Shalin’s Neighborhood

It's hard to know, i suppose, if a sound can be confused with a thought when a window is left open.  Passing through thought like stumbling out a window, braced against the pane, one arm holding the frame, trying to answer a call from just beyond the glass.  Only the call was bird, a pretty parakeet, whispering gangsta rap as it pecked sunflower seeds and dribbling bits of resonance into the dirt.  Birds are sounds, something like phones in a garden.  --i didn't mishear or mistake, but the parakeet had cut the cord when no one was on the other line. 

Dress

I will soon be entetaining a habituation where i'll have to write and read a lot.  I need to make my thoughts simpler and my language flow more easily.  I would like to create a daily exercise with three typewriters.  The first would have the word "Complex" above it, the second Simpler, the third Simplest.  I'd move down the row applying 15 minutes of thought  directly to each machine, repeating the same thing on each but in different formulations.

Soon i'll read and write a lot.  I need thoughts to flow simply.  I would like to create a daily exercise with three typewriters.  Above each, I would post the words "complex," "simpler," "simplest."  Moving from one to the next i'd write the same thing differently.

i will read.  i will write.  thoughts simply exercised on typewriters will flow in three variations.

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Fabric 4

haven't been here in a while.  maybe i'll come by sometime soon.

Singled spaces taken from the point perspective of a lean.  My head lays down on the pillow and hands move in a trusty fashion even though the letters fall solidly beside their own turf.  Here is the piece of the puzzle, here is where the idea lies just behind a sulking stone, here is when stars find their...stars are an unfathomable concept.  i regret to write about them.  Nothing more incomprehensible than entire galaxies bending like reeds to a moving sphere. how intolerable that we are them.  Cities like spotted constellations, sun spots with thoughts spread by her napkins.  "no one cares" they say, a surprisingly un-sophisticated statement by a star, "not us nor them."  Celestial ecologies sound like an intake--of breath, of distance between the lens and the pupil, of the space around the elbow facing the (hear)t, something like the sound of that farce.  Have you ever been driving and you think to yourself that you are like them and they are you and you think, but moreso you shiver, the reception of your own thought.  Shiver or thought,  which offers itself as a symptomatic offspring? Intuited ideas or ideas form intuition?

signals are to their importance as suddenness is to its caveat.

--spoke
       

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Symptomless poses falsify the outer layer of an indescribable garment.  She sheds its shoulder strap and the unreconciled comes falling off.  Steel beams are left squandered in a puddle, singular and millions.  Tub ducks are in tow, little quackers sparking away in yellowness.  Stolen in a glow of yellow haze left in a sun loft between temple and moonshine.  Funny how the color yellow sparkles the death watch like a twink in the eyes.  Seems to brighten the world in an unreasonable scurry of ghostly turmoil.  Singular dubbed duplicitous is the yellow way.  A smarting incisiveness driven by an artificial seedling.  Drop the pail spill the water, the sound tempts the most godly.  Each opera sparks and the dog chases, tail pointing northward.  Each turn bounces off the overburdened horse and skips tracks like a spun away train. 

Erik and I colloborated on this initial (beta) release of the Elsewhere Visitor Center.

Visitor Center Map

PLANNING MEETING NOTES:

Visitor Services (BETA):
    •    Installation process/product space
    •    Games: consist of objects and (dynamic card box)
        ⁃    Local - games that happen at desk (associative writing, ex corpse stories, etch-sketch
        ⁃    Elsewhere - games that take you around space: binoculars, take these five/return five more, frames
    •    Communication
        ⁃    Mailing list sign-up
        ⁃    Calendar of events
        ⁃    Cards, brochures, fliers - web info in card format (info on mailing list form)
        ⁃    Audio Tour, maps, info about installations
        ⁃    **Archive: "About elsewhere" materials**
        ⁃    Sign-in/Reflection/questions book
    •    Tools and Resources
        ⁃    What is installation?
        ⁃    Images
        ⁃    Strategies
        ⁃    Books
    •    Camera (pictures for sale - $2/poloroid if you create an installation, OR rent digital?)
    •    Buttons for sale?
    •    Aesthetics - glass, clean, lights, grand, organization system, "unit" feeling, communication strategies

PRIORITIES LIST

    1.    PHOTOGRAPH HUTCH
    2.    Pile of current elsewhere visitor stuff (?)
    3.    Mailing List (1hr)
    4.    Installation (3hrs)
    5.    Organize set-up of visitor center (2hr)
    6.    Two games of our own (2hr)

----
Post-Unveiling Feedback with George and Steph

BEST

- Parts that send you into the space (limited as a result of GE opening)
- Game that involved switching out objects

QUESTION

- Map of center? Work or not work?
   Response - Needs to be fleshed out more, deeper, more developed, self-sustaining
- Where does archival material live?
- Photos - post S/G arrival
- How do visitors encounter it? Is it accessible as is?
    - Is it something for their second return? Is it for returning visitors?
    - Are they encouraged to visit it?
    - Are there elements in the space that send someone back to it?
    - What is it used for, how are people directed to it?
    - Is there a mirror?
    - What are the public spaces of elsewhere? Map with context clues.
    - How are permissions provided (wrt above)

MUSEUM DISPLAY - is a historical display

STORE COUNTER - Where materials and information is distributed, human to human
Buttons, promotional information, fliers, etc

VISITOR CENTER - pedagogical, clear
 A way to communicate Elsewhere via process and organization
    - Education is clear
    - Refer to specific pieces in space
    - About Elsewhere, deeper level (articles)
    - Work about the work
    - Work by current artists
    - (i say - further opps to engage, such as promotional materials, calendar, web address, under guise of "learn more")

IDEAS
    - Game of unit as a whole (overarching theme) across whole unit
    - (((aside - in kitchen, etc are we on display?)))
    - Find and retrieve - not necessary getting, but recording. Games that are actually interesting for people.
    - Using objects to speak "Open me" "Look here!" etc
    - What I saw log - visitors can point each other to something that they saw in space -
        using words, maps and images...
    - mini-collections org'd by themed
    - shopping

Well a grand opening for a grand trip.  I can't quite say that the great Empire is here, though it certainly derived from this spot, and the cobble stones now seem to blend perfectly with the LCD flat screen monitors that cover the fancy facades like Time's Square.  Too many bags, and as I'm sure Steph will note, the attendant that fell down in the plane.

There is a small competition going on as to who is the most professional traveler.  A point tally system such as not having a pen you lose a point, operating two luggage bags at once plus two points, having to take a cab--minus 1 point and about 36 pounds (yikes).

Anyway, we meet the Elsewhere London crew tomorrow at a place called The Approach.  will be nice to see everyone.  Saw some bad art school art tonight--hopefully are going to see some interesting art tomorrow.

Things I'm thinking about and wanted to note: a city co-exists with the displacement of Being which is in fact a being-with as a matter of discourse (a singular individual thus defined by always already in community)--thus originary and plural- a being in the world which is the meaning in communication about/with being/consciousness according to Nancy---what does this mean?  Simply the city is a space of displacement and as Foucault would carry it out, the City becomes a model for the State (town square is to the capital as a police is to the Army) and in that manner the city becomes the displacement, the place holder of the State.

What to do with these thoughts?  I'm beginning to work out questions of play and alternative discourse between people that moves beyond or displaces identity toward a communication in the imaginary.
More later

PS.  Non of my cloths were dry when I packed so I can't help likening this trip to leaving egypt---having to pack cloths that had yet to rise!