[NetBehaviour] Some thoughts about work processes for the Brunel presentation -

[Alan Sondheim]

Some thoughts about work processes for the Brunel presentation -

http://www.alansondheim.org/P1050266.JPG

1. I generally don't work around 'pieces' but create within the
modality of a continuous production - hence the Internet Text's
25+ year run to date. As I've described it, there are short- and
long-wave topics, recapitulations, indices, revisitations to
older material, and so forth. I find I'm not 'progressing' as I
age - there are no moments, in others works, of more or less
naivete; the thinking just continuous, curls in on itself.

2. I tend to push things to whatever limits I can, place the
stage of production within edge spaces, spaces where things
begin to break down. This gives me the opportunity to work
simultaneously within multiple worlds, some not well-defined.

3. I work with other actors who inhabit temporary communities
within which cooperation or disintegration create stresses that
mirror every day life in numerous ways.

4. I venture as well into territories in which the limits create
untoward results, 'ugly' musics for example, uncomfortable
performance movement.

5. All of this considers edgespaces as spaces of annihilation,
dead-zones, genocides, limited resources, broken potential
wells. This underlies everything.

6. My work always has, however, a sense of care, of turning
towards care, of tending and stewardship, insofar as bodies and
productions are concerned - as if the world itself harbors
moments of kindness in the midst of conflagrations.

7. As well, there are uncomfortable moments of revelation,
desire, autopornographies, textualities pushed beyond sense and
sensibility; these play against the structures of the life-world
and beyond. Again, inadequacy, failure, and the limits of
expression come into play.

8. Whatever I work on, I hope is ultimately safe; a space that
allows performance, expression, exploration, contemplation of
annihilation, despair; but a space one returns from, in other
words an ultimately moot space, however morose.

9. Not only are the spaces within and without edgespace - they
are also malleable, alterable within and without their very
fundamental structure. There are no absolutes 'all the way
down,' at least not until the theoretical-almost mythical site
of the planck constants, where attributes are problematized.

10. I am told I am too negative, too morose, too demanding, too
arrogant, too argumentative, too dominating, too neurotic, too
depressed, too anxiety-ridden; I am probably all of these things
and more; my self and body are continuously under reconstruction
/ deconstruction, falling apart at the edges, failing. I fail at
what I do; I fail myself, I fail others. I also think this is
the world's territory, world's arena; we are our own private
hells, and out of this art, performance, thought emerges.

11. A difficulty is the clarity of language - I think there is
too much baggage in too much new terminology in philosophical
and critical discourse. The terminology tends to write and ride
within its own plateaus, close ranks, devolve into operations
that seem totalizing but explain little outside their universe
of discourse. But this is my problem. My thought, I think, is
embarrassingly complex but absurdly simply in concept - perhaps
a failure, perhaps something else.

12. When you're at your limits, continue onward; soon you'll see
you're still safe, whole, wherever you might be. You've learned
(and I've learned this from Clark Coolidge, a conversation a
long time ago). Taking care, try not to leave the world a worse
place than it already is. Do better than I have, leave no ruins
behind.

13. Return as much as possible to the ground, the literal,
physical, ground; remember the digital is not only a construct,
but also an addiction and a confluence of protocols. Remember
the world you came from, and the world you will enter in death,
and think beyond the malleability of the screen and its raster.
This is critical, to keep the somatic, the flesh and its
interiority, always in focus, even if only on the edges of your
thought. The real is the real for all that.

14. Map the limit to the limit - what can be approached, to what
extent? The grit and dirt of the world are to be embraced, even
if momentarily cleansed. With your eyes closed, _see_; what is
visible is what you and the world supply each other. The same
perhaps for every sense, every senselessness, something to
approach, even to the limit of the unapproachable.

15. The body is always somatic, grit, flesh, dirt, biome, scar,
history; the body is always already a ghost, a disappearance, a
memory with others, as others are a memory within you. Think of
rules and transgressions, be kind on the other side, or on those
approaches that go nowhere, that tend towards the apparent
sadness of the real.

16. Think through, release. Think through createspace, network-
space, work space, within and without the ruins. And be kind as
you can be, even if that leaves destruction in your wake.

17. There's more of course, I can't, now think of them...