Seminar
(from a novel in progress, Walt and Virginia)
Everyone who was supposed to be in attendance
was seated around the seminar room table
and Walt wasted no time in beginning the discussion
which was always less a discussion than a performance
that he would conduct as some kind of structured improvisation
where the various participants would intersubjectively jam
with each other in a form of metamediumistic energy transference
that would subliminally transcode the localized movements of
everyone's nerve pools into a collective self-interpretative dance ...
In 1960 (Walt started off on a tangent)
the year that I was born into this hellacious world
Richard Hamilton wrote his editorial overview
regarding the process of transcoding
Marcel Duchamp's Green Box
from a random assortment of loose pages
into a hard-bound print book of artist notes
that would serve as a reader's key to unlock
the creative process Duchamp discovered
while slowly mutating himself into a Conceptual performer
producing what we now know as The Large Glass
At the end of the book Hamilton
writes about 'moulded gas seeping
towards the elaborate conditioning
which will prepare it for its final orgiastic splashing
and observe with wonder the beauty of its auras.'
The word 'auras' stood out to me (Walt intimated)
since I had once reflected on an entire realm of techno art
as an ideally positioned avant-pop phenomenon
readily able to assist a new generation of artist-mediums
in their attempts to invent an emergent style of critical writing
that would take into account the multi-media authoring tools
that were at the time flooding the market and that I dubbed
the ongoing becomingness of postproduction
What this really meant I can't for the life of me say
since I was undoubtedly lost in cyberdrugspace
throughout the creative writing process
(the term cyberdrugspace is not really accurate
since I was neither on drugs nor did I feel particularly addicted
to the daily ritual of opening my laptop and connecting
to the Internet and all it had to offer me — perhaps
a better term for this would be virtual disembodiment
although that's not really what I mean either — perhaps
the better phrase yet again would be that I was
tapping into my unfiltered readiness potential)
But I digress ...
... and digress again (and again — what's new?)
[the seminar crowd roared in approval —
he was on a roll — or at least was playing
like he was on a roll and this enabled them
to role-play with him]
There are so many machines for us to decipher here
(Walt was prodding the group on so that they would
somehow invent a series of machines that he would
write on the white board only to then use this series of words
as titles for new collaborative works that they would all
now have to transform into collaborative Conceptual practice)
There is the Bachelor Machine
[and he wrote Bachelor Machine on the white board]
The Eros Machine
The Conceptual Machine
The Ergonomically-Correct Machine
The Bend Back-Asswards Machine
The Chocolate Love Machine
The Stand of Dicks Machine
The Cunning Foresight Machine
The Retinal Obliteration Machine
The Agricultural Machine
The Ultimate Prick Tease Machine
The Apparatus Machine
The Tautological Machine
The Machinic Machine
The Vision Machine
The Glass Machine
The Delay Machine ...
(and here was when Walt did what all well-rehearsed
actors of the pedagogical clan did without even thinking about it —
he inhaled deeply without affecting any sort of breathlessness
and counted to ten waiting patiently for the air to leave his body)
... not to mention The Cemetery of Uniforms ...
But that's not a machine!
(offered one of the the participants)
But it IS a machine
(countered Walt)
It is The Working Death Machine
[and he wrote that too on the white board]
It is the machine that awaits you as soon as you leave this fine institution
[a few nervous laughs]
But let's focus our minds on The Delay Machine
I won't get into the details but let's just say
that I am myself experimenting with delay tactics
not unlike other delay tactics
for example delay tactics like those we might
imagine were part of Beckett's creative intentions as well
You remember Beckett, yes?
[no response — well, one nod, but an insincere one]
The Delay Machine comes about in a note he wrote
regarding the subtitle of his famous work
the one we are investigating today
i.e. The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even ...
Even who?!
(another young voice makes itself known for no apparent reason)
Even you, if you let her
But this too requires patience ...
So let's tap into this delay question
this question of delay
The note Duchamp wrote begins
Kind of Sub-Title
Delay in Glass
(double underlined)
Use 'delay' instead of 'picture' or
'painting'; 'picture on glass' becomes
'delay in glass' -- but 'delay in
glass' does not mean 'picture
on glass' --
It's merely a way
of succeeding in no longer thinking
that the thing in question is
a picture -- to make a 'delay' of it
in the most general way possible,
not so much in the different meanings
in which 'delay' can be taken, but
rather in their indecisive reunion
'delay' -- a 'delay in glass'
as you would say a poem in prose
or a spittoon in silver
This is where Conceptual practice begins
and one could say that it becomes a project
right at this moment when it appears to be
losing itself in writing
but not just any writing
rather — the writing of the mind on hold
but with a literary confidence that squeezes
the blood orange out of philosophical principle
Now this relates to the discussion we were having last week
when we were looking closely at my concept of 'aura'
and how I was suggesting that 'aura' itself has been reconfigured
into something that is much more virtually embodied
and by that I mean naturally obtained by whosoever wishes
to embed themselves in a distributed network environment
that supposedly connects us all to each other in ways
previously unimagined in any other time in human history
As if there were still a human history
Right?
This is what Duchamp is saying ...
Right?
The question he asks us here
clear as a bell
is 'What human history?'
There is the throbbing energy of a robotic world
that continually strains to create
and this is what undoubtedly leads us into fits of desire
where we long to pulverize the chocolate love inside us
into some fine druglike powder that we can then sprinkle
on the buttocks of all the bodies we immerse ourselves in
but in the end
history is kaput and that nude descending the staircase
is not going down to the depths of purgatory
inasmuch as they are making an appearance
A guest appearance
But also a ghost appearance
And this is the apparition we are all sharing now
Remember what Duchamp himself once wrote:
A Guest + A Host = A Ghost
[the group is silenced]
The Delay Machine
it ends up
is consciousness itself
(Walt reappears as if out of nowhere)
and this is due to the way our brains are wired
i.e. the way we remixologically inhabit the Source Material Everywhere
and as such
what Duchamp teaches us to do by birthing the mutant forms of life
we now associate with a comprehensive Conceptual practice
is to lose ourselves in unfiltered readiness potential
Now — how exactly does he do this?
The answer is not so obvious and we don't want to be definitive
but let's at least take into account what he refers to as
the relationship between the State of Rest on the one hand
and A Choice of Possibilities on the other hand
'For the instantaneous state of rest' (he notes)
equals (he uses a literal equal sign as if it were a mathematical certainty)
equals 'bring in the term: extra-rapid'
For Duchamp
the extra-rapid finds its way into his discourse
as extra-rapid State of Rest
extra-rapid exposure
extra-rapid exposition
and even extra-rapid organization
(Walt surveys the scene before him and then continues)
and interestingly enough
all of these extra-rapid equivalences are ultimately
further equated with what he terms 'allegorical appearance'
Allegorical Appearance
Do you suppose this has any crossover potential
I mean meaning-wise are we on to something here
when we crossdress Duchamp's 'allegorical appearance'
with what I just recently referred to as both guest
and ghost or even ghostly appearances?
Of MAKING appearances?
Think about MAKING an appearance
and think about it in relation to the various machines
we have running here
[points to the white board]
and then imagine how what you MAKE
suggests that we (or you / or I)
are totally ON to something here
Because this is also what Duchamp is turning us on to
He is basically saying that we need to turn it on
To get TURNED ON
and that the available elixirs are finite
and we need to discover new ways to grind our desire
into druglike forms of seductive knowledge
How else do we think we are ever going to survive —
to maintain the robotic world that strains to create?
Now let's take a short break as you think about
what machine you want to become
and how this becoming-machine will in effect
enable you to TURN ON and MAKE
some kind of guest or ghostly appearance
[people jumping out chairs as if escaping execution]
and think about the PLATFORM
your appearance will be presented on!
Ctrl-Z: New Media Philosophy
ISSN 2200-8616