[syndicate] SAC and Pillars and Dance

[Alan Sondheim]

SAC and Pillars and Dance


1. Pillars and Dance


CountryDance was videotaped on a bluff overlooking Lac Leman in the Roman city 
of Nyon, outside of Geneve. Maud Liardon performs a folk or country dance 
which, I believe, is Swedish in origin; Foofwa d'Imobilite performs a separated 
but inseparable work, separated by the framing device of a pillar. (The scene 
is a remnant of a ruin, agora or forum transported to its present location 
above the void.) If Maud's dance resonates with the names of towns encountered 
on our journey, Foofwa's speeds and slows, measured against them. It is the 
regulatory apparatus of Roman architec- ture and military organization against 
the peasantry, with its excessive retemporalization of the real. Jakarta and 
shadow puppetry come to mind as d'Imobilite's presentation appears flattened in 
its silhouette; the pirou- etting of Liardon transforms the female body into 
volume - a volumetric whose forensics reveal the architecture of fecundity. Her 
turns create a tensor calculus destined to overturn the fabric of Roman 
linearity.

Beyond this evident symbolics, there are issues of nationalism, Swiss 
nationalism and its symbolic - Switzerland, with its 100,000 year-old past, 
ranging from deep prehistory through the wild tribal groups surrounding 
Hannibal's pilgrimage through the Alps. One has the Alphorn, citharas of all 
sorts, yodels and cheese, skies and private banking; one has costuming and 
multiple languages and dialects, Swatch and army knife, Rolex and fondue. The 
symbols proliferate to the extent that the imaginary of the Alps occupies a 
territory almost as large as the United States; in reality, Switzerland is 
roughly the size of West Virginia. Given this, any sign of "authenticity" may 
be seized by the visitor as Switzerland's Beyond, in the heart of the country 
and its culture. The fractal Alps twist and turn all the way down; dancing 
might present the preposterous notion of a "Swiss soul" (or any other nation's 
"soul") as the flesh supports Foofwa's "authentic" (the quotes proliferate) 
Gruyere costume.

Nevertheless the emblematic espoused by d'Imobilite's dance is a furious series 
of signs, almost toppling against the steadied rhythm of Maud's performance. 
Consider this: an alphabet of dance transformed through the graphemic directly 
into inscription, which is sublimated into the usual form and figuration of 
text. To the extent that dance leaves one speech-
less, dance speaks; isn't this true of any cultural form? And if it is so, if 
it is true, than cultural form subsumes speech, creates a differend out of 
which speech emerges only in its problematic. Here, speech is simultan- eously 
performative and non-performative - and what is the performative of speech in 
the first place? Nothing whatsoever without cultural context, mores, etiquette, 
and power down the road. This isn't the performative of a computer program in 
which for example "date" produces "October 4" - it's not process but 
flattening, re/presentation. Dance gives the lie, in other words, to the 
performative of language, just as violence gives the lie to dance. It is both 
degree and epistemological shift; ontology is just around the corner.

This conundrum, this relative annihilation of language, fascinates dance, 
fastens dance. Language is ultimately residue; inscription is hardened 
language, the beginnings of power, the suturing of the body politic. It takes 
dance, and dance signifying class, to unite language through its bypassing. 
Revolution is in the step, and violence is not far behind. One way or another, 
the earth stumbles beneath the feet of the dancers; one way or another, 
everything and nothing survives.

http://www.asondheim.org/countrydance.mp4


2. SAC


Space and Grid. Grid breaks it is True. Space breaks but just try it! (Go 
ahead, break azure takes it in stride, she doesn't break And that so early and 
lone among the furious travesties of a wound body of wound or introjection 
suppurates and projection wound Bonjour, salaam, shalom, hello! I will kill 
take the man from the woman and kill projection kill sex kill virus my hard 
drive's mess (yes, it's easy to mess emiss The thickness of the world = death 
sighted. For me, the death the videos - in fact there are pleasures, sadnesses, 
fear of death d. to hell with death numbered. Regardez-moi: not 650000 dead 
died at 9/11. Ten thousand birds died philosophy. Of course that isn't true; 
one stay out against the stay out EMPIRE stay out she's cracker-jack tensor, 
her eigenvalues stay out.

http://www.asondheim.org/blockage.mp4