“…Retinal pessimism is not simply the failure of the phenomena of perception, the physiology of the retina, or the science of optics. Nor is it the conviction that whatever one is seeing is the worst of all possible things that could be seen. Both are intriguing options. But, retinal pessimism is something else, and it is encapsulated in the strange status of black: at once present and absent, at once a fullness and an emptiness, at once the absorption of all light and the total absence of light. Black is at once the foundation of all colour and, in its absence or emptiness, it is also what undermines the substantiality of all colour. If one is willing to go down this path, a retinal pessimism is not just about the non-colour that is black, but it is about the perception of colour itself. It is, ultimately, the suspicion that all colours are black, that all retinal activity is retinal inactivity. Retinal pessimism: there is nothing to see (and you’re seeing it)…”
quotes
There are 312 posts tagged quotes (this is page 2 of 15).
The revolution is my boyfriend
The frequency of opiates is a special oscillation of ultra sound
“Anything that can be done chemically can be done in other ways…what is missed in withdrawal is a certain frequency
[…]
The frequency of opiates turned out to be a special oscillation of ultra sound. The frequency was quite as habit-forming as morphine but could be gradually shut off over a period of several months resulting in a painless cure […] The discovery that the effects of morphine can be produced by a sound frequency led to realization that the effects of any drug can be so produced and frequency therapy came to supplant drug therapy.”
The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs, Daniel Odier.
Símbols franquistes a Tortosa i altres desusos
Núvol ha publicat una bonica crònica del Embarrat i també unes paraules boniques sobre la meva acció/vídeo:
«Blanca Rego (Ferrol) va realitzar una de les accions més interessants i directament vinculades a la inutilitat i el desús. La gran màquina I és la realització d’una curosa recerca per Internet de les bases escrites de la primera edició (2014) del festival Embarrat (que no estaven ja penjades al propi web del festival). D’alguna manera, l’autora posava de manifest la obsolescència mateixa de la creació contemporània, les convocatòries, els premis, els festivals o els propis artistes i les seves obres. Un cop trobades les bases en un document PDF, l’autora inicia una cadena de transcodificacions: de PDF converteix el document a audio, el divideix en fragments i el converteix en arxiu de fotogrames, aconseguint un resultat aleatori i imprevisible. El resultat final és un vídeo HD en bucle de menys de 4 minuts esdevingut artefacte inútil, obsolet i inintel·ligible. Una absurditat amb ple sentit interpretatiu».
«Símbols franquistes a Tortosa i altres desusos», Oriol Martí Sambola.
Activating word patterns in the brain by tape-recorder techniques
“Assassins often hear voices telling them to kill. Are these voices necessarily imaginary? Directional mikes can project voices. Top secret research on lasers is concerned with sending thoughts. Experiments in Norway indicate the possibility of activating word patterns in the brain by tape-recorder techniques.”
The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs, Daniel Odier.
The female body is a deviation
“Whenever male bodies are represented as monstrous in the horror film they assume characteristics usually associated with the female body: they experience a blood cycle, change shape, bleed, give birth, become penetrable, are castrated. Traditionally, the male body has been viewed as norm; the female body a deviation.”
Dark Desires: Male Masochism in the Horror Film, Barbara Creed.
The sexuality of the loud noise
— You made a loud noise.
— You didn’t make umbrage with the loud noise. You made umbrage with the fact that you’ve got a load of gay people in a straight bar. That’s what you’ve got your problem with. Admit it, just admit it.
— No…
— Absolutely admit it.
— The sexuality of the loud noise was not an issue with me, it was the fact that the noise was loud.
— Oh, right, so it’s just merely a matter of decibels.
Weekend (2011).
Poison (1991)
Poison (1991), Todd Haynes.
I think that Poison was the first film I watched by Todd Haynes, many years ago. I’ve seen all his films and I like all of them, but Poison and Velvet Goldmine hold a special place in my heart (Velvet Goldmine is probably on my top 10 favourite films of all times).
God is prowling around with a tape recorder
“When nobody cares, then shame ceases to exist and we can all return to the Garden of Eden without any God prowling around like a house dick with a tape recorder”.
Playback from Eden to Watergate, Williams S. Burroughs.
No image. No color. Just blackness
“Dreams getting worse. Usually in nightmares you see what you’re scared of. Not in my case. No image. No color. Just blackness and then in the distance, getting closer and closer, beginning to pierce some strange ever-present roar, sounds, voices, sometimes just a few, sometimes a multitude, and one by one, all of them starting to scream.
Do you know what it’s like to wake up from a dream you haven’t seen? Well for one thing, you’re not sure if you were dreaming or not.”
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski.
Chambers’s Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts
Tristram Shandy
What he misses most is the sound of traffic
As he tells his father, what he misses most is the sound of traffic. It seems the noise made by trucks and taxi cabs created for him a kind of evening lullaby. Now he finds it difficult to fall asleep in the quiet.
“What about the sound of crickets?” Navidson asks.
Chad shakes his head.
“It’s not the same. I dunno. Sometimes it’s just silent… No sound at all.”
“Does that scare you?”
Chad nods.
“Why?” asks his father.
“It’s like something’s waiting.”
“What?”
Chad shrugs. “I dunno Daddy. I just like the sound of traffic.”
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski.
Silence cannot conceal anything
“Shall we converse, then?”
“Talk of the weather, which we know all about? Ask how we are, which we already know? I prefer silence. Then you can hear thoughts and see the past. Silence cannot conceal anything.”
The Ghost Sonata, August Strindberg.
A New Spanish Grammar
The Eight Technologies of Otherness
Harmony was a capitalist plot to sell pianos
—Do you perform often?
—Only at poor attended concerts for postgraduates.
—That’s a shame, why do you think that is?
—Because once you move away from tonality and harmony the audience is very small.
—That’s because harmony is science. Harmony is physics.
—Harmony was a capitalist plot to sell pianos.
(Untitled) (2009).
Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art
Specters of Marx
Rain is essential to my sense of identity
In the first page of Rain: Four Walks in English Weather, Melissa Harrison writes: “…rain is as essential to our sense of identity as it is to our soil.” She is writing about the English countryside, which is something that is not really familiar to me, but the fact is that now I realise that the only thing that I consider essential to my sense of identity is rain.
I’m from Spain, yeah, that supposedly sunny place, but Spain is not really such a sunny place, at least not all of it. I’m from the northwest corner of the country, in which it usually rains around 180 days per year, and I fucking love it. Now I live in Barcelona, which is a really sunny place, and I hate this weather.
But I think it’s going to rain today.
Into each life some rain must fall
“…it seems to me that rain is a mirror of one of our key emotional states: not a negative one at all, but deeply necessary – just as necessary as joy. Water, after all, both reflects us, and brings life; it was also, for Jung, an archetype of the unconscious, and of change. ‘Into each life some rain must fall,’ wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (or was it Dennis Potter?) – and it’s quite true: after all, nothing new can grow without it.”
Rain: Four Walks in English Weather, Melissa Harrison.