Europe Central

This novel lives up remarkably well to its gushy blurbs in that it really seems to debase conventional, historical works. Or at least Europe Central offers a different path by which we end up just as enlightened, just as informed and maybe slightly more entertained. This last virtue is certainly debatable as much for Vollmann's intermittent dryness as for the stunning tombs that exist in the more traditional, historical pantheon. This book is an alternative to the formula, and so refreshing, brave and original.

Something I found particularly interesting about Vollmann's construction was his ability to show the scaffolding of his work. In the first chapter, The Saviors, goes on to tell one of his short tales, all the while making metaphors and allusions to the Hebrew alphabet, one character after another. I like to think that this was a devise Vollmann used in order to get through writing the chapter -- sort of signposts for where he was going, where he wanted to go and how long he could take getting there. It's used to great effect in that --  thematically -- it's appropriate to the story. It breaks up the story in just the way he might have wanted it to. Also, it's just a little strange, which is a nice way to prime readers into what's to come.

My favorite tale (and I suspect Vollmann's too) concerns Shostakovich. The composer gets the epigraph of the book ("The majority of my symphonies are tombstones"), and inspires the style of the narrative. Both Vollmann and Shostakovich seem to be driven by the desire to inject some meaning into the nightmare of the 20th century by pulling out short, encapsulated moments or themes and arranging them in such a way as to turn a series of anecdotes into something digestible first and maybe enjoyable and beautiful second.

New Story

New story I'm writing for Jim starts: 

Looking around, there seems to be a demand to start these stories quickly, but I’m too tired for that pseudo-intellectual, Clooney cleverness.

Then, a loud explosion! 17 clowns saunter in with malice. My dead dog dies. Laura Linney’s mom cries out for her PTSD hamster. Sunlight bakes the barren Pine Barrens of Great New Jersey. The physics of this world are       something. A big, really big, big, whatever. Steven’s best friend goes to the website and orders            something…

eh

The Two Spaces of Heaven

• • 
    

    
    

    Saccenti’s video for Depeche Mode’s Heaven is a formalist exercise, but irregular. The

    video isn’t an exercise in rote procedure or minimalist repetition. Heaven is a video that

    suggests analytic conclusions. In other words, the piece sidesteps formality as a means to

    instead adopt formality as an end. The primary phenomenal yield is intellectual rather

    than spontaneous or aesthetic. In this way, Heaven is happily pondered. It burns slowly

    the way Depeche Mode’s track does. In the end, what’s most profitable about this mode

    of creation is its power to demand the viewers’ attention in just the way a visual artist of

    Saccenti’s caliber needs. The audience is forced into analyzing the video – she can’t

    watch passively – and so is disarmed from the incredible lighting, effects and

    compositions riding along the rhythms of the smoldering track.

    The video captures two spaces. First is the here and now of the present. Second is

    an incommensurable space of vertical time. The space of the present includes Depeche

    Mode playing in a decrepit and empty building. The building is big and empty like an old

    church. It’s gray and washed out. The second space is surreal and spatially infinite. The

    space includes entities in masks and robes. They could be human if not for the

    phantasmal and blue landscapes reflected in their glowing auras. If there’s a narrative

    dimension to Heaven, it’s simply the meeting of these two worlds. This is a metaphor,

    however, functioning to formally describe the relation between these two worlds and

    what they represent.

    One key to understanding the relation between these spaces is to notice how they

    are spatially represented in the video. The space of the here and now is represented in its

    regular orientation. The second space is represented as perpendicular to this space in the

    following way: Throughout the video, there are tokens that transgress the division of the

    two spaces. There is a mask, for instance, that can be seen on the altar behind the band as

    well as on some of the faces of the entities in the second world. Most significantly, there

    is a portal of blue light emanating from the wall behind the altar, shining in the same

    direction the band is facing. The portal takes many shapes and patterns (subject to

    interpretation in their own right), but what’s significant is the manifestation of this portal

    on the floor of the second world. We should take these instances of the portal to be

    literally the same. The spatial orientation of the two worlds deduced from this

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    perspectival clue represent the worlds’ spatiotemporal incommensurability. Of course

    there is another major token that appears in both spaces, namely a massive tree. The tree

    sits in the background of the surreal world, but also appears in a virtual outline in the

    world of the here and now. Significantly, the tree is oriented the way a tree would be in

    normal reality; however, these trees shouldn’t be taken as literal instances of the same

    token. Their symbolic significance will be considered.

    In any case, any correspondence between the two spaces should be taken as

    immaterial, supernatural or hypothetical. One might attempt to interpret this relation as

    religious or mental or otherwise, but Saccenti’s aim is purely formal, and thus abstracts

    from all potential content the way a logical formulation might.

    In the same way, we might conceive of the relation between the entities of the

    first space and the second space to conform to relations like angels and mortals; brains

    and states of consciousness; matter and forms, etc. These claims cannot be satisfied just

    since the possibility of one set compared to the next is ambiguous – and for good reason.

    What the viewer is treated to in Heaven is a formal treatise of all relations of this type.

    Saccenti is after a bigger truth.

    There are various correspondences between people in the space of the here and

    now (members in the band) and the entities of the second world. These might each be

    examined in turn. Each plays a strong role in the unfolding of the video.

    First and foremost is the proposed correspondence between the lead singer (in the

    space of here and now), and the entity in the pointed black mask. Saccenti relates these

    characters in two ways. First, obliquely – second, literally. Both characters occupy the

    very center of nearly every frame they appear in. Often, their images overlap in the center

    of the frame. In one such instance, we see a more literal interaction. The masked entity

    forges a skull in her hands, right in front of her waist. The image of the skull overlaps

    with the lead singer’s head. We should interpret this along the same lines as we had the

    spatial relation between the two worlds. The lead singer should represent the here and

    present. The entity forging the skull should be thought of as logically prior to the

    articulation of this or any human being. She stands as a kind of transcendental

    precondition for articulation in general.

    3

    Again, this relation might be thought in terms of god/man, sense/referent,

    whatever. But we should see the supernatural entities (and the world they inhabit) as

    ambiguous and novel for a reason. There are references biblical, Buddhist and voodooist

    – among others. The viewer has to pick a way to look at it.

    Working backwards, lets think of the entity in the black pointed mask as the

    ground or precondition for all present, extended, here-and-now, entities. Lets think of the

    singer of the band as the embodiment of such actualized presence and necessity. We

    might even constrain this interpretation further by considering the role of the centerpiece

    of the video: the massive tree.

    I take it that there are two overlapping ways of understanding the role of the tree

    in Heaven. First and most obvious is the tree as a symbol of life. The tree pervades the

    entire exercise in order to remind the viewer the domain of the piece: the set of living

    beings. This interpretation is too strong, especially if we consider its consequences. This

    interpretation would change the scope of the piece from the strictly formal to the purely

    mental. Instead of being a treatise on the formal/logical structure of things, it rather

    becomes an analysis of mind and experience. One may attempt to identify these two

    spheres (the logical and the mental), but it isn’t necessary or called for. The target of the

    piece is at least formal, and at most mental. To hedge and take up the former thesis

    shouldn’t detract from what could hypothetically be a psychical reading.

    Under our formal reading, anyway, we should read the tree as the topology in

    which Saccenti’s formal system rests. Here we might read just one of Saccenti’s

    philosophical conclusions; namely that the dialectic of absence/presence,

    necessity/contingency, a prioricity/a posertiorisity… rest upon some higher order

    principle or precondition. This principle or precondition is represented by the tree in its

    ability to pervade both spaces and adapt its articulation to the laws and forms of the

    disjoint world. In one space, the tree sits tall in the floating, celestial world. In another

    space, the tree takes the shape of an illusion or an inference. It takes the shape of an

    illusion when it appears in the church in a dark cloud, superimposed on the building’s

    walls. It takes the shape of an inference as a virtual projection fills in parts of the building

    that have apparently deteriorated. Within that virtual projection lays the tree again. We

    should take this shot to imply that the tree once stood in the deteriorated building. So be it

    4

    formal space (the supernatural world), modal space (the illusion) or actual space (the

    virtual projection), the tree remains and is unadulterated by each of these spaces.

    Lets look at another corresponding pair between the two spaces. There is an altar

    in the building. On the altar there is a statuette that holds a mask that is shared by one of

    the supernatural entities. This relation is a semantic one rather than a physical or

    metaphysical one. The relation takes up the problem of representing something physically

    in the present that is not itself extended or physically present. Understand this relation as

    similar to the relation between numbers as abstract entities and numerals as particular

    signs. We might take the abstract entity in Heaven to be melancholy or loneliness since

    there is a tear on the mask, and the entity wearing it is the only creature that is in solitude

    throughout the piece, but it doesn’t matter. The altar is merely the sign attempting to

    semantically capture whatever that abstract referent may be. What does Saccenti

    conclude about this relation? This is not perfectly clear, but there are distinct clues. For

    one, there is something else that relates the altar to the entity besides the mask. Both the

    altar and the solitary entity stick out from the rest of the video in a very particular way.

    First, where the building is stark and formally arranged, the altar is maximalist and

    chaotic. It is covered in statuettes, candles, aging foliage, glass, etc. Similarly the way the

    solitary, masked entity is filmed and arranged sticks out from the other shots of the

    supernatural world. The entity is disrobed and moves around in a contorted way. Candles

    and a fiery, blue halo usually surround her. In contrast, the other entities are framed in a

    dark celestial void, and stand in ritualistic poses. We should conclude that the semantic

    relationship represents a pearl of identity (the masks), but that this identity is surrounded

    by ambiguity and subterfuge.

    We should consider one final correspondence between the two spaces of Heaven

    (though there are likely others). I take this final relation to be the one that best marries the

    video to the track – and its articulation pervades the entire piece. The relation I have in

    mind reverses the relationship between the two spaces that we’ve considered up until

    now. Usually, the space of the here and now represents the actualized, the necessary, the

    present, etc., while the supernatural space represents the contingent, ephemeral, and

    formal. The relation between the musicians’ song and the robed entities lying in the

    portal presents the reverse to remarkable effect. The music (the song) is here the eternal

    5

    and formal embodiment of something that is very physically represented by the robed

    entities of the supernatural space. While the music carries on, the entities are physically

    affected. They are either caressed by bands of light or electrocuted by it. The light

    physically embodies the song in following its rhythm and representing its tone.

    Here I should stick by my formalist reading and say that what we might conclude

    here is that the relation between the strictly formal/logical, and the physical/actual, are

    not hard and fast. What is the actualization or articulation of some formal structure may

    well be the formal structure of some further articulation — and visa versa. However, just

    in case this interpretation comes off as overly technical and soulless, we might, just for an

    example, look to the song to see just how heartfelt and beautiful this piece has the power

    to be. The lyrics of the song describe disappearing in love and trust. The metaphor is fire

    and rays of light. The two entities resting in the portal lose themselves in embrace: their

    heads roll slowly and their mouths open. In contrast, we sometimes see the entities alone,

    lying in a ring of harsh light, wounded and convulsing in a disturbing and mechanical

    sequence. Perhaps this is the result of running themes like loneliness and love (inherent in

    Depeche Mode’s song) through Saccenti’s theoretical structure.

    
    

Must Do Good

  This is a piece by philosopher Santiago Zabala. I take from his capital 'B's that he's a sort of Heideggerian looking to scold analytic philosophy for swapping symbols around an old, corrupted paradigm, and failing to abstract far enough into more "existential" matters. This is a kind of weird prejudice I thought a critical field like philosophy was totally beyond. Couldn't the technical work of analytic philosophy just be the kind of Heideggerian artwork that opens up a new world of discourse? Alain Badiou, who Zabala points out as an important, contemporary philosopher, seems to recognize this importance. Just look at his treatment of set theory in Being and Event.

This is a paper by philosopher Timothy Williamson (thank you Dennis). In it, Williamson gives a really excellent argument for a more technical methodology that does well to rise above the prejudices in Zabala's article.

But, he's got them too:

Infra

The oblong spots of bristling grasses hold still but for sporadic, ticking blades disturbed by insects, persons or falling nuts from scrawny, white-trunked trees. Out past the dust bowled clearing, crests of folded green pigment outline the trees covered in small, dark leaves from the wide, bright varieties. They stack up like pretend hillsides. 

Nowhere To Run, South Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2010
Richard Mosse