Chicago performance text

[Alan Sondheim]

Chicago performance text


[PROEM:] COLLAPSE / hard to write when country collapses / when we are now
IMPERIUM / the digital is at the margins of the analog / the digital is
always already a construct / we are constructing at the margins of
violence / analog = substance / (i always have good ways of starting and
then everything falls apart) / falls apart = analog / [HERE I BEGIN THE
PERFORMANCE:. NO one understands the digital / we assume we understand the
term. we use it to reference perhaps.... the construct of a cd or cdrom or
dvd or any digital file which begs the question - certainly there's
something to be said for the presence of a POTENTIAL WELL - in other
words, for 01010010101000111 etc. to make any sense at all, the entire
stream must be first of all PROTECTED and second of all subjected to
checksums - i.e. verified. but this is all technology... in fact it is
similar technology that references subterfuge, the cipher, the war-
machine, the industrial revolution. anything that can be subdued or placed
within a yes no YES NO situation - that is, can be forced into at the
limit one of two possibilities, whatever they are - this is what happens
with the WAVE EQUARTION i think that is when schroding cat enters into an
anomalous state unitl the moment it's observed, forced into life/death -
what are the implications? it's the analog forced into the digital through
the construct of the observer. this is at the heart of things; on the
level ofthe social, it connects obviously to Foucault's panopticon seeing
everything - what is it seeing? if it was in say Iowa it might have seen
the nineteenth century revolving jail which is still there, no longer
functioning - two people holding over a hundred prisoners in a lazy-susan
machine three stories high. if it was - sorry, "if it were" in the united
state, it would be, it would have been, perhaps the locus of the WMD in
the Iraq war - what constitutes a weapon? how many have to die for mass
destruction? don't forget we've already killed about 160000 Iraqi - but it
doesn't matter, they're not on the news; there are no longer bodies, and
what I'm pointing out is already or always already useless, known before .
"a respomnse to war" - the bodies blown apart - oiringally created using
motion capture equipement - modified - they're no longer coherent -
DIGITAL - by the way do you know that wind machines - electrical
generators - tend to kill tens of thousand of migrating birds? another
true fact! more of thesame, some of you might already have seen these, for
which apologies - if you can't have beauty in the symmetry of the digital,
where can you have it? i'm trying nit to blow the speakers... on the other
hand, perhaps that would give ... some indication .. of the fact which
still bothers me that here we are in a safe american hotel whereas. - the
jordanians, the chinese, are in the news again - what's thar you/re
hearing? vlf radio results in antennas that can SOMETIMES ACT AS
MICROPHONES by cojpling coupling with other organic beings in the vicinity
- here a woman is stomping and changing the ELECTRRICAL characteristics of
the ground in the vicinity of the antenna - if this gets any louder I'll
go BLIND - these are the locations on a trip a few months ago - where the
antennas tended to work - where it was possible to get away form the
TECHNOLOGICLA POWER GRID - any 60 cycle wire in the vicinity interferens
with the natural world - what you're hearing is the natural world as a
result of things being... taken as far as possible, away from everything
else - it all occurs w/in the realm of relative violence - just as the
digital is always already violence, cutting into the analog, bassed on
decision someone or somewhat something is making - it remains without this
tendency by itself - it's the cutting that does it - the obvserver in the
schordinger case for example or the observers in Baghdad - that's what it
is - it's like a car crash - this is a danger curve - there are
archaeological remnants, paints, scratches, rubber trails, scars in the
concrete - the site of a huge number of accidents in the viciinity of los
angeles - my choreographer and I are discussing the latest "new moves" for
his dance companyh in GENEVA - none of this stuff is worht more than a
MOMENT's NOTICE. i'm always jealous of AREAL ARTISTS who make things that
CHANGE THE WORLD - big PAINTINGS or INSTALLATIONS - they're just THERE -
this stuff is all on the INTERNET - close your eyes and I'll have taken it
down - I don't have room for everything - sooner or later - when I'm gone
thank God - it will all disappear - tehre's no room for anything else - ok
this is ROBERT FANNING's kid in Morgantown West Virginia - he's the only
kid I know who can do this - it's a pretty good break - I think it was a
bit disturbing to the family - who knows? - I'm running out of
steam/stream - I'm old, I don't know how old I am, I kind of forget what
I'm doing here - it's like dusk - stuff growing darker - if this were a
performance I'd say - now this is the endof things COMING FROM AN AMERICAN
HOTEL I DARE YOU BAD PEOPLE TO BOMBOMB US I REALLY DARE YOU WER'RE THE
VILLLAINS HERE YOU KNOW THAT COME AND GET YOU No sorry that's COME AND GET
US YOU DIRTY PEOPLE WE"RE WAITING WE're The embe sorry MEMBERS of the SLA
Symbionese Liberation Society for Literature and thye Arts Front, signed
Patty hearst, but I'm not doing a performance so I'm not sure how long
I've gone for but I'll stop -= thankyou

[NOTE: I wasn't satisifed, I rarely am, with the performance, but the text
- improvised of course in real time in dialog with video clips chosen in
real time - seems ok.]

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