Yes, David, I have little difficulty in doing that kind of imagining as I
worked as an 'outreach' person in local retirement homes and hospices in
New Hampshire for years. And I agree -- imagining such spaces and their
connection to others IS relevant here, and not just tangentially so. As
cris suggests in his response, the verbal is only one vector in the
translational field; that's one of the reasons that the series we're
running is called 'partly writing'. We're focused how writers use text in
public spaces in order to 'attend' to them, and what exactly is attempted
in doing so, but of course no, the arts don't contain these conversations.
I hope I didn't suggest that in what I said.
I don't quite understand your 'I think not' juxtaposed below the excerpt
from my post below; is it meant to negate the possibility that
'explorations' such as the ones I refer to make any difference? I would
disagree if so.
On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, david.bircumshaw wrote:
> An interesting post, Romana, though I have trouble quite getting some of the
> things you say into focus. Is 'translatabilty' and its difficulties a matter
> exclusive to artistic endeavour: imagine an old people's home in a
> provincial town, privately owned, of course, the inmates, I mean residents
> are all extremely decayed in mind, all of them have the minimum treatment,
> i.e. they spend most of their days in little rooms with the tv to talk to,
> they have cook-chill type meals, they're bathed, but that's about all, not
> enough care assistants employed (at the minimum wage) for more than that,
> this is because their families have abandoned them - by leaving elsewhere by
> dying by indifference by poverty whatever - the authorities actually pay
> something in the region of 400 pounds a week for their 'care', but this
> place is not a 'home', whether it is where the language of their birth was
> spoken or not, it is a 'business', and profit is its motive, not love.
>
> You might try to talk to the occupants. But they have nothing to say. Or
> that they can say to you. It does not translate across the gap. All that's
> before them is death, and they sit in their abandonment before that
> prospect. You can certainly make a public space there, after all, nobody
> cares about that space. But what do you say into that space?
>
> "I find this kind of explorative work very moving and very important, in
> part as a stay against some of the most worrisome models of nomadic movement
> that seem to dissolve those non-translatable elements left so scantily
> conceptualised."
>
> I think not.
>
> The picture I've drawn above isn't entirely invented - I've seen such.
>
> It has a tangential relevance to the topic under discussion.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> David Bircumshaw
>
> Leicester, England
>
> Home Page
>
> A Chide's Alphabet
>
> Painting Without Numbers
>
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Romana C Huk" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2002 3:35 PM
> Subject: Re: future list
>
>
> I thought I'd answer Ian's kind query with responses also to Alison's
> posting a couple of days ago, which I found very interesting, and moving,
> as well as to Tom's comments on generative materials and situations for
> writing. It's exactly these issues of 'non-translatability', even across
> English-speaking cultures, that intersts me, and has informed my input
> into the events that Caroline Bergvall and I have been collaborating to
> produce. I really like like what you say about Caroline's work in your
> posting, Alison, and would only add that her interests in 'de- and
> re-contextualising language', 'scalpel[ing] into the DNA of language',
> remain focused on the incompatibilities between any two sites for doing
> so, and the non-translatable elements that locate differences in all those
> fluidities of operations. (I'm quoting in part from her and Ric Allsopp's
> call for papers for the Performance Research issue they co-edited very
> recently). I find this kind of explorative work very moving and very
> important, in part as a stay against some of the most worrisome models of
> nomadic movement that seem to dissolve those non-translatable
> elements left so scantily conceptualised. But that's me -- please don't
> read my thoughts as coincident with those of my collaborator!
>
> The event in January, Ian, was built on a conversation-led model as a
> kind of experiment: we wanted to talk between the 'languages' of poets and
> curators and publishers and performing artists and other kinds of
> 'activists' engaged in writing for public spaces. It was actually very
> difficult to do -- it was terribly hard at first to feel understood by
> all, and the languages we spoke in raked against others and came up for
> discussion before we could proceed. It was interesting to see, in this
> seminar on 'negotiating public space' and defining it for the purposes of
> our conversation, how those languages were sited in specific places even
> as we tried to discuss something more abstract -- the 'public'. We wanted
> very much to get at how writers produce 'socially efficacious' work, and
> had to define and discard and reinvent many different conceptions of
> public space that begin with, for example, the arts community, and end
> with huge conceptualisations evident in recent theory and practice that
> assume absolutely open-ended public space as a matter of principle: i.e.,
> anyone and everyone, in a mobile era, might 'be there.' The latter must,
> of course, forego discourses of location and community specificity (as
> well as critique of the latter's elisions in defining itself). How to
> write into such very different conceptions of public space?
>
> Caroline and I are right now thinking through what happened that weekend
> and are detailing the description of what WILL happen at the next event,
> which will go on to think about collaborations and 'translative' practices
> -- this is where I come back to where I began above. As we think through
> the residues in 'dialogue' and the worth of such residues (bad word; but I
> too must write these postings quickly for lack of time!), we want to think
> again about collaboration as possibly foregrounding rather than eliding
> difference -- but then, what we hope is that people will come and give us
> better ways of thinking about such questions. What is the space of
> collaboration? What is its relationship to 'public space'? Can answers
> to questions like those change the way we think about 'translation'
> between languages, arts forms, media for a single work?
>
> I'll be more coherent in the new description of the event, which is due
> here on line by Friday, we hope. We have lots of room for people to come
> along; we're experimenting with another model for conversation in this
> one, which includes some papers, too. More on that on Friday; for now, do
> visit the website: www.dartington.ac.uk/partlywriting/ to see where we
> were in January. We hope the website will soon include more comments from
> the poeple that were there -- comments that are meant to create a kind of
> new dialogue with people who wish to come to part II in April.
>
> And anything any of you might have to say in even the most quickly formed
> of responses to the above will be much appreciated -- will, no doubt, go
> right into othe formulations for April's event.
>
> Very best,
>
> Romana
>
> On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, ian davidson wrote:
>
> >
> > Romana
> >
> > Seeing your name come up reminded me. How was the partly writing seminar
> > at dartington last weekend? I've heard no reports or mention of it. Any
> > one else who attended prepared to make a brief report? I'd be very
> > interested.
> >
> > I also can't seem to find the website for partly writing despite
> > extensive searching so would appreciate address. Does that give details
> > of the forthcoming Oxford Brookes event in April?
> >
> > Ian (Davidson)
> >
> > >From: Romana C Huk
> > >Reply-To: Romana C Huk
> > >To: [log in to unmask]
> > >Subject: Re: future list
> > >Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 09:53:33 -0500
> > >
> > >Found Alison's post interesting in terms of the comment on Caroline's
> > >'at-homeness' in language. Isn't her work all about the constant
> > >'translation' of her several languages into one another? Not a native
> > >English speaker, her own 'linguistic displacements' have become one of
> > the
> > >most important 'subjects' of her work; in fact, the subject of an event
> > >we're collaborating to produce this spring. I would love to hear more
> > >about Alison's own displacements and what they mean for her work, as I
> > >don't find such generative problems banal at all.
> > >
> > >Romana
> > >
> > >On Sat, 26 Jan 2002, Alison Croggon wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi cris
> > > >
> > > > One of the reasons I've liked this list is because it's opened a lot
> > > > of work for me, which otherwise I would have trouble finding out
> > > > about; and it's often made me rethink or reread. And doesn't your
> > > > call for rigour resonate crosswise against your earlier call for
> > > > play? although I do understand what you're calling for - surely this
> > > > is a series of conversations more often than a series of conference
> > > > papers? -
> > > >
> > > > I'm not exactly unaware of the feminist thought behind such
> > > > splinterings; I certainly wasn't being critical of them. I am
> > > > interested in many things which don't necessarily enter my own
> > > > practice. What I was uneasily speculating was that splinterings and
> > > > fragmentations like those in Caroline Bergvall's work might be more
> > > > possible from an at-homeness in a language which I don't, for my own
> > > > banal reasons, possess at all: without disputing the various complex
> > > > exiles-within-exiles within the UK, it's a fact that my linguistic
> > > > displacements devolve down to day-to-day speech, no matter where I
> > > > am, and the English language estranges me in very particular ways:
> > > > and with those gaps so evident to me, that sense of fragmentation
> > > > occurs in my work in different ways. Like I want a hammer, not a
> > > > scalpel. Not that exile itself means this - I guess Celan is the
> > > > most obvious counter-example - but nevertheless I feel it's one of
> > > > the things at play in my own impulses. For what it's worth.
> > > >
> > > > Best
> > > >
> > > > A
> > > >
> > > > At 12:46 PM +0000 25/1/2002, cris cheek wrote:
> > > > >Then Alison writes:
> > > > >
> > > > >> It occurs to me that I'm not attracted in my own practice to the
> > kind of
> > > > >> linguistic splinterings and fracturing practised by writers like
> > Caroline
> > > > >> Bergvall because maybe the practice of poetry is for me a search
> > for a
> > > > >> mending, a patterning over/despite/through breakages and radical
> > absences of
> > > > >> certain kinds of selfhood. I often feel I should treat my whole
> > enterprise,
> > > > >> whatever it is, with profound suspicion.
> > > > >
> > > > >and i kind of think yes. But what some might read as splinterings
> > and
> > > > >fracturings are cogent arguments over historical representations of
> > gender,
> > > > >the image of the doll just for one example (read through Hans
> > Bellmer and
> > > > >Cindy Sherman and Duchamp). It speaks as much of 'mending' as
> > anything.
> > > > >Then there are the wonderul shifts between differing versions and
> > the ways
> > > > >by which current approaches to versioning are intended to provoke
> > dialectic
> > > > >response - poetry as unfinishable conversations.
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Alison Croggon
> > > >
> > > > Home page
> > > > http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
> > > > Masthead
> > > > http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
> > > >
> >
> >
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