[syndicate] What is Codework?

[Alan Sondheim]

Thanks; I lost sleep over it; part of it was the realization that these 
things are rapidly becoming canonic...

- Alan


On Tue, 16 May 2006, marc wrote:

> 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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>> 
>
>
>

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