[NetBehaviour] thinking, working here, through war there -

[Alan Sondheim]

I worked on, created, the piece below, thinking about war and its effects, 
and here all of us, people I know, who I collaborate with, acquaintances 
and so forth, are doing the same, it's an embarrassment to call it a 
"response to war" or a "war effort," at least giving money, spreading 
news, discussing, may help one way or another. For myself, I feel awkward 
sending pieces to Netbehaviour, realize I'm somewhat of a nuisance anyway, 
still naively hoping for discussion. On Netbehaviour we've discussed all 
forms of performance, role playing, meditative, dance and virtual, for 
example, and I wonder how people involved in these are coping, whether we 
or they or us feel that matters at all, given the butchery in the Ukraine 
which seems as if it will be ongoing for a tragic amount of time, more 
time, or any time at all. So I'm asking what people are doing, what might 
be thought of in the way of healing or raising money or consciousness, 
anything so we don't feel, at least so I don't feel, so utterly useless as 
if Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan, Hungary, and on and on, are being 
revisited with the same brutality, as if nothing's been learned, as if 
we're forced to be silent bystanders, silent witnesses, beyond donating. 
Please, if you have anything you might want to share, please do so, so 
many of us are hurting, not on the level of the fighting, but hurting 
nonetheless, again this hopeless watching. Please, if you can, say 
someting, if only to tell me to stop posting, be quiet, I think we need to 
talk, and if the only space we might talk in online would be twitter or 
Facebook, what then?

Thanks, Alan

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war thought, thinking through war

http://www.alansondheim.org/warthought.mp4
( https://www.youtube.com/user/asondheim/videos )
http://www.alansondheim.org/warthought.jpg

at night i can't sleep, but i'm not under fire, i'm not in any
danger, not even from myself, i wouldn't hurt myself under any
condition, but my thoughts are troubled by war, which is almost
a useless luxury, disturbed by war, touched by war, not only
this but from years again, hungary, vietnam, syria, isis, not to
mention the racist fury in the united states, marches, tear-gas,
protests, constantly writing, image-making, video-making,
teaching, talking, nothing nothing compared to being-there,
unimaginable, even saying that surrender, i make these useless
videos, writings, still images, musics, as if they made a
difference which they don't, i'm not complaining, i beg you to
donate of course, we donate of course, from a distance farther
than a finger tip state tip country tip or border, all of us
have had bad pain in our lives, almost passing out from it, all
of us, nothing at all, i can only describe a form of mist, a
type of mist, that is to say, harboring, strategies of
avoidance, as if there were a working subjunctive, that it might
all disappear, imitative magic, gesture transforming worlds, to
wake up from inconceivable dreams, horrors, threats, brutality,
all that's here, there's more, these documents, of nothing less
or more than mental states, metal states, aircraft aluminum,
tank iron, here safe bubble of production, an ability to believe
that the apparatus, camera, computer, instrument, producer,
player, are somehow protected here from there, from the violence
that surrounds us, infiltrates us, that is inflicted from within
and without, my understanding that these works are fundamentally
failures, collapses, but not excuses, but what one might think
from here, from something relatively safe, of course there are
riots, but they are inconceivably safer, everything is but there
where the world is when it is not, here, among them who are
killing, butchering, at will, here i write and write, it is
unspeakable, this litany of failures, residues of incapacity, as
if, always as if, what is being done here is a skewed form of
instrumentality, failure is what i can hope for, giving is what
all of us can do, failure upon failure but giving upon giving
upon giving, perhaps something will change with the last

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