Une voix à la radio & Animesh Rai!

J'ai entendu la voix d'Edouard Glissant pour la première fois sur France Culture. Je trouvais son discours fascinant. Très intriguée par l'association qu'il fait entre la géophysique et la pensée, un sujet qui me passionne, je l'écoutais avec attention. Glissant a un accent quand il parle. Je n'arrivais pas à identifier son origine. Il n'était ni du midi ni du Nord de la France. Pas belge, et certainement pas suisse. Après avoir écouté le programme, j'ai fait ce que tout le monde fait en 2009: je suis allée voir sur l'internet. Glissant vient de la Martinique! Ce qui explique bien des choses. Que je me sente autant d'atomes crochus avec lui. Plus encore que les femmes, les minorités ethniques et les colonies ont souffert de l'impérialisme culturel européen, en sus de l'impérialisme économique, politique, etc. En fait, comme lui, je remets en question certains aspects de l'ethnographie qui m'ont toujours paru inappropriés. Il faut vivre une culture avec son corps et son âme, au lieu de l'étudier sous un microscope. Même si je reconnais que Claude Lévi-Strauss a instauré un nouveau respect des autres cultures et un rejet des notions de primitivisme.

En tant que femme, je souffre de la domination mâle de notre culture, dont l'approche systématique ne correspond pas à mon processus intellectuel et créatif. La pensée et la philosophie sont censées être produites dans des sphères supérieures, qui échappent aux contingences matérielles. Il est probable, au contraire, qu'elles sont influencées non seulement pas l'histoire et la politique, mais aussi par la géographie et l'identité sexuelle. Glissant s'intéresse surtout à la relation entre l'Europe, la France en particulieur, et les colonies, et moins que moi, pour des raisons évidentes, à l'aspect sexuel de cette domination intellectuelle. Je crois. Parce que je n'ai pas encore lu le livre en entier! La Poétique de la Relation est un texte magnifique. Difficile. Ce qui m'amène à une nouvelle qui me ravit: Animesh Rai, qui a publié un doctorat sur la créolisation et enseigne dans des institutions universitaires, va contribuer quelques textes à ce blog. Sa pensée est proche de celle de Glissant qu'il connait personnellement et dont il admire l'oeuvre. Si bien qu'il est mieux à même de vous apporter ses lumières sur la pensée de Glissant que moi. Pour préserver le suspens, je révèlerai plus tard le sujet de ses contributions, mais je vous promets qu'elles seront intéressantes!

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Contribué par - Arabella Hutter

Poetics of Relation, Animesh Rai!

When I first heard Edouard Glissant, he was being interviewed on France Culture Radio. I found him riveting. Was very intrigued by his association of geophysics with thoughts, a subject I am passionate about. I could not place his accent. It was neither from Southern, nor from Northern France. Nor Belgian, certainly not Swiss. After listening to the program, I did what we all do in 2009: checked him out on the Internet. Glissant is from Martinique! Made total sense! Ethnic minorities and colonies have suffered from European cultural imperialism, not to mention economic, political, and more. In fact, I share his questioning of some aspects of anthropology which have always struck me as inappropriate. Culture should be lived, experienced with body and soul, and not studied under a microscope. Even if Claude Lévi-Strauss did express respect for other cultures and rejected the notion of primitivism.

As a woman I feel that I suffer from the domination of male thought in our culture, its systematic approach is alien to my intellectual and imaginary process. There is a certain assumption that thought and philosophy are produced in the higher spheres, untouched by material reality. They are influenced not only by history and politics but also by geography and sexuality. Glissant is interested more in the relation between Europe, France in particular, and the colonies, and less interested than me, for obvious reasons, in the sexual aspect of this intellectual domination. - I think. As I have not yet read the whole book yet! The writing is beautiful. Difficult. That brings me to a very exciting news: Animesh Rai, a scholar and professor who has studied Glissant and whose research and thinking is close to Glissant's, will soon make some contributions to this blog. He will be able to speak on Glissant much better than I. Am not yet disclosing the subject of these entries to maintain suspense!

Brought to you by - Arabella Hutter

Où donc a passé Jon Elster?

J'ai essayé de trouver une photo plus flatteuse de Jon Elster. Même si je plaisante sur son style, je respecte son travail.

Vous aurez remarqué que je n'ai pas parlé d'Elster depuis un moment. Au dos de son livre, citation d'un plaisantin qui prétend que Elster écrit "avec verve". Vous me devez de la reconnaissance pour m'atteler à ses textes moroses, à votre service. Une espèce de Reader's Digest, au fond. (Ça existe encore, Reader's Digest? Je les adorais quand j'étais adolescente) Monsieur Jon Elster ne favorise pas la glamour, il préfère la litote, et des listes, des listes et des listes. Bon, j'ai un petit penchant pour les listes moi aussi, mais je ne les fais pas lire aux autres. Listes du genre: (1) colère envers les gens qui nous ont fait du mal (2) colère envers les gens qui nous ont aidés (3) délectation de l'envie des autres (4) etc. Parce qu'il ne croit pas en une sociologie systèmatique qui aurait des règles et des prédictions précises. Une théorie intéressante, mais rejoint-elle vraiment Glissant? Il dit qu'il est comme un dentiste, avec une boîte à outils. Etant donnée une certaine situation, un certain nombre de sujets vont réagir par x et un autre nombre de sujets par y. Qu'il n'est pas possible de prédire ces nombres pour x et pour y. Et 5 pages plus loin, de ces pages écrites dans son style parsimonieux, il se met à aligner toutes sortes de remarques qui se réfèrent à la liste. On (je) doit constamment passer du passage présent à cette liste à 5 pages de distance, un pensum, pour ne pas avoir mémorisé les (17) articles dans la liste. J'ai pris un congé-plaisir en passant par les mémoires de Twyla Tharpe, divertissant! Elle se fait Baryshnikov! Et pour me laisser glisser dans Glissant. Quant à ce dernier, à suivre.

What ever happened to Jon Elster?

You might have noticed that I have not expanded on Elster for a while. On the back of his book, a joker is quoted saying that Elster writes "with verve". You should be grateful to me for drudging through his pedestrian writings. He's not into glamour, Jon Elster, but into understatement and ... lists: (1) anger at people who have offended us (2) anger at people who have helped us (3) enjoyment of other's envy (4), etc. Because he does not believe in a systematic sociology, with rules that work and apply and allow for precise predictions. He says that given a certain situation, some people will react with x and others will react with y, and it's not possible to estimate how many people will do x or y. He says he's like a dentist, with a box of tools. In the box of tools, there's (1) and (2) and (3). And 5 pages - written in a dreary style - after the list, , he starts refering to the list, so you (I) have to go flip over to that page as I have not memorized the (17) items in the list, to make sense of what he's trying to say. I took a break from Elster's prose to read Twyla Tharpe's memoirs - fun! she slept with Baryshnikov! - and to dive into Glissant. More about the latter soon.

Sliding along Glissant

Have I found my guru? Could it be Edouard Glissant? Don't worry if you have never heard of him, I have only discovered his work recently. I've never had a guru and thought I never would. I was listening to a philosophy program on French Radio. Edouard Glissant was being interviewed. Glissant means sliding, a significant name.... He was explaining how he rejects the idea of a universal system of thought. A light went on. In my mind. I have been playing with the idea that a human being does not constitute a coherent logical system. Philosophers always write as if one should subscribe to just one system of thought, which happens to be theirs. Glissant states that such a system is repressive, a conclusion which I had arrived to. I read texts by philosophers, and I also ask myself, of what right? From whose thigh do they think they are born to be so sure of their own theories? I perceive myself as a mosaic of elements: experiences, thoughts, feelings, imagination, fears, hopes, illusions. The only coherent aspect of this system comes from the fact that I produce them. These contradictions provide me with a richness in which I delight, and I'm sure others enjoy theirs too.
I have bought, for a small fortune, La Poétique de la Relation (Poetics of relation), by Glissant, and I'm diving into it. His style, consistent with his philosophy, is ... sliding, glissant. Poetic and allusive. I'll keep you posted as I read.

Communicated by - Arabella Hutter

A propos de glissant

Aurais-je trouvé mon gourou? Serait-ce Edouard Glissant? Ne vous inquiétez pas si son nom ne vous dit rien, je l'ai seulement découvert il y a quelques semaines. Je n'ai jamais eu de maître ou maîtresse à penser, je croyais que je n'en aurais jamais. Et puis j'écoutais une émission sur France Culture avec Edouard Glissant. Un nom prédestiné. Il expliquait qu'il rejette l'idée d'un système philosophique universel. Là, ça a fait clic. Depuis un certain temps, je retourne sous différentes faces la pensée qu'un être humain n'est pas un système logique cohérent. Or les philosophes écrivent toujours comme si l'on doit souscrire à un seul système philosophique, le leur. Glissant remarque que c'est un systéme répressif, la conclusion à laquelle j'étais arrivée aussi. Je lis les écrits de philosophes, et je me demande, mais de quel droit? De quelle cuisse sortent-ils qu'lls soient si sûrs de leurs théories? Quant à moi, je me perçois comme une mosaïque de fragments qui comprennent des expériences, des pensées, des sentiments, de l'imaginaire, des peurs, des espoirs, des illusions. La seule cohérence de ce système consiste en ce que je les articule. Il me semble que ces juxtapositions, ces contradictions représentent une richesse dont je me délecte, et je me doute bien que je ne suis pas la seule à éprouver ce plaisir.
J'ai acquis, pour une petite fortune, La Poétique de la Relation, de Glissant, et je m'y plonge. Son style, consistent avec sa philosophie, est ... glissant. Poétique et allusif. Je vous tiens au courant. -

Futurama meow woof woof

I'm really starting to be out-Performa-ed out. Three weeks. I mean, wouldn't 2 weeks been enough? But not in New York, oh no, in New York, 3 weeks. Went to Performa to catch a film by Matthew Silver, the man in a white dress. Sold out at 8pm so I went at the 9:30pm session. It is one of 10 short films commissioned by Performa. Was worried how I would survive 10 films re-creating re-inventing a 1916 futurist manifest for cinema. I enjoyed it a lot. It's of course pleasant to have all the films on the same DVD or whatever support, so you don't need to wait for the projector to be rethreaded, etc. as it the days of 16mm/Super8 projections.

There were amazingly beautiful films and funny films and touching films and beautiful and funny films, etc. Amazing how good curating can work, the films blended effortlessly into each other. I was interested to see how new media had affected experimental filmmaking, as I haven't been following this scene so much since my experimental days. Some films could have been shot on film, no effect or really little, and some, such as Matthew's, used a lot of effects. There were pets and babies, which seem to be popular everywhere these days, on youtube and in experimental films and on facebook profile photos. That's how deep I'll go today.

Performa last night

I was inside an astronaut's body last night. It was cosy and nurturing. We were offered milk shakes. A fashion show followed with characters who arrived from different parts of the body and exited through the - female - astronaut's v. (can't write the whole word, I don't want my blog to be tagged as pornography!) . They seemed to come out of a 60s Soviet futurist film. The costumes were extremely detailed with varying nuances, a Russian bear, a Siberian group, and in the end a Little White Riding Hood who we worried about whether she would find her way. It reminded us how in the 60s people believed in an utopian future where things would be better, where thanks to technology we would be healthy and beautiful and at peace. Who still believes that nowadays? Despite the fact that we are less at a risk of being wiped out by an nuclear exchange between two superpowers? My friend Adrian Saich was one of the performers. In profile in one of the pics. She says that Christian Tomaszewski and Joanna Malinowska were very pleasant and sweet, just like their show. No Avant-Garde Art Prima Donna. Refreshing.






Christian Tomaszewski photographing his show




Adrian Sachs

Art or art?

Today lots and lots of pictures, and less words. I went to the Joan Jonas performance at Performa last night. Didn't talk to me much. Well, I was standing in the aisle because the show was sold out, and art might not look as good when standing up as when sitting comfortably. I liked some stuff, the technical aspect, but it just didn't strike me the way the brilliant performance by William Kentridge did on Monday night. But the pics above do not represent Joan Jonas' sudden turn around in her style.






















While I was waiting in line, I saw another line two doors down. Went to check it after the show. It was a kidzrobot opening, is it art, is it not? I'm not even going to go there. The crowd was young and hip, there was free beer - all gone by the time I got there. Cool figures produced by young artists.

I was waiting in line for the 2nd time when a guy arrived in a spectacular beat up 70s grey car, in mat finish as opposed to usual glossy car paint. Address stencil painted on door: 255 E6th st, New York, NY no name. And the guy, in his 60s, parked the car right in front of a fire hydrant while there was a perfectly good parking space exactly on the other side of the street and just as large too.
All on one Wooster block, Thursday November 12.

New York dispatch by - Arabella Hutter

NYC infused with Performa

The Performa festival has changed my relationship to New York. It looks and it feels different. Walking around the city from one venue to another. Seeing amazing performances after performances commissioned by the festival. Some less amazing performances, but still vibrant with enthusiasm and commitment. Improvisation, this daredevil show par excellence, soar or fall. Don't the organizers the performers the audience know it's 2009? That we are in an economic crisis? That everyone in New York is concerned just with themselves, and money, and their career? The experience so far has been enchanted, making new friends, blowing my mind, walking around New York as if it were a small festival town somewhere, where you know everybody else after a couple of days, remembering that there is an element of "désinteressment" as says dear old Jon Elster (see many other entries) with a broad Norwegian accent, the "desssin terrrrressment".

Brought to you to you by - Arabella Hutter

Who's modern?

If you're about to go and see Quartett with Isabelle Huppert, you might prefer to skip reading this entry. In the first 10 minutes of the show last night at BAM, the design of the play and its directing felt so 80s, I almost fainted. I remember the excitement of seeing Peer Gynt directed by Robert Wilson in London. But that was quite a few years ago. I worked on keeping an open mind last night, and it paid off. The performances were vibrant, not just Isabelle Huppert but the whole cast. And the play is beautiful. It updates to the 20th century the delectation of 18th century French literature, that exquisite combination of formal language and blatant eroticism. While Robert Wilson's direction grew on me, it didn't create for me the excitement of the Lepage production at BAM earlier this season. For me, Lepage redifines theater. The relationship between reality, the show and the audience is altered. In Lipsynch, the words, the acting is not so important. The play works as a kind of modern pageant of situations, stories that we all know. Instead of Joseph leading Mary to Bethlehem, a sister takes her sibling out of mental hospital. A doctor operates on a patient’s brain. A young woman is sold by one man to another man. As the sets are more realistic than we have become used to in contemporary theater, the delivery of the lines understated, there has to be a reference to cinema. But it is not staged cinema. The evident theme of the play is word. Communication. Media. We are served a big dish of it, at nauseam. Word as lipsynched dialogue, word lipread, word recorded word forgotten word created and recreated. From a baby’s cry to an opera singer via recorded announcements, robot’s voices and poetry. No stone unturned.
The sets are black and metal and white. They’re gimmicky. The play’s full of gimmick. Electronics. Gadgets. Made out of modules, they are as much a part of the play as the characters are. The world in which the character evolves is constantly mutating around them. The plane seen from the outside, opens up, revolves and becomes its interior. The modules come together to form one setting and are split again, inverted and work as a completely different setting. They are realistic to some extent. The technology is at the service of the play director. For sure a lot of the poetry from the set is created by the lighting. Where the set representing the inside of a plane is nearly a copy, the small back lights which turn every passenger into a shadow manage to give this most banal of settings a poetic mystery. In every scene the lighting transcends the style to turn it into something spiritual or poetic. There is so much inventiveness in the craft of the staging. At the end of the play, the stage hands come to receive their part of the applause, as they are an integral part of the play. It shamelessly stuns the audience by tricks bordering on magic. The car moves on the stage with its lights on. It doesn’t look like a car, there is not mistaking here, but it has wheels, it moves and it lights. And somehow, it’s touching. That is the mystery of the play. While the sets are techno, the situations are contrived, the dialogues and the acting are banal, the result is hugely human. Compelling. It creates a balletic representation of our human condition, one where maybe technology can be set to serve humanity, and not the other way round. Where we can still be playful. Hopeful. And deeply care about each other.

Bleak is right

Depressed people are the only ones who see the world objectively, says Jon Elster. Everybody else is wearing pink-tinted eyeglasses. They have a better idea of how other people see them for example, whereas the rest overestimate the good opinion others have of them. In controlled experiments, depressed people figure out better what their odds are in a chance game vs others who tend to think the odds will be favorable to them. I read Gabriel Marquez' autobiography. He tells of many encounters in his travel. He describes everyone he meets as charming, generous, tolerant, intelligent, the station master in a village, the doctor in an other, the professor in Bogota. I envy him. I bet if I went and met them, they would all appear to me as wife beaters, prejudiced, self serving, egotistical individuals. I guess I am a life long depressive. The world seems pretty bleak to me. Statements such as "Life is wonderful" and "Isn't the world God created beautiful?" amaze me. I'm always wondering whether we're talking about the same place, the one with the wars, the pollution, the diseases, the poverty, the injustice, the repression? The only reprieve to this bleak vision comes from my children. Their love and the singular wonder of seeing them grow have out balanced the hardness of the world.

Les gens déprimés sont les seuls à voir le monde objectivement, d'après Jon Elster. Les autres portent des lunettes teintées en rose. Les déprimés ont une meilleure idée de comme ils sont vus par les autres, par exemple, alors que les autres surestiment la bonne opinion qu'on se fait d'eux. Dans des expériences contrôlées, les gens déprimés comprennent mieux leurs chances de gagner. Les autres prédisent des résultats trop positifs, comme si le hasard allait les favoriser. J'ai lu l'autobiographie de Gabriel Marquez. Il décrit les gens qu'il a rencontrés pendant sa vie: charmant, généreux, tolérant, intelligent. A propos de chef de gare de village, du médecin d'une petite ville, du professeur à Bogota. Je l'envie. Je suis sûre que si je les avais rencontrés, ils m'auraient semblé soit violents, intolérants, bornés ou égocentriques. Je suppose que je suis une dépressive à vie. Le monde me semble plutôt cruel. Lorsque j'entends des affirmations telles que "La vie est belle." et "Comme le monde que Dieu a créé est parfait.", je me demande chaque fois si on parle du même, celui avec les guerres, la pollution, les maladies, la pauvreté, l'injustice, la famine? La seule source de lumière, je la tire de mes enfants. Leur amour et l'émerveillement de les voir croître m'offrent un contrebalancier de poids contre la dureté du monde.

Par votre lectrice reporter - Arabella Hutter

Addiction to reason/la dépendance à la raison

Back to Jon Elster, and no fussing around this time. Here's what he says of what he calls addiction to reason. "Some people do indeed have a craving to make decisions on the basis of "just" or sufficient reasons. That, however, makes them irrational rather than rational. A rational person would know that under certain conditions it is better to follow a simple mechanical decision rule than to use more elaborate procedures with higher opportunity costs." Unfortunately I recognize myself as being sometimes addicted to reason: should I do this first then that? Should I buy these headphones or those? Not always. For example I go with my gut feelings when it comes to interviewing people for a job. There is an argument that we can make similarly valid decision using either our reason or our emotions. The advantage of basing a decision on emotions is speed.



J'en reviens à Jon Elster, et sans tourner autour du pot, cette fois. Voici ce qu'il dit de ce qu'il appelle la dépendance à la raison. "Certaines personnes éprouvent le besoin de baser toutes leurs décisions sur des raisons "justes" ou suffisantes. Ce comportement est en fait plus irrationnel que rationnel. Une personne rationnelle saurait que dans certaines conditions, il vaut mieux suivre une règle simple que d'avoir recours à un procédé compliqué qui n'est pas rentable." Malheureusement, je me reconnais dans cette dépendance à la raison: devrais-je faire ceci ou cela d'abord? Acheter ces écouteurs ou ceux-ci? Mais pas toujours. Par exemple, je me base toujours sur l'instinct lorsque j'interviewe quelqu'un pour une embauche. Il est proposé que nous pouvons faire des décisions d'une validité similaire que nous employions notre raison ou nos émotions. L'avantage d'utiliser nos émotions réside dans sa rapidité!

Reported by - Arabella Hutter

Science vs astrology/la science contre l'astrologie

You know how I was saying there are many arguments against astrology? Well, when I started looking on the Internet, I didn't find that many. Plenty of studies prove that astrologers are wrong: they can not guess people's birth sign, for example. But they can't prove that people in different signs are not different. Remember when scientists used to scoff at farmers for always planting at new moon? That's now common practice in most labs since it's been shown to make a big difference. One site had a chart showing the sign and ascendant of about 30 people in government and Nobel Prize winners. Out of a personal interest, I looked for the Aries sign. Only one of these had Aries, and as their ascendant. How likely is that? Which does not mean that Aries are hopeless losers, but that they prefer more delicate pursuits, like writing...

Si vous vous rappelez, j'écrivais que de nombreux arguments scientifiques réfutaient l'astrologie. Eh bien, quand j'ai commencé à chercher sur l'Internet, ce n'était pas si évident. Toutes sortes d'expériences prouvent que les astrologues sont incapables de deviner significativement le signe de sujets étudiés. Par contre, il n'y pas tellement de preuve que des gens de signes différents ne sont pas différents. Les scientifiques se moquaient des paysans qui plantent toujours à la nouvelle lune. C'est maintenant pratique courante dans tous les laboratoires de botanique.
Un site présentait les signes astrologiques de personalités dans le gouvernement, ou qui avaient gagné des prix Nobel. Sur une trentaine de cas, seulement un avait le signe du bélier, et seulement comme ascendant. Je m'intéressais particulièrement à ce signe pour des raisons personnelles. Ce qui ne veut pas dire que les gens du signe du Bélier ne peuvent rien réussir, ils ont simplement des intérêts plus délicats, comme écrire...

Par votre astrologue scientologue reporterologue curiosologue - Arabella Hutter

Where's the music?

Isn't it time for a new music genre? We had swing, bebop, latin jazz, rock, funk, soul, disco, reggae, ska, rap, garage, acid jazz, hiphop -I'm sure I'm missing a few. And we haven't had anything new for 20 years or am I missing something?

N'est-il pas temps qu'apparaisse une nouvelle musique? Nous avons eu le swing, bebop, latin jazz, rock, funk, soul, disco, reggae, ska, rap, rai, garage, acid jazz, hiphop - j'en oublie probablement quelques-uns. Rien de neuf and les dernières 20 ans ou est-ce que j'ai raté quelque chose?

as questioned by - Arabella Hutter