The Reversed Role of Modern Working Art: Pulling Us Out of the Void

pre WW2, the goal of working art was to unconceal the earth from underneath us, and present it as such

for example painting obscene pictures of naked old people, because no one likes thinking about that, its hidden from our daily life, we push it away

its a concealed earth that we walk on and are oblivious too and rely on its concealment in order to maintain comfort

and this is heideggers definition of working art, and it makes sense

and i think in his era, the important thing to do (a la deconstruction) was pull people out of the romantic and into the void that they were repressing

romantic/classical, depending on whether you were religious or technical etc

but in any case the "earth" in this case was the uncomfortable void that everyone was ignoring

and people more or less do the same thing today, but what if its the opposite?

we've confronted the absurd formally ever since camus/sartre, and have been DEFAULT in the void

so working art is now about pulling us out of the absurd and back into the romantic

reminding us that feelings are still real, and things DO matter, even though we dont want to admit it

this meditation was inspired by this track:

https://open.spotify.com/track/0Eqm7hD828cATBLUx2fJox?si=fbFjH0ggQ-mm0tgPyaRKew

Analysis of Scorsese Movie Silence

Silence is a powerful 2017 film by Martin Scorcese, that pierces deeply into some interesting theological questions. Below is a discussion analyzing some of these points, between a friend and me.




Friend:

Finished it


Wow


Me:

He kept the cross.



Friend:
Yeah


Did his wife.slide it into his hand?


It was such a good movie


Its like Padres came to Japan to "save" the Japanese but the only way to save them was to give up their ego, which is the route to Buddhist salvation


And all the inherent conceptual conflicts between Christianity and Buddhism


Damn



Me:
Yes, but also more importantly than their ego, their spirit, their entire world view


It’s asking much more than taking your life, in a sense



Friend:

Yeah


True




Me:
Because they wanted to die for their beliefs, they did NOT want to live to see their beliefs die




Friend:
Such a beautiful film


Wow


Well put




Me:
But you realize at the end that he did the ultimate sacrifice


He gave up all external signs of his belief, stepped on jesus, to forever go down in history as a heretic. But he kept the cross. He kept his belief in the end


He was the first Protestant, in a sense




Friend:
Ah that's a good point




Me:
External rituals are irrelevant, as long as you stay true to your personal relationship with god


That’s why he heard jesus’ voice at that crucial moment, saying step on me, it’s okay




Friend:
Yeah! And in the end, when Jesus said I was suffering beside you in the silence




Me:
Ugh yes, fuckkkkk


In a sense he did the hardest thing


He could have disbanded his beliefs like Ferreira, or died for his beliefs


But he decided to externally disband them while internally holding on


The ultimate enslavement 2017


I’ll have to hand 2017 over to him tbh


He won that shit




Friend:
Yeah seriously

And yeah I’m assuming he had his wife give it to him

How was that movie not way more popular



Me:
Probably too deep for most


Same with birdman




Friend:
Oh hold up


What if he didn't




Me:
They both had that layered quality, like 6 different layers


Of meaning




Friend:
What if she just gave that to him


Which maybe makes it more beautiful


Like he would never jeopardize her in any way


And he never outwardly showed his faith


But she saw it in him still



Me:

Yeah, good point. They leave it up to the viewer, to add more layers of meaning


Same with birdman. Remember the ending?


There were like 4 ways you could interpret it, and each made it a completely different movie




Friend:
Yeah!!!




Me:
I was always curious whether he kept “silently” blessing kijichiros confessions, even after


Cuz they showed one instance of him doing it silently




Friend:
I think he did




Me:
But at the same time they said the one emperor dude was watching him super closely to the end of his life and saw now Christianity


No*


And he kind of used Japan’s metaphysics against them, the same way they did against him


They were so preoccupied with external signs, so he gave that to him


But he still kind of won, while letting hem win too




Friend:
Yeah!!! You're right!!




Me:
Cuz all they wanted was to write down in history that he showed no external signs and therefore was not Christian


But he totally challenged that


Ahhhhh so many layers!!!




Friend:
Yeah!!!




Me:
The brilliance was, when I first saw it I was like man they broke him, Japanese ego death wins,


But when they show the cross at the very end


It just totally fucks WVERYTHING up


And starts adding all the layers




Friend:
Yeah and I think he thought he wasn't a Christian anymore too



Me:
Still maintaining the top layer, but adding so many more



Friend:
Bc he denounced




Me:
Also cool symbolism: if you watch closely, kijihiro and the other Japanese Christians only partially step on jesus’ face toward the end


Because they are still preoccupied with the externality




Friend:
But him dying with the cross hidden in his hand really showed that he still was, even if he didn't think he was bc of how he externally lived




Me:
But our boy puts his WHOLE foot on there, he don’t give a shit!!!




Friend:
True!




Me:
And that line at the end too: he failed in the eyes of god, or I guess, that’s between him and god.....


Then it shows the cross


AHHHHHHHH. The best.





Friend:
it's such the best one




Me:
Silence moonlight and birdman


Top 3 easily




Friend:
Yeah!


Without a doubt


Man


That was such a powerful movie


Even how is was shot


Most of the movie is silence or the sounds of nature


But when it's not silent, you almost don't want it to be


Bc the dialogue uncovers or fortells pain


And if it's not dialogue, the silence is broken by suffering


The pit or the cross on the shoreline are the worst ways to die I think


Japanese are fucked up




Me:
Yes!


The surface layer is that the Christians are doing it for their glory, the price is the suffering of others


Which is true


But a lot of the other layers Kind of subvert the Japanese

Some Scattered Thoughts on Season 2 Episode 4 of Black Mirror

I would write this into a cohesive post but am in a bit of a crunch, so hopefully these can serve as helpful notes for someone who would like to write a thoughtpiece on this. Feel free to take, just happy to get these ideas out. I bolded the parts in particular that I thought could be nice aphorisms from the episode:



I saw ep 4 of black mirror, a truly beautiful revealing of the importance of death in the human story. with a presentist mode of existence, and the important characteristic ability that we have to "forget" (a la Nietzsche), would we really want to keep going, if we had the chance? easy to say yes now, hard to know what you'd say then.
this was the first good episode this season for me,
the importance of life's ephemeral glow.
her decision to stay with the girl into eternity was so much more heartbreaking than the option to die and preserve the meaning she lived
cheating death does not evade nothingness, if anything, it emphasizes it
sartre would have loved that episode
we live with this paradoxical yearning to both escape death and experience a type of meaning that transcends life. this episode sort of demonstrates that we can't have both, in a really beautiful way.
singularity is bullshit, technology can't "solve" existentialism.

Conversation with a friend:
i had to like, think for a while just to reconcile the emotional disturbance it left me with
thats a sign of a good ep

yeah
It's so creative, even as a premise, then to build that world, build the characters so that we care about them, and then introduce a conflict and meaningful resolution
All in 90 mins

Yes! How could they do so much in so little time!
High maintenance also is good at this in its own way
Like you know so much about everyone so quickly, from so little

Character driven plot development

But this black mirror had this kubrick-esque quality
Where even at the end, during the supposedly happy ending, you can't help but feel there is something deeply disturbing about all this when you're looking at those circulating lights at the very end
Similar type of discomfort u get during the outro to 2001 odyssey

Just like, not readily explainable, but you know there's something

This is what Heidegger called "working art"

compressing reality

me

dude

u know what would be a pretty sick experiment at like a sound museum or something

so

u know how like mp3s, especially lower quality ones, are compressed

Cade

yeah

me

so ur not hearing the full frequency range of say, someones voice

Cade

did you listen to that NPR thing?

me

yeah reading it now

Cade

you should just listen to it

lol

they do sound tests

me

but as u get to higher bitrates, and eventually wav, and the FLAC, and then lossless

Cade

yea

me

you like erally begin to approach the full spectrum of his voice

and its almost like you dont NOTICE until you do

Cade

mhmm

me

you dont notice what was missing

Cade

yea

exactly

me

well whats the ultimate exaggeration of that?

real life, right?

Cade

haha

me

like hearing someone talk

like when you just hear me talk

you're hearing the full range of my voice

what if we could make it such that

we went into a room

and somehow were able to compress the frequencies of sound that could travel in the room

so we were like sitting across a table talking to each other

but the sound quality coming out of our mouths was SEEMINGLY compressed to like 128 kb/s

it would be SUPER weird i think

and would really awaken you to how shitty music compression is

it might be the best way to realize that i think

because we're so used to hearing each other in prefect analogue

Minimalist Portraits of Cultural Icons

so sick

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/07/28/noma-bar-guess-who/

Noma bar is awesome:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/03/29/noma-bar-negative-space/

(thanks brainpickings)

Trippy/artsy vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPRrhdnYNmM

why not throw in some other trippy vids:
https://www.facebook.com/wearealaya/videos/1414684821932940/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED (animation)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEUxlwb2uFI (animation)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhheiPTdZCw (animation)

http://vimeo.com/13137686 (animation, radiohead)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xr6uR3pLi8 (animation, benga)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGTynibJKB8 (ferrofluid)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4 (stop-motion wall-paint)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4RsU8RsvGg (music video, gets cool towards the end)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY (bird emerging consciousness)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9V11mTNonw (cymatic shapes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LOy2bL6ifk (akkord)

must read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Anus

"The Solar Anus is a short Surrealist text written by the French writer and philosopher Georges Bataille, as well as the name of a performance art piece by Ron Athey.

Albeit elliptically, its aphorisms refer to decay, death, vegetation, natural disasters, impotence, frustration, ennui and excrement. It makes ironic reference to the sun, for, although it brings life to the Earth, it can also result in death due to its unrestrained energies. Moreover, the anus should be seen to be an expression of the inevitability of residual waste due to its role in excretion."

"surreal"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2011/08/16/alexa_meade_makes_human_models_look_like_walking_paintings_.html

SIIIIIIIICK

Nice Pollack

http://accidentalblogger.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c575d53ef01538fc9e5f3970b-popup