofcommunism, Market Democracy has become the dominant political system. And, like dominant lifeforms, a dominant political form’ spreads’.
* synthetic fitness. Surgery, bioengineering, gene therapy, pharmacogenetics, medical treatment in general. Saving and prolonging lives. spiritual eugenics Only those who merit salvation will be saved. Only the moral will know peace of mind. Competing paradises.
* radst fitness. Fitness is out to win. Taken to its extreme it leads to the notion of supremacy-what Dr Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the drum major instinct-to be out ahead of all the others. The race-based collective version of this form of fitness
is of course ‘racism’.
* physical fitness. Staying in shape. The vanity of looking good. Because I am a manual laborer, I tend to think of physical fitness as the pre or post workday training programs of others. (As vitaminsare to food, fitness is to lifestyle). An indication of lopsided living; just as I have a shortage of sedentary time-seated at a desk, lounging, lying on the grass, lotus like. Enough resources to be maladaptive. Money to burn. Fat to burn off.
* subtle fitness. Fitness overcome. Fitness can be viewed as benign or malign. According to the friendly version, fitness keeps us on our toes. It keeps re-sharpening the cutting edge. life under fitness is robust. A little worker insecurity is good for the economy. According to the cruel version, fitness is a deeply rooted, distrustful, ruthless behavior based on elimination of