Re: <documenta X><blast> rhythms
Keller Ann Easterling (kae3@columbia.edu)
Tue, 24 Jun 1997 09:15:20 -0400 (EDT)
In putting together the publication which accompanies Jordan's
installation, we included texts which explored the instrumentality of
mental/corporeal rhythms and oscillations. One fascinating part of that
involved the voluntary and involuntary obsessions. We tried to explore
this with very ordinary documents related to habits, some scientific
documents of obsessive compulsive behaviors and instinct as well as the
deliberatly crafted texts of Sade, Handke or Kroetz, for instance.
All of them were about some kind of mental/corporeal storage of a very
distinct behavioral protocol. They allowed us to make vivid the virtual
sites of order that format space. Some of the stories, as I mentioned,
were about an involuntary possession by habit. But while Handke may
himself be gripped by agonizing behaviors, his texts are about
deliberately programming the virtual body with memory and sensation. His
texts are remarkable. Most of them communication through rhythm and
through a kind of direct impatience with his audience --an impatience
concerning our inability to use these very ordinary mental faculties to
reprogram the world through our perception of it.