1: The future backs away from us at the rate we approach it.
2: Therefore to enter proximity with, and gain perspective on the future we should slow down, stop, or even back away, so as that it might approach us.
Following thought -
3: To encourage the future to approach us we have to make our present redundant.
Question: How do we make a performance that makes itself redundant, thus opening the context for an approach by the future?
Friday, June 27, 2008
3: Three Quotes from Derrida on the Future
1
It is perhaps necessary to free the value of the future from the value of ‘horizon’ that traditionally has been attached to it—horizon being, as the Greek word indicates, a limit from which I pre-comprehend the future. I wait for it. I predetermine it. And thus, I annul it (Taste for the Secret 20).
2
If there is a future, or as he would have liked to put it if there is such a thing, there must be some opening that calls to us in the form of an appeal. This appeal of the other demands that we respond now; indeed, the mark we leave on the world we share will be inseparable from those infinite appeals made to us and how we responded when we were called. As Derrida tells us:
A simple phrase takes its meaning from a given context, and already makes its appeal to another one in which it will be understood; but, of course, to be understood it has to transform the context in which it is inscribed. As a result, this appeal, this promise of the future, will necessarily open up the production of a new context, wherever it may happen. The future is not present, but there is an opening onto it; and because there is a future, a context is always open. What we call opening of the context is another name for what is still to come (Taste for the Secret 19-20).
3
It is a matter of looking for something that is not yet well received, but that waits to be received. And one may posses a kind of flair for that which, going against the current, is already in touch with the possible reception. So—if I may refer to my own case—in all likelihood, each time I have attempted to make a gesture that was, as you said, bizarre or untimely, it was because I had the impression that it was demanded, more or less silently, by other areas of the field, by other forces, that were still in the minority, that were there. So there is a sort of calculation in the incalculable here, and the untimeliness is a sort of timeliness in the making (Taste for the Secret 16).
Found at: http://www.fehe.org/index.php?id=283 In an article 'Derrida: The Gift of the Future'
by Drucilla Cornell.
It is perhaps necessary to free the value of the future from the value of ‘horizon’ that traditionally has been attached to it—horizon being, as the Greek word indicates, a limit from which I pre-comprehend the future. I wait for it. I predetermine it. And thus, I annul it (Taste for the Secret 20).
2
If there is a future, or as he would have liked to put it if there is such a thing, there must be some opening that calls to us in the form of an appeal. This appeal of the other demands that we respond now; indeed, the mark we leave on the world we share will be inseparable from those infinite appeals made to us and how we responded when we were called. As Derrida tells us:
A simple phrase takes its meaning from a given context, and already makes its appeal to another one in which it will be understood; but, of course, to be understood it has to transform the context in which it is inscribed. As a result, this appeal, this promise of the future, will necessarily open up the production of a new context, wherever it may happen. The future is not present, but there is an opening onto it; and because there is a future, a context is always open. What we call opening of the context is another name for what is still to come (Taste for the Secret 19-20).
3
It is a matter of looking for something that is not yet well received, but that waits to be received. And one may posses a kind of flair for that which, going against the current, is already in touch with the possible reception. So—if I may refer to my own case—in all likelihood, each time I have attempted to make a gesture that was, as you said, bizarre or untimely, it was because I had the impression that it was demanded, more or less silently, by other areas of the field, by other forces, that were still in the minority, that were there. So there is a sort of calculation in the incalculable here, and the untimeliness is a sort of timeliness in the making (Taste for the Secret 16).
Found at: http://www.fehe.org/index.php?id=283 In an article 'Derrida: The Gift of the Future'
by Drucilla Cornell.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
2: Determining factors
The future is determined by three factors:
A: Fate or a Greater Force (predestiny or Divine Plan) 'It was meant to happen'
B: Free Will (The intended action of the individual/s) 'I made it happen'
C: Chance (Accidents and unforseen incidents and consequences) 'It happened'
However each of these is problematic in it's own way...
To be continued.
A: Fate or a Greater Force (predestiny or Divine Plan) 'It was meant to happen'
B: Free Will (The intended action of the individual/s) 'I made it happen'
C: Chance (Accidents and unforseen incidents and consequences) 'It happened'
However each of these is problematic in it's own way...
To be continued.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
1: The Future Starts Here.
Today the process for creating a new Strange Names Collective project began.
1: The team of Gillian, Kevin, Michael, Rachel, and Suzy were invited, and accepted, to join the process.
2: They were notified of the blog.
3: They were sent an unfinished document to read and contribute to.
4: The document includes the following information:
The procedure for constructing the performance starts here, not with gathering and generating material but with deciding the method for achieving this.
Rather than following one method, we will employ all of our individual methodologies.
The performance has a working title ‘Future Tense’ and two core questions:
What is ‘Future’? - and as a sub-question - What is ‘Potential’?
All inclusions in the Bill of Parts should encourage responses to these questions.
We are each to create tasks, questions, and prompts, and include them in the document, also suggesting additions, alterations, and clarifications to each other’s inclusions. These could take the form of:
Writing tasks, or open questions.
Instructions for physical tasks.
Images to be created.
Objects to be manipulated.
Relevant sources to be encountered or used
Processes to be undertaken.
Speculations on possible performances or elements thereof.
Or any other gathering or generating procedure that you can come up with…
Hopefully at this stage the difficult task will not be coming up with procedures, but actually holding back on them, as we are not to share ideas until the document is completed. Enjoy.
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