Sarahel's Semiotics 4U

the Author never really existed anyway, after the pen left the page

tbh, the main point I was trying to make is that a lot of talk about sport at this kind of level gets really reductive and tries to turn it into a power struggle or a playing out of freudian aggression or something, but I think its more interesting to look at the internal forms of the thing where there are more ideas about movement and form and space, also strategy and compromise. I mean there are a lot of ideas about how to get from here to there on a soccer pitch that I think a lot of painters right now could take on board for example. Also, the creative space afforded by sport and how within the playing field the movement of the players constantly reactivates and redefines the nature of spaces and politicises the spatial aspects of the board. Not in a chess way, which is much more regulated and mechanical than most sports (don't jump down my throat about that, the grid naturally involves a different way of politicising space imo) but in a way that is gestural and imaginative and energetic.

the Author never really existed anyway, after the pen left the page

― a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful (dyao), Tuesday, August 11, 2009 10:56 PM (1 minute ago)

thank u celebrity author Michel Foucault <3

haha I was actually miming Barthes, but I'll take Foucault

Tiarnan, you're basically touting Nomadology as a key text for understanding field sports? Marry me. That shit is potent.

women's sports bras = sexist?

i haven't read this stuff in a while so i wasn't sure but i had always thought they didn't really care about what 'true' meant, they just wanted to point out things that were 'not true' and true is just like, an empty hole in the center. or it was something you could only experience if you were raised by wolves. but also that the point of materialism is that meaning is man-made.

Marx, and to a certain degree Debord, believed that some form of cultural revolution would result in greater "truth" in terms of lived experience/society.

Art is found in the viewer, not the object

the Author never really existed anyway, after the pen left the page

The art is subjective whether it's by a third party or the orginator.

uh i suppose I am, i'm also trying to get Todd Chilton to watch some ice hockey tbh

cycling/athletics are where the finish line = mayan 2012 btw

yes, the biggest pile of crap I ever encountered in college was the idea that pieces of Art in and of themselves had artistic qualities which were universally appreciable

well, besides this one pile in the fourth floor bathroom of the library at 2 AM in the morning

yerk!

Deleuze/Guattari tout chess as a straight-up striation of space, an urban organisation taken to its logical and controllable absolute. Field sports offer more opportunity for unforseeable agency, for literal nomadism. Imagine isobars on a football pitch. Constantly evolving pressures, paths rather than routes. Thus does it align itself with the artistic impulse, the paths to creation.

http://mwcapacity.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/untitled-triquad-1.jpg i'm obsessed with how almost awesome this is but it is clear that todd was always picked last

Deleuze/Guattari ... blah ... they seem to be extremely fashionable right now in art circles. Thus, I am suspicious.

I basically wrote a really huge and enjoyable poem incorporating all this (Nomadology meets sports, among other things) a year ago and it's still my defining work of art, so I'm somewhat in my element atm.

omg that is beautiful

D/G are extremely fashionable right now in crit circles because they are AWESOME

they're considered way lame in art circles in my experience right now

tbh I was only introduced to them by a crazy wacky far-left professor as an afterthought because I was heading in that direction anyway, and I considered them to be 'well obscure'. I felt kinda special, reading this shit that nobody else my age was reading. Except all the Philosophy students, obv.

like i think you need to be quoting wolstonecraft or lyotard or something prolly

xp - The contrarian in me suspects that they are fashionable because their theories lend themselves to bullshit rationales for whimsical garbage.

they're considered way lame in art circles in my experience right now

a couple years ago, it seemed like every vaguely conceptual/intellectual art show had some Deleuze/Guattari reference in the description ... and a lot of them were lame.

it's kinda like how Foucault is art fag central so you get all shades of condescension from theory poofs if you're into him now I think, it's like double meta contrarianism

a couple years ago, it seemed like every vaguely conceptual/intellectual art show had some Deleuze/Guattari reference in the description ... and a lot of them were lame.

― free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Tuesday, August 11, 2009 11:13 PM (30 seconds ago)

this is kinda why tho

Thus does it align itself with the artistic impulse, the paths to creation.

This is so lame, no offense. To prize a path rather than a route is mere romanticism and to see the easy layout of chess as one thing while ingorning that a certain Messi run looks a lot like a certain Maradona run looks a lot like x player run - the semi-infinite recurrence that a fan or a player of many years will see over and over during a lifetime of games; wing play, crosses, slotted balls, playing lanes, the long ball, etc... is just old timey bohemianism. It's quaint but not terribly useful or insghtful.

^^ or it's internalized capitalist thinking ... too many artists/curators referring to Foucault, I must pick someone else to distinguish myself.

that was xp to ikr.

aw

I was never aware of D/G outside of my studies. I read and absorbed Nomadology in an academic context (and indeed used references culled therefrom for a successful finals paper), and only interpolated elements into poetry because my own artistic response was so compulsive.

Everything in football is a path, rather than a route. Ethpecially if you have a lithp.

to clarify MW, you mean that the formulations and strategies of team sport are finite and repeatable and so the element of choice of ways of moving are not as plentiful as they seem so there is a False choice?

(Admittedly, there are some paths more well-trodden than others)

we're not complaining about you, unless your poetry was published in artforum or something.

yeah but I think that helps when you're talking about strategies for employing space, what I meant was that the nuance of chess really depend on the whole, whereas the nuance of sports can be much more localised and idiosyncratic

want to get into chess more fwiw

I think my annoyance at the D&G-rationalizing art projects, is that by citing the theorists they are implying that their projects have conceptual heft, when a lot of the time, they seem whimsical and lacking in rigor.

tbh my experience of art school has led me to realize that most uses of the word querying/deconstructing etc. actually mean nothing of the sort, but that the guy who made it kinda thought about some of that stuff once jus sayin

Extracts were published in a low-key brochure made by a university friend. The thing I most fervently derived from D&G was the infinite possibility for mischief and mayhem, rather than any high-minded art-wank sombriety, and also the idea that even in space, things are linked, and can recur in different forms. Citing a philosopher and then demonstrating none of the principles implied is the height of philistinism.

Chess is a striated whole, yes, according to nomad theory, and field sports are a lot more disjointed. Space is even more important in the latter, because it actually exists. The spacelessness of chess is what makes it so controllable and unartistic. Not that it is a bad activity. I was enormously rapt by chess not so far back. It's very good fun.

what is an art circle

http://www.abstractdigitalartgallery.com/artgallery-psion005-abstract-digital-art-fractal-Psytrip.jpg

http://www.ccca.ca/history/isaacs/english/images/68chess1.jpg btw

http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/images/Pillar8-Thought-and-Art-Vitruvian-Man-Leonardo-da-Vinci.jpg
art circle

xp most of D&G fans were social practices/relational aesthetics people ... I think.

fart circle

lol his navel is the centre of the circle, i never noticed that

sarahel do you mean professional flashmob organisers because if ever a nomadic principle has been hijacked for nefarious ends, that is it

to clarify MW, you mean that the formulations and strategies of team sport are finite and repeatable and so the element of choice of ways of moving are not as plentiful as they seem so there is a False choice?

Essentially, yes. I get impatient with either/or comparisons which purport to rely on some kind of 'hard science' or quantifiable differences but are really just aesthetic or personal, when it's precisely what's personal or aesthetic (to me) whcih justifies and explaining why is more fun and more rewarding than proving why. That said, I do rather love Borges' labyrinth of endless desert.

somewhere I have a list of parody social practices/relational aesthetics art projects I made up, if anyone's interested.

xp - in a similar vein as flashmobs ... yes.

MW, I meant that the minutiae of sport involved unforseeable paths. There are undoubtedly tactical 'routes' which are just as worthy of study, and perhaps even more worthy of admiration. There is something magnificent about a team using good tactics to pull off a result it wouldn't otherwise have pulled off. The specifics, well, they're the paths taken. Nothing scientific about them. The science is in the approximation of organisation.

I would like to see that list Miss El

the context is - a friend of mine did a project at some conference for social practices/relational aesthetics and said most of the other projects were lame, so I made these up.

1. birfday barfday - I ate too much cake and threw up at my 8th birthday
party. It was a slumber party. I was really embarrassed. I have commissioned
a fashionable indie clothing designer from Portland to create adult sized
replicas of the clothes me and my friends wore at the party. I will invite
attendees to reenact my 8th birthday party, and this time I won't throw up.

2. learning to love mommy more - a number of prepaid cell phones will be
available for participants to call their mothers. Participants will also
fill out surveys noting what they appreciate most about their mothers as
well as their first name and their mother's phone number. Participants will
also have the option to call one of the mothers on the list and relate to
her what her child values about her that they might not be able to or wish
to say.

3. cashing in your CHiPs - this project will bring people together - artists
and non-artists alike - through their reminiscences about the 70s television
program CHiPs. Teams will be formed based on a participant survey of whether
they preferred Ponch or John.

4. am I the cute one? - participants will bring with them a photo of someone
they've been told they resemble but believe they are better looking than.
They will then go around the room holding up the photo next to their face
and asking everyone, "Who is cuter?"

5. everyone's shit stinks - stool samples will be collected from
participants and there will be comparative smell tests. Participants will
also be required to write a one page diaristic essay about what they ate the
day before and recount a significant food memory.

Chess/Football variables in common

Use of space wrt limitations
Speed (especially with timed chess play)

Mental acuity and agility

Physical prowess and agility (admittedly for chess, if you can breathe, cogitate, see, raise your arm and grasp a piece, you're good. It's considered good form, though not necessary to be able to kick a football with a relative degree of accuracy in soccer)

Style of play/tactics

Naffness of kit (Don't laugh, many a chessmaster was felled by unexpected dazzle-ships patterned scarfs worn over lilac and blue striped shirts with silver piping 'round the sleeve hems.)

Fans/Groupies

Feel free to add your own...

!!!!

That is an amazing post.

Sarahel please tell us abt the semiotics of which theorists ppl use to illustrate the importance of their stuff.

Gravel: crap ... I've temporarily stopped paying attention. I'll have to do some research, and get back to you.

MW, I meant that the minutiae of sport involved unforseeable paths.

However, I cannot forsee many paths in chess whereas 'God' or some awesome robot from the future with a super brain/computer could see all the variables on the pitch as *ho hum* so predictable. "If he punts it up there, the defender will be able to get to the ball before the attacker, whereas if he passes it out to the winger, they'll get bogged down. Best to run at the defense a bit and see if you can shake them up. Maybe get one your backs up a bit and see if you can get that guy on your right to run down the touchline. The you pass it *just so* (robot brain makes 20 zillion precise physical calculations) and he volleys it into the box *just so* (whir, whir) and then you can charge at the box, dive *just so* and head the ball to *boink, zap* that exact spot over the keeper's left where he hesitates so much."

I bet you my robot could do all that and beat you at chess and compose a sonata all at once.