Robert Kocik's blog

CONVERTING NONSITE TO SITE
Robert Kocik

For all designs, see:
http://nonsitecollective.org/nonsitetosite1
http://nonsitecollective.org/nonsitetosite2
http://nonsitecollective.org/nonsitetosite3
http://nonsitecollective.org/nonsitetosite4

I’ve been reflecting on Nonsite---as a direct result of being roiled by watching the DNC on TV (the progressive party of the most promising nation on the planet, if elected, will, hopefully, hang on to the middle-class, have a world-class educational system (just like a real country), get a health care system that is a good as the systems in poorer countries, hopefully slightly curb cozening and privateering, equal pay for same job---the whole list of basic ‘givens’ yet to be achieved---whereas progressive parties (once upon a time) ran on platforms calling for abolition of the presidential veto, disbanding of Congress, rule by referendum, cooperative organization of prisons, confronting the Framers’ distrust of direct participation by the people in making fundamental law, and so on.) And though the DNC has never before been this poised to undercut the empty sense of promise.

The more I think about it the more I feel that the Nonsite Collective runs on aesthetics---and that this specialty is precisely its disability. The most pervasive medium (the sensory---the fact that we are not only acutely influenced by but formed by everything we see, hear, touch, taste) is the medium currently the most disavowed and disowned. What a ‘thing’ to own. We own it. With regard to being positioned and provisioned for accomplishing our collective aims, we’re resoundingly sub underdog. (The Nonsite Draft Proposal [see nonsitecollective.org/draft_proposal] defines our aesthetic aim as actively placing aesthetic practice in relation to catastrophic forms of social organization---like DNC VS RNC?)
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Oh, um...Thom--what I meant to say:

if prosody is not manifesting what's going on, then our very range of motion is disabling--restricting us to reactionary, passive or, at worst, victimized behavior--as our forms could then do no more than conserve the restriction. That's a far cry from prophylactics.

Granted, through Rob's report, not having been present at the talk--I can only glimpse BB's astonishing and (for me) kindred translation practice. Strikes me first as: the nearest any description has ever come to my 'ordinary' experience of words--whether speech, thought, the tacit. The source text (the arising, unauthored or other-authored) involved with each word. (The scant control I lend to what I say and write is not terribly significant. With my body, my being, my ego, the constant attuning and not impeding...whether buying oranges and apples at supermarket, or writing a poem). The originating from nowhere--placing the secluded in the middle of the social--each time I open my mouth. The shared untraceability of words as we fluidly use them is dizzying, harrowing, inconceivably sublime.

Adding these notes, taken while reading Rob's report:

You'd have to imagine the condition in which there is only One Subjectivity (ours) to sort of know what I mean.

In the subtle body only 1/4 of the word is speakable. This is the same as saying that, for me, there is no such thing as pre-prosodic.

(I've got the secret 'down' to the even the sound between and created at overlap of phonemes.)

In Kashmir the de-differentiated word is called 'sphuratta'--sometimes translated as 'luminous throbbing' (but, one can only find out for oneself--in BB's situation between differentiation and non--the death that is not death--the only state that can actually make the metabolic non-necrotic.)

Differentiation is terminal. True for sound, true for cells, true as us.

I like the idea of democracy being secret and not public knowledge (shared secret knowledge? Constantly renewable as an initial rising and realization in each one of us.) Of course a commercial democracy must be utterly extrovert (why we freak out, currently, when our leaders withhold information from us). Read more