The Virtual Reality of Yunsum Dimsum

The Plane of Immanence

"Thinking provokes general indifference.

It is a dangerous exercise nevertheless. Indeed, it is only when the danger become obvious that indifference ceases, but they often remain hidden and barely perceptible, inherent in the  enterprise. Precisely because the plane of immanence is pre-philosophical and does not immediately take effect with concepts, it implies a sort of groping experimentation and its layout resorts to measures that are not very respectable, rational or reasonable.These measures belong to the order of dreams, of pathological processes, esoteric experiences, drunkeness and excess.

We head for the horizon, on the plane of immanence, and we return with bloodshot eyes, yet they are eyes of the mind.

Even Descartes had his dream. To think is always to follow the witch's flight....danger takes on another meaning: it becomes a case of obvious consequences when pure immanence provokes a strong, instinctive disapproval in public opinion, and the nature of the created concepts strengthens this disapproval.

This is because one does not think without becoming something else, something that does not think--an animal, a molecule, a particle--and that comes back to thought and revives it.

The plane of immanence is like a section of chaos and acts like a sieve. In fact, chaos is characterized less by the absence of determinations than by the speed with which they take shape and vanish.  This is not a movement from one opinion to the other but on the contrary, the impossibility of a connection between them, since one does not appear without the other having already disappeared, and one appears as disappearance when the other disappears as outline. Chaos makes chaotic and undoes every consistency in the infinite.The problem of philosophy is to acquire a consistency without losing the infinite into which thought plunges...

To give consistency without losing anything of the infinite...."

What is Philosophy?
DELEUZE & GUATTARI

Philosophy in the Flesh

"It is the body that makes spiritual experience passionate, that brings to its intense desire and pleasure, pain, delight, remorse. Without all these things, spirituality is bland. In the world's spiritual traditions, sex and art and music and dance and the taste of food have been for millenia forms of spiritual experience just as much as ritual practice, meditation, and prayer.

The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, the intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experience becomes the basis of passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepard. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath.

The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the seevice not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience.

Cognitive science, the science of mind and the brain, has in its brief existence  been enormously fruitful. It has given us a way to know ourselves  better, to see how our physical being-flesh, blood, sinew, hormone, cell, and synapse-all things we encounter daily in the world make us who we are."

"This is Philosophy in the Flesh."

Lakoff and Johnson

URGENT APPEAL TO SAVE IRAQ'S ACADEMICS.

http://www.petitiononline.com/Iraqacad/

To: special rapporteur on summary executions at UNHCHR in Geneva and international Human Rights & Law organisations
URGENT APPEAL TO SAVE IRAQ'S ACADEMICS.
Call for action to save Iraq's Academics

[ English ] - [ Arabic ] - [ Nederlands ] - [ Portuguese ] - [ Japanese ]

URGENT APPEAL TO SAVE IRAQ'S ACADEMICS.
A little known aspect of the tragedy engulfing Iraq is the systematic liquidation of the country's academics. Even according to conservative estimates, over 250 educators have been assassinated, and many hundreds more have disappeared. With thousands fleeing the country in fear for their lives, not only is Iraq undergoing a major brain drain, the secular middle class - which has refused to be co-opted by the US occupation - is being decimated, with far-reaching consequences for the future of Iraq.

The wave of assassinations appears non-partisan and non-sectarian, targeting women as well as men, and is countrywide. It is indiscriminate of expertise: professors of geography, history and Arabic literature as well as science are among the dead. Not one individual has been apprehended in connection with these assassinations.

According to the United Nations University, some 84 per cent of Iraq's institutions of higher education have already been burnt, looted or destroyed.

1. We appeal to organisations which work to enforce or defend international humanitarian law to put these crimes on the agenda.

2. We request that an independent international investigation be launched immediately to probe these extrajudicial killings. This investigation should also examine the issue of responsibility to clearly identify who is accountable for this state of affairs. We appeal to the special rapporteur on summary executions at UNHCHR in Geneva.

This petition was launched by the BRussells Tribunal and is already endorsed by CEOSI (Spain), the Portuguese hearing of the WTI, Iraktribunal.de (Germany), the Swedish Antiwar committee, the IAC (USA), the International Association of Middle East Studies (IAMES), the German Middle East Studies Association (DAVO) and the European Association for Middle Eastern Studies (EURAMES), and several personalities, like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Tony Benn, Eduardo Galeano, John Pilger and Michael Parenti. See the list of endorsers.

See also the call for action underneath and more information on www.brusselstribunal.org/Academics.htm
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Call for action to save Iraq's Academics

1. We call upon all people, especially academics and students, to help end the silence that surrounds the ongoing crime of the assassination of Iraqi academics and the destruction of Iraqi's educational infrastructure, and support Iraqi academics' right and hope to live in an independent, democratic Iraq, free of foreign occupation and hegemony.

2. We urge that academic institutions and organisations declare solidarity with their Iraqi colleagues.

3. We urge that academics forge links between Iraqi educators, both in exile and in Iraq, and universities worldwide.

4. We urge that student organisations link with Iraqi student organisations.

5. We urge that educators mobilise colleagues and concerned citizens to take up the cause of the salvation of Iraq's intellectual wealth, by organising seminars, teach-ins and forums on the plight of Iraq's academics.

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Academics.htm

News and Info Blogs

For bite-size, candidly written and no-holds-barred information on the latest in politics, tech gadgets and miscellaneous media coverage , log on to the blogs below as alternatives for your  news diet for 2006.

Buzzmachine-for business, media and international affairs.
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Dailykos-for politics
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Gizmodo- for tech gadgets
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Slashdot-News for Nerds
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information courtesy of FP:Foreign Policy Magazine, Nov/Dec 2005

A West Coast New Year

A time spent with long absent friends. Catching up, decidedly warmer weather, and eating well...

Special thanks to Gregg, Carol, Kevin and Dave for ushering in the New Year.
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Christmas in Vermont

Brooklyn's UN headed up to Vermont for the snow and slopes upon the conjuring of itinerary magic by the ever reliable Mr K...          

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Gig

The November 05 version of Kane Juan's regular Friday M-Bar gig at Broome Street...

pics 

dj

Kiki Smith & Chuck Close

Spending some time in SF and meeting up with old friends.

Came across two collection of works well worth seeing exhibited as a double bill at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

"It's only through the particular personal manipulations of the basic units that you can build a transcendent experience that becomes greater than the sum of its parts."-Chuck  Close

"I think the body as a subject, not consciously, but because it is one form that we all share, it is something that everyone has their own authentic experience with." -Kiki Smith

SFMOMA

Vote for Sonny!

Singapore's own  music prodigy, DJ Sonny has been nominated for the Street  Style Asia 2005  Awards.

Visit the site  to vote in affirmation of his street cred.
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Visit Zouk to dance to his music.
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Strike!

The Performance Studies Department in support of the Graduate Students' Union strike has been holding classes away from campus. Yesterday, we had a class in a synagogue and another at a gay and lesbian support centre. Cliched as this may sound, one great thing about this city is the diversity in opinions and voices, and the guts of those wanting to speak to make themselves heard.

For more information, see attached article...

The Nerds Are Pissed
New York University opts for war with its best and brightest
by Tom Robbins November
15th, 2005 11:28 AM

Download the_nerds_are_pissed.doc

Performa 05

Akiko Ichikawa Annika Eriksson Banks Violette Bas Jan Ader Bernar Venet Berni Searle Breyer P-Orridge Bruce McClure Bruce Pearson Carey Young Carsten Höller Cat Mazza Ceal Floyer Charles Atlas Chris Peck Christian Holstad Christian Marclay Christoph Keller Clifford Owens Coco Fusco Derek Jackson Derric Adams Discoteca Flaming Star Ei Arakawa Emily Sundblad Francis Alÿs Free Radio HDTS free103point9 Geliti Ivan Monforte Jack Smith Jamie Isenstein Jason Dodge Jesper Just Jim O’Rourke John Armleder John Tremblay Juliana Snapper Julie Tolentino Jutta Koether Karl Holmqvist Kate Pocrass Koo Jeong-A Larry Krone Laurie Simmons LEE WALTON Loudmouth Collective Lovett/Codagnone Lucy Raven Luther Price “The role of PERFORMA05 is of utmost importance in drawing attention, yet again to the history and on-going development of performance art.” – Marina Abramovic Mary Coble Melik Ohanian Michael Smith Michelle Handelman Mieskuoro Huutajat Millree Hughes MTAA Mungo Thomson My Barbarian neuroTransmitter Nicolás Dumit Estevez Nina Katchadourian Pablo Helguera Paul D. Miller AKA DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid Peter Coffin Piero Golia Pierre Huyghe Rafael Sánchez Rene Daalder Ron Athey Sabrina Gschwandtner Sharon Hayes Sislej Xhafa Suara Welitoff and Thalia Zedek Tamy Ben-Tor Tom Johnson Tony Conrad Troy Richards Vaginal Davis Vlatka Horvat Wanda Raimundi-Ortíz Yoko Ono

PERFORMA 05
November
NYC

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Global Voices Online

Global Voices Online.
The world is talking. Are you listening?

Quoted:
"Global Voices Weblog is an international effort to diversify the conversation taking place online by involving speakers from around the world, and developing tools, institutions and relationships to help make these voices heard."

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Martin Heidegger

"For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression 'being'. We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed."

"Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of being. But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression 'being'? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question. Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the meaning of being and to do so concretely. Our provisional aim is the interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of being..."

Heidegger, Sein und Zeit

Reda Briki's Halloween Gig

Let Reda Briki electrify your Halloween.

Howl along with the tribal beat.

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Morpheus Creative

More than a decade ago, this feisty dynamo was already displaying her innate entrepreneurial and creative spirit by exchanging her self-made  'scrungies' ( hair contraptions made of cloth wrapped around rubber bands... for those of you who didn't grow up in the early nineties ...)in class for two dollars(?... my memory is failing me...) a pop. It can be testified that they were well worth the investment...there are still one or two working pieces in my closet!

Now the boss of design and communications company Morpheus Creative, this amazing woman has recently added a new title to her many accomplishments :

WIFE-aka boss of an entity otherwise known as husband.

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Congratulations dearie!

Joyce Tan

Announcing the birth of Joyce Tan Online...

Babes... you look fantabulous!

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Intro your photographer please.
xoxoxox.smuak.

Martyn Weaver

"Architecture... is more open to conceptions of embodiment than many other disciplines,which is perhaps why it has actively sort to open itself to deconstructive and nomadic interventions...Traces of the body are always there in architecture."

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"After it is built, structure is still not a fixed entity. It moves and changes, depending on how it is used, what is done with it and to it, and how open it is to even further change. What sorts of metamorphoses does structure undergo when it's already there? What sorts of becomings can it engender?"

Elizabeth Grosz-Embodying Space

"ONCE"

Each time you photograph water it is different. We are mostly water.

NACHRUL

Cyber Narratives

"Cybertypes" and "How we became Post-human" question the construction and re-construction of the technologically enabled self.

How are we being changed inherently via the technology that we embrace? While "Cybertypes"'s Nakamura problematizes the notion of an 'utopian' space of virtual equality, positing the stance that cultural and social stereotypes of race and gender continue to re-enact themselves on-line, Hayles in "Post-human" argues for the legitimacy and importance of situating our disembodied cyber-selves and information back into a/our material body.

As I type this and you read this, who am I communicating with? Are we connecting/connected through the words you see floating on the interface of your screen right now? Hello... who are you? Hello. Where am I?

Rats, swans and shit Weather

Its pouring acid rain and evaporated dirt in NYC. The subways are soaked with grey suspect matter dragged in from drenched feet and plastic remains of half eaten soggy..god knows what... threatening to choke the screeching wheels of the subways.

The rats are having a field day.

Quickly snapped a picture on the way out of school with umbrella in one hand, bag tucked under the underarms, bundled up in a coat with the wind threatening to blow me unto the road where the lights were flashing red. Very unglamorous.

Ran across the streets with my winter boots. Ok its only fall but I'll take dry and dorky to cool and soaked any day. What are these girls doing tiptoeing around with open toed heels in this weather?

Pretty wet swans...