KESKEN KAIKEN

#109

2009-09-30T02:01:00.002+03:00

It won’t be called the avant-garde. It will be referred to by various names, all of them precise, like “the society for touching lightly the forearms of another” or “a tendency toward making chains of half-rhymes in a circle with one’s friends.”

- Anne Boyer's wonderful manifesto (?) The Provisional Avant-Garde is at HTMLGiant - and I thought it had disappeared from the world! <3

#108

2009-09-28T00:42:00.003+03:00

Many of us have gathered in the cul de sac of satire. We’ve gotten pretty good at it. Unfortunately, satire seems less and less viable and powerful, and our decades-long immersion in irony has made conviction alien and meaning slippery. There is a kind of satire that seems to be making fun of everything and standing for nothing. In this way it can seem adolescent and moralistic and overly simplistic (not unlike the political novels of the 1920s and ’30s).

- Chris Bachelder on satire, Upton Sinclair, and building a poetics of engagement

#107

2009-09-27T20:28:00.003+03:00

1. self-institution rather than institutional critique

2. promiscuity rather than opposition
3. "The kitchen, the bed, the living room made up our anything-but-sterile laboratories. Dreams, unhappiness, rage were all over the architecture"
4. revive a meritocracy of affect
5. poets are architects
6. replace economic logic with poetic logic
7. OPEN SOURCE CASH

- Anne Boyer's primer for poets (I am copying this link for link because sometimes Boyer takes her best posts off the net)

#106

2009-04-29T00:55:00.003+03:00

-- today, there is a great deal of good poetry that is not being read. To think about contemporary (...) poetry, with any attempt at comprehensiveness and seriousness, brings a writer in contact with a range of controversies germane to literary study (...) in virtually all areas of such study. The criticism of contemporary poetry is usually given over either to aesthetically dominated judgmental reviews (mainly short blurbs of praise written by peer-poets implicated in the literary/ professional networks they are asked to judge) or to an academically sanctioned (mis)application of current critical theory to canonically (and professionally) acceptable extended readings of "major" contemporary poets.

- Hank Lazer in "The Politics of Form and Poetry's Other Subjects: Reading Contemporary American Poetry" - applies to criticism everywhere, I'd say

#105

2009-04-24T14:32:00.005+03:00

The Frozen moments School of Comics "treats the medium as a collection of still images strung together for maximum effect (...) careful to maintain the illusion that the reader is looking in on the panels, not participating in them". These "drawings, once trapped in panels, become images designed to signal “drama” or “suspense” to the reader (...) frozen moments of interchangeable plots told with (...) gestural ink lines".

- Dan Nadel in Comics Comics #1 on Wally Wood's 22 panels (pictur'd above); one can't, obviously, with my obsessions, not connect this with OuBaPian constraints, Polti's 36 situations (or with all the other "universal plot" -(pseudo)theories), or with other poetic forms & recipes, ancient, early and late modern; cause it's all the same, guys, Vorsprung durch Technik...

#104

2009-04-24T14:06:00.004+03:00

In these innovative panels and pages, Kirby would Photostat his artwork over a photograph (sometimes in black and white, sometimes colorized or tinted) to create a collage unlike anything else seen in Marvel comics. At their best the photomontages approached a realistic 3D; even when they visually failed (usually due to the relatively poor printing processes of the period) they were still bold visual experiments.

- keep getting stuck on comics these days, but here's the Bully Says blog on Kirby's photomontage, something I'd noticed but somehow hadn't noticed - but a great conversation on Comix Scholars drew my attention to how Kirby's work parallels the "renaissance" of collage at the time

#103

2009-03-10T01:04:00.002+02:00

Nah, I'm just, like, this guy who commuted to idea space when he went to work every day. Guys like us, we kinda farm idea space for produce. They call us imagineers.

- Alan Moore's tribute to Jack Kirby from Supreme: The Return #6 - and, man...that's who I wanna be when I grow up, the guy who "commutes to idea space when he goes to work every day"...

#102

2009-03-10T01:02:00.003+02:00

In the end, the ‘conspiracy theory’ view of history seemed to me a desperate, almost sad, attempt to enchant the mechanized modern world with a little mystery and meaning. The idea that someone, somewhere, is in charge and has a plan, or a spaceship, is a comforting one but it seems to me a secular version of faith in God.

- Grant Morrison on The Invisibles and a lot more

#101

2009-01-20T18:48:00.002+02:00

When today's avant-guard no longer swims against the tide but is funded by the Deutsche Bank and rubs shoulders with oligarchs and billionaires, we have to find a new language for the tactics and meaning of these freedom fighters... Embarrassingly the Kandinsky Prize has proved to be nothing but a plaything of the new elite, another part of the system.

- via Sign & Sight, Peter György on the Deutsche Bank-sponsored Kandinsky Prize being awarded to the ultra-nationalist Russian artist Aexei Belyaev-Gintovt

#100

2009-01-14T15:05:00.012+02:00

What would happen if scientists were able to modify human beings using either genetic manipulation or cybernetics? How would those discoveries be utilized?

- Zak Edwards on Transhuman #1 - the old adage by Stan Lee: "With great power comes great responsibility"; but with great power also comes inhumanity; the horrific evolutionary leap beyond anything that is recognizable as human. Did it begin in 1982 with Moore's Marvelman (or Miracleman, after the copyright change)? It's certainly already starting to bloom in 1986, in the midst of Watchmen's thatcherite political noir in the character of Doctor Manhattan, the "inhuman" superbeing whose actions we cannot understand; and it's full blown in Morrison's Overman from Animal Man #23 (1990, pictured above), Zenith and The Invisibles, (1987 and 1994 respectively), the visionary mixing of Lovecraft, Crowley and The Illuminatus Trilogy with posthuman themes of evolutionary change. It's certainly continued strong in Ellis's The Authority, Black Summer, No Hero, and Millar's Wanted, Ultimates & War Heroes, even if it's toned down in favor of wide-screen death & entrails action and pseudo-political commentary on vigilantism. But what's interesting about this development is its connection with the old 20th century motifs of supernatural horror. In Transhuman by Jonathan Hickman (the new "mock-comicumentary" (?) about, well, transhumanism in the future) the "new humans" are revealed as enhanced chimpanzees who will take over the earth from us regular humans; an ironic twist which, in one image, ends and renews the central theme of supernatural horror: in the new millenium it's not the dark abyss of racial devolution that scares us, but the dawn of the new gods, who might not be human at all; the radiant singularity of technological progress. But I mean, who knows, after the next ice age (to come back to the Captain Marvel family), it could be rats who evolve past us, as in Shazam #21 (vol.3, 1975)

#99

2009-01-14T14:46:00.002+02:00

And, worst of all, we have seen once-noble races turn savage and warlike with the passing of time! A fate which your OWN foolish breed seems headed for!

- Uatu the Watcher in Fantastic Four #13, v.1, where FF fight Red Ghost and his cosmic-ray enhanced mind-controlled orangutangs - wrap your head around that cold-war metaphor: nuke-scare interlaced with ape-scare (i.e. the dark abyss of racial devolution)

#98

2009-01-03T19:05:00.004+02:00

Tandis que la vie palpitait dans les Ténèbres, féroce ou peureuse, ruée aux fêtes et aux batailles de l'Amour ou de de la Nourriture, une pensée vint s'y joindre. À la rive du fleuve, au rebord d'un roc solitaire, une silhouette sortit de la Caverne des Hommes. Elle se tint immobile, taciturne, attentive aussi, les yeux parfois levés vers l'étoile du Levant. Quelque rêve vague, quelque ébauche d'esthétique astrale, préoccupait le veilleur, moins rares chez ces ancêtres de l'Art qu'en maintes populations historiques.

- J.H. Rosny the elder, Scènes préhistoriques, 1888, a prehistoric man looks at the stars and feels no fear; Rosny, the father of French-language science fiction, whose prehistoric characters aren't afraid of time or space, & whose astronauts (a word he invented) are no xenophobes

#97

2008-12-30T02:48:00.001+02:00

Older media have largely abandoned the idea that difficulty is a virtue; if I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable. It’s a bit of an irony that difficulty thrives in the newest medium of all – and it’s not by accident, either. One of the most common complaints regular gamers make in reviewing new offerings is that they are too easy. (It would be nice if a little bit of that leaked over into the book world.)

- John Lanchester in LRB on why gaming exists under the radar of general culture

#96

2008-12-21T01:58:00.005+02:00

-- though the area of the unknown has been steadily contracting for thousands of years, an infinite reservoir of mystery still engulfs most of the outer cosmos. . . .men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars. . . .a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the dæmons of unplumbed space.

- Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927); the suspension of disbelief meets the dark abyss of time and the abyssal depths of psychoanalysis

#95

2008-12-21T01:43:00.002+02:00

[Giordano] Bruno made the world so infinite that [he posits] as many worlds as there are fixed stars. . . .so that to somebody on the Dog Star (as, for instance, one of the Cynocephals of Lucian) the world would appear from there just as the fixed stars appear to us from our world. . . .This very cogitation carries with it I don't know what secret, hidden horror; indeed one finds oneself wandering in this immensity, to which are denied limits and center and therefore also all determinate places.

- Johannes Kepler, De stella nova in pede Serpentarii (1606). Quoted in Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957; see #94); also, the reference to Lucian's fantasy beings

#94

2008-12-21T01:40:00.002+02:00

There is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call Void: in it are innumerable globes like this on which we live and grow; this space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit. For there is no reason, nor defect of nature's gifts, either of active or passive power, to hinder the existence of other worlds throughout space, which is identical in natural character with our own space, that is everywhere filled with matter or at least ether.

- Giordano Bruno, De l’infinito universo e mondi (1584). Quoted in Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957)

#93

2008-12-21T00:04:00.003+02:00

For some time I accepted the visions as natural, even though I had never before been an extravagant dreamer. Many of the vague anomalies, I argued, must have come from trivial sources too numerous to track down; while others seemed to reflect a common text book knowledge of the plants and other conditions of the primitive world of a hundred and fifty million years ago - the world of the Permian or Triassic age.

- Lovecraft, The Shadow Out of Time (1936), an exemplary instance of the transformation of "a common text book knowledge" of "primeval times" into supernatural horror

#92

2008-12-20T23:47:00.005+02:00

She comes! the Cloud compelling Pow'r, behold! / With Night Primaeval, and with Chaos old. / Lo! the great Anarch's ancient reign restor'd, / Light dies before her uncreating word: / As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, / The sickning Stars fade off the a'thereal plain; / As Argus' eyes, by Hermes wand opprest, / Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest; / Thus at her felt approach, and secret might, / Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.

- Pope, Dunciad, Book IV, ll.337-346, the 1729 edition; can a comic poem initiate the usage of "primaeval" in the sense of supernatural horror?

#91

2008-12-20T22:52:00.005+02:00

Far away, all unknown, beyond the range of mortal minds, scarce to be approached by the gods, is a cavern of immense age, hoary mother of the years, her vast breast at once the cradle and the tomb of time. A serpent surrounds this cave, engulfing everything with slow but all-devouring jaws; never ceases the glint of his green scales. His mouth devours the back-bending tail as with silent movement he traces his own beginning. Before the entrance sits Nature, guardian of the threshold, of age immense yet ever lovely, around whom throng and flit spirits on every side.

- Claudian, On Stilicho's Consulship, II, 424ll.; the beginning of the "conspicuously irrelevant" extended digression on the goddess Natura's cavern, which C.S. Lewis (in The Allegory of Love) claimed is one of the first moments in "the liberation of fantasy from its allegorical justification"

#90

2008-12-20T19:51:00.007+02:00

CHAPTER XVIII

WHAT ARE THOSE STARS WHICH ARE CALLED THE DIOSCURI, THE TWINS, OR CASTOR AND POLLUX?

Xenophanes says that those which appear as stars in the tops of ships are little clouds brilliant by their peculiar motion. Metrodorus, that the eyes of frighted and astonished people emit those lights which are called the Twins.

- Plutarch, Sentiments Concerning Nature with which Philosophers Were Delighted, Book II - a marvellous collection of prose poems from the first century A.D.; should be read alongside something like Cortázar's Historias de cronopios y de famas or Ben Marcus's The Age of Wire and String for the full estrangement-effect to work. Some links to his Morals.

#89

2008-12-18T19:49:00.008+02:00

A doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in.

- Grant Morrison on his DC Comics Ragnarok, Final Crisis

#88

2008-12-18T19:37:00.003+02:00

No more briar pipes. Their makers, in Saint-Claude, have stopped work until they are paid better.

"If my candidate loses, I will kill myself," M. Bellavoine, of Fresquienne, Seine-Inferieure, had declared. He killed himself.

A thunderstorm interrupted the celebration in Orléans in honor of Joan of Arc and the 477th anniversary of the defeat of the English.

In the course of a heated political discussion in Propriano, Corsica, two men were killed and two wounded.

- excerpts, via David Chirot, from Nouvelles en Trois Lignes by Félix Fénéon (1861 - 1944), French anarchist, gallerist and art-critic, and the original text-message novelist; and a contemporary adaptation of his technique

#87

2008-12-18T19:27:00.005+02:00

Far be it from me to say that in more elemental times such things could not have been. The condition belongs to the geologic age - the great birth and growth of the world, when natural forces ran riot, when the struggle for existence was so savage that no vitality which was not founded in a gigantic form could have even a possibility of survival. That such a time existed, we have evidences in geology, but there only; we can never expect proofs such as this age demands. We can only imagine or surmise such things - or such conditions and such forces as overcame them.

- Sir Nathaniel de Salis of Doom Tower in Bram Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm explains the conditions of possibility of "primaeval monsters"; anything is possible "in Earths long order" as Hardy says

#86

2008-12-18T19:21:00.007+02:00

-- was there ever / A time of such quality, since or before, / In that hill's story? To one mind never, / Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore, / By thousands more. // Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border, / And much have they faced there, first and last, / Of the transitory in Earth's long order; / But what they record in colour and cast / Is - that we two passed. // And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour, / In mindless rote, has ruled from sight / The substance now, one phantom figure / Remains on the slope, as when that night / Saw us alight.

- Thomas Hardy, "At Castle Boterel" muses on the primaeval; compare with Pascal's fear of the infinite or the geological sensibility of Sir Nathaniel de Salis; the mid-nineteenth century "dark abyss of time"

#85

2008-12-18T19:05:00.005+02:00

#206: "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me." #207: "How many kingdoms know us not!" #208: "Why is my knowledge limited? Why my stature? Why my life to one hundred years rather than to a thousand? What reason has nature had for giving me such, and for choosing this number rather than another in the infinity of those from which there is no more reason to choose one than another, trying nothing else?"

- compare the constant fear of the infinite in Pascal's Pensées and originating themes of supernatural horror & fantasy