20th Reading: maybe if you hit it hard
I mentioned before that there is a show in London at the ICA opening called Talk Show, which I would love to see but that ain’t happening, so I am enjoying it through their research page. This piece of performance writing from Chris Mann, maybe if you hit it hard, I found oddly enjoyable and lovely even, though also sometimes frustrating in a wanting to shake the artist until his teeth rattled some sense out from between his lips. It plays in a cat with a mouse sort of way with the questions of the Subject, the object, the relation between them and broader questions of what language does.
A long selection of the glorious, ridiculous and down right annoying language games of Chris Mann:
ttToBe thinks it has a sense of humour. it is afterall the classic transformative object. which is only to say that its a Name. (though of course any word will Do. and coz the known is that which cant be Thought, and coz its the Sequence of, of, of Notes that make it Whistleable, the Subject then is that name given to a style of Cop. the latin for this is Form. (Grammar, that which turns the Unconscious Negation into the Conscious Affirmation, the standard Addiction .. and as you is my unconscious, and therefore Lack an Object, weÕre left with the choice of whether this is a Symptom, or a, Field, you know, whatyouseeiswhatyouget, Sense, the successful defEnce (where you both blame it for not being something Else, And love it for not being You. This, as freud used to say, is Shit. (twodownfouracross two letters, It. the Shrink. (fuck, what Is this, some sort of private joke? (though not knowing WhoÕs, is of course the demand that it fail to Translate. (the past of Past, Fucked. ( .. the Subject, the amnesiac Object. Ashamed. Humiliated. iÕm bored. (not bad. whatdya call, what Is that, Haiku for Me? (though not All metaphors is Voyeurs. some still need a noun to make them come.
See more progress on: Read and/or research 30 things from my sh*t to read folder for April 09