(Sadler’s Wells, 24 July 2015)
The ballet opens with an idyllic scene of car mechanics, waitresses, and girls of unknown provenance labouring, lounging, conversing, and copulating on a sizzling Arizona afternoon. The ensuing scenes augment this idyll with violence and murder. The production does well by eschewing the 1940s Hollywood Code; there is more to noir than film noir. The narrative is gritty in places, thereby challenging one to detect beauty in or between the episodes of the tragic or the mundane.
Vitality seduces.
The line between the sensual and the pornographic is fine. This demarcation need not be observed for art to retain its integrity. The dances' eroticism derives from their context, the implied relationships, and playfulness, which deals in uncertainty and suspense. Art layers uncertainty and suspense.
One need not come to possess beauty in order to savour it. Even the contemplation of nature may evoke eroticism. It may suffice to merely know that beauty exists and to be touched by this beauty (to ascertain one's own existence).
25 July 2015
22 July 2015
DUMMY lab
(Chamäleon, 19 July 2015)
The city is suspended, waiting for the world to end. Work takes the mind off the wait. Work provides for weekend amusements, to while the wait away. Conformism blunts anxiety. Conformism gorges on the grim attire, beer, and the semblance of uniform thought. The numbed emotions do not court art, but are pervious to the kind of engineering that can smuggle in art---circus, for example. Engineering delivers the promise of order and hence hope.
In circus, the audience enjoys violence by proxy. Contortion looks risky, painful. (In ballet, by contrast, extreme movement looks natural, relaxing.) Enter technology and the artist's technique, and with them, the promise of insurance against the risks, maybe even against the world's end.
The warm summer breeze bounces against the walls of Hackeschen Höfen, brushes against the diners' cheeks and ruffles their hair, penetrates the open window of the dressing room, and envelops the glowing skin of a dancer aroused by the exhilaration of the just-concluded performance and the colleague's ambiguous embrace and stripped down to her black underwear and a cigarette. This is all there is to it.
The city is suspended, waiting for the world to end. Work takes the mind off the wait. Work provides for weekend amusements, to while the wait away. Conformism blunts anxiety. Conformism gorges on the grim attire, beer, and the semblance of uniform thought. The numbed emotions do not court art, but are pervious to the kind of engineering that can smuggle in art---circus, for example. Engineering delivers the promise of order and hence hope.
In circus, the audience enjoys violence by proxy. Contortion looks risky, painful. (In ballet, by contrast, extreme movement looks natural, relaxing.) Enter technology and the artist's technique, and with them, the promise of insurance against the risks, maybe even against the world's end.
The warm summer breeze bounces against the walls of Hackeschen Höfen, brushes against the diners' cheeks and ruffles their hair, penetrates the open window of the dressing room, and envelops the glowing skin of a dancer aroused by the exhilaration of the just-concluded performance and the colleague's ambiguous embrace and stripped down to her black underwear and a cigarette. This is all there is to it.
5 July 2015
"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman" by Richard P. Feynman (2005)
Science, democracy, and the market economy have a principle in common. Various things are to be tried out and those that work best are to be favoured. So question the status quo and question the authority. Explore and exploit.
Scientific progress, democracy, and markets are often observed together because, once one has come to appreciate the common principle, it is hard to justify applying it selectively. No inherent complementarity between markets and democracy need exist.
In a liberal society, everyone runs his own experiment, his life. Everyone is a scientist, invested in his own method and respectful, or at least tolerant, of others' methods. Humility dictates that one share the equipment. Integrity dictates that one truthfully disclose the outcome of one's own investigations. Humility and integrity are devoid of their moral imperative in a society in which exercising them is suboptimal (if such a society exists).
What is commonly regarded as virtue is the recognition of a deep insight about one's optimal behaviour. Of two otherwise identical societies, that is juster which makes a given insight about optimal behaviour more obvious. That behaviour is moral which is in best agreement with one's preferences. Because both the discovery of preferences and of their logical implications are tasks most formidable, the society confers moral status on the outcome of this discovery.
Feynman further envisages a society organised so that humility and integrity are optimal and are the optimal habits in the pursuit of truth.
Feynman's approach to teaching is the artist's approach: Indulge your urges and expose the product to the public. If the public appreciates the product, you prosper. Otherwise, you fail as an artist. But by second-guessing the public, you can still excel as a craftsman. Feynman's is the artist's way.
Scientific progress, democracy, and markets are often observed together because, once one has come to appreciate the common principle, it is hard to justify applying it selectively. No inherent complementarity between markets and democracy need exist.
In a liberal society, everyone runs his own experiment, his life. Everyone is a scientist, invested in his own method and respectful, or at least tolerant, of others' methods. Humility dictates that one share the equipment. Integrity dictates that one truthfully disclose the outcome of one's own investigations. Humility and integrity are devoid of their moral imperative in a society in which exercising them is suboptimal (if such a society exists).
What is commonly regarded as virtue is the recognition of a deep insight about one's optimal behaviour. Of two otherwise identical societies, that is juster which makes a given insight about optimal behaviour more obvious. That behaviour is moral which is in best agreement with one's preferences. Because both the discovery of preferences and of their logical implications are tasks most formidable, the society confers moral status on the outcome of this discovery.
Feynman further envisages a society organised so that humility and integrity are optimal and are the optimal habits in the pursuit of truth.
Feynman's approach to teaching is the artist's approach: Indulge your urges and expose the product to the public. If the public appreciates the product, you prosper. Otherwise, you fail as an artist. But by second-guessing the public, you can still excel as a craftsman. Feynman's is the artist's way.
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