[NetBehaviour] M'Work

[Ken Turner]

as they said in the 60's - right on
ken
On Apr 26, 2007, at 04:50, Alan Sondheim wrote:

>
>
> M'Work
>
> There are certain misapprehensions in relation to my works in various
> fields - music, sound, photography, film, video, texts, media in 
> general.
> I am assumed to be a producer bypassed or deflected, that my work 
> refuses
> steadfastly one genre or another. In fact, I neither produce 
> masterpieces
> nor specific works, and am uncomfortable with the thinking that 
> references
> a litany of key objects in my career. Instead, I construct discourses,
> albeit with myself - discourses of such a nature that it seems 
> irrelevant
> to complete those things that might complete a career - a series for
> example, or critical moments. I insist on discourse, because this is 
> the
> means of progress, of thinking itself; to stop at the wayside of this 
> or
> that thing cluttering up the environment means a waste of energy and a
> good deal of the limited time we are all given in the first place. As 
> far
> as funding is concerned, I believe that such thought, such discourse,
> should be rewarded in particular by granting agencies or good 
> samaritans,
> since there is little change of sales or recompense for the creation of
> working-through streams of thought occasionally resulting in partial
> reconstructions of philosophy, phenomenology, or any other and all 
> modes
> of conceiving the world. What is the world, but scaffolding which
> constantly is renewed, destroyed, forgotten, abandoned at death, 
> crudely
> stumbled upon at birth? To examine this world, to truly occasion 
> studies
> and thinking without compromise, I am forced to forgo stases, strange 
> and
> familiar attractors - forced to avoid these at all costs, however
> seductive they might appear. This is not to say that I remain aloof 
> from
> the marketplace - only that I appear deeply unfit for it, and am 
> forced to
> search elsewhere for financial support. But everywhere I look, it is 
> the
> same story - give me the goods, and I might consider, on one level or
> another, rewarding you - but nothing further. There are no gifts in 
> this
> life, but only exchanges, and even these come at high psychological 
> cost.
> I honestly try to acquiesce; it is useless, tawdry; nothing seems to 
> come
> of it - something in my character. Given this, I plod onward, carrying 
> my
> sickness with me and an insane desire to believe that reward exists
> somewhere through the journey itself, rather than the destination 
> alone.
> However, the thrust of this memo is elsewhere - a counter to those who
> critique my working as a contamination of site, cite, and sight - those
> who are blind not to see value in the difficult motion of thinking 
> among
> the ongoing world. This is what I do; I think, give signposts, 
> memoranda,
> exempla, and inhabitants of the imaginary, and this, I believe, is the
> goal and guise of the true artist, never to rest, never to complete 
> what
> is already known, but to search out elsewhere for whatever knowledge 
> might
> be gained along the ways.
>
> http://www.asondheim.org/gloom.mov
>
> at least no one else is doing this stuff at least on a daily basis.
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>