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French illustrator Fred dies (1931-2013)

“Fille à soldats” by Fred, Pilote no 6, Hors-Série, November 1974, p. 33.

☛ Pilote: “Fille à soldats” by Fred, no 6, Hors-Série, November 1974, p. 33.

The image reproduced above comes from an old Pilote issue I still cling to.

French cartoonist Theodor Friedrich Otto Aristidès, aka Fred, passed away Tuesday [April 2, 2013] in a Paris hospital at age 82. He was best known for Philémon, his surrealistic comic about a French farm boy who fell down a well into a fantasy world akin to Wonderland. Fred was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême in 1980, and had been the oldest living recipient. (CBR: “Comics A.M. | ‘Philémon’ creator Fred dies at age 82” by Brigid Alverson, April 3, 2013)

Last February, Dargaud had just released the 16th instalment of Philémon, “Le train où vont les choses” (2013).

Illustration by Fred for the ‘Philémon’ comic book series. First published on the cover of Pilote no. 487 (1969). Republished as the fourth instalment of the ‘Philémon’ series (Dargaud, 1973)

Illustration by Fred for the ‘Philémon’ comic book series. First published on the cover of Pilote no. 487 (1969). Republished as the fourth instalment of the ‘Philémon’ series (Dargaud, 1973)

I remember reading Philémon comic book series in various public libraries when I was quite young. At the time I was almost exclusively reading Franco-Belgian BDs or bande-dessinées: Tintin, Astérix, Lucky Luke, Spirou. What I discovered when I started reading Philémon was that comics or bande-dessinées were far from being limited to the same content and form. I became aware of the fact that comics could have wildly distinct, surprising styles.

There isn’t much resources in English about Fred online. Below is what I could find, including a couple of obituaries from French media.

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Previously: French illustrator Jean Giraud a.k.a. Moebius Dies (1938-2012)

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Illustration by French illustrator Fred from a page of ‘Simbabbad de Batbad’, the sixth instalment of his ‘Philémon’ comic book series (Dargaud, 1974)

Illustration by French illustrator Fred from a page of ‘Simbabbad de Batbad’, the sixth instalment of his ‘Philémon’ comic book series (Dargaud, 1974)

• By on April 4, 2013 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , ,

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Maurice Blanchot on critique (French)

On voit bien quelle mépris s’attire la critique qui n’est pas contestation d’elle même, mais exercice tranquille d’un pouvoir outrecuidant et vain. Autrefois, pendant les fêtes populaires, il arrivait qu’on sacrifiât en effigie les rois ou les chefs pour racheter, par un sacrifice au moins idéal (quelquefois sanglant), l’abus que représente toute la souveraineté. Le critique habituel est un souverain qui échappe à l’immolation, prétend exercer l’autorité sans l’expier et se veut maître d’une royaume dont il dispose sans risque. Aussi n’y a-t-il guère de souverain plus misérable et, pour n’avoir pas refusé d’être quelque chose, plus près de n’être rien.

☛ “Le Mystère de la critique” by Maurice Blanchot, first published in Journal des débats, 6 janvier 1944, p. 3; reprinted in Chroniques littéraires du Journal des débats : Avril 1941-août 1944, Paris: Gallimard, 2007, pp. 533-536. PDF.

I’m not aware of any existing English translation of this text. In a very elegant and efficient prose, Blanchot is taking aim at “the usual critic” (le critique habituel). The important thing to keep in mind is that he’s not rejecting the whole idea of critique, nor critique in itself. He’s rejecting the kind of critique that is essentially a vain exercise of sovereign power. This form of petty criticism can be identified in the following way: when taking concern about an object, the critic fails to challenge itself, its own critical stance. Such a critic is nothing but a “piteous sovereign” (Aussi n’y a-t-il guère de souverain plus misérable).

A couple of years later, while he admits sharing Rilke suspicions (une réserve) toward criticism, Blanchot nonetheless feels the need to argue in favour of a certain “critical power” (la puissance critique):

Il faut retenir que la puissance critique appartient au jour dans ce qu’il a de fugitif, d’instantané; elle a la versatilité du jour qui passe, mais cela signifie aussi qu’elle est mouvement et devenir, et son rôle est de dissoudre la solennité et le caractère abrupt, enfermé, des oeuvres en les livrant à la réflexion de la vie, qui, on le sait, et par bonheur, ne respecte rien. En outre, on comprend que le critique doive être sans art propre et sans talent personnel: il ne doit pas être à lui même son centre; il est un regard, soit, mais un regard anonyme, impersonnel, vagabond. En ce sens, on peut dire que la condition du critique est des plus difficiles et exige une ascèse presque insoutenable. Un être anonyme, irresponsable, une présence sans lendemain, quelqu’un qui ne doit jamais dire “je”, mais tout au plus “nous”, l’écho puissant d’une parole exprimée par personne. Cela n’est pas dit par dérision. L’un des torts des philosophies contemporaines est d’avoir déprécié futilement la valeur du “on”. (L’Observateur no. 6, May 18, 1950; reprinted in Traffic no. 12, Spring 1992, pp. 140-142. PDF.)

I like to remind myself of Blanchot’s argument whenever I hear about the “end” or the “uselessness” of critique. Usually, those arguments works by reducing the various conceptions of critique to the caricature of one of its many manifestations: Descartes’s critique, Kant’s critiques, Marx’s critique, Frankfurt School’s critical theory (which is itself a simplified label for a group of various and quite distinct critical theories), film criticism, critical thinking, etc. I discussed this problem before: see “On Critique”.

• By on September 16, 2012 ― Published in | Tagged: , , , ,

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Haul Vloggers

Boing Boing: “Haul vloggers: young women videoblogging clothes and makeup they buy”. Above screen capture from ChanelBlueSatin

The Boing Boing post links back to Susannah Breslin’s personal blog which is not very informative. More information can be found about this phenomenon under the term “haul video”, “haul videos”, “mall haul” or “makeup haul”:

“Haul videos are the democratization of the home shopping network. They typically feature teen girls just back from the mall, shopping bag in hand, gushing over their purchases (or “haul”) to their webcam to be uploaded to YouTube for the world to see. […]A search for Haul at YouTube returns 105,000 videos. A spot check reveals that surprisingly few of these videos are for U-Haul or another unrelated topic. What more could a retailer ask for that enthusiastic, peer-to-peer endorsements of their shopping experiences? Retailers should be cultivating if not deliberately encouraging the creation of these videos.” (read more over at David Erikson’s blog)

Have the consumer buy form you, have the consumer work for you:

“On YouTube, there are a new set of viral videos called “Haul” videos. These are videos posted by everyday people talking about the stuff they bought on their most recent shopping spree. Some name each items with cost, some are just showing off the items they bought. Some people are showing off how much they saved. There are a few videos that get more then 200,000 viewers them. This could be a treasure trove for local businesses.” (A Guide to Haul Viral Videos)

A “haul” is a cargo. Thus “haul vloggers” could be understand as human carriers, loaded with objects, speaking about those things (or literaly through them, as in the screen capture above), existentialy concerned by all this equipment. Now two things about that :

1) In its general form, it’s not a new phenomenon. Thorstein Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” back in 1899 in his book The Theory of the Leisure Classe. Veblen was a major inspiration for Baudrillard’s The Consumer Society (1970);

2) It will be a mistake to associate this phenomenon strictly with teen girls. We all brag to a certain degree about what we buy, may it be books, DVDs, CDs, tools, wine, etc. We may not do it in front of a camera, but we speak about it, we post about it, we tell friends about it (Marco Arment, the lead developer of Tumblr, is currently buying a new BMW). That maybe why some are thinking Blippy ―a kind of Twitter where you post about items you just bought― could become the next big thing (it launched last December).

• By on March 14, 2010 ― Published in , , | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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“Love Stories” by Joost Swarte, 2014

“Love Stories”, cover art by Joost Swarte, June 9 & 16, 2014.

☛ The New Yorker: “Love Stories”, cover art by Joost Swarte, June 9 & 16, 2014. © Condé Nast.

“Love Stories” illustrates the theme for The New Yorker’s 2014 Summer Fiction issue.

Joost Swarte is a Dutch illustrator, graphic designer and cartoonist. This is not the first cover he draws for The New Yorker: Condé Nast lists two more covers from 2007.

Joost Swarte official website is Flash based, and sometimes a challenge to navigate. Joost Swarte Blog is being regularly updated at the time of writing (it is mostly in Dutch). Also in Dutch is Griffioen Grafiek website which offers a great selection of items by Joost Swarte, all properly identified. Finally, to learn more about him and his work, The Comic Journal has an interesting, in-depth interview from November 2012: “The Joost Swarte Interview” by Daniel Peniston and Kim Thompson.

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The theme of Joost Swart cover art for The New Yorker suggests both the intensity of summer loves and the passion for literature. As I stumbled upon this illustration, I was reminded recently of the torrid correspondence between Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, and more specifically of a letter by Miller dated from August 14, 1932. Here’s a short excerpt:

Anais, I only thought I loved you before; it was nothing like this certainty that’s in me now. Was all this so wonderful only because it was brief and stolen? Were we acting for each other, to each other? Was I less I, or more I, and you less or more you? Is it madness to believe that this could go on? When and where would the drab moments begin? I study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the danger zones. I don’t find them—not any. That means I am in love, blind, blind. To be blind forever!

The letter is reproduced in A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, 1932-1953 (ed. and introduced by Gunther Stuhlmann, New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, [1987] 1989, pp. 96ff). One can read the whole letter at Letters of Note. A French translation is also available at Des Lettres.

• By on June 9, 2014 ― Published in , , | Tagged: , , , , ,

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Zorba: The Video Game (by Dr. Pippin Barr, 2011)

“ZORBA” the video game (screen capture), by Pippin Barr, November 2011. © Pippin Barr

☛ Pippin Barr: ZORBA the video game, November 2011. Flash is required to play the game. © 2012, Pippin Bar.

Here’s how the author of this atypical video game introduces ZORBA:

Dance?! Did you say dance?! Come on, my boy! Together! Let’s go! Again! Down! Boss… I have so much to tell you! Now’s your chance to go head to head in a furious Greek dancing contest against Zorba himself!

If you only have two or three minutes to spare, go ahead and give it a try. Don’t forget to turn up the volume.

The game is inspired by Cacoyannis’s film Zorba the Greek (1964, also known as Alexis Zorba: see IMDb) which itself is an adaptation of the novel Zorba the Greek (Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά, 1946) by the great Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis.

But why make such a game in the first place? Well, for one he is Pippin Barr, author of such games as Safety Instructions (the first of Pippin’s game I played: I died pretty quickly), The Artist Is Present (which I played for half an hour: basically staying in line, waiting for my turn) and Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment (it hurts). And more.

Pippin Barr also wrote a couple of posts documenting and detailing the development of the game ZORBA (as he always does with the games he creates, to my knowledge). Here, he explains how he got the idea to do it in the first place:

In terms of its “creation myth”, the game came up because Rilla and I were in Venice for the Venice Biennale, cultured souls that we are. We were walking through the Piazza San Marco and, as there usually are, there were bands playing in a couple of the (crazy expensive) restaurants. A huge number of tourists were grouped around one particular band, which started to play the song from Zorba the Greek as we passed. Naturally, no one can resist listening to that song once it gets going, because it’s pretty addictive stuff.

When we left, we started talking about how great a Dance Dance Revolution style game of the Zorba song would be. We diverged rather quickly, though, in terms of what would be great and interesting about such a game. Naturally, I was most interested in a perverse kind of reading of the song. Specifically, I became attached to the idea that in many video games it’s effectively the case that the AI is only pretending you can beat it. A computer dancing (digitally) to the Zorba song obviously doesn’t have to make a single mistake. And so I immediately wanted a game where you dance to the song against a computer and, as it becomes impossibly fast and beyond your capacity, the computer just keeps right on dancing without a care in the world. It plays on ideas of what “skill” is, what’s “fair” from an AI opponent, and so on. Amusing. (“Why, ZORBA? Why?” November 9, 2011)

You can read more about the game development by searching all of his blog’s post tagged “Zorba”.

Pippin Barr holds both a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He’s Ph.D. was about video game values while his M.Sc. was about user-interface metaphors. He’s the author of the book How to Play a Video Game (Awa Press, 2011). He currently teach “experimental interaction and programming for designers” at the Center for Computer Games Research at IT University of Copenhagen, in Denmark. Read more about him. One can also read a recent interview with him over at The Setup: “Pippin Barr” (February 7, 2012).

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Previously: Greek Director Michael Cacoyannis Dies at 90 (1921-2011)

• By on April 24, 2012 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , , ,

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Earlier maps of worldwide telegraphic lines

“Carte générale des grandes communications télégraphiques du monde” (“General Map of Worldwide Telegraphic Communications”) by the International Telegraph Bureau (Bern, Switzerland), 1901. Call number: G3201.P92 1903 .B87x. Retrieved from the Norman B. Laventhal Map Center

☛ Boston Public Library / Norman B. Laventhal Map Center: “Carte générale des grandes communications télégraphiques du monde” (“General Map of Worldwide Telegraphic Communication”) by the International Telegraph Bureau (Bern, Switzerland), 1901. Call number: G3201.P92 1903 .B87x. A hi-res version can be downloaded at the link (7265 × 5119, 36.4MB).

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From Jean-Luc Nancy’s book The Creation of the World, Or, Globalization:

Urbi et orbi: this formulation drawn from papal benediction has come to mean “everywhere and anywhere” in ordinary language. Rather than a mere shift in meaning, this is a genuine disintegration. This disintegration is not simply due to the dissolution of the religious Christian bond that (more or less) held the Western world together until around the middle of the twentieth century to which the nineteenth century effectively relinquished its certainties (history, science, conquering humanity―wether this took place with or against vestiges of Christianity). It is due to the fact that it is no longer possible to identify either a city that would be “The City”―as Rome was for so long―or an orb that would provide the contour of a world extended around this city. Even worse, it is no longer possible to identify either the city or the orb of the world in general. The city spreads and extends all the way to the point where, while it tends to cover the entire orb of the planet, it loses its properties as a city, and, of course with them, those properties that would allow it to be distinguished from a “country.” That which extends in this way is no longer properly “urban”―either from the perspective of urbanism or from that of urbanity―but megapolitical, metropolitan, or co-urbational, or else caught in the loose net of what is called “urban network.” In such a network, the city crowds, the hyperbolic accumulation of construction projects (with their concomitant demolition) and of exchanges (of movements, products, and information) spread, and the inequality and apartheid concerning the access to the urban milieu (assuming that it is a dwelling, comfort, and culture), or these exclusions from the city that for a long time has produced its own rejections and outcasts, accumulate proportionally. (tr. by François Raffoul and David Pettigrew, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007, p. 33)

Following the recent Boston Marathon bombings, reactions of spontaneous compassion –not only officials one– were expressed in various parts of the world. On one hand, it is tempting for a moment to think that humanity has finally come together (as if it was its obvious destiny) and that “we” are one, stronger in solidarity. On the other hand, the bombing itself is the very expression of the fact that there is no such thing as a single harmonious “one”, that “we” are many and, as such, divided. Globalization is not equalization. It is possible that the very movement that allows people all over the planet to show compassion in unison is also the movement that intensifies violent confrontations. In his book La Communauté affrontée which he wrote a few weeks only after the events of September 2001, Jean-Luc Nancy opens with the following lines:

The present state of the world is not a war of civilisations. It is a civil war: it is the internal war of an enclosed city, of a civility, of an ‘urbanity’, which are in the process of fanning out to the very limits of the world […] (“The Confronted Community”, tr. by Amanda Macdonald, Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, [2001]2003, p. 23)

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The Norman B. Laventhal Map Center has 11 maps of telegraphic lines. Below in an even older map from 1871 showing “the telegraph lines in operation, under contract, and contemplated, to complete the circuit of the globe”. It was created by J.H. Colton & Co. for G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co. (call number: G3201.P92 1871 .J53).

By J.H. Colton & Co. for G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co. Call number: G3201.P92 1871 .J53. Retrieved from the Norman B. Laventhal Map Center

By J.H. Colton & Co. for G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co. Call number: G3201.P92 1871 .J53. Retrieved from the Norman B. Laventhal Map Center

More similar maps can be found at Atlantic-cable.com which is a website about the “history of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications”

• By on April 18, 2013 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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“We” are interrupted: Jacques Derrida on the condition for being together (1999)

Wherever the “we” is a kind of fusional community where responsibility is swamped, I can see danger. Moreover I have, with experience, contracted an allergy to any community of that type. But on the other hand, I would term “we” acceptable when it is made of interruptions, where those who say “we” know that they are singularities with an interrupted connection. Not only does that not prevent us saying “we” and talking to ouselves and hearing ourselves; but the condition for talking to ourselves and hearing ourselves is that this interruption remain. Imagine the closest possible proximity between two beings: love, erotic experience, extreme ecstasy; distance is not abolished, infinite distance remains. The “we” is a species, it’s like when you roll the dice or when you cast your line, when a fisherman casts his line; perhaps there is a “we” on the other side? It’s a promise, it’s a request, it’s a hope. It can also be a fear. When I say “we” I hope that it is not us, that we are not enclosed inside this “we”. To say “we” is a mad gesture in a certain way, mad with hope, with fear, with promise. But it certainly is not a peaceful assurance about what this “we” is. There is no “we”. A “we” has never been discovered in the wild.

☛ Elsewhere Derrida (D’ailleurs Derrida) a film by Safaa Fathy, O.V. French, with English subtitles, [1999]2001, 68 minutes (IMDb). Excerpt: 53:30 @ 56:57. The film also exists in a truncated 52-min version.

[UPDATE–November 4, 2014] I have updated this post with the English translation from the subtitled version of the film (above), and moved the French transcription I made of the same excerpt below.

Partout où le «nous» serait une espèce de communauté fusionnelle où la responsabilité se noie, je vois un danger. D’ailleurs j’ai, en quelque sorte par habitus contracté, une allergie à toute communauté de ce type là. Mais en revanche, j’appellerais un «nous» disons acceptable un «nous» fait d’interruptions, un «nous» où ceux qui disent «nous» savent que ce sont des singularités qui entretiennent entre elles un rapport interrompu. Non seulement cela ne nous empêchera pas de dire «nous» et de nous parler et de nous entendre, mais la condition pour que nous parlions et nous nous entendions c’est que cette interruption des rapports demeure. Imaginez la proximité la plus grande possible entre deux êtres ―l’amour, l’expérience érotique, l’extase extrême― la distance n’est pas abolie, la distance infinie demeure. Le «nous» c’est un peu comme lorsqu’on jette les dés ou lorsque le pêcheur jette sa ligne: … peut-être y a-t-il un «nous» de l’autre côté? On dit «nous»: c’est un promesse, c’est une demande, c’est un espoir. Ça peut être aussi une crainte! Je dis «nous», mais j’espère que ce n’est pas «nous», que je ne suis pas enfermé dans ce «nous». Donc dire «nous» c’est un geste fou, d’une certaine manière, fou d’espoir, de crainte, de promesse… Mais ce n’est certainement pas une tranquille assurance quant à ce qui est: il n’y a pas de «nous»… jamais a-t-on rencontré un «nous» dans la nature.

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The use of the first-person, plural personal pronoun “we”, wherever it is used, is “always already” problematic1. As Derrida explains in the excerpt quoted above, there is no “we” in nature: one cannot find it or touch it like one does with a tree or a stone. It’s a fiction, a promise, a call, an ideal, a hope (in the ambiguous sense of that word: see Elpis as an ambiguous expectation). It may work for a while before fading away, or it may remain in the realm of discourse without being able to actualize itself. It’s not an answer, but a question. In the interview quoted above, Derrida suggests that the condition for a “we” to exist calls for the constant interruption of the relations [des rapports]. He is especially keen on this point: “we” has nothing to do with the harmonious fusion of beings idealized by certain political discourses. In an interview he did with François Ewald in 1991, he explained:

DERRIDA: I do not like the word community much, I am not even sure that I like the thing itself.
EWALDY: You yourself used it.
DERRIDA: If by community we understand, as is often the case, a harmonious whole, a consensus and a fundamental agreement under phenomena of disagreement or of war, I do not really believe in it, and in it I foresee as many threats as promises. (translated as “A Certain ‘Madness’ Must Watch Over Thinking”, Educational Theory, Volume 45, Issue 3, pages 273–291, September 1995, subscription may be required; an English translation was also published in Points… Interviews, 1974-1994, edited by Elisabeth Weber, Stanford University Press, 1995, pp. 339-364; first published in French as «Une “folie” doit veiller sur la pensée», Magazine Littéraire, no. 286, March 1991).

Compare with what he wrote of the community in Foi et savoir, first published in 1996:

There is no opposition, fundamentally, between “social bond” and “social unraveling.” A certain interruptive unraveling is the condition of the “social bond,” the very respiration of all “community.” This is not even the knot of a reciprocal condition, but rather the possibility that every knot can come undone, but be cut or interrupted. This is where the socius or the relation to the other would disclose itself to be the secret of testimonial experience –and hence, of a certain faith. If belief is the ether of the address and relation to the utterly other, it is in the experience itself of non-relationship or of absolute interruption (indices: “Blanchot,” “Levinas”…) (“Faith and Knowledge” tr. by Samuel Weber, in Acts of Religion, eds. Gil Anidjar,New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 99)

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The quote in French featured at the beginning of this post is a slightly modified transcript I did of the audiovisual recording presented in the film. At the time of writing, one can watch this excerpt on Youtube:

The original French version of this documentary can be bought online at Amazon France at a reasonable price, but it comes without any subtitles (French only). Éditions Montparnasse is also selling the same original French DVD. It is also possible to watch it online on YouTube where it was uploaded in seven parts (see part 1/7). It comes with Castilian subtitles (the video was uploaded by Horacio Potel for his excellent website Derrida en castellano). In 2001 Icarus Film released an English version titled Derrida’s Elsewhere. Unfortunately, the English DVD is more expensive: the 68 minutes version of the documentary goes for $298US. For more information about the film, see a PDF document (in French) produced by ARTE Vidéo.

Below is a behind-the-scene photo taken during the shooting of Safaa Fathy’s documentary. It was published in the journal diacritics (“Images” by Safaa Fathy, Volume 38, Numbers 1-2, Spring-Summer 2008, p. 23; subscription may be required)

Derrida, Jean-François Mabire, Martial Barrault (director of photography), Safaa Fathy, Almeria, Spain, 1999. Retrieved from Diacritics, Volume 38, Numbers 1-2, Spring-Summer 2008, p. 23.

Derrida, Jean-François Mabire, Martial Barrault (director of photography), Safaa Fathy, Almeria, Spain, 1999. Retrieved from Diacritics, Volume 38, Numbers 1-2, Spring-Summer 2008, p. 23.

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1. I previously discussed the problem of representation associated with the political slogan “We Are The 99%”: see Occupy Wall Street and Black Friday ↩︎︎

• By on January 20, 2013 ― Published in | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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SITE’s King Kong Christmas party, 1976

Retrieved from the Canadian Centre for Architecture Collection: James Wines, hand drawing of a King Kong figure atop a Christmas tree. Invitation sent to Gordon Matta-Clark to attend SITE’s Christmas party, 60 Greene Street, New York City, December 28, 1976. 35.4 x 21.6 cm. CCA Collection. PHCON2002:0016:004:085. Gift of Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark © SITE

☛ Canadian Centre for Architecture: James Wines, hand drawing of a King Kong figure atop a Christmas tree. Invitation sent to Gordon Matta-Clark to attend SITE’s Christmas party, 60 Greene Street, New York City, December 28, 1976. 35.4 x 21.6 cm. CCA Collection. PHCON2002:0016:004:085. Gift of Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark © SITE.

There are many more interesting items to discover online at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Collection. The Collection has its own RSS feed and the CCA maintains an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube.

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The Canadian Centre for Architecture provides the following explanation regarding the context in which this drawing was produced:

Inspired by the adaptation of King Kong by Dino Delaurentis, this 1976 Christmas party invitation was designed by James Wines, president of SITE. The King Kong theme ran throughout the party. “Gorilla cookies and fay wray punch will be served,” the invitation reads. SITE co-founders Alison Sky, Michelle Stone and Wines’ daughter Suzan designed a Christmas tree modelled on the Empire State Building and adorned with a King King doll made by Sky. The SITE holiday event that year was a great success and even had coverage in the NY Times, with guests including Andy Warhol, Bob Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Gordon Matta-Clark, among many others from the New York art world. (CCA Collection: “A King Kong Christmas”, December 20, 2013)

The New Times article to which the CCA’s description referred was written by Rita Reif and it was published on December 30, 1976: “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” (there’s a fee to access the full article). The report written by Reif provides a detailed description of the party. It also tells the story of just how the actual King Kong Christmas tree was put together:

They came to the party to see a gorilla grab at airplanes from his perch atop the 12-foot Christmas tree. Or was it the Empire State Building?

They came to eat gorilla cookies and drink Fay Wray punch.

They came to talk about Kong Kong, his taste in architecture, his taste in women and how gingerbread should taste.

In fact, about 50 guests gathered the other night in a lower Manhattan loft for the fantasy-filled party planned by the designers and writers who make up the five-member staff of Site Inc. (Sculpture in the Environment). And many of the invited lingered ―in the appartment that is 33 blocks south of the Empire State Building and 18 blocks north of the World Trade Center― on onto the next morning munching, sipping and mulling such monstrous questions as “What is King Kong made of?”

“Love, mostly,” Alison Sky answered over and over again, invariably with a broad smile and a nod at what was described as the most strokeable simian in SoHo. “It’s also leather and vinyl and synthetic gorilla fur. And it’s stuffed with steel and polyester.”

When Miss Sky began a year ago to hand-sew that ape with the enigmatic smile, it was a private project, she said, a gift for Suzan Wines, the daughter of the artist-writer’s Site colleague James Wines, a sculptor. Miss Sky had no idea then, she recalled the other night, that it would take two months to complete. She also had not reckoned on the amount of labor and the number of people that the effort would involve. […]

King Kong cookie designed by James Wines’s daughter Susan (Age 10). From The New York Times: “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” by Rita Reif, Dec. 30, 1976

King Kong cookie designed by James Wines’s daughter Susan (Age 10). From The New York Times: “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” by Rita Reif, Dec. 30, 1976

[T]he full work force did not become involved until shortly before Christmas. Miss Sky had pondered out loud the problem of how to decorate this years’s tree. And when she proposed doing a King Kong, her colleagues roared their approval and fell to work. Michael McDonough, an architect-trained associate, drew plans for the silvery cardboard-and-wax-paper-framed skyscraper that would surround the tree, on top of which the stuffed gorilla would pause for the Yuletide season.

“We never considered the World Trade Center,” Mr. Wines reported emphatically, adding that several of the invited had called to say that if the tree were based on the current Dino Di Laurentiis [sic] remake of the 1933 monster classic and framed with the towers, they were not coming.

“Our King Kong is a takeoff on the original and the building had to be the original one that the real King Kong fled to,” he said. (The New York Times: “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” by Rita Reif, Dec. 30, 1976).

Group portrait from SITE’s King Kong Christmas party, 1976. From New York Times’s article “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” by Rita Reif, Dec. 30, 1976

Group portrait from SITE’s King Kong Christmas party, 1976. From New York Times’s article “In SoHo, King Kong Cookies And Fay Wray Punch…” by Rita Reif, Dec. 30, 1976

I asked @ccawire for additional information about SITE’s King Kong Christmas tree and they kindly pointed me to the book SITE: Identity in Density (Master Architect Series VI) (Images Publishing, 2005; Amazon). In it Michael McDonough, who had drew the original plans for the tree, gives his personal account of the King Kong Christmas party. As it turns out, the party played some role in SITE’s early notoriety:

We were all very young, mostly broke, serious-minded, and determined to change the world. The world, curiously, mostly noticed, I remember when Dino DeLaurentis filmed his campy remake of King Kong in 1976. Most Downtown turned out as unpaid extras in the plaza of the World Trade Center, all of us celluloid witnesses to the great ape’s denouement. SITE celebrated the event with a King Kong Christmas Tree party that year, the centerpiece a cardboard confection of the Empire State building topped by the angel Kong himself. The then still oh-so-dowdy New York Times reported the event, complete with a group portrait. It was like Paris in the 1920s, our Greene Street Mafia, but the style was grunge before there was grunge. (“The Greene Street Mafia: Remembering Site and Soho in the Mid-1970s” by Michael McDonough, in SITE: Identity in Density (Master Architect Series VI), edited by Steve Womersley, Victoria: Images Publishing, 2005, p. 17)

To learn more about SITE philosophy and numerous achievement, visit its official website either at sitenewyork.com or at siteenvirodesign.com. Founder James Wines also teaches architecture at Penn State University: see his profile there.

Among other things, SITE is recognized for designing a showroom for the Best Products company (see SITE profile at MoMA). A four-part documentary regarding this particular project can be watched on YouTube. Part 1 is embedded below (see Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4).

• By on December 25, 2013 ― Published in , , , | Tagged: , , ,

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Épiméthée : l'homme sans qualité


– El Greco, Epimetheus and Pandora, ~1600.

 

Cependant Epiméthée, qui n’était pas très réfléchi, avait, sans y prendre garde, dépensé pour les animaux toutes les facultés dont il disposait et il lui restait la race humaine à pourvoir, et il ne savait que faire. Dans cet embarras, Prométhée vient pour examiner le partage ; il voit les animaux bien pourvus, mais l’homme nu, sans chaussures, ni couverture, ni armes, et le jour fixé approchait où il fallait l’amener du sein de la terre à la lumière. Alors Prométhée, ne sachant qu’imaginer pour donner à l’homme le moyen de se conserver, vole à Héphaïstos et à Athéna la connaissance des arts avec le feu ; car, sans le feu, la connaissance des arts était impossible et inutile ; et il en fait présent à l’homme. L’homme eut ainsi la science propre à conserver sa vie ; mais il n’avait pas la science politique (…).

– Platon, Protagoras, §XI, tr. Émile Chambry

Now Epimetheus, being not so wise as he might be, heedlessly squandered his stock of properties on the brutes; he still had left unequipped the race of men, and was at a loss what to do with it. As he was casting about, Prometheus arrived to examine his distribution, and saw that whereas the other creatures were fully and suitably provided, man was naked, unshod, unbedded, unarmed; and already the destined day was come, whereon man like the rest should emerge from earth to light. Then Prometheus, in his perplexity as to what preservation he could devise for man, stole from Hephaestus and Athena wisdom in the arts together with fire–since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully used by any–and he handed it there and then as a gift to man. Now although man acquired in this way the wisdom of daily life, civic wisdom he had not, since this was in the possession of Zeus (…).

– Platon, Protagoras, 321b-321e, in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3 translated by W.R.M. Lamb, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967.

• By on June 11, 2008 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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“The Half-Life of Disaster” by Brian Massumi (April 2011)

Natural disaster and terrorism define the poles of disaster. In between stretches a continuum of disaster, a plenum of frightful events of infinite variety, at every scale, coming one after the other in an endless series. […] An association is established between “natural disaster” and “national security threat” […] Tendencies such as these blur the boundary between the policing of civil society and the military sphere, and between natural activity, criminal activity, and acts of war. […] The natural and the human are everywhere co-factors in disaster. They co-compose disaster in a way that can be fiendishly complex. But they are not simply in fusion or confusion. The media-borne affective conversion circuit upon which political power increasingly relies for its legitimation obscures the actual dynamics of this interlinkage. The return to the human personal level short-circuits any collective response that is not already either inscribed in the same logic of exploitative development that has brought the world to this juncture, or in complicity with the national/natural security apparatuses of full-spectrum force that move forcefully against those enacting alternate strategies of collective action in the name of alternate collective futures.

☛ The Guardian.co.uk: “The Half-Life of Disater” by Brian Massumi, April 15, 2011

Massumi also wrote:

As long as disaster capitalism reigns – which no doubt will be as long as capitalism itself reigns – the world will be caught in a vicious circle: that of responding by increasingly draconian and ill-advised means to a threat environment whose dangers the response only contributes to intensifying.

This “vicious circle”, as it is described here, could also be called a “positive feedback” or a “runaway process” (or “runaway tendencies” or “runaway chain reaction” if one wants to borrow from nuclear science vocabulary). In this regard, Massumi article can be read as a follow up to Sadie Plant and Nick Land’s essay “Cyberpositive” (1994).

Brian Massumi is professor in the department of communication of the Université de Montréal. Visit his official website to learn more about him.

• By on April 19, 2011 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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