Archive: Author: w

ritual

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2006/5/21 9:30-11:00am, zen buddhist temple, W:

Chanting, meditating, singing, praying, standing-sitting-moving in coordinate fashion. It is all a way to coordinate desires, to enhance a group desire. Ritual. Not the blank and blind following of a meaningless tradition, but the inhabitation of a circular group event of which I am a part. I become part of the group. I lose myself. We are. And yet, desire gets in the way, or that seems to be much of what I read in books on zen. Is desire necessary for ritual? What about Artaud/Deleuze’s BWO – isn’t that a desire of intensity, not of lack? Am I willing to give up desire, even the kind based on lack? Could I even if I was?

my nice little walls, skins, borders

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2006/05/20 7:15pm, at home in the attic, W:

I want… the pain under my eyes, sinuses, to subside. I want the kids to go to sleep without a fight because I want my wife. I want to be able to become more aware. I want to be able to describe my desires right now in a more specific and less general way. I want to be able to quickly grade the stacks and stacks of 8th grade quizzes and tests about the Pythagorean Theory and Animal Farm. I want to be able to listen better. I want to write up the notes about the meeting we had today. I want to escape my desires, my body. I want labeling my desires to magically dissolve them. I want to find that I am not alone. I want to stop searching for my own desires – it is painful and scary. I don’t want to be vulnerable. I want to keep my nice little walls, skins, borders of the body that so carefully filter my desires.

It will probably take a long time before I can really, truly look deep into my desires. There are long-term and short-term and immediate desires. There are desires and there are fantasies. What kind of desires are we hoping to find in common here? Am I defining myself as desire, as lack? (I want to look back to Deleuze to see what he had to say about desire.) It’s kind of restrictive saying “I” want.

I imagine that D. wants dinner right about now. He is hungry, as he eats late. He’s had a long day and is tired from running around with his friend. He wishes his wife would understand this and comfort him.

S. desires a place where she could be surrounded by people who listen. S. wants a drink, but that makes her sleepy and it is really too early.

Sh. is like me, wishing her daughter would go to bed without a fuss so that she can actually spend time with her partner. She’s not even tired yet.

Beyond Surveillance Meeting Notes for 3/19/06 at Mess Hall

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(a Chicago portion of the International Day Against Video Surveillance)

What is a body? How many different ways can we see/conceptualize body? (shadow/image/touch/money/consumer/oppressed/marketvalue/distance)
To what degree is surveillance reliant on the body/identity as a basic unit? (How are bodies constructed in the eye of surveillance? Is a body simply a node where certain phone numbers come together? As we zoom in/out do the bodies become aggregate/disaggregate bodies?) What is an individual?
Identity and capitalism are mutually generated.
Data vs. you? (Is this a fair binary?) Can we trouble that link? What is “you” anyway?
Sh. presented her project involving economies of touch.

The destruction of the binary of real vs. performed.
Th. sang with a chorus asking “how do we find a truer state of being without being murderers or liars?”
How is the ghetto constructed, and how do we define ourself in relation to it?

God is the all-seeing eye.
S. presented her surveys of the neighbors of Mess Hall regarding the surveillance camera strobe? (Highlight for me was the one that said the strobe was supposed to make it look like the police were doing something, when nothing was in fact being done.)
Is the neighborhood watch “friendly” surveillance? As “opposed” to camera as pseudo-community?
The Quaker lives a tangible, rooted (not mystical) life.
Can I get the feed? Who has the right to see the data? Where does it go? How can we approach this without adding additional layers of surveillance to surveillance, without adding to the paranoia?
How deep is the problematic of surveillance? (Does it not go clear to our core- to the very conceptualization of our self, to who “I” am?)
We self-surveill, self-govern (Foucault).

What sort of embodied resistances can we inhabit? (And resistance seems too reactionary a word, in my opinion.) How can we live day-to-day? What other modes exist, beyond? Can we expand the holes, rather than directly resist? How can I walk out the door, right here, right now, beyond surveillance? (I was wishing for an easy utopic solution. *sigh*)

Beyond Surveillance Workshop (a Chicago portion of the International Day Against Video Surveillance)

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2pm Sunday, March 19, 2006
Mess Hall
6932 North Glenwood Avenue, Chicago
‘Morse’ stop on the Redline

An informal workshop experimenting beyond surveillance.

1. Participants will share their experiences in various formats (as you desire).

… reworded slave spirituals… surveillance cameras, massage therapy and the global sex trade… neighborhood surveillance cam survey… camera confiscation… your experience here…

2. Participants will discuss some of the central issues around surveillance.

* Cameras attempt to project the image they desire (to prevent). They are not (only) passive recorders of cultural exception, but rather active projectors of desired cultural norms. What changes when the “master” becomes much more abstract and disembodied? And what kind of embodied resistances make sense under such conditions? How can we go on? What are the positive aspects and positions of power which all participants take up? What does surveillance enable?

* Recording prevents change. You are whoever you were as far as the cameras are concerned. At what point are we no longer the person on the video? Are we ever? Are we addicted to seeing images of ourselves? What modes can we inhabit?

3. Participants will come up with some ways to move beyond surveillance AND actually try out and experiment with a few of them.

…live mock technical glitches!!!… pre-written actions undermining the “capture” of reality by presenting it as scripted… parodies of what cameras WANT to project/see… or don’t want to project/see, strut with labels on like “drugdealer”

To download flyers (if not attached to this email):
M19chi-bs-idavs.pdf
Contact:
beyondsurveillance at thefrictioninstitute.org
Also:
http://www.notbored.org/IDAVS.html

Beyond Surveillance Meeting Notes for 2/19/06 at some sandwich shop

Posted on by w

following are some rough notes from feb. 19. meeting with th. and myself. many questions to discuss. please add to them! what’s in <> is possible action/performance/experiments. especially add to those!

1. you can’t discuss surveillance without discussing race

2. or the money
(camera as way to make the neighborhood more “attractive” by moving undesirables out of sight; real estate developer’s weapon; reverse block-busting)

3. what is the implication of many cameras being bought with anti-terrorism $ ?
(the war on drugs, the war on terror, whatever you call it…)

4. cameras attempt to project the image they desire (to prevent). they are not only passive recorders of cultural exception, but rather active projectors of desired cultural norms.

5. cameras attempt to project docility and the idea of omnipresence. as with the slave/master relationship.

6. recording prevents change. you are whoever you were as far as the cameras are concerned. how long are records kept? at what point are we no longer the person on the video? are we ever?
(surveillance displaces the self with the image/object/commodity. where is the link between identity and self?)

7. remote surveillance allows presence while absent, control without risk. (like aerial bombardment instead of ground troops) who’s watching? and from where?

Jail

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More Blacks in JailMinority overrepresentation in the criminal and juvenile justice system
Activity:
Draw 10 people and label them by ethnicity according to the juvenile population of Cook County (p. 4).
Draw 10 people and label them by ethnicity according to the arrested juvenile population of Cook County (p. 4).
Draw 10 people and label them by ethnicity according to the confined (jailed) juvenile population of Cook County (p. 5).
Draw 10 people and label them by ethnicity according to the juvenile population of Cook County transferred to adult court (top left, p. 6).

What do you notice?
Why do you think this occurs?
In “Minding the Gap” there are statistics that say that whites are more likely to use drugs than blacks, yet the statistics above seem to imply the opposite. What’s going on?

Minding the Gap: An Assessment of Racial Disparity in Metropolitan Chicago

Charley Skedaddle: Gangs

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Web resources:
chicago gangs
gangs of chicago – Google Search
gangs of chicago research
gangs of chicago research 2
Post-Industrial Gang Research

new york gangs: historical
gangs of new york movie
Bill The Butcher

——————————————-
Activity:
1. In groups of 3 to 4, make a word-web concept map of everything you know about gangs in your neighborhood. Concepts might include: Why do they join? What do they do? How do they represent (colors/signs)? What are the names of local gangs? How do they join? Where are they located? What are the dangers? And so on.

Present one “hub” (concept) of your map to the class.

2. Watch the “Gangs” section of “Gangs of New York.” Make a word-web concept map about these historical civil-war era gangs in New York City. Use your concept map of current local gangs as a template for the layout and questions you need to answer.

3. How are local gangs now similar and different from civil-war era gangs in NYC? (Do they dress the same? Do they join for the same reasons? Do they do the same things? And so on.)

4. Think about the following questions and discuss with your group:
Should Charley have been in a gang? Should anyone be in a gang? Are there any “legitimate” (“good”) reasons to be in gang? Why or why not?