#17 - MG - When she woke up the dinosaur was still there
While I was fabricating clay dinosaurs during daytime, I conducted another experiment at night. I convinced myself that, if dinosaurs were my primary concern when I was awake, I should certainly achieve to see them in my dreams as well. I was very excited about the prospect of my nocturnal encounters with these long-lost species, but each morning I woke up in disappointment, as I had not retrieved the slightest bit of prehistory from my subconscious. To this day, I never saw a single dinosaur in my dreams, which made me wonder: if my subconscious does not have the faintest interest in this prehistoric species, is it because it does not have a clue what I’m thinking about, when I think dinosaurs during my waking hours? Does it ignore this mind blabber, for the simple reason that dinosaurs are only part of our conscious existence? Etc? Etc? Any possible encounter with a prehistoric being provides us with an a-historical plot and is thus immediately subjected to the laws of fiction. Dreams are only fictional in the sense that they are reality in disguise (or in full exposure?).I did dream other things. One night, I found myself without a head. I realized I didn’t screw it onto my neck in the morning. It was an awful routine to begin the day, it wasn’t painful or anything, just very uncomfortable and inhumane. Mechanic; machine-like. I couldn’t see what it looked like – the screw inside my neck – but when I explained my dream to a friend and demonstrated the motions of connecting body and head, it was clear to him that I had been photographing that day: my actions resembled those of a lens being fixed to a camera body.
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#16 - LO - Único, doble, triple y partido.
Teníamos nueve o diez años, y estábamos sentadas en el banco de una vereda de pueblo, en la casa de mi abuelo, bajo la sombra nocturna de un árbol que nos escondía un poquito. Mirábamos, aburridas, a la gente pasar caminando y charlando, o pasear en auto, muy lentamente, actividades de las noches de verano; los bichos zumbaban alrededor de una lámpara de tungsteno que quedaba justo arriba del árbol. Justo al frente de la casa de mi abuelo estaba el Club Progreso, con sus mesas en la vereda y el televisor que sacaban todas las noches para que los parroquianos miraran - o mejor dicho, oyeran - en el fresco, mientras jugaban partidos de truco o se pasaban chismes. El sonido de la televisión se esparcía por toda la cuadra y los vecinos estaban acostumbrados. Esa noche mi amiga, de repente, empezó a repetir los diálogos como si estuviera en trance. Con una maestría absolutamente sorprendente se mimetizó con el acento de los actores. Me acuerdo sobre todo de una frase: “Me gusta, Johnny”. Me gussta, Llioni pronunciando bien la s, con claridad, en vez de aspirarla como se hace en la llanura pampeana, y la J, como una ll fuerte, un sonido entre la ch y ll.
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¿Qué aprendimos con esas voces que habitaron los dibujos de nuestra infancia, esas imágenes dislocadas que atravesaban kilómetros, barreras, anillos de información, para llegar a cualquier rincón, incluso a un pueblo perdido en la nada misma? Lo que aprendíamos, creo, era que existe el lugar donde se vive y luego existe todo ese otro espacio inalcanzable, un lugar remoto, familiar y extraño a la vez, que no es tuyo y sin embargo te pertenece. Imágenes y sonidos desfasados, en todos los sentidos posibles, generando un aprendizaje masivo simultáneo, una educación sentimental imparable, vasta, férreamente codificada y muy manierista.
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Calle de mano única.
¿Quiénes traducen y quiénes se traducen en o para otro/s?
¿Quién tiene más poder: Cortés, tallado en un solo bloque, o la Malinche, que lleva un jardín de lenguas en sí?
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Lo neutro es esa zona donde figura y fondo no están individualizados. No hay contraste, no hay sensibilidad con las diferencias porque se está dentro mismo del cuadro, en el centro. Y si aparece algo diferente, la irritación de la mucosa genera poco a poco una perla.
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meterse al mono es la expresión que usan los actores de doblaje para señalar el momento en que toman al personaje, lo sienten y lo invaden por dentro, lo animan.
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La Ponderosa será mía, decía una voz aguerrida, saliendo de unos finos labios, formas humanas que se movían por unas milésimas de segundo más que lo que resulta lógico.
Si esa anomalía generaba alguna extrañeza, había otra que resultaba aún más asombrosa: los Cartrwight hablaban igual que el Chavo del 8, el profesor Jirafales o Doña Florinda.
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una vez conocí a un poeta que en vez de traducción decía traslape o también translucinación.
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¿Qué aprendimos con esas voces que habitaron los dibujos de nuestra infancia, esas imágenes dislocadas que atravesaban kilómetros, barreras, anillos de información, para llegar a cualquier rincón, incluso a un pueblo perdido en la nada misma? Lo que aprendíamos, creo, era que existe el lugar donde se vive y luego existe todo ese otro espacio inalcanzable, un lugar remoto, familiar y extraño a la vez, que no es tuyo y sin embargo te pertenece. Imágenes y sonidos desfasados, en todos los sentidos posibles, generando un aprendizaje masivo simultáneo, una educación sentimental imparable, vasta, férreamente codificada y muy manierista.
///
Calle de mano única.
¿Quiénes traducen y quiénes se traducen en o para otro/s?
¿Quién tiene más poder: Cortés, tallado en un solo bloque, o la Malinche, que lleva un jardín de lenguas en sí?
///
Lo neutro es esa zona donde figura y fondo no están individualizados. No hay contraste, no hay sensibilidad con las diferencias porque se está dentro mismo del cuadro, en el centro. Y si aparece algo diferente, la irritación de la mucosa genera poco a poco una perla.
///
meterse al mono es la expresión que usan los actores de doblaje para señalar el momento en que toman al personaje, lo sienten y lo invaden por dentro, lo animan.
///
La Ponderosa será mía, decía una voz aguerrida, saliendo de unos finos labios, formas humanas que se movían por unas milésimas de segundo más que lo que resulta lógico.
Si esa anomalía generaba alguna extrañeza, había otra que resultaba aún más asombrosa: los Cartrwight hablaban igual que el Chavo del 8, el profesor Jirafales o Doña Florinda.
///
una vez conocí a un poeta que en vez de traducción decía traslape o también translucinación.
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#15 - CV
Hola todos,Te esperamos este jueves 6 de octubre para la charla "Existe el español neutro? Reflexiones en torno al doblaje mexicano como un caso de traducción", presentada por Leticia Obeid, artista residente en Casa Vecina.
La plática se impartirá en el marco del proyecto un ojo dos ojos tres ojos propuesto para Estudio Extendido por Uqbar, iniciativa de Mariana Castillo Deball e Irene Kopelman, desde la cual han invitado a varios artistas internacionales a trabajar en torno al tema de la narrativa y la tradición oral.
Jueves 6 de octubre a las 18:00 hrs.
Casa Vecina - Estudio Extendido
1er Callejón de Mesones 7, Esq. Regina,
Centro Histórico, 06080, Ciudad de México.
Tel: 5709.1540 www.casavecina.com / atencionalpublico@fch.org.mx
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#14 - UQ
A short bibliography of the library and the bibliography or;how to bite your own tail
...Gabriel Naudé’s Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque, first published in 1627, presents wall-system furnishings as the accepted norm. Although he devotes extensive passages to the ordering of the books in the shelves as an aid to memory, Naudé draws no explicit connection between that order and the spatial configuration of the library. How he conceived this can, however, be inferred from a close reading of the Advis, which is written in an elliptical but engaging style for those already familiar with the subject. Often reprinted and translated into Latin and English, Naudé’s comprehensive guide to the collecting, arranging and administering of a large library was widely read and
frequently cited by later writers on libraries. [note 11: G. Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (Paris, 1627 ), cited here from the 1879 reprint of the 1644 edition and the translation published by A. Taylor (Berkeley, 1950 ). I have emended the translation as noted. A Latin translation, by an unknown hand which Taylor calls ‘less than certain’ was published in A. Smid, De Bibliothecis nova accessio collectioni Maderianae adiuncta (Helmstedt, 1703 ). For significant excerpts and a consideration of Naudé’s importance see Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. V , pp. 295-331 is P. Nelles, ‘The library as an instrument of discovery', in D. R. Kelly (ed.), History and the Disciplines (Rochester, 1997 ), pp. 41-57.]
The first extended consideration of the wall-system library as providing instruction to those who view it appears in Hermann Conring’s 1661 epistolary encomium on the Bibliotheca Augusta in Wolfenbüttel, one of the largest and most respected libraries in the seventeenth century. Covering a wide range of general topics, this substituted for the treatise on library matters that Conring had not been able to produce. [note 12: H. Conring, De Bibliotheca Augusta Quae est in arce Wolfenbüttelensi (Helmstedt, 1661); reprinted in J. J. Mader, De Bibliothecis atque archivis virorum clarissimorum … libelli et commentationes (Helmstedt,1702); cited here from the reprint in H. Conring, Opera (Braunschweig, 1703; reprint Aalen, 1973). Summary and excerpts (with significant ellipses) in Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. V, pp. 376-86 , with commentary by M. Palumbo.] Less extensive than Conring but advancing essentially the same position are brief passages in Jean Garnier’s 1678 catalogue of the Jesuit Library in Paris and the introductory gloss on it in Johann David Köhler’s 1728 compendium of library texts, [note 13: J. Garnier, Systema bibliothecae collegii parisiensis societatis jesu (Paris, 1678 ); Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. V , pp. 549–62; J. D. Köhler, Sylloge aliquot scriptorum de bene ordinanda et ornanda Bibliotheca (Frankfurt, 1728); Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. V, pp. 522–3. On Köhler, see D. Schmidmaier, ‘Bibliothekswissenschaftliche Bestrebungen an der Altdorfer Universitätsbibliothek zwischen 1630 and 1800’, Zentralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen 98 (1984), p. 19.] as well as Conyers Middleton’s 1723 proposal for the reordering of the University Library in Cambridge. [note 14: C. Middleton, Bibliothecae cantabrigensis ordinandae Methodus (Cambridge, 1728); reprinted in his Miscellaneous Works (London, 1752); Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. VIII , pp. 28-31.] In his 1665 commentaries on the Vienna Court Library, Peter Lambeck simply advocates the wall-system as essential for any princely book collection. [note 15: P. Lambeck, Commentarii de Augustissima Bibliotheca Caeserea Vindobonensi (Vienna, 1665-1779), vol. I , pp. 69-71; quoted in Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. V, pp. 68-9.]
Although silent on the question of immediate perceptibility in a single look, two late-seventeenth-century texts clearly elucidate the underlying conception of early modern libraries as easily accessible condensations of knowledge similar to encyclopaedias and bibliographies. Heinrich Hottinger’s 1674 Bibliothecarius Quadripartitus includes a small but comprehensive treatise on the assembling and ordering of a library, preceding three sections on theological bibliography. [note 16: H. Hottinger, Bibliothecarius Quadripartitus (Zurich, 1674). Long passages with commentary in Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. V , pp. 415-45.] Discussion of libraries is integral to Daniel Morhof’s Polyhistor literarius, a guide to the world of learning in the form of an extended, annotated bibliography. Appearing in multiple editions and re-printings between 1688 and 1747, the Polyhistor was widely read not only in Germany but also beyond. [note 17: D. G. Morhof, Polyhistor literarius (Lübeck, 1688-92; subsequent editions Lübeck, 1707, 1714, 1732, 1747); the book’s complex publication history is discussed by G. Maggiano in Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. VI , pp. 41 ff.]
The latest and most comprehensive consideration of the wall-system library and the propaedeutic overview is found in the Dissertationes philologicobibliographicae of 1747 by Oliver Legipont, the first standalone treatise since Naudé but also the last to advance the early modern conception of the library he initiated. Although apparently little read outside the monastic context for which he wrote, Legipont is significant because he picks up and expands upon the issues raised by the earlier authors. [note 18: O. Legipont, Dissertationes philologico-bibliographicae (Nuremberg, 1747); excerpts and commentary by M. Menato in Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. VIII, pp. 92 ff. Menato mistakenly calls the Dissertationes the first comprehensive examination of the relation between collection, space, and users, ignoring the continuities with earlier texts outlined here and setting up a false continuity with nineteenth-century biblioteconomia. J. G. Becker, ‘Bibliotheksreisen in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert’, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 21 (1980), cols. 1372-3, notes that Legipont is not cited in travel accounts and by those visiting libraries in the later eighteenth century, which does not discount his significance in the present context.]
A markedly different conception is evident in the disparate texts on libraries by Leibniz published after his death. [note 19: Leibniz’s many texts on libraries and books have not been published as a group, and a thorough analysis of them is beyond the scope of the present essay. The best general studies are M. Palumbo, Leibniz e la res bibliothecaria. Bibliografi e, historiae literariae e cataloghi nella biblioteca privata leibniziana (Rome, 1993); and, albeit somewhat outdated, L. M. Newman, Leibniz and the German Library Scene (London, 1966).] A strenuous advocate of the library’s utility and unsympathetic to any form of ostentatious display, Leibniz rejected both the separation of formats and the immediate perceptibility of the library space. Nevertheless, he was fully committed to the conception of the library as an accessible, because ordered, condensation of knowledge.
As such the library was little different from the various textual compendia central to intellectual life in the early modern period. Indeed, this congruence between the textual and the physical, between the conceptual and the real, is evident in the twin senses of the term bibliotheca (library). It applied equally to both an organized list of citations and an organized collection of actual books, meanings now distinguished as bibliography and library. The slippage between the two senses is most evident in Morhof’s Polyhistor, where the student/scholar is admonished to know both. Similarly, Leibniz used the library (in the sense of book collection) and the encyclopaedia as reciprocally reinforcing metaphors to explain how to both collect, condense and arrange more knowledge than the human mind can contain on its own. [note 20: Palumbo, op. cit. (note 19), pp. 11-2 , 22-3. For the dual sense of bibliotheca see M. Cocchetti in Serrai, op. cit. (note 6), vol. III , p. 11.]
Eric Garberson, 'Libraries, memory and the space of knowledge', Journal of the History of Collections vol. 18 no. 2 (2006) pp. 208-209.
(photo: M. Goosen, Biblioteca Central, UNAM, Mexico DF)
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#13 - UQ - neveroddoreven
Never Odd or Even Volume II by Mariana Castillo Deball
Never Odd or Even Volume II is an anthology of 30 dust jackets of non-existing books. A compilation of 30 titles in one single publication! Join us in this literary journey throughout different topics and subject matters ranging from: unpublished memories, tropical manifestations, intragenealogy, Why the letter E is everywhere?, the taste of truth, the aroma of existence, contemporary ruins, conversations between a cardinal and a roadrunner bird, and more!
A project by Mariana Castillo Deball
Contributors: Mario Bellatin, Koen Brams, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Santiago da Silva, Tim Etchells, Carla Faesler, Dario Gamboni, Dora García, Moosje Goosen, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Pascale Montandon, Irene Kopelman, Adriana Lara, Pablo León de la Barra, Jesse Lerner, Juana Lomeli, Valeria Luiselli, Raimundas Malašauskas, Antoni Muntadas, Sophie Nys, Manuel Raeder, Eran Schaerf and Eva Meyer, Sergio Taborda, Heriberto Yépez
Published by bom dia boa tarde boa noite, on the occasion of the exhibition Never Odd or Even at Grimmuseum, Berlin
Curator: Solvej Helweg Ovesen
Opening: Saturday October 1st, 19h
Performances with Ana Teixeira Pinto and Armando Andrade Tudela 20h
1.10–20.11.2011
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#12 - MG - 2 x Reverse = A Round Way Trip
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In this month's issue of The Believer, self-proclaimed master palindromist Barry Duncan talks about the craft of making two ends meet. A fragment:
"...There was a point at which, Duncan half-jokes, he actually thought he might need to be hospitalized. 'I was thinking about reversibility all the time. And then it just became very natural for me.' And now? 'I'm just all the time doing it,' he says. 'I write hundreds [of palindromes] a day, probably.' Reverse is his default gear now, as made clear by his advice to would-be palindromists, who, Duncan says, should begin by reversing everything: 'Every word you see, every word you hear, every word you read, every word you write. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that, all day, and all night, that's what I'm doing.'" Read the full article.
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And then something else. Paleontologist Jack Horner wants a pet dinosaur. He says he's going to achieve this by reverse-evolving a chicken. More on Wired.com.eyb eyb & cock a doodle doo
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#10 - MG - Barnum Brown, Storyteller
"... Dawn glows along the shore of a lagoon near the sea three millions of years ago in Montana. The landscape is of low relief; sycamores and ginkgo trees mingle with figs, palms and bananas. There are few twittering birds in the tree-tops and no herds of grazing animals to greet the early sun. A huge herbivorous dinosaur Trachodon, coming on shore for some favorite food, has been seized and partly eaten by a giant Tyrannosaurus. Whilst this monster is ravenously consuming the carcass another Tyrannosaurus draws near determined to dispute the prey. The stooping animal hesitates, partly rises and prepares to spring on its opponent. With colossal bodies poised on massive hind legs and steadied by long tails, ponderous heads armed with sharp dagger-like teeth three to five inches long, front limbs exceedingly small but set for a powerful clutch, they are the very embodiment of dynamic animal force."
Barnum Brown, "Tyrannosaurus, the Largest Flesh-Eating Animal That Ever Lived" in: The American Museum Journal. 1915
Barnum Brown, "Tyrannosaurus, the Largest Flesh-Eating Animal That Ever Lived" in: The American Museum Journal. 1915
#9 - MG - In the beginning, the T. rex. was a T. rex.
The T. rex holotype at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
The first complete T.rex skeleton was excavated by fossil hunter Barnum Brown. It was first mounted at the Museum of Natural History in New York and, since the 1940s, has been on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. T. rex has long been presented standing vertically; recent studies show the dinosaur actually kept its body horizontal.
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#7 - MG - In the beginning were the dinosaurs
Hitchcock’s story of the MacGuffin, as one may recall, tells the tale of two train passengers speculating about a suspicious package in the luggage rack. One of them looks up to the parcel, then turns to the other and wonders,
‘What is that?’ to which his travel companion responds,
‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin – an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’
‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ says the other.
‘Well, then that’s not a MacGuffin…!’
It is mid-September and I happen to be on my way to the Scottish Highlands for a short vacation, to a region that, my guidebook assures me, harbors the oldest rock formations in the world. I’m certain this is the kind of half-truth MacGuffin that draws tourists (draws me) into spending a holiday in a raincoat, admiring the landscape while rain soaks your socks up to the point that you will get a faint impression of what it must have been like for our ancestors – the amphibians. At night, you sip your whiskey to forget it all. But that’s not the point, or perhaps it is, because Scotland has it all. (We have Scotch! We have rocks! We have Scotch on the rocks!) The fact, of course, is that Scotland does and does not contain the oldest rocks in the world. The oldest rock in the world is the world itself, you fool – and the best thing about it is that you can admire it from any godforsaken corner of the world, or all-in-resort of your liking. Happy holidays!
And so I have (not so subtly) shifted your focus away from the MacGuffin, straight to the (well-deserved) detour of my vacation – which is what the MacGuffin is really about, for the pragmatic reason that stories need beginnings, even though these are always hard to locate (Scottisch lions) let alone agreed up (MacGuffins). Here’s another trick that I find interesting in regard to distracting you from what this story is going to be about: nec gemino bellum Troianum orditor ab ovo: semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res. Or, in contemporary speech: nor does he (Homer) begin the Trojan War from the egg, but always he hurries to the action into the middle of things. (Horace, Ars Poetica, ca. 13 BC).
(Mid August)
Caught in the middle of my actions, I’m trying to figure out how to turn 5 kilos of brown-bagged crumbs of Oaxaco – barro, dry soil – into something I can bend, mold and shape into a dinosaur creature. I am an amateur. I am a writer: my hands produce words, not form. There is always form of course, if only because my thoughts take shape in my brain – but I have never played with thoughts so literally. I also feel quite literally caught in this clandestine action of mine: the aforementioned part of my ‘work’ takes place not in a studio (I’m a writer, remember) but in the privacy of my home, at my kitchen table to be precise, where I can be assured to remain unseen and unexposed, left alone with my own embarrassments.
Once I have mastered the skill of turning dry soil into a workable substance, dinosaurs begin to manifest themselves. The first one is a victory to me: I created a creature (a hybrid of herrerasaurus and tuojiangosaurus, I’d say)! The other dinosaurs bear the traces of my repeated and failed attempts to achieve that same triumphant feeling again. Perhaps it is because I was a child since I last made something out of clay; perhaps it is because I am trying to reproduce a number of clay figurines that are already so disarmingly cheerful, but my dinosaurs look harmless, seemingly laughing at the joke I produced with my own hands.
And even though skulls always appear to be smiling at us, no matter the species, my clay creatures seem far remote from the dinosaur skeletons and models in natural history museums – the models we rely upon when fantasizing about a world inhabited by prehistoric animals.
This practical (tactical) ceramic joke is an experiment in amateurism as much as it is an exercise for my writing, the latter of which always succeeds in sabotaging my thoughts, molding it as it were, into the autopilot direction of language, structure, plot. That doesn’t mean I ever feel prepared for the writing that is about to come. Whenever I hit the proverbial wall of writer’s block (at the beginning of practically each new day) it’s as if I can feel this molding take place in my brain – to no avail. Too much traffic clutters the flow of words. As a matter of fact, words cannot express how frustrating it can be for a writer not to find the proper words. That, of course, is a tautology, or, roundabout: another great way of simply not getting there, unless you wish to swallow your own tail! Transporting thoughts from A (the mind) to B (an empty Word.doc on your computer screen, or a blank piece of paper if you are of the romantic kind) is not always as simply as it seems. In my clay exercise, B becomes the variable y, and y = basically anything that can happen if you change your formula of life and work.
y = the MacGuffin that drives the motor that drives the plot, and therefore it clearly doesn’t matter whether I’m a sculptor or an amateur, or whether dinosaurs do or do not exist.
‘What is that?’ to which his travel companion responds,
‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin – an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’
‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ says the other.
‘Well, then that’s not a MacGuffin…!’
It is mid-September and I happen to be on my way to the Scottish Highlands for a short vacation, to a region that, my guidebook assures me, harbors the oldest rock formations in the world. I’m certain this is the kind of half-truth MacGuffin that draws tourists (draws me) into spending a holiday in a raincoat, admiring the landscape while rain soaks your socks up to the point that you will get a faint impression of what it must have been like for our ancestors – the amphibians. At night, you sip your whiskey to forget it all. But that’s not the point, or perhaps it is, because Scotland has it all. (We have Scotch! We have rocks! We have Scotch on the rocks!) The fact, of course, is that Scotland does and does not contain the oldest rocks in the world. The oldest rock in the world is the world itself, you fool – and the best thing about it is that you can admire it from any godforsaken corner of the world, or all-in-resort of your liking. Happy holidays!
And so I have (not so subtly) shifted your focus away from the MacGuffin, straight to the (well-deserved) detour of my vacation – which is what the MacGuffin is really about, for the pragmatic reason that stories need beginnings, even though these are always hard to locate (Scottisch lions) let alone agreed up (MacGuffins). Here’s another trick that I find interesting in regard to distracting you from what this story is going to be about: nec gemino bellum Troianum orditor ab ovo: semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res. Or, in contemporary speech: nor does he (Homer) begin the Trojan War from the egg, but always he hurries to the action into the middle of things. (Horace, Ars Poetica, ca. 13 BC).
(Mid August)
Caught in the middle of my actions, I’m trying to figure out how to turn 5 kilos of brown-bagged crumbs of Oaxaco – barro, dry soil – into something I can bend, mold and shape into a dinosaur creature. I am an amateur. I am a writer: my hands produce words, not form. There is always form of course, if only because my thoughts take shape in my brain – but I have never played with thoughts so literally. I also feel quite literally caught in this clandestine action of mine: the aforementioned part of my ‘work’ takes place not in a studio (I’m a writer, remember) but in the privacy of my home, at my kitchen table to be precise, where I can be assured to remain unseen and unexposed, left alone with my own embarrassments.
Once I have mastered the skill of turning dry soil into a workable substance, dinosaurs begin to manifest themselves. The first one is a victory to me: I created a creature (a hybrid of herrerasaurus and tuojiangosaurus, I’d say)! The other dinosaurs bear the traces of my repeated and failed attempts to achieve that same triumphant feeling again. Perhaps it is because I was a child since I last made something out of clay; perhaps it is because I am trying to reproduce a number of clay figurines that are already so disarmingly cheerful, but my dinosaurs look harmless, seemingly laughing at the joke I produced with my own hands.
And even though skulls always appear to be smiling at us, no matter the species, my clay creatures seem far remote from the dinosaur skeletons and models in natural history museums – the models we rely upon when fantasizing about a world inhabited by prehistoric animals.
This practical (tactical) ceramic joke is an experiment in amateurism as much as it is an exercise for my writing, the latter of which always succeeds in sabotaging my thoughts, molding it as it were, into the autopilot direction of language, structure, plot. That doesn’t mean I ever feel prepared for the writing that is about to come. Whenever I hit the proverbial wall of writer’s block (at the beginning of practically each new day) it’s as if I can feel this molding take place in my brain – to no avail. Too much traffic clutters the flow of words. As a matter of fact, words cannot express how frustrating it can be for a writer not to find the proper words. That, of course, is a tautology, or, roundabout: another great way of simply not getting there, unless you wish to swallow your own tail! Transporting thoughts from A (the mind) to B (an empty Word.doc on your computer screen, or a blank piece of paper if you are of the romantic kind) is not always as simply as it seems. In my clay exercise, B becomes the variable y, and y = basically anything that can happen if you change your formula of life and work.
y = the MacGuffin that drives the motor that drives the plot, and therefore it clearly doesn’t matter whether I’m a sculptor or an amateur, or whether dinosaurs do or do not exist.
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#5 - MG - A Peso A Piece
Algunas figuras de la collección Waldemar Julsrud.Museo Waldemar Julsrud, Acámbaro, Guanajuato.
Waldemar Julsrud was a hardware merchant and amateur archaeologist. In 1944, he excavated some pre-hispanic artefacts at the foot of a mountain in Acámbaro. Unable to dig for more, he offered a peso a piece for every object that was found here and brought back to him intact. This resulted in a vast collection of more than 30.000 ceramic objects, some of which - due to the 'economy' of this archaeological enterprise - inevitably turned out to be awkward anachronisms, like a digital watch on a knight's wrist. A substantial part of Julsrud's collection comprises dinosaurs (two-feet; three-feet; four-feet; three-clawed; two-clawed; mostly friendly in appearance), sparking the imagination of Waldemar Julsrud who concluded that here, in Mexico, people and dinosaurs had once coexisted. For Julsrud, the anachronism turned into a plot.
With Monterroso's short story still in mind, which part is most astonishing: that the dinosaur is still there, or that the human is already there?
With Monterroso's short story still in mind, which part is most astonishing: that the dinosaur is still there, or that the human is already there?
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#4 - MG
When she woke up the dinosaur was still there.
In Monterroso's short story (as brief as the blink of an eye), the promise of an action that is about to take place/the suggestion of an action that just took place (or both, since the two characters are seized in the moment and the reader is propelled into this story in medias res), proves to be sufficient for any reader to engage with this most mysterious encounter between a person and a dinosaur. It doesn't really matter whether the encounter between this human being (is it a human being?) and a long-extinct animal was brief, frightening, life-altering or absurd. Any encounter with a prehistoric being provides us with an a-historical plot, and is therefore immediately subjected to the laws of fiction - regardless of whether we face these laws (and this dinosaur) in reality or in a fictional realm.
There are two ways to tackle this fictitious dinosaur: either the first character woke up to realize that the dinosaur of his dreams was still there, or the dinosaur character is capable of a visionary thinking about its own evolution, straight into the future of Homo Sapiens. This Homo Sapiens sleeps and wakes and sleeps again, in the company of the dinosaur. And when he wakes up, the dinosaur is still there.
Indeed, in both cases the dinosaur is still and persistently there, and one is compelled to think: what would this dinosaur have thought when Homo Sapiens awoke - when it looked the awakened creature into the eyes and saw the future, staring back in disbelief?
In Monterroso's short story (as brief as the blink of an eye), the promise of an action that is about to take place/the suggestion of an action that just took place (or both, since the two characters are seized in the moment and the reader is propelled into this story in medias res), proves to be sufficient for any reader to engage with this most mysterious encounter between a person and a dinosaur. It doesn't really matter whether the encounter between this human being (is it a human being?) and a long-extinct animal was brief, frightening, life-altering or absurd. Any encounter with a prehistoric being provides us with an a-historical plot, and is therefore immediately subjected to the laws of fiction - regardless of whether we face these laws (and this dinosaur) in reality or in a fictional realm.
There are two ways to tackle this fictitious dinosaur: either the first character woke up to realize that the dinosaur of his dreams was still there, or the dinosaur character is capable of a visionary thinking about its own evolution, straight into the future of Homo Sapiens. This Homo Sapiens sleeps and wakes and sleeps again, in the company of the dinosaur. And when he wakes up, the dinosaur is still there.
Indeed, in both cases the dinosaur is still and persistently there, and one is compelled to think: what would this dinosaur have thought when Homo Sapiens awoke - when it looked the awakened creature into the eyes and saw the future, staring back in disbelief?
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#3 - MG - Formal Sequences
"Every work of art can be regarded both as a historical event and as a hard-won solution to some problem. It is irrelevant now whether the event was original or conventional, accidental or willed, awkward or skillful. The important clue is that any solution points to the existence of some problem to which there have been other solutions, and that other solutions to this same problem will most likely be invented to follow the one now in view. As the solutions accumulate, the problem alters. The chain of solutions nevertheless discloses the problem."
(in: George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things)
(in: George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things)
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#1 - MG - In Medias Res
nec gemino bellum Troianum orditor ab ovo: semper ad eventum festinat et in medias res [nor does he begin the Trojan War from the egg, but always he hurries to the action into the middle of things.] (Horace, Ars Poetica, ca. 13 BC)
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#0 - UQ
Is it possible for a narrative to exist without its primary source? Or is this the very nature of storytelling - a bodiless narrative that travels, and continues to travel, as an independent stream through time, regardless of its author?
Uqbar will be working at Casa Vecina in Mexico City, from August 2011 - February 2012. Project members include Moosje Goosen, Leticia El Halli Obeid, Ricardo Cuevas, Jon Mikel Euba, Amalia Pica, Jorge Satorre, Mariana Castillo Deball and Irene Kopelman.
Uqbar will be working at Casa Vecina in Mexico City, from August 2011 - February 2012. Project members include Moosje Goosen, Leticia El Halli Obeid, Ricardo Cuevas, Jon Mikel Euba, Amalia Pica, Jorge Satorre, Mariana Castillo Deball and Irene Kopelman.
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