Jordy: Obsolescence and Desire

Obsolescence and Desire: Fashion and Commodity Form
Gail Faurschou

I had a difficult time comprehending this article. The topic of the introduction was easy enough to comprehend. It concerned the late capitalist economy and cultural repercussions. The late capitalist economy is based on commodity, which requires the consumption of objects. Fashion was proposed as the exceeding example for the consumption of a commodity because it continuously reinvents itself by recycling styles from the past. After the introduction the text became extremely difficult to read because it used abstract terminology without explanations or elaborations. For instance in the statement, “the death of the symbol is the precondition for its birth as a sign commodity”, what is a sign commodity? How does a symbol die? Why must a symbol die in order for sign commodity to be born? Why can’t they co-exist?


“The spectacle, grasped in its totality, is both the result and the prospect of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration.”

I do not understand this quote. The spectacle as a result from modes of production is easy to understand, but what does the additional decoration have to do with the spectacle?
Are they saying that the spectacle is part of the real world? Or are they saying that spectacles are added decoration? And in either case what is the relevance if it is decoration or not?

Postmodernity: is understood as a new phase of intensification and re-organization of late capitalism such that production, having surpassed its earlier rationale of satisfying the needs of a modernizing society, is now compelled to drive consumption to new extremes of insatiability”

Postmodernity is in its purest stage: fashion is the dominant expression

Fashion does this by transforming the “object” of consumption and intensifies the outmoded of the object’s value.

“Postmodernism is the dead world of objects become fashion-conscious”

Symbols and Signs: What does it mean to say that fashion parades objects as a reification of what they once were, or a simulation of what they imagines themselves to be?

Fashion: birth, death, spectacular resurrection

Objects:
- More than utility
- Give meaning
- Destroy

“Marx: all value is social and objects acquire it on the basis of the relations through which we exchange them”

“Exchange them”: symbolic or commodity

Commodity:
- Mediated through the market
- Exchange value: equivalent units of socially necessary labor time
- Does not allow for a symbolic investment or the generation of meaning

Late capitalism: renders obsolete any explanation of consumption

I am unclear on the differences between symbolism and commodity.

The Paradox of Value in the circuit of consumption: “Symbolic” consumption: How does it take place? Continuously generate? Intensify?

“The death of the symbol is the precondition for its birth as a sign commodity”

Why can’t the sign commodity exist before a symbol? Why can’t they coexist?

“… Objects are (not) mechanically substituted for an absent relation, to fill a void, no: they describe the void, the locus of the relation, in a development which is actually a way of not experiencing it, while always referring to the possibilities of experience”

I am not sure what the discussion of is about here? How does an object describe a void? What is the void? What is they importance of the experience? Is it the experience of creating an object or the consumption or the destruction of it?

Consumption: “a collective and active behaviour, a constraint, a morality, and an institution. It is a complete system of values.”

Jordy: Temporal Contract

Temporal Contracts: On the economy of the Post-Industrial Landscape
Ellen Durham-Jones

Corporate America is ruled by temporary contract
- planned obsolescence of goods
- buildings and employees as disposable assets…etc.

post-industrial landscapes characterized by short term profit, and minimal commitment.

If it is the condition to consume and become obsolete in the post-industrial city then why don’t we accept it as such and design for it? Why couldn’t we have buildings that are highly affordable and market friendly, but can be quickly dismantled and recycled? Is inefficiency a necessary condition of consumerism?

Has durability become more valued to hedge off the unease if rapid change?
Or has it become less valued, perceived as irrelevant and unnecessary?

Information age and service economy

Ruptured marriage vows
NAFTA
Cyberpsace
Freeways,
24 hour convenience stores

In the post-industrial landscape where do

If we are positioning consumerism as a problem in our contemporary society, in that it creates placelessness, waste and superficiality, then what ways can this problem be addressed?

If it is a matter of consumption then we can demand that the players in the game regulate their actions. So, the corporations would produce less; the consumers would produce less; and the stockholders would demand less. However, this approach relies on the conservation or reduction of action. Why not approach the problem in the opposite manner? What if you pushed consumption to even greater levels? For instance, when someone is attempting to quit smoking you could either convince yourself to reduce consumption or smoke an entire pack to the extent that you make yourself sick.
Essentially, what if you pushed for a “heart attack of consumption”?

What does it mean to make place? Is it in the physical construction of a place or is it tied into our emotional understanding of place? Can we construct a place or does

Jordy: David Harvey: Popular Capitalism and Popular Culture

The dimensions of space and time have there been subject to the persistent pressure of capital circulation and accumulation, culminating in disconcerting and disruptive bouts of time-space compression.

What is space-time compression?

Which space is being referenced? Is the space of a room? A hallway? Outer space? Public space?

Which kind of time is being referenced? Is it out perceptions of time? Or is it in reference to passing of events?

Why is the relationship between space-time compression and the separation of scientific knowledge from moral judgment?

Why do we assess the confidence of an era by the width of the gap between scientific and moral reasoning? How do you judge the confidence of an era?

Why do we turn to aesthetics in periods of pronounces confusion and uncertainty?

“Crises of over-accumulation typically spark the search for spatial and temporal resolutions, which in turn create an overwhelming sense of time-space compression, we can also expect crises of over-accumulation to be followed by strong aesthetic movements.”

Why would we expect crises of over-accumulation to be followed by strong aesthetic movements?

Jordy: Federic Jameson week2

The Bonaventure Hotel

Populist aspect:

“They no longer attempt, as did the masterworks and monuments of high modernism to insert a different, a distinct, an elevated, a new utopian language into the tawdry and commercial sign-system of the surrounding city, but rather attempt to speak that very language.”

- Aspires to be a total space, a complete world (miniature city)
- Collective practice (hyper crowd)
- Does not wish to be part of a city (its equivalent, replacement, or substitute)

Modernists elevate themselves from the city (le Corbusier’s Pilotis)
Postmodernists wish to exist within the city fabric (no utopia transformation is desired)

i.e. glass skin: a placeless association from its neighborhood: reflects everything that surrounds it

Postmodern hyperspace: “…succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to maps its position in a mappeable external world.”

If the postmodernists are struggling to find their own paths, (i.e. death of the subject: "it is no longer clear what the artists and writers of the present period are supposed to be doing") then why are spaces being designed to as confusing and disorienting? Why not seek to answer questions about the architecture, rather then present representations of our own confusion and disorientation. I understand that the postmodern hyperspace is a reaction to what is occuring in the larger cultural context, but i do not understand the need or utility of this reaction. How does poorly designing the entry to a bunch of stores create a postmodern condition (pg. 174)?

The author suggests that we are in a need for new perceptual tools to understand hyperspace. However, I question the logic or even need for such tools. The construction of hyperspace in the Bonaventure Hotel is a cultural construction. What is the connection between our culutre's highly consumptive capitalist economy and the need for space that represent those conditions?
What is the connection between high turn over capital and spaces that are disorienting?

Jordy: Federic Jameson week2

p.166

"I want to sketch a few of the ways in which the new postmodernism expresses the inner truth of the newly emergent social order of late capitalism, but will have to limit the descripition to only two of its significatn features, which I will call pastiche and schhizophrenia.."

The text clearly discusses the role of pastiche in postmodernism, but i failed to notice a clear discussion postmoderism descriptions of schizophrenia. Is it in regards to the postmodernist tendencies of hyper fast changes in consumption, in that there is no stability for rationale? Or is that postmodernism is based on the replication of other styles? So that postmodernism is like the ackward kid who is noticeably wearing clothes who are not their own?

Obsolescence and Desire: Fashion and the Commodity Form

Fashion is often regarded as something trivial and superficial in our lives. In the article, Faurschou discusses fashion and it’s relation to late capitalist consumerism. She argues that the contradictions that fashion and its context exist within are representative of postmodern society. A key issue that is raised is that of desire and obsolescence. Unlike nearly any object humans possess, fashion exists in a cycle where consumers desire it immensely, but it never gains permanence in their lives. In a matter of days, weeks, or months it becomes disposable. What was once so coveted to a person later becomes disliked and disposed.

If one creates an article of clothing themselves that is in fashion at the time of creation, will it be any less disposable? For example, if a woman sewed herself a pair of skinny jeans last spring/summer, will she still be wearing them a few months from now? If they’re not longer ‘hot’, will she still want them?

Temporary Contracts

On the Economy of Post-Industrial Landscape by Ellen Dunham-Jones

In contemporary society there is a fixation with the impermanent. Today everything is liquid – housing, jobs, information. As a result, a post-industrial landscape is spreading across North America.
According to Dunham-Jones, “Post-industrialism can be defined as the convergence of the ‘Information Age’ and the ‘Service Economy’ ”.
In other words, contemporary society has shifted from a society that is based on production of goods to a “production of images and information” (Dunham-Jones). As a result, cities are spreading outwards, business centres are becoming de-centralized and economic disparity is growing. The author uses New York City as an example – a city that not too long ago was a manufacturing centre. It is currently a centre of image and information creation that is supported by the service industry at the bottom. Can New York still be the culturally rich, thriving city it is known as if its function is that of a centre for the creation of imagery and information for global mass-capitalism?

Is permanence necessary in our lives today? What does it offer? Discuss.

Truly Indie Fans

By JESSICA PRESSLER

Published: January 28, 2007

Source: New York Times

WHEN Douglas Martin first saw the video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as a teenager in High Point, N.C., “it blew my mind,” he said. Like many young people who soothe their angst with the balm of alternative rock, Mr. Martin was happy to discover music he enjoyed and a subculture where he belonged.

Except, as it turned out, he didn’t really belong, because he is black.

“For a long time I was laughed at by both black and white people about being the only black person in my school that liked Nirvana and bands like that,” said Mr. Martin, now 23, who lives in Seattle, where he is recording a folk-rock album.

But 40 years after black musicians laid down the foundations of rock, then largely left the genre to white artists and fans, some blacks are again looking to reconnect with the rock music scene.

The Internet has made it easier for black fans to find one another, some are adopting rock clothing styles, and a handful of bands with black members have growing followings in colleges and on the alternative or indie radio station circuit. It is not the first time there has been a black presence in modern rock. But some fans and musicians say they feel that a multiethnic rock scene is gathering momentum.

“There’s a level of progress in New York in particular,” said Daphne Brooks, an associate professor of African-American studies at Princeton. She was heartened last summer by the number of children of color in a class she taught at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, where kids learn to play punk-rock standards.

There is even a new word for black fans of indie rock: “blipster,” which was added to UrbanDictionary .com last summer, defined as “a person who is black and also can be stereotyped by appearance, musical taste, and/or social scene as a hipster.”

Bahr Brown, an East Harlem resident whose Converse sneakers could be considered blipster attire, opened a skateboard and clothing boutique, Everything Must Go, in the neighborhood in October, to cater to consumers who, like himself, want to dress with the accouterments of indie rock: “young people who wear tight jeans and Vans and skateboard through the projects,” he said.

“And all the kids listen to indie rock,” he said. “If you ask them what’s on their iPod, its Death Cab for Cutie, the Killers.”

A 2003 documentary, “Afropunk,” featured black punk fans and musicians talking about music, race and identity issues, and it has since turned into a movement, said James Spooner, its director. Thousands of black rock fans use Afropunk.com’s message boards to discuss bands, commiserate about their outsider status and share tips on how to maintain their frohawk hairstyles.

“They walk outside and they’re different,” Mr. Spooner said of the Web site’s regulars. “But they know they can connect with someone who’s feeling the same way on the Internet.”

On MySpace, the trailer for Mr. Spooner’s new film, “White Lies, Black Sheep,” about a young black man in the predominantly white indie-rock scene, has been played upward of 40,000 times.

Rock was created by black artists like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and Elvis Presley and other white artists eventually picked up the sound. In the ’60s, teenagers were just as likely to stack their turntables with records from both white and black artists — with perhaps a little bit of Motown, another musical thread of the time, thrown in, said Larry Starr, who wrote “American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV,” with Christopher Waterman. But that began changing in the late ’60s. By the time Jimi Hendrix became the ultimate symbol of counterculture cool, with his wild wardrobe and wilder guitar playing, the racial divisions were evident.

Paul Friedlander, the author of “Rock and Roll: A Social History,” noted that Hendrix became popular just as the black power movement emerged. Yet his trio included two white musicians and his audience was largely white. That made him anathema to many blacks.

“To the black community he was not playing wholly African-American music,” Mr. Friedlander said, even when Hendrix formed a new all-black band.

By the early ’70s, “you began to have this very strict color line,” Mr. Starr said. Music splintered into many different directions and, for the most part, blacks and whites went separate ways. Black musicians gravitated toward genres in which they were more likely to find acceptance and lucre, such as disco, R & B and hip-hop, which have also been popular among whites.

The next few decades saw several successful and influential black musicians who crossed genres or were distinctly rock, such as Prince, Living Colour and Lenny Kravitz, and rock melodies and lyrics have been liberally sampled by hip-hop artists. But rock is still largely a genre played by white rockers and celebrated by white audiences.

THE recent attention given several bands with black members — like Bloc Party, Lightspeed Champion, and the Dears — could signify change. “Return to Cookie Mountain,” the second album by the group TV on the Radio, a band in which four of the five members are black, was on the best-album lists of many critics in 2006. Around the country, other rock bands with black members are emerging.

On an evening in December, at Gooski’s, a crowded dive bar in Pittsburgh, Lamont Thomas, sweating through a red T-shirt that read “Black Rock,” played the drums behind the lead singer Chris Kulcsar, who was flinging his skinny frame around the stage, and the guitarist Buddy Akita. The bass player, Lawrence Caswell, dreadlocked and gregarious, introduced the band, a punk quartet from Cleveland with the name This Moment in Black History.

“The funny thing is, a lot of people assume from the name that we’re just white kids being ironic,” Mr. Thomas said.

This may be because their fans, like the ones who attended the show at Gooski’s, tend to be white, although there are usually one or two people of color, Mr. Caswell said.

Nev Brown, a photographer and writer from Brooklyn, said that at the indie rock shows that he has covered for his music blog, FiddleWhileYouBurn.com, he is almost always the only black person in the room. Some fans are curious about why he is at the show and try to talk to him about it.

“And then you get idiots, like people who think you’re a security guard,” he said.

Damon Locks, a Chicago-based publicist and singer in a hardcore band called the Eternals, said he is frequently mistaken for “one of the other three black guys” in the city’s rock-music scene. “We joke about it,” he said. “We’ve been thinking about getting together and starting a band called Black People.”

That kind of isolation is one of the reasons Mr. Spooner, the documentary director, regularly showcases black and mixed-race rock bands at clubs. For a band to participate, the lead singer must be black. This caused some friction early on, he said. “A lot of white people were offended that I was saying, ‘This is for us,’ ” Mr. Spooner said on a recent evening at the Canal Room, a club in downtown Manhattan, where he was the D.J. between sets for multiethnic bands like Graykid, Martin Luther and Earl Greyhound.

But, he added: “Almost every black artist I know wants to play in front of their people. This is bigger than just rocking out or whatever.”

Mr. Thomas, of This Moment in Black History, said that white fans sometimes want to know why he is not rapping. “It’s the stupidest question,” he said.

Just as often, it is African-Americans who are judgmental. “There’s an unfortunate tendency for some black people to think if you listen to rock music or want to play rock music, you’re an Uncle Tom,” Mr. Thomas said.

LaRonda Davis, president of the Black Rock Coalition, an organization co-founded by Vernon Reid of Living Colour in the mid-80s to advocate for black rock bands, said the resistance is rooted in group-think. “Black people were forced to create a community,” she said. “We’re so protective and proud of it, like, ‘We have to protect our own,’ and why should we embrace something that has always excluded us?”

Nelson George, author of “Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Boho’s: Notes on Post-Soul Culture,” suggested that the rock ’n’ roll aesthetic had been a major deterrent. “Black kids do not want to go out with bummy clothes and dirty sneakers,” Mr. George said. “There is a psychological subtext to that, about being in a culture where you are not valued and so you have to value yourself.”

But lately, rock music, and its accouterments, are being considered more stylish. Mainstream hip-hop artists like Kelis wear Mohawks, Lil Jon and Lupe Fiasco rap about skateboarding, and “all of the Southern rap stars are into the ’80s punk look, wearing big studded belts and shredded jeans,” said Anoma Whittaker, the fashion director of Complex magazine. At the same time, the hip-hop industry’s demand for new samples has increased the number of rock songs appearing on hip-hop tracks: Jay-Z’s latest album features contributions from Chris Martin of Coldplay and R & B artist Rihanna’s current single samples the New Wave band Soft Cell.

“Hip-hop has lost a lot of its originality,” said Mr. Brown of Everything Must Go, the East Harlem skateboard shop. “This is the new thing.”

Maya Week3: Temporary Contracts

Buildings and places have traditionally been conceived of as lasting artifacts that embody the achievements and ideals of a civilization. This article explores the themes of durability and ephemerally, beginning with questions of how is the built environment changing as a result of evolving ideas? Has durability become more valued as a hedge against the unease of rapid change? Or has it become less valued, perceived as irrelevant, nostalgic, and unnecessary (2)?

The article tends to argue the second point that buildings have become ephemeral and trivial, by using the example of the edge city effect and corporations such as Walmart that AT&T as main contributors to the development of our modern landscape. I don’t necessarily agree. All the way through reading this article I was waiting to hear the solution to our problem. Strategies to take back the streets and obtain more social control over our cities development and condition. I have yet to read one article that begins to inspire and encourage the individual to take responsibility for change in their area. Of course it is much easier to state the facts, this is what these big box stores are doing to devalue our environment and communities, but more importantly is how and why do they hold so much power to do so? Our concepts and ideas have evolved to a state where economics is being determined by the monetary cost of the production. We need to change our economics and begin to factor in the actual cost to society, global resources, communities, and cultural preservation. If our culture is now being defined upon commodities that we consume, then we will not have any cultural artifacts worth remembering. Our Walmart buildings will not stand the test of time.

Week 3 theory review Obsolescence and desire

Obsolescence and desire: Fashion and the commodity form

This reading discussed fashion as a commodity and its relationship to the consumerist values of capitalism. Most intriguing is the discussion of the relationship between symbols and their transition into signs. The Webster dictionary defines symbols as an object or act representing something in the unconscious mind or an object that has some cultural significance. A sign is a type of gesture that refers to an action or idea. With in the terms of Post modern consumerism, in order to turn the object into a commodity it is important to turn he symbol into a sign. “A sign must liberate itself from the concreteness of symbolic exchange…then the sign can become a value for consumption (238). As a result, for example Ralph Lauren, or other fashion labels, their product has a temporal position of being fashionable before it is out of fashion and a new product needs to be produced and sold for consumption. “What is important for Baudrillard, is that we understand consumption not as the consumption of objects as such, but as the idea of the symbolic relation that is supposedly expressed by the object (240).”
In relating a label with a belief system, the consumer is then able to confirm or support their identity by wearing this label. The only problem with this is that this identity is based on pure illusion. The example of the cosmetic industry selling individualized products that suggest that you are an individual takes this illusion one step further. We are walking billboards, suggesting that our beliefs are change as quickly as the fashion industry.

Gorretti: Popular Capitalism and Popular Culture by D. Harvey

Notes:
"time space"... time vs space...? time + space...? time = space...?

What is the relationship between time and space or as Harvey spoke of it, what is the significance of the hybrid of "time and space"? For me to understand this notion of "time space" I have to contextualize this idea in my own time and space. However, after discussing this notion with my colleagues it was brought to my attention that time and space in today's day in age is irrelevant. Thanks to digital technology and the Internet time is instantaneous and space is anywhere an Internet connection can be made. Perhaps this is what Harvey meant by time space, that both are no longer important factors because both time and space are fleeting. Trends in fashion no longer need to be attached to a particular setting because with one instance, a web posting can hit all continents at once. Thus does this mean that time and space no longer exist or is it that they have drastically changed.

Gorretti: Postmodernism and Consumer Society by F. Jameson

Notes:

“... postmodernisms is the effacement... of some key boundaries or separations, most notable the erosions of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass popular culture. This is perhaps the most distressing development of all from an academic standpoint, which has traditionally had vested interest in preserving a real of high or elite culture against the surrounding environment of philistinism” (165)

"... stylistic diversity and heterogeneity... that is the moment at which pastiche appears and parody has become impossible." (167)

Definitions:
1. Pastiche: an incongruous combination of materials, forms, motifs, etc., taken from different sources; hodgepodge.
2. Parody: to imitate (a composition, author, etc.) for purposes of ridicule or satire.
3. Philistinism: (sometimes initial capital letter) a person who is lacking in or hostile or smugly indifferent to cultural values, intellectual pursuits, aesthetic refinement, etc., or is contentedly commonplace in ideas and tastes.

This quotation taken from page 165 from Jameson's article places this idea of the effacement of boundaries between high culture and mass popular culture in a negative light. He begins to elude that their merging brings an unavoidable end to elitism and perpetuates the lower class of mass popular culture. However I argue that the collision of the two worlds may be more beneficial to the culture than realized.

The Louis Purse
Designers such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dolce and Gabana have for decades now claimed their mark in high fashion. However, in the past 7 years a they have become more popular than ever. Thanks to the merchants selling knockoff designer bags and the mass popular culture that buys them, their names are not only uttered by fashionistas but by "regular" people as well. Does this merger between high and low class mean that Louis Vuitton purses will now be sold at your local Walmart? No, it simply means that what was once popular among a small group of people is now popular among a larger group of people.

Synopsis: Popular Capitalism and Popular Culture

David Harvey, from the Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Social Change

In periods of confusion and uncertainty, a turn to aesthetics becomes more pronounced (181). As a result of the reaction to modernism, it was not understood what the new ethics of the time were. Thus, “the association between scientific and moral judgments had collapsed, aesthetics has triumphed over ethics […] images dominate narratives, ephemerality and fragmentation take precedence over eternal truths…” (181). The way something appeared took precedence over what it meant.

Harvey narrates an association between Regan-era “voodoo economics” and postmodernity. The trading of information and “remixing” of money were not based on reality, but were a manufactured image. Economies were no longer based on the production of something tangible but were based on pushing and re-arranging of image, information, capital, debt. The United States was at an economic low-point, but with spin, the situation did not appear so bleak. Casino capitalism had emerged.

Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

At the time the article was written, the concept of postmodernism was not widely understood. It was agreed upon that postmodernism emerged as a reaction against high modernism in all forms of art. To be postmodern brought about a blurring between high and mass cultures. Additionally, pastiche became a very important component of postmodernism – the superficial appropriation of stylistic elements. According to Jameson, pastiche represents a “blank parody” (167).

Jameson argues that postmodernism can easily be related to late (consumer/multinational) capitalism. The disappearance of history and co-opting of cultures are essential in order for the marketing to a global economy. By trivializing a culture it is easy to turn it into a set of images that can easily be forgotten.

RE Starbucks Image Meeting

Alexander Mc Queen. In response to our talk about how fashion represents our current postion in history. He could be our avante-guarde.

website http://www.alexandermcqueen.com/flash.html

Maya Cochrane Polular Capitalish nd Popular Culture reading wk 2

Maya Cochrane Popular Capitalism and Popular Culture Reading week 2

This article raises questions about the relationship between Postmodernism and the development of Capitalism and current culture. He uses political and commercial figures like Ronald Regan and philosopher Paul de Man, to explain the importance of image over ethics. He constantly brings us that the “experience of time and space has changed?” What does he mean by this? We had a short discussion about this and linked it to the impatience our culture has today. In the past information got to you slowly, through mail where as now we send e-mail and expect an instant reply. We are experiencing events shortly after they happen and just as quickly they become history. If we are living in the present and receiving an overload of information through constant advertisement, sifting through the vast information available on the web we are always suspicious about whether the information we receive is accurate? While we are listening to the spin placed on the news about our politicians real issues go “unheard in a world cluttered with illusion, fantasy and pretence.” This forces us always question the truth behind the information we receive, leaving us always unsure and later apathetic to the real issues that affect our lives. We discussed how “counter culture” is being used by corporations to sell products to consumers. Seemingly public spaces, like myspace or utube are being infiltrated with corporate commercials disguised as everyday people expressing their opinions. In a cultural situation like this what do we become?

Maya response week 2 reading 1

Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism and Consumer Society

Notes and thoughts on reading:

This article attempts define and situate Post Modernism with in our contemporary pastiche capitalistic time. He explores Post Modern era with in two recurrent themes of “the transformation of reality into images, and the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents (179).” By this he means that there is no real individualistic search for style or new identity. Our current times have just appropriated a pastiche, bland understanding of the past partly because we are stifled by the limited combination of possible styles explored by the modernist eras and mostly because we live a space lacking an understanding of time and our defining history. We must then consider the very essence of existence and if we are a living society “incapable of dealing with time and history” then what trace, or memory do we end of leaving for the generations to come? Jameson says that the latest mutation in space-postmodern hyperspace-has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world.” Does that mean we are actually no longer aware of our position? Or is it really that we are no longer in complete control of that position because we are moving at a speed that does not allow us to slow down and think about the state we are in? Who then is in control of this new space? Where is our avant-garde?

Mayas first blog ever

Well, in this techno savvy world I never was really interested in more information (besides the picture of my eye) from my head getting onto the permanent Internet, but here we go.

I want to start by adding a picture of my studio work and place it with in this discussion framework.
Since we have titled our blog after our main reading by Roland Barthes I have placed an image of the book I edited, erased and used to draw out a story that was waiting to be discovered. I have also added a series of my palimpsest writings and rewritings of non-language.

I think that this section in Rolands book about desire and the pleasure of the text should inspire our writing on this blog.



The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but on treatise: writing itself) (Barthes, R. The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, Hill & Wang, New York, 1975, 6).