what do you see reflected in that puddle of oil?

Not If But When: Culture Beyond Oil

globish

‘English is the common language of the international abstraction that is known as the artworld.. English is the main vehicle of communication and discourse around art – criticism, press releases, artist statements.’

http://www.friezefoundation.org/talks/detail/do-you-speak-english/

what would be great is a film just of houses

Vivre Sa Vie

 

-.. He’s never thought in his life. He has to place a bomb in the cellar to blow it up.  He does it.  He places the bomb, lights the fuse, then he runs away of course. But suddenly he begins to think.  What about? How is it possible to put one foot in front of the other? You must have thought about that too.  So he stops running, he can’t go on, he can’t move forward.  The bomb explodes, the cellar falls on him.  He holds it up with his shoulders.  But after a day, maybe two, he is crushed to death.  The first time he thought, it killed him

– Why did you tell me that story?

– No reason, just to talk

– Why must one always talk? Often one shouldn’t talk but live in silence.  The more one talks the less words mean.

– Perhaps but can one?

– I don’t know

– I’ve found that we can’t live without talking

– I’d like to live without talking

– Yes that would be nice wouldn’t it? Like loving one another more.  But it isn’t possible

– But why? Words should express exactly what one wants to say

– Do they betray us?

– But we betray them too, one should be able to express oneself

..

– We must think, and for thought we need words.  There’s no other way to think.  To communicate, one must talk – that is our life…. I believe one learns to talk when one has renounced life for a time.  That’s the price.

– So to speak, is fatal?

-Speaking is almost a resurrection in relation to life.  Speech is another life from when one does not speak.  So to live in speech, one must pass through the death of life without speech.. There is a kind of ascetic rule that stops one from talking well until one sees life with detachment.

-But one can’t live everyday life..

-with detachment?  We balance, that’s why we pass from silence to words.  We swing between the two because it’s the movement of life. From everyday life one rises to a life we call superior, the thinking life.  But this life presupposes one has killed the everyday.

– Then are words and thinking the same?

– So I believe, Plato said it, it is an old idea. One cannot distinguish the thought from the words that express it.  An instant of thought can only be grasped through words… One searches and can’t find the right word.  That’s why you didn’t know what to say, you were afraid of not finding the right word.

– But how does one know when one has found the right word?

..

– Someone once told me: there is truth in everything, even in error

– Searching is the truth of life.

__

Dear Diary

 

Driving past these homes I smell jogging suits, video tapes, dogs in the garden, pizzas in cardboard boxes.. That’s what frightens me dogs, pizza, slippers..

..What would be great is a film just of houses

“They want to teach students to produce and produce..they don’t teach them the philosophy of working, how important being bored is, how important sitting and drinking coffee is, or travel. Not the actual work.”

x

‘You say

“Today, there are no longer images that are beautiful, there are chains.” I think this phrase could also be a departure point for this conversation’.

‘Yes, what I mean by chain is a dynamic structure that produces forms that are part of it: pre-production, production, post-production.’

 

[Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews Philippe Parreno, various locations, 2001- 2002]

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