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CCC Workshop

Transcript
>Something like a discussion

Document
>Something like a discussion

Document
>Felix Guattari, "Molecular Revolution" (excerpts)
>Begins with English Summary by Charles

Document
>Delacroix's Journals (excerpts)
>Begins with English Summary by Charles

Document
>Simone Forti (Excerpts)

Transcript
>Session 3, Charles

Transcript
>Session 1, All members

Something like a discussion… (*see also, updated version )

...evolving around: the “state“ of the world, each protagonist’s perception of it, what they do or feel they can do in it, the revolting against and revolutionizing of norms, what becomes or could become of these revolutions.
I basically took the structure of Guattaris text, and included the other protagonists views within it, particularly the process of revolting, doubt, creation (since they all are protagonists of molecular revolutions), that Simone Forti (and Delacroix, but maybe I should do some more refining concerning his process) goes through. But where Guattari's text what have been kind of conclusive (with a basis for a form of action), Simone keeps the text open. The text is a representation of the process they went thru, but this process will be repeated in cycles by folowing generations. And it is this process we are struggling with.

The world

Guattari: For some years now we have been experiencing a process comparable to that of 1929, a full range of regional conflicts, of local political confrontations,of economic crises

Delacroix :1853
How does a world so beautiful contain so much horror!…under the appearance of calm of these houses,..the passions, vices, crimes, are only sleeping, or awake in the dark preparing to take arms. Rather than uniting against theterrible sufferings of mortal life, men are wolves and tigres destroying each other.

Forti: End of summer in the Sierra Nevada, in an almost imperceptible manner, a giant pine tree moves in spirals around its axe.

How one sees it

G: Indeed a revolution of great amplitude is developing today, but at a molecular or microscopic level.

F: I am a dancer, not because I move well, but because I am capable of reading movement. It is in terms of movement that I understand things, and it’s what enables me to be a good dancer.“

D:The result of my days is always the same, an infinite desire of what one never obtains (...) an extreme “itch“ to fight the most one can against time which carries us away (...) always also a sort of philosophical calm which prepares for suffering, lifts us from unimportant things.

What one does about it.

G: I do believe that a whole series of factors are leading to an absolute crisis at all levels of social organization throughout the world. This situation would call for revolutionary solutions

D:17.08.1830
We were first during three days in the middle of gun fire, people were fighing everywhere (...) until now everything is ok, all the people of good sense hope that the makers of republic will keep quiet

F: I saw a man in pyjamas walk up to a tree, stop, look at it, and change the way he stood.

D: 28.05.1848
Rousseau, who never saw any fire other then that of his kitchen, says that he would rather a liberty mixed with danger, than a peaceful slavery, alas I have come to the opposite opinion, considering that this freedom ought at the price of battles is not really freedom.

G:The main question for me is a radical change of attitude with regard to political problems. On the one hand there are “serious“ things one sees in the papers, on television:the questions of power in the parties, the unions, the groupuscules; on the other hand, there are little things, the things of private life: the militant’s wife who stays at home to look after the children.

F: We (Ann Harpling) viewed the working of technique with the perspective that the body was capable of doing all kind of movements.

D:1847
The real moralists, the philosophers, such as M.Aurel, the Christ, never spoke of politics. The equality of rights never occupied them, they only asked men for resignation towards their destiny…, of submitting oneself to nature. Sickness, death, poverty, pains of the soul are eternal and will torment humanity under all regimes, whether its form be democratic, mononarchic, will do nothing.

F: We worked on the idea of attaining a state of receptivity in which the flux of our consciousness could be elevated in total freedom.

F: Driving on a highway in Arizona, I saw a small tornado moving fast along the desert. I really wanted to run to its center. I stopped the car, and I walked to it, but I was too shy to jump on it and grab it before it dissapeared..

G:The problem is this: one can not strive toward a political objective without identifying as well all the microfascisms, all the modes of semiotic subjugation of power that reproduce themselves through that struggle, and no myth of a return to spontaneity or to nature will change anything

F: I remenber very distinctly the movement Bob(Morris) did that day. He had been observing a rock.Then he lay down on the ground. During three minutes he had become more and more compact until the “contour“ of his body no longer touched the ground, keeping only the part under his center of gravity in contact with it.

G:To the extent that one fights microfascisms at a microscopic level, one can also prevent it from happening at the level of large political groups. If one believes that each one of us is immunized against microfacist contamination, against semiotic contamination by capitalism, then we can surely expect to see unbridled forms of macrofacism well up

F: I had started doubting of my way of practicing, of the identity I had developed a belonging to as an artist ,both of witch I shared with many artistes. “I perceived a common vision of the world between an aesthetic research coming from New York and the foreign policy, which came from Washington”

G:Analysis again, everywhere possible

D: 05.05.1852
There are no radical brights or shades. There is a colorless mass for each object reflected differently on every side. The profound truth of this, which may seem bizarre, is all the understanding of color in painting. Strangely enough, it has been only understood by a small number of painters, even among those one calls the ‘colorists’.

F:After working with Bob Whitman, and using the different constitutive elements of the room I was performing in, “I realised that most of my actions were executed not for the movement to be seen, but for a precise work to be done”.

G: The microfascisms can only be dealt with a new type of arrangement of enunciation. One example of these arrangements of enunciation - an impossible, truly awful arrangement from the vantage point of the arrangements of desire - is that of this room itself, with some individual raised above everyone else, with a prepared discussion which would make it impossible for any one really to start a discussion.

F: I started taking classes at the studio of Martha Graham, but I couldn’t tuck my stomach in. I didn’t want to tuck my stomach in. Then I went to Merce Cunningham. I couldn’t understand the movements they were doing, and even less to do them. One important part of these movements seemed to be the arbitrary isolation of the different parts of the body. Once I said in exasperation that Merce was a master in articulate isolation destined to adults, and that what I had to offer was closer to the holistic behavior and movement and behavior of babes.I went to work in a kindergarten.

In ‘59, Bob Morris and I had moved to New York. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What was the most impressive to me was to be “emerged“ in an environment that seemed completely conceived and created by people.

D: 16.05.1853
Oh indignante Philanthropes! without heart or imagnation.You think that man is a machine, like your machines, you deprive him of his most sacred rights, under the pretext of freeing him of tasks that you consider unworthy, and which are the law of his being.

F: Like a labyrinthe of mirrors and concrete. It was very depressing, I started paying attention to my one gravity and mass, as a kind of prayer... because they hadn’t changed.

F: 1st of May 1961
Feeling depressed. I am ashamed to dance.I can’t stand an longer all the precise movements that are taught in technique courses, but I am ashamed to move in reponse to my own sensations. I just can’t do it any more

D: 30.4.1849
I saw a procession of ants,.., going in one direction as if migrating, a small number of ants were going the opposite way. Where were they going? We are all stuck, animals, men, vegetables, in this immense box called the universe

G: Analysis again, everywhere possible
leading through a systematic decentering of social desire, to soft subversions and imperceptible revolutions that will eventually change the face of the world, making it happier.

D: 02.04.1849
Man always starts all over again, he can establish no progress. How could a nation establish one in his ...

F:To understand why the conditions a work of art had to fill in seemed all of a sudden very restrained. I thought of the Hopi Indians, who are bound to the center of harmony of the earth by the top of their head, which they must keep open. They have a migration to accomplish, which has brought them around the Americas several times, along many generations. But the temptation to sedentarise and build a city arose every time they settled a little to long. Life is simpler, within a large stable community in which one can make a name for ones self. But the danger is that the top of the head closes up, and the world is destroyed. Every time a couple of people feel this evolution, escape and hide under earth before being destroyed. After several days they come out again and the whole cycle starts again

 

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