mark rylance and the nature theatre of oklahoma

Potential recruits for Kafka's Nature Theatre of Oklahoma (NTO) face an unenviable task: it is not clear what is expected. The Theatre is vast, all embracing and has no limits; it is nature itself. Recruits bring a prior self with them which they will now lose. But it is a leap in the dark with no obvious redemption; it is a theatre but actors are not being enlisted. On duty is the usual cast of clerks, bureaucrats and assistant bureaucrats with the addition of extras dressed as angels. Karl tries to clarify what is expected; do they want engineers, technicians or actor? are qualifications required? are European credentials accepted in Oklahoma? He has no papers; is that a problem? No answer. Finally he is assigned the role of minor technician with the name Negro. Having left one self behind the NTO cannot tell entrants what their new self is to be; would-be 'actors'  have to guess-I am not who I was but I don't know who I now am.

It is not a situation that calls for a therapist; Susie Orbach or Adam Phillips can't help these lost souls; the trick is to juggle many selves. Karl does this; he can be an actor, engineer, technician-whatever they want. He is a good liar. Mark Rylance calls this 'using yourself'';  in fact he does juggle with multiple selves; there is the prior self that he fears; the next self which the play offers and a third self through which he comments on the first two. It can be unnerving ie when he loses Rooster Byron for a while; lying and self lying certainly feature. Rylance can also use his 'self' to explain other 'selves' Watch The Grass Arena for example and then Barbaric Genius: John Healey's 'self' has been amplified

There is hope for actors joining the NTO.

damien hirst and bauhaus

Here is Damien Hirst at one of the most fabulous events of the party season-the Motilo 'with love' party at London's Le Baron; Damien is dancing with Anna Machkevitch in the smokily lit lazer-effect club area.80 years ago another party took place at a Bauhaus gathering; here little Bauhausers are decked out futuristically in tube or metal attire. The current Barbican exhibition is aptly titled 'Art as Life'; there is sculpture, textile,dolls, theatre, posters and photography including shots of bauhausers at play (gymnastics and metal parties)-art as life or a way of life.

Picnoleptic suggestions for the Chinese Politburo

co The Poliburo of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (PSCCCC) vigilantly  attends to all the material and psychic needs of the citizens. The citizens also need to be vigilant especially when interruptions occur in PSCCCC thinking. Recently Wen Jiabao warned against a return to the Cultural Revolution.Was he thinking of the overly zealous local actions of Bo Xilai and his wife? Or did he have in mind the ups and downs of Confucianism; once seen as midieval and next as fostering loyalty to the state but now perhaps a political threat?  The PSCCCC could learn from Kafka's Great Wall of China; workers on the wall operate a system of piecemeal construction so that once a 1000 yards is completed then, after due celebrations, the High Command transport them faraway to start another 1000 yard section; on this journey they see innumerable other partial sections of wall in the process of completion accompanied by the usual celebrations and so on for ever. These are stories of the mass management of peoples which pay careful attention to the mental states of wall builders; only this section of wall is ever visible. But yet more care could be lavished on the worker's soul. Specifically what is the optimal mental state for perpetual interruption? How do I best cope with only ever experiencing a 'bit' and never a whole? It is possible to make mass use of Virilio's idea of  picnolepsy where the worker's ego is not continuous but made up a series of little deaths with fits; during each fit there is no awareness only oblivion. It is in principal possible to calibrate the timing of fits with those moments when the High Command is planning to move wall workers to a new location; a process of inducing oblivion is required; the PSCCCC can adopt a similar routine to coincide with their periodic ideological interrruptions To imagine this, from the perspective of the worker's experience, just take a look at the fitful aspect of many of the dance sequences in Pina Bausch's Cafe Muller. The figures shake and convulse. Perhaps Gombrowicz is thinking of these Chinese wall builders when he talks about the 'grimace'; a picnoleptic fit is sure to make the victim grimace like the 'grimace duellists' in Ferdydurke.

damien hirst and Munch

Damien Hirst gets helpers to finish or do all of this art work. He says 'I can't be arsed doing it'. Houellebecq in his recent novel depicts Hirst and Koons dividing up the art market for fun. Why not go a step further and be like Tom Ripley who invents a fictional artist to make money: Derwatt. Derwatt acquires a reputation and value even though the paintings are fakes. There is a difference as Ripley gets Bernard Tufts, another character, to do the fakes. We never see Derwatt. Ripley invents the idea that the artist is living in Mexico. It is a pity Hirst lacks the bottle to do the same. We might hear more about all the underpaid Bernard Tufts (not even the mininum wage) that he employs to do his work so we'd never  have to see or listen to him;
Imagine if Peter Watkins was to make a film about Hirst following the method he uses in his film about Munch. Watkins criticizes the monoform nature of much cinema-fast paced linear narrative to keep people in their seats. In his film about Munch there is not one form but many. Almost in one shot we hear the artist coughing (TB), see an image of his childhood (more TB), one of his portraits and footage of writers etc who formed his intellectual milieu (Strindberg et al); also, spoken over, is a timeline of his era. How are these levels of representation to be worked out for Damien Hirst? If Watkins was to make a film (Munch-like) of Damien Hirst he can find material for every representational level from Youtube:

1. Damien + mates shouting and swearing at the Groucho club
2. an image of some his 'spots'-the ones he bothered to do himself
3. timeline of his era-Trump, Kardashian, Jade Goody (for sentiment)
4. Similar to Munch coughing the Hirst film needs kitsch sound to accompany the 'spots'; available from Amazon are Kitchen Craft-n-Fun Animal Sound Magnetic Clips (Energy Class A+). Each clip (spot) makes the noise of the pictured animal and is activated by simply opening the clip (spot). The clips (spots) have a magnet to fix on your fridge.

aeneas and klaus weber's ape

In the Aeneid, Aeneas is shown pictures of a far future which contains events and characters which are beyond his immediate comprehension. He has this experience more than once in the Aeneid. It happens to him in the Underworld after which he has to exit said domain via the Ivory Gate, the gate of false dreams. He cannot go out via the Gate of Horn (for dreams that will come true) for then he will see the future; he handles Venus' shield running his eyes over each piece and turning it over and over with his arms and hands. He 'delights in the likeness' much as chimps do; much as Klaus Weber's 'shape of the ape' does, seeing, wondering but not comprehending. Within the shield Aeneas dimly senses future images of Caesar Augustus, Anthony and Cleopatra. Klaus Weber's ape also dimly senses images: the images of Darwin, Lenin, the Nazis.

Tiresias' advice to Ulysses

In Horace's Satire 2-5 the poet reflects on the section of The Odyssey in which Ulysses descends into the underworld and there meets, amongst others, Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes. Tiresias can prophesy the future even in the underworld. He paints a picture of what awaits Ulysses: it is not a smooth, sweet journey home. Instead ship destroyed, men destroyed, he will find a world of pain at home- arrogant men devouring his goods. When Horace revisits this scene only the last prophecy interests Ulysses-money and goods. How can I regain my lost wealth he asks the Prophet who, surprised, remarks it ought to be enough to make it back to Ithaca and set eyes on his ancestral home. However if Ulysses is only interested in money then here are some lfrom the blind seer: he is to identify in Rome wealthy, childless and preferably witless landowners and ingratiate himself with them and thereby inherit their will-ie become a legacy hunter with all the self abasement that is required. Ulysses examines his soul and concludes that in former days (at Troy) he endured greater trials so he can surely endure this. Tiresias then provides a lengthy list of ideas of how this is to achieved: use flattery, creep up unobtrusively, don't overdo it; prostitute Penelope if required and so on. Fraenkel, the great German scholar, considered this satire to be acid, cynical and lurid. Not Horace's true nature. What about epode 8 (the one about his ex girlfriend's black teeth and decrepit age)?
Returning to the underworld imagine now Horace and Fraenkel (he is there- still groping his Oxford female seminar students) together  with Ulysses. Imagine further standing before these lost souls Tiresias now as Grayson Perry's The Father in pilgrim attire decked out with rags, tools, weapons and dangling behind the little, ursine talisman/god Alan Measles. No more lengthy descriptions of the future underworld careers of the assembled; instead the ragged figure raises his pilgrim stick aloft and Alan Measles appears aloft, long arms hovering over the company proclaiming HOLD YOUR BELIEFS LIGHTLY
The Father: a wise, enduring and resourceful figure-Alan Measles dangling behind him; compare to Israeli soldiers shambling back from the destruction of Gaza (handy being able to walk to work), the city reduced to rubble and flames, calling forth drones, rockets, jet bombers, missiles and tanks. The Sky TV channel Eurosport, during cycling races, carries an Israeli tourist board ad-Israel; land of creation; better is land of death and  destruction.

more on Odradek

W Benjamin sees Odradek as the 'the commodity that survives to no purpose' and through whom 'surrealism may come to an end' mutating into kitsch which sustains itself on an outlived world of things. Surely the point about Odradek is that it does survive and persist-in attics, doorways and at the bottom of stairs in various houses. For Odradek to be a kitsch object it would have to had a earlier purpose or immediacy since lost or outlived. Kafka says: 'anything that dies has had some kind of aim in life, some kind of activity, which has worn out; but that does not apply to Odradek'. Odradek has not lost shape or broken down having once been new and complete; 'nowhere is there an unfinished or unbroken surface' to suggest it is a 'remnant'.It is eternally complete and unchanging. That is what makes the Householder anxious when he bumps into it leaning against the banisters. Odradek endures yet he and his family will not. What if Kafka's householder had bumped into one of Orozco's yellow scooters while wandering round Prague in that period? More fun that meeting Odradek again. According to Benjamin when Orozco places his yellow scooters around cities his hand is catching hold of these objects (as if in a dream) at their most threadbare and timeworn point. But if someone walks past one of the yellow scooters surely he/she is able to see it as a use of kitsch itself. What would Benjamin have made of Svankmajer's A Week in the House?  Svankmajer is a fully paid up surrealist who hardly deals in the 'decrepit' aspect of objects-he may even be inspired by the 'threadbare and the timeworn': they have eloquence and a latent sensibility through being touched and heard- 'these objects are not dead artefacts to me. I lovingly give them starring roles in my films'. Svankmajer is an alchemist animating and reanimating the secret life of objects.