We identify emotionally, subjectively; we evaluate politically, objectively

“We identify emotionally, subjectively – and yet at one and the same time we evaluate politically, objectively in relation to society. Because the profound reaches past the everyday, a heightened language and a ritualistic use of rhythm brings us to those very aspects of life which the surface hides; and yet because the poet and the visionary do not seem like everyday people, because the epic state is not one on which we normally dwell, it is equally possible for Shakespeare, with a break in his rhythm, a twist into prose, a shift into slangy conversation or else a direct word from the audience to remind us – in plain common sense – of where we are, and to return us to the familiar rough world of spades as spades.”

(page 98)

Peter Brook, The Empty Space. London: Penguin, 1968.

From my own library, bought from the Emily Carr University Library booksale, used, for 50 cents.

The occasional rock

“The problem with philosophers is that because their jobs are so hard they drink a lot of coffee and thus use in their arguments an inordinate quantity of pots, mugs, and jugs—to which, sometimes, they might add the occasional rock.”

(page 233)

Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” In Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004), Chicago: The University of Chicago.

Read (in English) for a class (in German) on Installation, UdK-Berlin.

A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday

“”You still don’t get it, do you? We’re talking about a revelation here,” Colonel Sanders said, clicking his tongue. “A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That’s what’s critical. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about, you gold-plated whale of a dunce?””

(page 268)

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore. Trans. Philip Gabriel.

Borrowed, in digital form, from the Vancouver Public Library while living in Berlin.

Everyday practice patiently and tenaciously restores a space for play, an interval of freedom, a resistance to what is imposed

“By itself, culture is not information, but its treatment by a series of operations as a function of objectives and social relations. The first aspect of these operations is aesthetic: an everyday practice opens up a unique space within an imposed order, as does the poetic gesture that bends the use of common language to its own desire in a transforming reuse. The second aspect is polemical: the everyday practice is relative to the power relations that structure the social field as well as the field of knowledge. To appropriate information for oneself, to put it in a series, and to bend its montage to one’s own taste is to take power over a certain knowledge and thereby overturn the imposing power of the readymade and preorganized. It is, with barely visible or nameable operations, to trace one’s path through the resisting social system. The last aspect is ethical: everyday practice patiently and tenaciously restores a space for play, an interval of freedom, a resistance to what is imposed (from a model, a system, or an order). To be able to do something is to establish distance, to defend the autonomy of what comes from one’s own personality.”

(page 254-255)

Luce Giard & Michel de Certeau, “Envoi” in The Practice of Everyday Life, Volume II.

Found on the new acquisitions shelf.

Performing everyday life is bound to create some curious kind of awareness

“The performance of everyday routines, of course, is not really the same as acting a written script, since conscious intent is absent. There is a phenomenal and experiential difference. Being a performer (like being a lawyer) involves responsibility for what the word performer may mean and what being a performer may entail. Nor are everyday routines managed by a stage director, although within the theatrical metaphor parents, officials, teachers, guides, and bosses may be construed as equivalents. But again, these mentors would have to see themselves as directors of performances rather than instructors in social mores and professions outside the arts. What is interesting to art, though, is that everyday routines could be used as real offstage performances. An artist would then be engaged in performing a “performance”.

Intentionally performing everyday life is bound to create some curious kinds of awareness. Life’s subject matter is almost too familiar to grasp, and life’s formats (if they can be called that) are not familiar enough.”

(page 187)

Allan Kaprow, “Participation Performance” in Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life.

Bought secondhand from Pulpfiction Books on Main St., Spring 2012.

A history at the halfway point of ourselves

“Everyday life is what we are given every day (or what is willed to us), what presses us, even oppresses us, because there does exist an oppression of the present. Every morning, what we take up again, on awakening, is the weight of life, the difficulty of living, or of living in a certain condition, with a particular weakness or desire. Everyday life is what holds us intimately, from the inside. It is a history at the halfway point of ourselves, almost in a recess, sometimes veiled; we should not forget this “memory world,” to use Péguy’s expression. We have our hearts set on such a world, a world of olfactory memory, memory of childhood places, of the body, of childhood gestures, of pleasures. We should perhaps underline the importance of the domain of this “irrational” history, or this “nonhistory,” according to Alphonse Dupront. What interests the historian of everyday life is the invisible.”

(page 3)

Michel de Certeau, “The Annals of Everyday Life” in The Practice of Everyday Life, Vol. 2: Living & Cooking.

Found on the new acquisitions shelf of the ECU library.

To grasp the multiplicities of practices in action

“Our own difficulties in constructing this study [The Practice of Everyday Life] were born from this requirement. How could we grasp the activity of those who practice the ordinary, and how could we go a contrario from sociological and anthropological analyses? With our weak strength and without any illusion save our enthusiasm, we had to open up an immense construction site: we had to define a method, find models to apply to it, describe, compare, and differentiate activities that are by nature subterranean, ephemeral, fragile, and circumstantial — in short, seek by trial and error to elaborate “a practical science of the singular”. We had to grasp the multiplicities of practices in action, not dream about them, succeed in rendering them intelligible so that others in turn might be able to study their operations. There was a desire at stake for a reversal of the analytic glance, and this desire was of course no stranger to the great disappointed commotion of May 1968; in order to succeed, this reversal had to be based on making practices factually visible and theoretically intelligible.”

(page xxxviii)

de Certeau, Giard & Mayol, The Practice of Everyday Life,Volume 2: Living & Cooking. DC33.7 .C38 1998

Found on the new acquisitions shelf, ECU Library.

Erinnerung/Memory

Und du wartest, erwartest das Eine
das dein Leben unendlich vermehrt;
das Mächtige, Ungemeine,
das Erwachen der Steine,
Tiefen, dir zugekehrt.

Es dämmern im Bücherständer
die Bände in Gold und Braun;
und du denkst an durchfahrene Länder,
an Bilder, an die Gewänder
wiederverlorener Fraun.

Und da weißt du auf einmal: das war es.
Du erhebst dich, und vor dir steht
eines vergangenen Jahres
Angst und Gestalt und Gebet.

“And you wait, await the one thing
that will infinitely increase your life;
the gigantic, the stupendous,
the awakening of stones,
depths turned round toward you.

The volumes in brown and gold
flicker dimly on the bookshelves;
and you think of lands traveled through,
of paintings, of the garments
of women found and lost.

And then all at once you know: that was it.
You rise, and there stands before you
the fear and prayer and shape
of a vanished year.”

(pages 80-81)

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images.