yes, this is fascinating. I can't help being struck by the immense difference between Foucault's western view of the boat - "closed in on itself" - and the double-hulled waka or ocean-going canoes of the Polynesian Maori, that in contrast very closely espouse te Moana, the ocean they traverse. Strange memories of visiting Stockholm's Vasa museum, dedicated to the seventeenth century floating palace that sank on her maiden voyage, so mightily and heavily did her ballasted multiply-gunned splendour loom over the sea. The imbalance of hubris. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Such an earnest museum that pays hommage to the so earnest blindness of another bunch of my ancestors. A reminder that the same unconscious blindness we're experiencing today will one day make future generations want to laugh and cry at the same time. Port to port and brothel to brothel? Some very large parts of the seafaring world where this didn't/ doesn't seem to apply are worth looking at precisely for their navigational prowess.
No desire to undermine the Foucaultian perspective - after all, it was because her crew couldn't wait for their binoculars that the Titanic went down. Just a need to nuance boat stories with references from another culture. Pharoah's barque included? Navigation is of sanskrit origin. To be aligned with Greek cybernauts? How not to forget the Maori seafarers and their mythology that served as a vessel for the imagination? Will we be able to reflect on the Pacific Rim at ISEA this summer without falling into the trap of art tourism? Sun tanned neurons.
From tack to tack indeed. Apologies, there was a little gust that roused my sail and I couldn't help moving with it.
Kia ora
sjn
________________________________
From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org on behalf of Skawennati Tricia Fragnito
Sent: Mon 17/04/2006 19:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] blue ships turning
Dear Robin,
Thank you for the quote and the definition. I really appreciate them. It's
like you found the source inspiration for this thread (that we seem to like so
much we don't want to let go of it!)
A blue ship is also invisible.
Sincerely,
skawennati
--- Murphy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The quote is from Irit Rogoff : http://kein.org/node/64
> The text doesn't include the footnotes for the source:
>
> Michel Foucault famously declared "...the boat is a floating piece of
> space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed
> in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the
> sea and that from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to
> brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious
> treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the
> boat has not only been for our civilisation.. the greatest instrument
> of economic development...but has been simultaneously the greatest
> reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence"
>
> Since I didn't know what heterotopia meant I looked it up on wikipedia:
>
> In his essay, "Different Spaces" (reprinted in Aesthetics, Method, and
> Epistemology), Michel Foucault observed that people in advanced
> technological societies would increasingly move into indeterminate
> spaces called "heterotopias," which literally means "other places."
> These spaces are both real and imagined, such as the space where a
> phone call takes place, or within the informational sphere that has
> also been labeled "cyberspace."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia
>
>
> Robbin Murphy
> THE THING, Inc.
Skawennati Tricia Fragnito
http://www.ThanksgivingAddress.net --new!
http://www.skawennati.net
http://www.CyberPowWow.net
http://www.ImaginingIndians.net
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