build[ing] a whole that's much greater than the sum of its parts. (via)
To
dialog, both have to be
present (minimally, at least). To
show up, on all levels. Not
remotely. A remote setting marks that which is not at all,
an absence (abyss) of distance and depth. A perceived
tabula rasa.
People who object to the in-jokes should consider that they might be just part of a dialectic with what could be termed the out-jokes—the more populist and obvious bits of humor. (via)
A
setting, or
culture construed around two
addictions,
coffee and cigarettes. Jittery and gasping for air, the subjects seem to be more at ease once caffeine and nicotine enters their system.
The high that conforms their freedom. Willpower becomes a Machiavellian negotiator. That which they consume, ends up consuming them. They try to control the awkwardness of the conversation by controlling the proximity, access and quantity of these substances (or
objects). Back and forth, they
alternate. In doing so, their intake becomes a stimuli for dialog, confrontation, a sort of communication. An attempt, really. Or what it really becomes, a controlled mass communication of
public energy. The only thing
free remains the
fall. A free fall. A social void. A substance abuse. A miscommunication.
This paranoid misunderstanding is played for comedy, but the fear of a gaping void remains. (via)
A
gaping void. Such is
public space in Albania. And yes, the
public energy, mentality & complexes it generates are indeed ‘
played for comedy.’ Just as the 11 fragments or comic shorts below, the most successful public space in the country, the
cafe, is taken out of context. It is abstracted. Removed from the rest of its publics' lives. It has become a
misconstrued
mise-en-scene, staged, a
still life. We see and hear its subjects come and go, but
where from / to becomes the unseen
other (third) space. A space that seemingly falls out of the margins, into the cracks of the frame. But, we know that space. We live in that space.
Everyday. We just can't see it from the cage. The one we've locked ourselves up in and call
public, the
cafe. The most
unproductive public space in Albania.
This [other] space may be all the more menacingly threatening or tantalizingly luring for being unseen. (via)
It is the impossibility of enclosing the everyday that makes it tantalizingly luring. It is the impossibility of our relationship with it. It is our lack of reach. Our stubbornness and resistance in seeing, understanding, living it. Our myopic vision and blurred capacity to focus the lens. We see the aesthetics (such as they are dangled near us), not the forensics. We see the spectacle in front of it, not the science behind it. We applaud it, not research it. We art (eh) it, not act it. The everyday mundane bores us. So much in fact, that we've constructed, staged the cafe, as our place for the only public that's worth our caliber, or just a second look. A place within a space. A cafe within a building. Doubling the distance, thus the effort to leave it. Doubling our stay, thus consuming our productive time and exponentially exhausting our brain activity - to find an excuse to stay. Dead labor. It's like we've shut the door on our relevance and turned our back to a potential significance. Dismiss it as mundane. The everyday and its labor - our critics, are not us. The cafe releases us. It has plenty of space, coffee and cigarettes - public stimuli- to rationalize the impossibility of enclosing the everyday, the relevance of those who criticize us, and the untapped potential of the mundane. Its publicness makes us someone. We can finally come out of ourselves, be our original self or an alternate(ive), anyone really. Freedom, at last.
We've passed the facade (which has already been painted for us). We are inside the building envelope, inside a 3-dimensional facade - a public threshold (that which we don't think of as public space, but it most certainly is) - seated, surrounded by the comfort of our coffee and cigarettes, incapacitated to stand up to our everyday. We can't hear or see its definition or resolution fully because we're gated in, however, we're still present, even though it has evaporated into a gaping void of a whispered mirage, from which we only can make out a few choice words and offensive gestures (a mistaken defense, perhaps). We don't need the in-between. We can fill in the rest . After all, we have our own public inside, with whom we can put our heads together and continue this distant outside conversation. Multiple (incapacitated) minds at work are better than a single stubborn one. Two imaginations here are better than any presence out there. (Or, it might just be the crowd inside is hearing voices, thinking they're coming from outside. And, yes there is a definition for it: schizophrenia.) A dialectic of in- vs. out-jokes.
Such is our public culture. ‘A paranoid misunderstanding that is played for comedy.’
A subject, an object and their shadow walk into a cafe... to talk about the future. Better yet, to alternate (alternativate - should definitely be a verb) futures. Bored by the everyday mundane, they choose a spot, still, very still (sturdy and secure), still life still; a sizable table for the objects (coffee and cigarettes); chairs and immediate space for the awkward tic (a la mode, perhaps) of the subject; and proceed to mark the threshold of their elusive composition - a frame big enough to cast the entire shadow when it misbehaves egoistically while in dialog about the future. (Sort of premeditating a crime scene, no?) Without the recurrence of this linguistic link, there would be no public, no culture. No information exchanged. It is this communication that holds it together, minimalistically. A critical juxtaposition alternating difference and repetition between publics. (Borrowing Deleuze's ‘the interior is only a selected exterior, and the exterior a projected interior’.)
What, then, are these / our publics?
Public space as a gaping void. Public energy as free fall. Public culture, checkered?
What is our public pattern? That is pattern as juxtaposition of social improvisation and political determination. Literally and figuratively. Forensically and aesthetically. Spatially and culturally.
Yes, culture is public(s).
That's why a closer look in defining the concept of publics, its depth and distance in name and access, would help us see and extract patterns of (ab)use in expression, exception, exploitation, exit, and extinction.
How could/should/would we exchange in it, then?
[T]here's the suggestion that inside every apparent improvisation is an element of determination. (via)
If all we're looking for is an
opening or an
invitation (an
enabling, some would say) to
exchange through
participation, we have to keep in mind that there's a thin line between
improvisation and
determination, in
form and
content, in
role and
position, in
contrast and
pattern, in
coffee and
cigarettes. Otherwise, it becomes an
urban warfare with just a simple move (like adding
color, see the end). An
asymmetric one that distorts the
seen and the
perceived, the
lived and the
construed, the
protagonists and the
antagonists.
A free fall of alternates(ives).
We can also choose to
participate through
play.
(My favorite!) After all, the
playground is the original
public space. In this film, the
table top (as
pattern and
content) fits that description. Those who do not believe the world is flat, may prefer to play 3-dimensionally, hence the composition within the frame, the
mise-en-scene, becomes a
playground.
The choice and nature of exchange (
communication or
action)
- checkers or chess (as play / fight / bet)
- is entirely yours.
Do we, then, play the subject (wo/man), the object (board), or the link (game)?
The public, the space, or the culture?
Is the culture check(ered/ed/mated) out?
 |
Nine (of many) invitations to participate:
(ex. Opening, Game, Defense, Counter/Gambit, Variation, System, Counter/Attack, Reversed, Inverted, etc.) |
** There are quite a few layers, scales, and readings to the questions and thoughts I've laid out here that I hope most make sense without being too cryptic, thus unclear. (The joke would be on me then, for failing on this many levels.) ☺☻
I have borrowed cinematic work, mainly Jarmusch's series of encounters in Coffee and Cigarettes (along with the in- and mostly out-jokes of each fragment), as an analogy, to illustrate what I've been rambling on so far. The coffee and cigarettes culture of/in Albania. Since, cinema is but a representation, consider this post one as well. A critical speculation of publics: spatial, social, cultural. A proposition of sorts, not a realization.
I perceive culture as a conductor of public resonance.
(stolen from the film dialogue and adapted as this post's scope)
Strange to meet you.
What did you dream about?
I can't. I don't have time to tell you this.
Twins.
Who's the evil twin? That's the way it works, right?
Somewhere in California.
The beauty of quitting is that now that I've quit, I can have one, you know, 'cause... I've quit.
The willpower!
Those things'll kill ya.
- I can't help it. I'm fucking addicted. OK?
- So, coffee and cigarettes? That's your lunch? That ain't healthy, is it?
- So, I'm on a diet. OK? I ain't no fucking quitter.
Renee.
I wish you woudn't have done that.
No Problem.
- So, are you sure everything is OK with you?
- Yes. Everything is OK. And you?
- Me? Things are OK, not perfect, you know, but pretty much OK, yeah.
- Good. I'm very happy to see you.
- I'm happy to see you, man.
- I guess I'm going to go.
- Really? So soon?
- Yeah. But, listen. If you don't want to talk now, call me anytime. Maybe now it's not the right time for you. That's all.
So I was very happy to see you.
- Yes, me too. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there's nothing wrong, really.
- That's OK. I understand. Call me.
Cousins.
- It's just... funny, don't yah think, that when you can't afford something, it's like *really expensive* but then when you can afford it, it's like, free? It's kinda backwards, don't yah think?
- Yeah, well... the world is a bit like that, I guess, in a lot of ways.
Jack shows Meg his Tesla coil.
It's an air transformer, with primary and secondary coils that are timed to resonate. It's basically a step up transformer, which converts relatively low voltage high current, to high voltage low current, at high frequencies.
- Without him, we wouldn't have alternating current, radio, television, X-ray technology, induction motors, particle beams, lasers, none of that would even exist if it weren't for him.
- Or, the rock band Tesla.
If we would've paid more attention to his ideas, the world would be a much better place. We'd have free mass communication, free transportation, free energy for everyone. That's why they discredited him in the end...for free energy.
- He perceived the earth as a conductor of acoustical resonance.
- Hmm. What a beautiful idea.
- Damn it. Something went wrong. It wasn't supposed to stop. It was supposed to keep working. I don't know what happened.
- You think, maybe you blew a capacitor?
- No, I didn't blow a capacitor.
- I think, maybe the spark gaps are too far apart on you spark coil vibrator.
- That's it. I didn't check that earlier.
Cousins?
- Likewise. I'm certainly very aware of you.
- And the reviews, ahh..
- They were pretty fucking great.
- I was amazed because, you know, it was... I didn't think many people would kind of get all, the sort of the cultural references..
- You'd be surprised. Yeah!
- But, a lot of people didn't have any kind of reference to mate to it... Let me try and put it in context. I've always had a big passion for history, you know, and peoples' lives, all the little events that you know, how you get from A to B, and all the small details in peoples' lives, and kind of, really, full of, sort of epic qualities, you know... and so, I've been doing all this research, and, um, anyway, I've come up with this.
- What stage is..this green lit? Or, is it just... What stage is it on?
- It's not some.. it's got nothing to do with work. It's not a ‘project.’ What I've discovered was..
[gets interrupted]
- Wow. I've been recognized.
Delirium.
- You a doctor now, or something?
- I've been studying alternative medicine for two years now. I mean, ancient healer techniques, and all that. I happen to know a certain procedure I can perform using a drill gun, an electric drill. But, you know, my hand's nice from being a DJ.
Caffeine can cause serious delirium.
- You're a real caffeine junkie, aren't you?
- Just keep it down. Just between us.
- You know, before I gave it up, it used to make me dream faster. That's how my dreams were, just whizzin' by.
He specializes in alternative medicine. That is, alternative, to this planet.
Champagne.
- I've lost touch with the world. Where are we?
The Armory. It sounds so heavy and ponderous.
Let's pretend this coffee is champagne.
- Why would we do that?
- Well, to celebrate life. You know, like the rich, elegant people do, the classy people.
- I prefer coffee, simple working man's coffee.
- Oh, you're so provincial. You know what your problem is?
- What?
- You have no joie de vivre.
- I don't?
- No! Besides, this coffee is awful. I propose a toast.
- So what should we toast?
****************************************************************************
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