Telling Time To Go Back

What is it. It is imagined, it is not anything.

na·tion

/ˈneɪʃən/ Show Spelled[ney-shuhn] Show IPA

–noun

1.

a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own: The president spoke to the nation about the new tax.

2.

the territory or country itself: the nations of Central America.

3.

a member tribe of an American Indian confederation.

4.

an aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, often speaking the same language or cognate languages.

coun·try

/ˈkʌntri/ Show Spelled [kuhn-tree] Show IPA noun, plural -tries, adjective

–noun

1.

a state or nation: What European countries have you visited?

2.

the territory of a nation.

3.

the people of a district, state, or nation: The whole country backed the president in his decision.

4.

the land of one's birth or citizenship.

5.

rural districts, including farmland, parkland, and other sparsely populated areas, as opposed to cities or towns: Many city dwellers like to spend their vacations in the country.

6.

any considerable territory demarcated by topographical conditions, by a distinctive population, etc.: mountainous country; the Amish country of Pennsylvania.

7.

a tract of land considered apart from any geographical or political limits; region; district.

8.

the public.

9.

Law . the public at large, as represented by a jury.

10.

country music.

My belly was my sun-dial

The gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
Who in this place set up a sun-dial,
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small portions. When I was a boy,
My belly was my sun-dial; one more sure,
Truer, and more exact than any of them.
This dial told me when twas prper time
To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat.
But now-a-days, why even when I have,
I can't fall-to, unless the sun give leave.
The greater part of its inhabitants,
Shrunk up with hunger, creep along the streets!

Plautus (d. 184 B.C.)
p. 28 of The Discoverers, Daniel Boorstin

There is nothing left for imagination

Sympathies, an open proposal.

Open proposal: Sympathies, an event that is aware of so many other events.

Sympathy is:
1. Sameness of feeling
2. action or response arising from this
3. agreement in qualities, harmony, accord
4. a mutual liking or understanding arising from the sameness of feeling



Sympathies are:
Events where we gather to show our fiercest sympathy. We hold signs without words. The posterboard and the language is replaced by mirrors. We amble, we look, we sympathize.

Don't think Hallmark Card Sympathy, think about how you feel about
Egyptian Revolutionaries, Wisconsin Workers, Planned Parenthood Supporters.
Question the 'form' of 'protest' in your life. How do you deal with the savageness that so many other people experience when you are comfortable, and maybe even happy?
Is it possible to design a new form for our own rebellion?

How. As training, I would like to hold a series of walks for people who are captivated, frightened, worried, and unclear about what to do about so many overwhelming upheavals in the world. With mirrors as our protest signs, we will walk and think about what we are and where. We will look at things, see ourselves where we are, see what others see, and look at eachother. We show or feel sympathy for what we see when we see it, where we are. Meanwhile we think of those who are breaking, or almost broken, revolting against forces as big as nations and tsunamis. For many people who are only surviving recent events, there is no meanwhile to take notice of, meanwhile is a privilege. Let us celebrate the meanwhile, offer sympathy, and focus in on the wonder and the disaster of everywhere we are.

fellow feelings, of like feelings.
1. Sameness of feeling
2. action or response arising from this
3. agreement in qualities, harmony, accord
4. a mutual liking or understanding arising from the sameness of feeling
5. The entering into or ability to enter into another person's mental state, feelings, emotions
6. In physics, a relation or harmony between bodies of such a nature that vibrations in one cause a sympathetic vibration in the other
7. In physiology, a relation between parts of the body of such a nature that a disorder in one induces a disorder in the other
8. A supposed tendency of certain things to unite or act on eachother.

Actual Products Intensify Print Quality

Today I attended an afternoon workshop at SF Camerawork led by Ariel Goldberg, sponsored by Nonsite Collective. This is what happened to me:

This trip was fraught, as it was only a picture in a picture in a picture, and no one knew who would ultimately be looking at the photos, the final images from the outside. Only we know that the print quality gets better when the product is in the image, or rather when there is a product, not just an imagined one or a referenced one, but a real 4 color product. Its either that or it’s a sense of responsibility that will help the image quality improve. Take ownership of this experience and get into the photo’s shoes, try to sympathize with the paper quality or the texture of the vinyl, and have the self discipline to understand how hard it must be to print on such a low thread count. Feel how impossible it must be to exist with so much tooth that even the simplest image gets distorted when it is merges with you.

The distracting part of all this is that from the get go, no matter if there is ever paper or vinyl, there is or was a photographer, or we hope that there was, and they will never experience texture. But what if the camera was just set on automatic, and if it even cleans its own lenses? What if all the cameras now clean their own lenses? If the lens is always clean, and the photos are always taken at the right time, or every time, on a schedule, then is there nothing behind this photo, is it just a trace of the automation? And the self healing, self sufficient, selfless photographer who never has to take a picture, who can’t even properly dirty the lens? If looking at photos is a mechanical process, which seems to be the case, and taking the picture is too, and they clean their own lenses, then what are you doing? If we enjoy the look of taking photos, the ethos, the freedom of association, the inside jokes and the body language, then we would also probably really enjoy the cleaning of the lenses. It’s good to be needed, you know?

I would like to step up to the podium. I would like to propose a camera club, where we all focus on the maintenance of the camera. We turn off the auto clean function and we enjoy the cycle of the dirtying of the lens, and then of course we enjoy the cleaning of the lens, which we do by hand, with two hands and a handkerchief, just like before time. The lens is so transparent when we clean it, and it could be totally self satisfied, but the truth is that you can’t stand to leave it alone. Don’t let it clean itself, because once it is clean, it becomes everything it could ever be, its total potential is maxed out, and then where else does it have to go? There’s nowhere but up to go until you’re at the top, and then you are pure, clean, alone. And it’s just a lens, and that is not the life worth seeing through. This clean lens obsession and maybe eventually the camera needs to consider whether the lens is a healthy part of its body, or if it should be removable. Its amazing what goes into an automatic image of chance, the lens must be so clean, it must almost not be there.

The Language of the Socially Good

The community of the untold story: it takes one individual to advocate on behalf of the artisans and create the mission. To create new formulas to institute a new training strategy of healthiness, a system of health by a team from a team of doctors, scientists, artists and film makers. A 2 prong effort with everyone in the field, creating outreach to create funding.

Why is this so hard? Inspired by health issues the investment of wonder is on the market. Imagine being a family of real environmental nightmare strategy.

First, identify creative leaders of the community where everyone is watching.

The successful transition and what was exciting is you’ve removed the teaching barriers-- we took him to the intrenational market problems strategy. 25 community members transitioned to prohibit development, trading in the field, developing with the other, softer voices for the long term benefit of design training.

In our workshop these drawings, a local production, as well as the safety or luxury of time. It shows the deep connection to place she was inspired by herself. The challenges were being fused with and the strong market funding dried up, challenging for sustainable funding to keep this continuing for the community.

For the innovative on going dynamic as well as models, sociologists, better prepared to tackle the community from the field. If you can’t sustain yourself, you can feel the life, its made by hand from the plan to the land, from the soil to the market, this is coming of age. Preserve these rich traditions, learning how to create new models of reproduceable engagement to a deeper appreciation of stones and connection to culture of community, desiring celebration.

Social Craft Explanation// We are going to Bangalore

Lets now look closely at Social Craft.

Social Craft is a framework and a method of valuing and studying the
minutia of every day experiences.
Please take out your magnifying glass. While holding it in your left
hand, stick your right index finger through the center of the glass.
Hold it up to your eye to examine this experience.

Through the use of magnifying glasses we can see what we often only look at...
By observing the experiences that we often take for granted, we stand
to learn more of their truth and essence. If we magnify our daily
routines and use them as sources of physical, mental, emotional, and
social learning, education becomes universally available and equal.
Social Craft honors the syllabus of your life. Your life begins at
home.

When I think of how I do what I do, it all goes back to what I saw and learned from
home. I had to clean underneath the table as well as the top of it, and now, not
coincidentally, I find myself looking underneath everything I do. I find my interests
to be in finding and attending to hidden details, shining them up or deciding to leave
them hidden. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that my love of secret details and my
thoroughness has come to be out of a rigorous weekly Saturday house cleaning.

Home is our first curriculum. It is where we learn many of the
systems for navigating life. We think it is the best place to start
to study and to practice social craft. To formalize the home as a
site of learning, we will study its physical structure, its relation
to the body, and its ritual use. Our class will build and use a house.
Its use as a site of learning will make it a home.

The discussion of ‘ home’ in India is complex, and cannot be parsed
without acknowledging the domestic laborers that cohabit with many families. There is
a movement in Bangalore to unionize private household workers, and from afar
this seems to be a cultural phenomenon that is currently being questioned in
the media and the art world. The domestic labor industry extends to
many homes- not just of the rich, but across most social strata from
lower middle class and above, wherein maids, cooks, and caretakers complete the
concept and experience of Indian family life.
In speaking to friends in India, I have learned that these workers are not considered to
be employees nor family members, but rather are seen as an undefined aspect of the
household.
We are interested in understanding the social aspects of the Indian home and
acknowledging the expertise that accrues in the process of developing and keeping it as
a viable enterprise. Not only witnessing, but taking an objective look at domestic labor-
- valuing it as a formative part of human development and education-- will no doubt have
an impact on how participants see their own relationship to home and home workers.

To begin our exploration of home and work, we will hire 4 local experts, versed in
homemaking. They are a real estate agent, a vedic architect, a matriarch, and a
builder. We will hire and compensate them as adjunct faculty through
Srishti, opening up the question of class and academic status. We hope to see their homes
and seek their assistance in building a house, understanding its maintenance
and practices, and finding the art and education inherent in it. We
are working with srishti to devise a method of payment and contracts
that value them as a professor-- offering them the opportunity to
be professionally validated, and paid in a way that legitimizes their work with us to the
government and the institution of srishti, or not.

We will meet with students daily to build a home, devise home
practices and to explode these as valuable learning experiences and
art practices. The radical nature of inserting the home inside a
school campus, as a physical structure and as a method for learning,
is not only poetic but speaks to the historical
synthesis of education from the home and the family.

This home/school will happen through daily classes, where students and
experts become immersed in the design and building of a physical
structure, which will house the class. The daily maintenance of the
house generates a learning environment that encompasses the classes
collective idea of home. This idea will be informed by active
research and documentation of local housing and domestic politics.
We will invite Bangalore to a weekly series of open house events, where members of the
class will perform their research, exhibiting the functions of the home on campus.