"the skin of a robot . . .

. . . vibrates with pleasure/matrons and gigolos, carouse in the parlor/their hand grenade eyes, impotent and blind . . . " (beck, "lazy flies").

so i'm thinking, of course (regrettably) i have to provide language. of course all artists want their art to speak for them . . . and it does and it can and it will . . . but surely . . . not to everyone. for some robots, vibratory pleasure transcends verbal/lexical/written/spoken-as-words language (hereafter VLWSAWL). . . it travels differently. but so for others, for patrons and banks and tenure and ratings review boards, language (VLWSAWL) becomes necessary (Brian Massumi might have it that this language is "subtractive"). with hope, an artist can choose a method of articulation that does not crush her vision, and maybe this is the promise of new media networks (i'm just shining it up, here; of course, there are and have been alternative methods . . . flyers, graffitti, word-of-mouth/buzz, clubtalk, zines, etc.). but it's not even this that i want to talk about or even think about. and it's so horridly arrogant of me to think that we, that i can take it up, that i can gesture toward coherent thoughts regarding the role of/need for OR valid and acceptable resistance to (generating) VLWSAWL language in the context of attempting to make/use/distribute art . . . its central rhetorical/structural/aesthetic concepts and its tangential associations and whatnot. on the one hand, i don't always see the need to attempt to control the central conceptualizations (and some will argue that this makes the work arhetorical) . . . because of course i can never control the central conceptualizations . . . never completely and this has always been true (frustrating to many to imagine their/our discourses of power in this light, i suppose. right). see, so here it seems that i desperately need language to sort out my distinctions, but it is actually true that i've developed a disposition that, activated in certain production cycles (usually in filmmaking) disallows me from thinking strictly in these terms (although neither can i avoid it completely). and i think it must be true that i would not have seen myself emerging w/ this disposition were it not for my work in production, in making films. so whereas this post wanted (earlier) to be my apology for my arrogance, i'm pretty certain that i can't offer it. i can concede that it's arrogance, this desire to explore methods of articulation beyond language (beyond VLWSAWL, that is . . . although look at my last post about my latest film . . . inspired by written text. ha. ha.) . . . so but back to pleasure: go watch this video. better, watch the video for "hell yes" at the beck site. or watch this version. watch the whole thing before reading any further. no cheating.












homework:
imagine filming your response.
film it.


here's my homework.