Julie's invocation of the unconscious

[Julie Ingleton]

David
I must state from the outset that i am still not completely clear as to what
it is you are doing in relation to the computer equiptment .

Also my immediate thought was that to answer your question it would need to
be looked at in context. I mean a person would need to have an understanding
of Japanese society and understand who are the  people attending your
performance.

I am going to attempt to describe it in four steps.The fourth step i do not
see in your performance but i think is a necessary part of the sequence.

I will describe the four steps as this;   4.   reconciliation,  3.
creativity,  2.relaxation,  1.non-purposive state.


Now i will relate them to what you do in a performance David.

4. reconciliation - this relates to what David Samuals wrote o the 12th.
"Freud and Werthiemer (not to mentionLevi-Strauss, and lets addHegel...)
assert thatthere is a subcoscious desire resolution,tranquility, the good
form. "ect.

Yung  believes  that in order for there to be reconciliation ther needs to
be (3.) creativity;

Winnicott (1971) states, to be creative you need to be (2.) relaxed;


Winnicott (1971)states to be relaxed  you need to be in a (1.)
non-purposive state;  He descrbes this as "not having purpose... person must
be allowed to communicate a succession of ideas ,thoughts, impulses,
sensations, that are not linked accept in a neurological way, or
physiological, or perhaps undetected."

David, I see you in a position where you need to be creative, and therefore
need to find a non-purposive state, and as you said you were anxious in your
performance, (at least in the beginning), you would need to find a way to
relax, to get creative,   you describe your 'immediate arbitrary
consciousness' and 'scribbles' ect and this is where i see you gaining a
non-purposive state.

I am now going to make a desparate attempt to bring in the word 'discourse,
as i am uncomfortable with it's absence.

firstly i see discourse happening in the fourth step of reconciliation ( see
David samuals on the 12th jan.)  where there is a dialogue between the
subconscious - the creative object and the - conscious. This is a continuing
circular discourse., where conscious knowledge is brought in to the new
found knowledge brought out by the creativity.


secondly; what is described in the non-purposive state  you could say was
happening earlier in this list.  I'm afraid i can't remember who it was, and
i don't have time to look it up as i have three pre-school age children
waiting with mouths open to be fed and a husband saying "what are you doing
on that computer" but, someone, spoke of discourse as being a conversion
within ones self, talking to ones self, and refered to somebody else who was
sorting out her thoughts as she wrote, doing her thinking as she wrote.


 my opologies if this is disjointed,


gotta go.
julie.
Original Message-----
From: Divizio <d2d at PD.HIGHWAY.NE.JP>
To: DISCOURS at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU <DISCOURS at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, January 13, 1999 1:37 AM
Subject: Re: Julie's invocation of the unconscious


>Julie,
>Thanks to question.
>
>>Is what you are doing representational of
>>something else?
>
>No it's presentational.  I *present* my immediate, arbitrary
>consciousness......perception......to the computer.....which transforms the
>*information* (writing and other cursive, energetic
>*scribbles*).........into text (usually)...[though some VERY strange
>images....patterns.....video noise..... sudden interruptions ..... long
>pauses...... have generated .......figures ...sketches .....curious
>shiftings of scale (varying intensity of image)].....that seem to bear a
>contextual relationship to the mediation......both  temporally and
>spatially.  The video documentation of the performance reveals curious
>....to the point of.......profound associations.  The process is
>ambivalent.......I have no expectation.
>Let me describe an example.
>
>The first performance I did with this mediation process, I took the stage
>wearing a small video camera that I could adjust to watch the computer
>screen I held in my hands.  I explained only that we (myself and two
>Japanese ...dancer/musician) were going to create a kind of shamanic
>audience participation poem.
>
>At the outset the girls spray painted in English, Japanese, and other
>graffitti ...what they perceived of the imagery projected onto the
>projection video screen from the camera I wore. One *sang* and one
*danced*.
>For a "moment", late in the performance, none of us were on the stage
>......we'd all moved into the audience.
>
>
>The audience were about 100.  It was in a nightclub in Tokyo, rented for
the
>book launch of a local poet's new compendium ......of Tokyo poets.  Many
>performances, readings, and music.
>
>It was pretty noisy....the party was well under way.
>
>I listened...
>I heard someone say "Time" (not to me...I simply heard it)
>I wrote it on the computer screen.....it transformed accurately into fonted
>text "Time".
>
>I listened....
>I heard someone say "Paints" (I think this was projected at me.....perhaps
>composed)
>"Paints" appeared on the screen next to "Time" accurately transformed.
>
>>>From the back of the room I heard someone call out "MORE Challenging".....
>indeed it was going a little slow.......I *was* a little anxious.  I wrote,
>"more challenging".  (It's clearly legible in the documentation video)
What
>appeared on the screen however, was...... "mere challenge".
>
>Now the poem read, "Time Paints mere challenge".  Wow.  Cool huh?
>
>The performance continued another 12 minutes......
>
>Later, I was surprised to hear on the video documentation the man's voice
>who had called out "MORE challenging".  He happened to have sat next to the
>documentation camera.  He gives a running commentary about what we were
>doing onstage throughout the performance.  Some very interesting comments.
>He kept referring to what we were doing as
>"Bleak!"....."Pessimistic"......then comparing it to Beckett.......and
>Rimbaud..."then declaring NO NO NO this guy is missing the point!"
>
>BUT, the *truly* interesting thing is ....on the documentation video it is
>clear that this unknown commentator did not call out "MORE
>challenging"........he called out "MORTALITY".
>
>"Time Paints mere challenge" is, I think, a pretty optomistic statement
>about
>"MORTALITY"
>
>Does that answer your other questions, Julie?
>
>I've done Five such performances..each unique...each with similar results.
>
>I've been researching biosemiotics to try and evolve an understanding of
>what's going on.
>
>I'm really looking for some leads on figuring out how to talk about what's
>happening in this performance.
>
>Any ideas?
>
>d2d
>
>·ol : Julie Ingleton <julieip at DIESEL.NET.AU>
>ˆ¶æ : DISCOURS at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU <DISCOURS at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU>
>“úŽž : 1999”N1ŒŽ12“ú 19:19
>Œ–¼ : Re: Julie's invocation of the unconscious
>
>
>>David,
>>...and what do you think it is that is occuring with your audience,? and
>>what is your audience response?  Is what you are doing representational of
>>something else?
>>Best wishes
>>Julie
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Divizio <d2d at PD.HIGHWAY.NE.JP>
>>To: DISCOURS at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU <DISCOURS at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU>
>>Date: Tuesday, January 12, 1999 4:35 PM
>>Subject: Re: Julie's invocation of the unconscious
>>
>>
>>>**********Divizio's invocation of the unconscious
>>>as provoked by
>>>David W. Samuels
>>>in reply to
>>>
>>>Jim and Julie,
>>>
>>>                                                                  To
>>>#/\/\/\/\
>>>On 1/12/99
>>>Divizio wrote all of the following,
>>>sequentially, alternating between pda and OED.
>>>
>>>doxa~
>>>        carafe 1 Corroon 1
>>>        Carole 1 carafe 1
>>>        area araf 1 Arab 1
>>>        oral 1 ouch unsafe
>>>
>>>glory~
>>>        jwafa mraga firafa
>>>        Sonya gwafa ginafa
>>>
>>>opinion~
>>>        warning weilding
>>>        warning MaRissa
>>>
>>>hexis~
>>>        mud I issued sided
>>>        issued sued I sined
>>>        joined Seiko mud I
>>>
>>>habitus~
>>>        Ratified butilarl
>>>        eatilarl sutilonl
>>>        Vatican nutilarl
>>>        metilarl warlord
>>>
>>>settled tendency or practice~
>>>        escrowing-Ra
>>>        gacmeanet beetles
>>>
>>>
>>>SCARABS ANYONE?  I like the late 20th C metaphor of us rolling our
>>>information around like dung beetles from one end of this life to the
>next.
>>>
>>>
>>>OK first the Introduction.
>>>I've been watching a while.  But I think this is worth posting.
>>>
>>>I am a Performance artist...cum poet.  Hahaha.
>>>
>>>I am trying to figure out WHY the following happens.
>>>Formally, I present a multi-media performance of a computer mediated
>poetic
>>>generation with a pda(character recognition computer-personal digital
>>>assistant)
>>>
>>>My credentials DNE......or is that NDE
>>>My background is shady...starting many things....finishing none....well,
>>>few.
>>>Five years of undergraduate meandering...and subsequently 20 years of
>"real
>>>life" experience gathering...punctuated with sporadic diverse
>>>reading....focused on whatever I needed to know for upcoming works
>>>(performance, etc, etc.).....OR trying to figure out WHAT's just happened
>>in
>>>works I've presented (performances, etc, etc)
>>>
>>>I am smoking my OED.
>>>
>>>Language has always fascinated me but =*as much as possible*=I have tried
>>to
>>>avoid it in my artworks......which come from a ritualistic base
expressing
>>>my relationship with Place and Creature.
>>>
>>>A year ago I had a vision of a performance with a pda I'd come
>>>into.......hahaha.  It is very interesting work.  I've enjoyed and
>>benefited
>>>from reading along here.
>>>
>>>I'm not exactly sure HOW this is working........but I have some thoughts
>on
>>>the matter
>>>which are the *object* of my research.....
>>>
>>>NO....I want you to read the poems first.
>>>Please return to the top of this extravagant hypertextuality******
>>>/\/\/\/\#
>>>Thanks to David Samuels to stimulate this outburst.
>>>
>>>David 2 Divizio
>>>
>>>
>>>>I don't think it's an allergy to the notion of unconscious so much as an
>>>>allergy to the notion of depth psychology.  In my view the move to
>>>>"discourse" from "language" puts us in a positioin to ask some
>interesting
>>>>questions about the unconscious, such as:
>>>
>>>>(1) what is the relationship between consciousness and things that go
>>under
>>>>terms like "doxa," "habitus," "hexis," and so on.  This covers things
>like
>>>>the relationship between grammar and textual construction, the linking
of
>>>>things like quantity, stress, intonation and gesture in performance, as
>>>>well as the question of linguistic consciousness and linguistic
ideology.
>>>>I think that's what Greg Urban is trying to do, to use the Peirceian
>>>>trichotomies to empirically investigate how the things that people are
>>>>conscious they are doing are linked to the things they are not conscious
>>>>they are doing, even though those latter things have meanings; and how
>>>>features of discourse can move from one domain to the other.
>>>
>>>>(2) is a depth psychology model of the unconscious supported by the
>>>>empirical evidence of discourse?  For example, Freud and Wertheimer (not
>>to
>>>>mention Levi-Strauss, and let's add Hegel while we're at it, why not)
>>>>assert that there is a subconscious desire for resolution, tranquility,
>>the
>>>>good form.  Freud says that ambiguity creates anxiety, Levi-Strauss that
>>>>ambiguities are resolved in myth, and so forth.  Whereas I think it can
>be
>>>>argued from the evidence of discourse that people desire indeterminacy
at
>>>>least as much as resolution.  So it's this area where "unconscious"
>slides
>>>>imperceptibly into "psychological motivation," and specifically
>>>>psychological motivation as a means of resolving our anxiety to find an
>>>>explanation for "behavior."  Discourse can help us unpack some of these
>>>>issues so that we're not held in thrall by the German aesthetic
tradition
>>>>of holism.
>>>
>>>>So that's my opinion.
>>>
>>>>Best,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>David W. Samuels
>>>>Assistant Professor
>>>>Department of Anthropology
>>>
>>>>212 Machmer Hall
>>>>University of Massachusetts
>>>>Amherst, MA 01003
>>>
>>>>VOX: (413) 545-2702
>>>>FAX: (413) 545-9494
>>>>email: samuels at anthro.umass.edu
>>>
>>
>