文化！Culture!
How do you begin on this subject, what has been the bane of my working life for the past weeks (working on issue number two of 《穿》WEAR journal)?! It’s rather ironic in this also-context, what could be seen as yet-another-cultural-exchange-endeavour, though i’d like not to see it motivated as such, but because of certain divides among us—via language or approach to what is this, our common interest, or goal perhaps—you start to wonder what exactly is being shared or exchanged within this process.
Reinaart’s excerpt from Gilbert Simondon immediately made me think of the Flusser text that he had sent us before, which I really loved (perhaps in certain ways the more fluent version of one of my manifestos), because i have been less aware of the conflicts between culture and technology, much moreso of a strand of thought where culture and technology run parallel, both artists and technicians as the “tricksters” of perception and identity and nature. Techne –> tekton –> ars –> tour de main –> artifex –> art.
文化与技术走的两条平行的线。艺术家与技工都要骗知觉、身份和自然。
We derive meaning as we construct culture, develop technology as we conquer the laws of nature. In Lacanian thought, entering adulthood and becoming acculturated is the departure from the Real, where there is no separation or cognition of any separation between self and other. On another tangent, this has created a string of nodes in my streams lately (who dares go back to religion?), trying to understand separation and non-separation. Have you seen Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight (有中文字幕)?
我喜欢在《格列佛游记》里描绘的格利佛碰到了一个外地社会，一个没有语言的文化，所有人把他们需要用来交流的东西背在身上。 I like the image from Gulliver’s Travels, of a culture where there is no language, and people carry on their back all the things they need to reference in discourse.
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About the video above: It was originally prepared for the 玩世不恭 Cynical Cultural Exchange BBQ that we did at HomeShop last summer. I just finished putting English subtitles on it, as it will be taken to the Kunstverein Baden (where i think Michael is also participating?) in the Spring.
