In "The Blog Report: Technologies of Forgetting" Craig Saper writes that blogs call us into forgetting:
In the blogsphere, efforts to remember allow everyone to forget as the messages literally sink to the bottom archived in an accessible (and therefore not pressing) heap. In the movie, one technician uses the hero's memories to seduce the heroine (again) as if for the first time. In the blogsphere, seductions and frauds fuel the effort to forget by remembering.
I am not making an effort to forget the 3rd Deleze Conference by remembering it in my blog. It's in my long-term memory, but I do accept that some of my blog-posts were published for the purpose of forgetting some certain (even very significant) events.
11 July 2010. The event I wish I could forget: Netherlands vs Spain, 2010 World Cup Final craziness. Read below why.
The prices for the shabbiest beds in Amsterdam skyrocketed. 80 Euros per night was the cheapest one could get. Luckily, one hotel agency helped me to find a cheap bed... The crew of the cruiser(!) turned out to be Russian. I figured it out after I heard the big men chatting very loudly with each other, swearing unholy and drinking, probably, Sprite. I speak Russian once a week, when I call my parents. My parents never swear over the telephone. So, it was funny to hear someone swearing in Russian so.. naturally.
The tiny room cost me 25 Euros per night. Considering the fact I had 200 Euros in my pockets for five days in Amsterdam, it was a great deal! I bought me two Heineken and wished Spain luck with managing their economic crisis.
11 July 2010. The discovery I do not want to forget. I have found a beautiful graffitti at Van Diemenstraat. I thought it was a Kindergarden. If so, what an original and daring idea: a baby-dinosaurus instead of a little cute bamby, sharp-toothed predator versus vulnerable herbivorous victim. Times change and the representations of children on the kindergarden walls change as well.
12 July 2010. Failed expectations: one of the presentations I was looking forward to attending was cancelled. The presentation "Deleuze and Citizenship: From Migration to Nomadism" by Thomas Nail did not take place. If I am not mistaken, he is a philosophy doctoral candidate, who was awarded a Fulbright to conduct research in Montréal and Toronto as a visiting scholar at the Center of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS): "Drawing on the political philosophy of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, his research will focus on the political organization and theoretical innovations of Canada's diverse and burgeoning immigrant rights movement." I was very much looking forward to meeting this person. I am planning to write a paper about the Kyrgyz nomads who revolted against their presidents and expelled them from the country... These presidents turned into immigrants. On the other hand, they have become the nomading ex-Presidents of nomads...
12 July 2010. And here is a stream of the positive long-term memories:
Double espresso chat with Stijn De Cauwer, a young incisive scholar from Belgium. Registration and welcoming plenary sessions with Constantin Boundas and Felicity Colman in the Aula (which is, actually, an old Lutheran Church). Generous lunch at the Atrium, something like a Dutch "Mensa" with healthier choices, fresher smell, more day light and cleaner floors. The Image of Thought session with Diana Masny (chair), Chris Beighton ("Criticality, Clinicality and Connectivity in Education") and Alexi Kukuljevic ("Multiplicity and the Logic of Capital"). Refreshments at beautiful Oudemanhuispoort (see the picture below).
In the evening, Lorna Collins and Xena Lee invited the audience to take part in "Making Sense of Territory--the Painting Event as a Territorial Gesture" at Brakke Grond Witte Zaal. In "Philosophy in Practice" booklet the artists explain:
In Making sense of territory: the painting event as a territorial gesture, presentation, painting and active participation of the audience were all combined to create an installation, or rather a 'Makin sense event'. Lorna Collins held a presentation exploring why and how art is able to help us think about 'territory'. At the same time Xena Lee created a charcoal drawing in response to Collins' presentation. During this dialogue between Collins and Lee the audience were invited to make a simple mark on a transparency sheet in reaction to the performance. The resulting artwork, in which the transparency sheets have been projected upon Lee's drawing, is thus a combination of presentation, painting and installation; involving active participation of speaker, painter and audience.
The performance encounters the rhizomatic connections across three plateaus of participation and method and tries to make sense of the heacceity of territory and art. By combining philosophy and art, or rather putting philosophy in praxis, and showing people how to engage with art, Collins and Lee open up a way of being in the world and making sense of it.
Fragile Lorna Collins is done with her presentation.
Xena Lee territorializes the painting. One of the volunteers passes on more transparency sheets to her.
My modest contribution to the painting event: find the "lacy noodles with compressed spirals" chunk on the canvas.
13 July 2010. I want to forget running through the heavy rain in Amsterdam.
13 July 2010. I do not want to forget the most exciting panel session of the conference titled Trahir/Gilles Deleuze's Virtuality: René Lemieux's "The Guattarian Otherness: A Pharmakon for the Deleuzian Studies?"; Suzanne Hême de Lacotte "Gilles Deleuze's Iconoclasm?"; Flore Garcin-Marrou's "Gilles Deleuze and Theater, or The Philosophy and its 'Other'"; Cécile Voisset-Veysseyre's "The Amazonian in Questions: Monique Wittig or Gilles Deleuze?"; Fabrice Bourlez's "Deleuze and the Question of Gender"; Denis Viennet's "Virtual and Becoming-Other: The Question of Stranger in Deleuze". I have found a beautiful video on one of the webpages of the Chimères dedicated to Suzanne Hême de Lacotte's "Image Cinématographique et Image de la Pensée Philosophique".
I hope, Suzanne will not mind if I also publish the excerpt available on Chimères:
"[...] La rencontre de la philosophie et du cinéma est riche de perspectives, l'engouement pour l'entreprise de Deleuze, les perspectives théoriques qu'elle a fait naître et l'intérêt qu'elle continue à susciter en sont la preuve. Appréhender cette rencontre sous l'angle de l'image de la pensée permet de la resituer dans une ligne particulièrement philosophique et de poser la question de sa place dans l'œuvre deleuzienne.
La question de savoir s'il existe ou non une hiérarchie des disciplines chez Deleuze se pose au terme de cette réflexion. En tant que philosophe, il a affirmé l'autonomie de l'art, de la science et de la philosophie. Pour autant cette autonomie n'exclut aucunement, comme nous avons tenté de le montrer, que des ponts puissent être jetés entre cinéma et philosophie, que le cinéma « ait un rôle à jouer dans la naissance et la formation de cette nouvelle pensée, de cette nouvelle manière de penser. » Une ambiguïté demeure néanmoins au terme Cinéma : si la philosophie est bien posée comme devant faire la théorie - conceptuelle - de cette nouvelle pratique des images et signes qu'est le cinéma, les concepts qu'il suscite peuvent également être créés par les cinéastes eux-mêmes lorsqu'ils évoquent leur pratique : « en parlant ils deviennent autre chose, ils deviennent philosophes ou théoriciens. Ainsi, un double mouvement apparaît à l'occasion de ce détour par le cinéma : la philosophie est remise en centre pour gagner en autonomie, et dans le même temps, par un mouvement centripète, elle va se loger là où on ne l'attendait pas : chez des artistes qui la pratiquent sans le savoir, ou sans l'admettre."
Please, click on the links and check out the presenters' books (in French). Informative, interesting, at times, provoking, this penal session was my favourite.
My presentation was scheduled for the Digital Machines session at 11:30 chaired by Felicity Colman (!!!) Oh my, really? I did not recognize her. Now, when I am writing this blog-post, I am slowly realizing what a lucky ass I was to meet Felicity Colman in person and even receive a positive comment from her! Felicity Colman has many admirers. Some expressed their admiration by creating a Facebook group I'm in love with Felicity Colman ! In the age of Net, this might be considered as an ultimate expression of love, you know.
Dr Felicity Colman
Lecturer, Screen Studies
Qualifications
BA Design (UTS), BA ArtHis (Q'ld), MA VisCult (Monash), PhD Art History & Cinema (UniMelb)
Biography
Felicity Colman lectures in the Screen Studies program on questions of political aesthetics in relation to world cinemas, histories of world film theory, censorship and media, commodity cultures (including television), avant-garde and experimental screen media. She is engaged in research into various theories of epistemological modes of address – by creative praxis and by creative theory. Her research and teaching draws on on experimental and independent world cinemas, with a focus on art, independent, indigenous, militant, documentary and feminist work from around the globe. Felicity has published on aesthetics, gender issues, and contemporary art and cinema practices, with specific reference to Gilles Deleuze and Fèlix Guattari, in journals including Angelaki, Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Women: A Cultural Review, Reconstruction, and The Refractory. Prior to lecturing at the University of Melbourne, Felicity taught visual cultural theory, and screen techniques to filmmakers, art students, art teachers, and theory students at Swinburne University, Prahran, Melbourne, and at the Centre for Ideas, The Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. Felicity also worked in the contemporary arts industry in Melbourne for several years, as a facilitator of artist run galleries, including STRIPP gallery in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Her doctoral thesis was on philosophies of temporality in Robert Smithson’s experimental work.
I will write about my own presentation at the 3rd Deleuze Conference in a separate blog-post. Let me introduce you to Bruno Lessard, the Canadian scholar who presented his paper titled "Claiming the Event: Deleuze, Foucault, and Digital Video". Those particularly interested in film theory and Gilles Deleuze’s work Cinema 2: The Time-Image, might be interested in "Missed Encounters: Film Theory and Expanded Cinema" by Bruno Lessard available at The Refractory.
The session Micropolitical Instances chaired by Claudia Mongini gathered philosophers and artists. The presentations were very informative and hard to digest (it was a very long conference day for everyone): Andre Dias' "To Have Done with the Possible: Involuntarism as the Other Side of Biopolitics" (Andre writes a cinema and contemporary culture Portuguese blog "Ainda não começámos a pensar / We have yet to start thinking"); Tina Rahimy's "Becoming-minority-in-language The political relevance of incomprehension"; Andrea Medjesi Jones "A Shock to Thought: Conditions of the Emerging Image" (I liked her paintings and the poster: "If You Look Hard You Look Hard"); Boram Jeong's "The Power of the False: Deleuzian Politico-aesthetics".
In the evening, I enjoyed observing the conference participants and organizers drinking sparkling wine and having sparkling conversations. There was something very special about this particular conference. I wish I could step forward and dance during Richard Pinhas' concert at the Expo Zaal in de Brakke Grond. I guess, Stijn, somehow noticed my unreserved admiration and asked me, "Why aren't you dancing?"
SCHIZOTROPE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MARIE ZORN
The Schizotrope project was born out of a desire to honor Richard's friend, the noted philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who died in 1995. In 1998, Pinhas teamed up with French 'cyber-punk' author Dantec and Schizotrope came to North America in March 1999 for a series of shows. This album was compiled from tapes of these shows. Featuring Dantec reading from Deleuze’ works, accompanied by Pinhas playing guitar, with sound electronically modulated in real-time by various processors, this is a musically innovative, emotionally moving, and conceptually rich fusion of those disciplines closest to Pinhas’ heart.
14 July 2010. I woke up in my new cozy bed. My Eurocruiser cradle was off to Germany. It was my second time in Hotel Y-Boulevard. They have cheap and very cheap beds. This time, I paid 20 Euros per night. In August 2009, I paid just 9 Euros.
If you scrutinize the brochure of the Hotel Y-Boulevard, you will see what a beautiful hotel it used to be. Not anymore. But I still like this cheap hotel: they have snow white towels and clean bed sheets. In addition, they have a breakfast buffet. What else do I need? Well, probably, nice quiet room mates. I met nice people from Norway, USA, Canada and Mexico in two nights at Hotel Y-Boulevard. But when the guys started drinking whisky and smoking weed, I felt strange vibrations in the air. I did not want those dark vibrations, I wanted to run away. When you go to a conference or lecture in Amsterdam, this is always the case: tourists come to this city to get wasted and get high, and you have absolutely different priorities. I want to forget the tourists who come to Amsterdam and get stupidly lost in the Red Disctrict. There is so much more to Amsterdam than smoking pot. Now when you have seen the Red District, here are "10 Things to do in Amsterdam BESIDES Smoking Pot".
14 July 2010. I do not want to forget the early-morning conversation with Phillip X. I forgot to ask his full name. He was from Brazil. I asked him about the most beautiful places in Brazil, and he recommended Bonito ("The most beautiful place in the world!") and the beaches of Florianópolis. I looked up the pictures, and now I am dreaming of going to those places. Then Phillip and I hurried to different parallel sessions. I attended the Memorial Practices session moderated by Craig Lundy. Unfortunately, one of the presenters was absent. This leads me to the next sentence. Fortunately, we had more time for questions to the presenters Jean Hillier ("Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on: Taking a Heritage Rollercoaster ride with Deleuze"), Victoria Browne ("Histories of Feminism as a Place of Immanence: Methodological Explorations in Histroriography and Archival Practice") and Zsuzsa Baross (I cannot recollect the title of her presentation, she changed the original title "159+1 Variations, or Painting Becoming Music").
I was undecided between the session Deleuze/Guattari in (Neo) Material Software Cultures and the Dutch movie The One All Alone in Eye Film Institute at the Vondelpark. And I attended the panel session, missing the last chance to watch the film. This session was extremely useful for my own PhD thesis chapter about the maps of blogosphere. I kept on making notes like crazy. I met Jussi Parikka, Director of CoDE - The Cultures of the Digital Economy-institute at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge ("Does Software Have Affects, or, What Can a Digital Body of Code Do?"). Seb Franklin's presentation "The Executable Image: Deleuze, Cinema and Software Studies" sparked a discussion between the film industry practitioners. Tero Karppi's "How to Disappear Completely? Disconnecting As an Act of Resistance Against Social Networks" evoked an overwhelming response from the audience not aware of the existance of the so-called Web 2.0 suicide machines. It was my top 2 favourite session in Oudemanhuispoort.
In the closing key lecture "Vegetable Locomotion: A Deleuzian Ethics/Aesthetics of Traveling Plants", Laura Marks imaginatively explored the journeys of plants across gardens, fields, continents and--figuratively--over houses of Amsterdam, Islamic mosques and Caucasian carpets...
So many important things happened. And yes, Craig Saper, I am afraid you are right. I am afraid to forget these trivial (for you) important (for me) things, and I need technologies helping cope with this anxiety, the anxiety of a [potential] loss:
The blog style disarmingly unstudied and sincere does not march together even within a single site never mind among countless others; efforts to constellate blogs as a pattern creates an anxiety of a loss that has already occurred and continues to reinforce the fading subject even as countless subjects tell the often mundane and trivial details of their lives. In Jungian psychoanalysis, the oceanic moment of recognizing yourself as a speck in the universe becomes key to an abreaction and personal epiphany of seeing your site as part of a larger whole. The blogs and other technologies of forgetting keep deferring the archetypal closure even as it keeps insinuating itself not as the links that connect all of us, but the loss and forgetting in an unstriated space without completion. Some will bemoan the sacrifice. Others will mourn in recounting in real time every absolutely specific detail allowing for a forgetting unbounded by remembering.
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