She is alone, having just returned from a tango class. At 10:22pm, the front door is slammed open. A poorly shaven (by design or inadvertently) man enters. She neither screams nor calls the police. "What a nuisance," she thinks, putting aside the New Yorker. "This foul-smelling savage probably wants me to teach him some salsa. And another one is hovering in the corridor---too shy to enter and supplicate. Well, if I teach the basic steps to the intruder, he might leave promptly and share the knowledge with his friends. Surely he has not forced himself into my apartment to lecture me on his area of expertise. I am in no danger." This seems to have been the Chinese foreign policy until the mid-nineteenth century.
History has favoured military might and economic influence, not poignant poetry, romantic dance routines, and friendly demeanour. Yet it is hard to accuse history of having failed to favour merit; the definition of merit evolves to conform with history's choices. Today, poetry, dance, and friendly demeanour are all integral parts of economic influence.
History matters for the same reasons data matter in science. A successful society encapsulates all relevant history in social norms (e.g., common law), institutions, and a collection of principles (e.g., a constitution). The remaining history are possibility theorems, of interest to experts.
Revolutions change the rules of the game. Entrepreneurship changes the strategies. Economic and political development benefits from the stability of rules and the innovation in strategies. Mao understood the merits of change, but has failed to direct it appropriately. Capitalist economies and democracies deliver change without planning for it.
The belief in the supremacy of ideas is less harmful than the belief in the supremacy of nations. The latter vilifies and sacrifices people. The former challenges ideas and, in the best case, may lead to conversations, not wars.
29 September 2013
5 September 2013
Peepshow Follies of 1938
(Fais Do-Do, 16 August 2013)
What Marx used to call exploitation, what feminists used to call objectification, what the layman calls a repugnant transaction, and what the philosopher intuits as injustice consists in having little choice but to make a living of a small and common subset of individual characteristics. This subset's commonality leads to vigorous competition, which makes so earned living meagre. This subset's smallness makes so earned living dull.
The way to improve an individual's condition is to expand the choices available to him, instead of circumscribing modes of employment. The involuntary, idle poverty brought about by such circumscription would hurt more than exploitation does.
The mundane serial exposure of common bodies lacks a narrative and aesthetic gratification. It is not art. (There is more art at an afternoon SkyBar, in the fabric flirting with the breeze and the bodies undulating with each step.) This exposure may lead to intellectual gratification, however. There is liberation in acknowledging the mundane as such. There is a promise in bodily small talk, however common.
What Marx used to call exploitation, what feminists used to call objectification, what the layman calls a repugnant transaction, and what the philosopher intuits as injustice consists in having little choice but to make a living of a small and common subset of individual characteristics. This subset's commonality leads to vigorous competition, which makes so earned living meagre. This subset's smallness makes so earned living dull.
The way to improve an individual's condition is to expand the choices available to him, instead of circumscribing modes of employment. The involuntary, idle poverty brought about by such circumscription would hurt more than exploitation does.
The mundane serial exposure of common bodies lacks a narrative and aesthetic gratification. It is not art. (There is more art at an afternoon SkyBar, in the fabric flirting with the breeze and the bodies undulating with each step.) This exposure may lead to intellectual gratification, however. There is liberation in acknowledging the mundane as such. There is a promise in bodily small talk, however common.
24 August 2013
Paper or Plastik at Pico Blvd
A sole supple soul seeks thought; treads, trusts, twists, propelled by the purpose to probe the plurality of potentialities, to contact, connect, commune, contemplate, condense, cancel, fall free, flex, fudge the future.
Motion rouses reality; reality flees, exposing the traces of liberty.
Motion rouses reality; reality flees, exposing the traces of liberty.
13 August 2013
Helmut Newton: White Women • Sleepless Nights • Big Nudes
(Annenberg Space for Photography, 10 August 2013)
Helmut Newton's fashion photography is predicated on the principle that the individual has no inherent personality. Instead, any personality trait derives from a garment. Newton's models wear the clothes that they do not choose in settings that they would not seek. The clothes accentuate no trait that the model cannot be stripped of or twisted out of. The stares are blank, right into the camera.
The exhibition notes apologise pre-emptively, claiming that the photographs do not "objectify," but empower, the women. Objectification (a concept so nebulous that it subtracts from any debate) is subjective. If one detects it and is offended by it, one is better off not perusing Newton's catalogue; no disclaimer would appease.
Helmut Newton's fashion photography is predicated on the principle that the individual has no inherent personality. Instead, any personality trait derives from a garment. Newton's models wear the clothes that they do not choose in settings that they would not seek. The clothes accentuate no trait that the model cannot be stripped of or twisted out of. The stares are blank, right into the camera.
The exhibition notes apologise pre-emptively, claiming that the photographs do not "objectify," but empower, the women. Objectification (a concept so nebulous that it subtracts from any debate) is subjective. If one detects it and is offended by it, one is better off not perusing Newton's catalogue; no disclaimer would appease.
3 August 2013
"Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain (2013)
The book is a cultural critique. It asserts that individuals differ in temperaments, on which one can build (personality), but which cannot be altered and must not be cured. The plurality of tastes has been championed by markets. The plurality of both tastes and values has been championed by democracies. The plurality of temperaments may have been underappreciated by the education system and the labour market; extroverts carry a premium, possibly undeserved.
It is not obvious that motion pictures are to blame. Roger Thornhill, of "North by Northwest," may have been an extrovert or an introvert (indeed, his wives left him because he led too dull a life). These are only his superior social skills that are apparent. Movies do tend to promote characters with such skills (because a mumbling hermit would typically be an inept ambassador for the director's ideas), but by doing so, movies educate at least as much as they promote a particular temperament. Instead, it is the higher-density living (which raises the rewards to socialising) and possibly the pharmaceutical industry (which cashes in on the desire to conform) that are complicit in the rise of the extrovert ideal.
It is not obvious that motion pictures are to blame. Roger Thornhill, of "North by Northwest," may have been an extrovert or an introvert (indeed, his wives left him because he led too dull a life). These are only his superior social skills that are apparent. Movies do tend to promote characters with such skills (because a mumbling hermit would typically be an inept ambassador for the director's ideas), but by doing so, movies educate at least as much as they promote a particular temperament. Instead, it is the higher-density living (which raises the rewards to socialising) and possibly the pharmaceutical industry (which cashes in on the desire to conform) that are complicit in the rise of the extrovert ideal.
29 July 2013
Ron Mueck
(Fondation Cartier, 28 July 2013)
The past exists only in what one is today. Today is when one leaves a mark on tomorrow. In the interim, to exist is to remain alert and hopeful, and to reason. To die is to wish to be never seen.
A work of art that is remembered is an innovation in method as well as in representation. The gratification from accomplishing both is necessary to motivate a breakthrough.
The past exists only in what one is today. Today is when one leaves a mark on tomorrow. In the interim, to exist is to remain alert and hopeful, and to reason. To die is to wish to be never seen.
A work of art that is remembered is an innovation in method as well as in representation. The gratification from accomplishing both is necessary to motivate a breakthrough.
14 July 2013
"Sally Meets Stu" by Ate9 dANCEcOMPANY
(Fais Do-Do, 13 July 2013)
Aristotle believed that heavier bodies fell faster.
Science progresses because it tests, not canonises, its hypotheses. Art progresses as it discovers new ways to design experiments (which help the viewer discover his preferences and offer to him new perspectives on others) and to gratify. Classical ballet only seeks to gratify. Preserving the traditional means of gratification is an end in itself, for classical ballet.
Contemporary ballet, as contemporary science, does not appeal to authority. Its priority is to enrich the vocabulary. Ate9 is the experimental quantum mechanics of dance. Ate9 ventures into the world where the classical intuition fails. Once-in-a-lifetime events are as exotic to an individual as quantum phenomena were to the classical physicist. With evidence scarce and premeditated reasoning incomplete, individuals act in ways that do not conform with others' expectations.
One can get by with classical physics alone; one can neglect surrealism, censor irony, and dismiss the quantum phenomena at the heart of contemporary dance---but not if one yearns to understand completely and communicate parsimoniously.
Danielle Agami's ballet is intense, direct (not literal), and immediate. It is of precarious peace and of the urgency of the moment. To act and irrevocably err is better than to waste oneself on chores and indecision.
Aristotle believed that heavier bodies fell faster.
Science progresses because it tests, not canonises, its hypotheses. Art progresses as it discovers new ways to design experiments (which help the viewer discover his preferences and offer to him new perspectives on others) and to gratify. Classical ballet only seeks to gratify. Preserving the traditional means of gratification is an end in itself, for classical ballet.
Contemporary ballet, as contemporary science, does not appeal to authority. Its priority is to enrich the vocabulary. Ate9 is the experimental quantum mechanics of dance. Ate9 ventures into the world where the classical intuition fails. Once-in-a-lifetime events are as exotic to an individual as quantum phenomena were to the classical physicist. With evidence scarce and premeditated reasoning incomplete, individuals act in ways that do not conform with others' expectations.
One can get by with classical physics alone; one can neglect surrealism, censor irony, and dismiss the quantum phenomena at the heart of contemporary dance---but not if one yearns to understand completely and communicate parsimoniously.
Danielle Agami's ballet is intense, direct (not literal), and immediate. It is of precarious peace and of the urgency of the moment. To act and irrevocably err is better than to waste oneself on chores and indecision.
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