[syndicate] What is Codework?

[marc]

Thanks Alan,

I love this text, not emotinally - but more for its clarity about a 
subject that can, for some, create confusion, which is explored here so 
poetically...

A print out of this text is going on my wall :-)

marc

>
>
>
> What is Codework?
>
>
> Codework is a practice, not a product.
>
> It is praxis, part and parcel of the critique of everyday life.
>
> It is not canonic, although it is taken as such.
>
> It is not a genre, although it is taken as such.
>
> The term is relatively new and should always be renewed.
>
> We are suffused with code and its intermingling with surface phenomena.
>
> Wave-trains of very low frequency radio pulses for example.
>
> Phenomenology of chickadee calls.
>
> Codework is not a metaphor, not metaphorical.
>
> It exists precisely in the obdurate interstice between the real and the
> symbolic. It exists in the arrow.
>
> It is not a set of procedures or perceptions. It is the noise in the
> system. It is not the encapsulation or object of the noise or the system.
>
> It is continuous; it is parasitic; it is thetic.
>
> When it becomes metaphor, masterpiece, artwork, it is still-born; it is
> of no interest except as cultural residue: it is of great interest to
> critics, gallerists, editors.
>
> When it is not collectible, not a thing, virtual or otherwise, it is not
> of interest to critics, gallerists, editors.
>
> Things have already taken up its name, as if pictures in an exhibition.
>
> This is nothing more than the continuous reification, territorialization,
> conquest, of the real - as if the real were always already cleansed,
> available for the taking - as if the real were already transformed into
> capital.
>
> Capital is the encapsulation, objectification, of code. Capital drives 
> the
> code-conference, the code-book, the code-movement, the code-artist, the
> code-masterpiece; capital drives the technology.
>
> In short: Capital drives code into metaphor.
>
> In short: Metaphor drives code into capital.
>
> In short, but of greater difficulty: Capital drives metaphor into code.
>
> In production, simpler: Metaphor drives capital into code.
>
> The driving of metaphor, code, or capital is not codework.
>
> Codework is the labor of code, subject to thermodynamics.
>
> Codework is demonstrative, demonstrative fragment, experiment, partial-
> inscription, partial-object, the _thing_ prior to its presentation, the
> linguistic kernel of the pre-linguistic. Code is the thetic, the 
> gestural,
> of the demonstrative.
>
> It the gesture that never quite takes. It is the noise inherent in the
> gestural.
>
> However: Codework will become a _subject_ or a _sub-genre_ or a 
> _venue_ or
> an _artwork_ or an _artist_ or a _dealer_ or a _collector._ However: This
> is not codework, or: What I describe above is not codework; after all,
> names are subsumed beneath the sign (Emblematic) of capital - as if
> something is being accomplished. (Hackers who are not hackers are
> unhacked.)
>
> To code is not to produce codework; it is to produce code on the level of
> the code or interface. Bridged code, embedded code, is not codework; the
> irreversible spew of cellular automata is codework, all the better if the
> rules are noisy. The cultural production of codework abjures intensifica-
> tions, strange attractors, descriptions such as this (which is the oldest
> game in the _book_). The hunt and reception of short-wave number codes is
> codework. Writers on the edge are circumscribed by codework, 
> malfunctioned
> psychoanalytics, scatologies. Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Blacks, are endlessly
> coded and decoded; the codes are dissolute, partial, always already 
> incom-
> plete: the differend is codework.
>
> To speak against the differend is codework; tumors are codework, metas-
> tases. The useless sequences of DNA, RNA.
>
> Be wary of the violence of the legible text. Beware the metaphor which
> institutionalizes, the text which defines, the text of positivities, not
> negations, the circumscribing text, inscribing text; beware of the
> producers and institutions of these texts, whose stake is in hardening of
> definitions, control, capital, slaughter: Texts slaughter.
>
> And texts slaughter texts.
>
>
>
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