[syndicate] What is Codework?

[marc]

Hi Alan,

Yes - I agree with the term  'canonic'

The way that certain mannerisms, social or even eugenic 
'constructions',  in our languages and connected behaviours, readily 
appropriate something such as code in to our cultures on many levels...

The word becomes so loaded, that one sometimes has to redefine what it 
originally means to one's self. Which you have via the process of poetic 
study.

Even perhaps reclaim it, or even find a new term for reasons that are 
more in line to their specific needs of that time...

marc

>
>
> 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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