Deiknumi

Language gives the illusion of precision. Language promises that you can say exactly what you mean and that whoever you say it to will understand you without confusion, but this is not what happens.

I should make an exception for mathematical language, which can be precise - though as a result, there is a limited set of concepts which it can express. Perhaps the same extends to computer programming languages, but I haven't had enough experience with them to know.

I reject the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Even as a child, back when the only language I had access to was English*, I held concepts in my mind for which I had no words. For instance, I always wanted a word between "love" and "like", or a word for a relationship between "friend" and "lover". To be more precise, I wanted a word that captured the intensity of feeling implied by love/lover but with the innocence and freedom inherent in like/friend. I still haven't found a word I can use that doesn't get corrupted in one direction or the other.

*One might question whether there ever was such a time - but if back then I was sensitive enough to notice the differences between languages beyond their sounds, I was certainly unaware of it.

I also have trouble with language being serial. Information has to be delivered in a particular order, and the overall effect changes depending on the order that you choose. In English, you can arrange your clauses virtually however you like (commas, colons, semicolons and parentheses are your friends). In ancient Greek, the inflections allow you great freedom with word-order as well as clause-order - the expressive possibilities of which I have praised on many occasions - but it is only when I have time to sit down and think about the best order to deliver information that I can use this feature to my advantage. Otherwise I fall apart: AAAAAGH too many choices! and fall back into English.

But now I've discovered Native American languages which are highly morphological. One word can carry so much information that, ultimately, there are fewer words per sentence. What this means is that there are more concepts hitting you at once. To give you some sense of the different experience, try this:

antidisestablishmentarianism

This is an English word with many parts, but you are probably familiar with all of them.
anti - opposing
dis - breaking down
establish - bringing something into effect/recognition
ment - noun suffix indicating result or state
arian - noun/adjective suffix "believer in"
ism - noun suffix indicating theory/doctrine/position of opinion

Between these definitions, and the order of these parts, you know that the word refers to the doctrine against breaking down recognised institutions. But you receive all this information at the same time. It isn't like a sentence where some things come before others.

The cat pounced on the ball.
On the ball pounced the cat.
[Something] pounced, [and did so] on the ball - it was the cat.

Think about the differences between these three sentences. You change the emphasis - however subtly - by changing the order in which you introduce items. But suppose you wanted to give all three things (the cat, the ball, the act of pouncing) absolutely equal emphasis. In English, I find you can't.

But perhaps these highly morphological languages alleviate the problem?

I just came across this fascinating article. The specifics about the Mona Lisa don't interest me so much as the notion that a person's voice can be reconstructed from their bodily dimensions. I mean, it makes sense that one could figure out the size of the vocal folds, how sound would resonate through the skull, etc - though I certainly wouldn't have thought of it!

Perhaps the coolest thing about physical anthropology is realising how much we can tell from bodily remains. Even if it's just a tooth or a kneecap, it can lead to the reconstruction of so much more. Skulls seem especially telling; the tutorial where we got to look at prehistoric skulls certainly hammered that home. You can tell whether a creature was bipedal or quadrupedal, what sort of diet it had, and all manner of things about its brain just from its skull - never mind all the analyses you can do of teeth, especially on older specimens where you can even trace a creature's travels!

And it's not just bodies that are telling. Watching archaeologists at work is fascinating - a good archaeologist needs an eye for detail, so as to recognise all the little signs that something interesting might lie below. Stains on the ground, subtle changes in elevation or vegetation... wow.

Anthropologists are interpreters of signs, and the semiotics begins well before finds are made. What an amazing field to be in!

I find - and I think Saussure would agree, at least on some level - that all signs seem to involve a visible and invisible/implied component. In most instances, the signifier corresponds to the visible and the signified to the implied. With words, for example, you hear/see them plainly but what they refer to is "hidden". The word 'cat' is not a cat, but a cat does not have to be physically present for an English-speaker to understand what is meant when the word is heard or read.

But genes stand out among signs, because the signifiers (the particular sections of DNA) are hidden, whereas the signifieds (phenotypes) are plain for all to see. In attempting to decode the genome, we are hunting for signifiers - unlike decoding languages, where we have the signifiers and are searching for signifieds.

It seems to me - though admittedly my experience with this field is limited - that all semiotic activities pertaining to the interplay between human biology and its physical or psychological manifestations involve us having a signified and hunting for its signifier. Perhaps this is why there is a separate field of Biosemiotics. I wonder if it has different theories of signs, better suited for its purposes.

Or perhaps it is fallacious of me to attribute notions of cause to signifiers and effect to signifieds. Saussure emphasises the inseparable nature of a signified and signifier, claiming that both of them point at each other; in cases of cause-and-effect, the pointing does not go both ways. Or does it?

In Tuesday's Anthropology lecture on evolution and speciation, I found myself thinking how this model could explain much beyond biology. Can we not, for instance, speak of cultural evolution? When a group of people from one place go off to another geographical region, do they not adapt in their social and material practices to the new environment - sometimes to the point that they become a markedly separate "cultural species" from the population they left behind in the home country, especially in subsequent generations?

Except that, in my experience with cultural evolution, it tends to be populations that remain behind which evolve. The population which moves to the new place is more likely to cling to its old ways and resist changes to them. My Athenian friend Galatia, for instance, remarks that Greek communities in the US tend to uphold traditions to a much greater extent than is generally done in Greece itself. Similarly, people coming from India who visit Indo-Mauritian communities have remarked: "it's like India was 50-100 years ago!"

I just find it interesting how culture seems to favour sympatric speciation (which biologically has only been observed in labs), whereas biological speciation favours the allopatric mode.

And there is even greater irony when we throw language in! Because, for all language is intimately tied to culture, language evolution seems to follow the biological pattern. Language speciation tends to be allopatric or parapatric: new languages and dialects emerge in populations who move, or in different regions of the range where a language is spoken.

On the other hand, there are cases such as Kreol Morisien, which seems to be evolving faster than any other language I know. With English or French for instance, you can hardly tell the difference between the language spoken 10 years ago compared to the language spoken today. But in Mauritius, 10 years out of the country is enough to make someone sound antiquated.

The thing with languages, though, is that it is possible to know more than one simultaneously. My Mauritian relatives living abroad speak the language of whatever country they're in while there, using Morisien among themselves or if they go back to Mauritius. It's as though their Morisien becomes "evolutionarily dormant" so long as they aren't in Mauritius.

. . .
There could be an honours thesis in this!

I caught the interview with Ted Daeschler on The Colbert Report, and it was hysterical! Whle I don't see that anything came up in the interview that couldn't be understood by the layperson, I don't think it would have amused me as much were it not for the focus on Evolution in my anthropology classes at the moment. I did find myself wishing more had been said about Daeschler's discovery - but then again this was The Colbert Report, so of course they were going to tie it to current controversial events. I even foresaw that Colbert was going to have fun with overtly "disbelieving" evolutionary theory to someone who takes it for granted in his work. Nonetheless, it was well done and I was highly entertained!

It's amazing how material from both the Physical Anthropology and Saussurian Semiotics courses keeps coming up in 'mundane' life - and the courses play off each other so well, too! In the next few days I shall be posting at length about Evolution of Language and Culture as well as a piece on The Semiotics of Genes. Terrific mental fodder here!

Struggling with the monument essay: how exactly do I want to write about them? I know (as outlined in the last entry) that we can problematise how to define "monument", but that's not really what I want to look into. That's more like background, really - as in, I shall have to declare a few assumptions that way before I can carry on.

What follows behind the cut is me freewriting in an attempt to sort out my thoughts. Not very reader-friendly, I'm afraid. Feel free to read through if you are so inclined, but be warned that it isn't organised and I'm making a lot of references that I'm not explaining.

( Read more... )

Last night I found myself suddenly bursting with ideas concerning my final paper for the Visual Culture class. Of the topics available to us, I've chosen to write on Monuments and Memory. Behind the link you can see my brainstormings and get some idea where this is heading.

( Part One: Problems with Defining Monuments )

And sometime in the near future I'll be posting Part Two: why is it worth trying to define monuments at all?

On the other hand, we can play something of an Existentialist: just as nobody asked to be born in the first place, nobody asked to be born with artistic talent.

What happens if you have great talent in some area, but the opportunities it offers you are making you miserable? I have three friends who are prodigies (I do not use the term lightly) in different artistic fields, who started pursuing their respective specialisms in prestigious university programmes. All of them found themselves so miserable that they ended up walking out without finishing their degrees - for one fellow, when he only a few months away from his PhD!

I do not believe that anyone should be forced to become a slave to that talent - even if it is prodigal talent. Talented people are still, at the end of the day, people. But this begs the question of whether my sympathy with these people contradicts everything I have said concerning the importance of being responsible about having talent. Haven't these people, according to my earlier notes, been "irresponsible"?

I would argue, they have not.

There are different ways of being responsible with one's art. Studying that particular area is one aspect of it, but at the end of the day formal qualifications don't mean as much as what one actually does (or doesn't do) with their skills and understanding. Sometimes, being a responsible artist means stepping back from the art-world. Sometimes it means catering to the masses rather than the elite (or vice-versa). Sometimes it means focusing on effect rather than process, and doing things in ways that are presently 'unfashionable' because those ways are the most effective.

And, at the end of the day, Art is about preserving, interpreting, and sharing the human experience. With some artists, I wonder how much of an experience they really have, drowned as they are in training. A friend at a performing arts boarding school has a very regimented life with almost no free time - what kind of a life is that? Not that I am criticising her decision (for she has chosen it and is satisfied with it), but I have to wonder about the sort of art that produces. When you have excluded so much from your own life, what do you have left to share?

I'm coming to find that my recent struggles with Art revolve around notions of responsibility. To put it bluntly, I feel that the artistic milieu here has no sense of the responsibilities incurred upon them by being artists.

Indeed, I am sure that if I confronted them with this, many would respond: what responsibilities?

Now, as much as I may speak of this (and have spoken of it before) in terms of disgust, I do not mean to look down on people for valid differences of opinion. Lately I wonder about the extent to which my disgust is justified.

You see, until recently, I've been fighting all my life for the right to pursue artistic endeavours. My parents (and to a large extent the surrounding community, but my parents most significantly) saw Art on a spectrum that ran from waste of time (at best) to immoral (at worst). I had drilled into me that part of being a good and moral human being, in my case, was surpressing my creative/expressive drives. I even accepted this, until I was twelve or so.

Life-changing things happened in my twelfth year. I'll tend to focus on the morbid, but not all the significant events were disturbing.

For one thing, it was the year when my talents were brought to my attention: praise for my writing; being asked to join a choir that everyone else had to audition for; winning the Shakespearean acting competition. To be fair, it wasn't the first time these things had ever been brought to my attention, but this was the first time I believed it. I think, on some level, I didn't want to believe it before because I knew that my parents would never let me do anything with it, and I was still very much at a stage in my life where going against my parents would have been futile.

Now at this point I was in Saudi Arabia, in the midst of people who believed (among other things) that music involving anything beyond drums and voice goes against Islam. (Not everyone there took this stance - and I never believed it for a second - but there were enough people who believed it strongly enough that it was worth taking it for granted.) So when a girl in my class brought her flute to school one day, it was a really risky thing to do. I'd go as far as saying it was so risky she was stupid to have done it, but as you will see I am grateful that she did.

She got caught with the flute - by, of all people, the Islamiyat teacher. When she asked, "Is that flute yours?" the whole class went silent. Our poor classmate was really in for it now.

"Yes," she replied nervously.

"Can you play it?"

"Um, yeah..." (we were holding our breaths)

"Then in the last 10 minutes of the lesson, you must share your talent with us."

"WHAT?!" cried all the rest of us in shock.

"Well that's a commendable attitude!" said the teacher sarcastically. "How many of you can play an instrument? When God gives you talent, it's not for you to pretend it's not there - it's for you to do something with."

To this day I applaud her for saying that, and it is the heart of my artistic practice. I am meant to do something with these abilities; it is my responsibility to. It is this notion which gave me the courage to do things without my parents knowing. And when things came out to my parents (as they eventually did), I saw their criticisms in light of this notion. I felt they were telling me that I could never be responsible enough with my talents - so much so that, in my case, I had to keep them bottled up and hidden because the risk of me misusing them was too great. My fight to keep going with my Art was, more specifically, a fight to show that I could be responsible enough with them. I was going to do something - I didn't know what, but something so great and so beneficial for people that there was no way they could deny that my Art was indeed A Good Thing. And slowly they started to accept that they couldn't hold me back forever, and their disdain turned into indifference; they let me apply to study drama (though I didn't take that up in the end) and supported me coming here to do Cultural Studies.

And then I get here, and what do I find? Everyone goes on about "enjoying themselves" in Art, revelling in their ability to create with no purpose except the creation itself, and even holding in disdain anything that is created for a purpose. Art is this big leisurely enterprise that they deem important without ever saying why; everything is boiled down to "an impulse to create". It's the very attitude I've been fighting all my life to prove I don't have!

At the end of the day it might be nothing more than cultural difference, which is why I made my earlier disclaimer. Whatever the case, I'm perplexed and disappointed; apart from technical skill, I don't see that there's much any art class here can offer me. But technical skill is important (and something I need improvement on) so I'll receive that.

I know I'll miss her later
Wish I could bend my love to hate her
Wish I could be her creator
To twist her arms now
- from the song Sleep To Dream Her by the Dave Matthews Band

I know this song is about a relationship between people, but especially in these lines, it reminds me of the artistic process. It can even be argued the songwriter intended this, since he does refer directly to the experience of being a poihth/j (creator). As the song carries on, he also addresses a key function of artwork that I feel is all too often overlooked: that artwork preserves. And it is especially important for preserving the intangible things that are a crucial part of the human experience.

To look at it from a slightly different angle, one that is perhaps closer to the spirit of this song, artwork gives the artist power over their intangible experiences. The singer feels helpless because of his love and longing for this woman, and expresses this (very cleverly, in my opinion) through the metaphor of a Creator and its Creation: he wishes he could have power over her ("to twist her arms now") the way he would have power over something he were creating. We could even suppose that this female subject of the song is, instead of a literal woman, a personification of those powerful intangible experiences that we feel we must somehow subjugate or capture.

She stares up at the stars when
The stars fell from her hair then
I bent down to collect them
And then she was gone

The creator, through the process of symbolic creation, is collecting these fallen stars. The reasons behind it may range from the purely personal ("to be the light in her eyes"), to preserving older knowledge for younger generations, to the desire for something to be known and remembered by the whole world - but whatever the case, these created objects are all that remain once the experience or event has passed.

This space between us
Where wingless dreams fall earless
Will you not bear me witness
With your back to me now?

Another way of looking at it is that symbolic objects are created to turn people into witnesses. Again, sometimes this is a matter of personal need (I know that on countless occasions, abstruse concepts playing on my mind became clearer to me after I could inspect some article I created about them) and other times the witnesses must be other people. Either way, it is an attempt to bridge "this space between" ourselves and other people with their backs to us, to alert them to these "wingless dreams" that would otherwise "fall earless".

So while we have spoken of museums (in which category I include galleries) being receptacles of Memory, personally, I think it is more the artifacts/artwork within which are the receptacles. A museum is just a viewing-place. Admittedly, some museums are artifacts themselves - like the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, where the building is imbued with symbolic content in its architecture - but that's a special case.

. . .
I'm thinking that there's probably a decent final essay topic in this; something about artifacts and memory. But rather than an expository piece simply showing that there are artifacts which preserve memories, I find myself more interested in the process behind them. How do artifacts subjugate experiences/events and create witnesses? How does something acquire meaning?

His work is beautiful, sure, and clearly there is much thought, time, and hardship invested in it. I should find myself respecting him and his work. Yet half the time he speaks I want to laugh at him.

First of all, there's the notion of him taking his work far too seriously. It's something I shouldn't scoff at, because I know I take my own artwork very seriously and I'm sure that people find me just as laughable when I talk about it. But there is a difference in here somewhere.

The first time I noticed it was in the scene with his family. There seemed to be a sense of coldness towards them, a certain matter-of-factness about their presence which I found disturbing. As if they were taken for granted. They definitely seemed to be trivialised next to the artwork.

Wife: What are you going to make with the tree, Andy?
Andy: Who's paying you? (laughter) Who's paying you? Well I won't know until I get there now!

Lately I find it really grates on me when people become second place to artwork. Creating art should not be a selfish enterprise.

And then, of course, was the scene about the sheep. "We must get past the wooliness to experience the essence of sheep" - I can't believe he said it with abject seriousness! He explained his position, yes, and it really should have fallen into place from there... but I can't see that statement as anything but ridiculous. Perhaps if the shepherd had said it instead of him? I don't know.

I suppose I shall have to think on it all more. Maybe it's nothing more than my nearly automatic bias, lately, to any artwork I am instructed to like or take seriously. It just seems to me that so much artistic practice is done for the wrong reasons, that things are valued/frowned upon that shouldn't be. Maybe it's another instance of culture clash, or maybe I'm just changing as a person.

But whatever the reason, I do contend that I do not automatically care about artwork anymore. Now artwork has to prove itself to me, and show me why I should consider it as significant.

Unfortunately I had to turn the final drawing in before I could access a scanner, so I cannot include an image of it here.

The final drawing strayed very much from my initial idea. Originally, it was supposed to be something rather like this sketch. She was to have same costume and hairdo, but in a different pose (standing in releve, arms crossed over her chest, wielding twin swords). And of course, she was actually going to be drawn to look like me!

The more I played with it though, the less and less satisfied I became. The pose looked dramatic, but (as I discovered when I had someone try to pose for it) was anatomically impossible. It also didn't work with the costume, since the outfit included a belt (not seen in the digital sketch) that clearly would have restricted mobility. Now, part of the original concept was that this was supposed to be unrealistic to some degree - but it was coming to a point where I was having trouble suspending my own disbelief. Something had to be done.

Then, one day I was telling a friend about one of my favourite films, Asoka. I was commenting on the costumes, and in particular the battle gear of Kaurwaki. I don't know whether there is any historical accuracy in this outfit, and I am generally inclined to believe that nobody in their right mind would go into battle so dressed up (although in the context of this particular battle, it might have made sense to keep one's valuables at hand, and the least cumbersome way to do that might well be to wear them). Regardless, I love it - it's one of the most gorgeous and original fantasy outfits I've seen! And I especially like the notion of a fantasy warrior outfit based on an Indian aesthetic.

So, I decided that The Rayassin would be similarly attired. I didn't want to copy the outfit verbatim, though, because the point here was not to portray myself as Kaurwaki but to create an ensemble in that style. So, I redesigned the makeup, the breastplate and the belt to include my own patterns and symbols. The result is something which is my own, and yet where the allusion to Asoka is still evident.

Technically, the drawing could have been better. I am happy with the face and hair, which after many many practice sketches looks sufficiently like me (or at least, looks like I do in the photo I was using for reference). The rest of the body could have used more work, as well as the metal parts of the costume. But it figures, I suppose, since I haven't studied how to draw metallic objects or how to draw the entire human body anywhere near as much as I have studied how to draw the face (and in particular, my own face). In spite of these criticisms, however, I am certainly pleased with the overall effect!

This photo & text montage illustrates my online persona Raya Wolfsun. It didn't come out quite as expected, but I am nonetheless satisfied with the result...

( Click here for image )

I often refer to myself as a "memory-whore" (although lately I think that claiming to "have memory-lust" is a better way of expressing it) - by which I mean, I tend very much towards reminiscence and reflections on the past (especially reflections on what I was like at various points in the past). So, one of my major themes became the portrayal of some of my most significant memories.

The other thing that I find really defines me is the multicultural synthesis. I wanted some sort of representation of the different cultures that make up the one I call my own, and this became my other major theme.

The final image consists of 4 layers. Each layer combines a photograph and an associated block of text (which, unless stated otherwise, was written by me.) From bottom to top, the layers are:

Layer 1
Photo: negative photograph of a staircase
Text:
The men at the top of the stairs - they opened
my eyes, & turned me into a wreck - but
since they failed to take my life, I decided
I wasn't going to let myself succeed either

Layer 2
Photo: me facing upwards and looking rather haggard
Text:
rastaa vahii aur musaafir vahii
ek taaraa na jaane kahaan chhup gayaa
duniyaa vahii duniyaavaale vahii
koii kyaa jaane kisakaa jahaan luT gayaa
merii aankhon men rahe, kaun jo tujhase kahe
maine dil tujhako diyaa

The road is the same, the traveller the same
But my guiding star has disappeared
The world is the same, the cosmos unchanged
Unaware that a life is shattered beyond recognition
Is anyone left who will say to me
"I give my heart entirely to you?"

- from the song Ramaiya Vastavaiya from the Hindi film Sri 420. Lyricist: Shankar Jahaistan.

Layer 3
Photo: me, wearing a churidar and Indian jewellery, brandishing a keris (Malaysian dagger).
Text:
And for the longest time
I could not tell which sphere
I belonged to - ultimately
it was the synthesis
of all of them.

Layer 4
Photo: profile of me with feathery red-streaked hair
Text:
pollai morphai twn daimoniwn
polla d'aelptws krainousi theoi
kai t'adokethent' ouk etheleste
twn t'adokethwn poron heure theos
toiwnd' apebe tode pragma

Many forms take supernatural affairs:
many unexpected things are arranged by the gods
and things anticipated fail to come about.
God finds a means for unexpected things:
So it was in this affair.

- last 5 lines of Euripides' Alcestis

This notion of the Curio Cabinet fascinates me. We spoke of them as being displays of wealth, evidence that the owner had the money to travel and collect the contents within. That they were mini-museums, showcasing the curiosities of other places...

There are two key words here: curiosities and other. It is almost taken for granted that what you bring back from some other place will turn out to be bizarre (but usually charmingly so). One might argue that anything you would collect for a curio cabinet would have to be. What would be the point of going all that way and bringing back something that you could find in your everyday life? Not particularly exciting, for instance, to show that on a tiny island 10,000 miles away they use the same mass-produced disposable plastic cups we use here.

Of course, sometimes it can prove interesting to show that things elsewhere are done in the same way as where you come from, if the expectation was that things would be done wholly differently. For instance, my American grandparents couldn't resist taking back a McDonald's menu from Oman - they had not expected to expected to encounter McDonald's in Oman! Arguably, that menu still had curiosity value since it had notable differences to one from America: it was printed in Arabic on one side, prices were given in a different currency, and so on. But it was still more exciting than a menu from any ostensibly local restaurant, bilingual or otherwise...

And then, we have the case of my room. Mum used to refer to my room as "the museum", and indeed my room is like one large curio cabinet with its amalgamation of objects from all around the world. But I don't see it as a display of curiosities. If anything, it is the presence of these things that makes my room familiar to me! When these items were acquired, it was not because they struck me as being different to what I'm used to. If anything, they stand for things that are very much a part of me - my heritage, places I've lived in and become attached to, significant incidents.

They are the constant reminder that my current circumstances are not what I'm used to; if it makes sense to say this, they are the reminder of their absence. I look at my khanjar and think how odd it is to be in a place where people would consider is strange to see someone wearing a ceremonial dagger - indeed, such would be illegal here! Perhaps with good reason, but the notion is still an oddity to me...

Yet when people come to my room, they are struck by the sense of other. I show and tell them about my possessions like someone leading a museum tour. Sometimes I feel that by this I am doing those items a disservice, but at the very least, I do make it clear that they were not collected for the sake of collecting. They are symbols; they are a physical, visual, embodiment of memories. They are Readymades after the fashion of the Baroness, not of Duchamp.

I was thrilled when I read the guidelines for the DW assignment - they are perfectly suited to the theme I want to work on!

So, I have to produce two self-portraits: one of them a realistic pencil drawing, the other a digital paint/photo montage. I've decided that these will be depictions of my two major online personae.

Raya Wolfsun
This is the persona most of you know: the one where I try as far as possible to give you a sense of what I'm "really" like. I use quotation marks because, as far as I'm concerned, any crafted persona shows something very real about the person who plays it; I do not mean to suggest that other personae are "false". But Raya Wolfsun has the most in common with my offline self. She is my age and gender; she has my memories, my skills, my feelings. She is me when I am "just being myself" online.

And yet... she is just a representation. One that tries to be realistic, but it is a representation nonetheless. To be fair, I don't consider my offline self to be anything more than a representation either, but it's certainly a different one, and possibly more effective in terms of staunch realism. You could say, Raya Wolfsun is a highly realistic pencil sketch whereas Raya Offline is a photograph.

Ironically, this is the persona I want to depict as a montage. Or perhaps it isn't so ironic, since I can readily use photographs. In line with the subtitle of The Raya Monologues ("I feel, therefore I am") the focus of this piece will be an identity constructed through emotion-memory. It will involve a combination of text, photographs, and things digitally painted to portray me and the crucial moments that have shaped me.

The Rayassin
In role-playing games I normally play a character called The Rayassin. She is a stealthier, sexier, infinitely more confident version of me - but as such, she is also colder-hearted and more ruthless. I like to think of her as a mode that is fun and refreshing to slip into from time to time, in a controlled setting, but not someone I would ultimately want to be 24/7. Her morals are questionable, most of her choices self-serving and selfish. She is action without remorse.

She also looks good in tight black outfits and expertly wields two curvy daggers. Hey, we all can dream, right?

The "unreality" of this persona is key. She might be believable at first glance, but on her own (i.e. not connected to the rest of me) she's pretty hollow. Which is why she is the one I want to depict by means of a pencil drawing - one which looks realistic on the outset, but which clearly shows something that isn't real.

Perhaps I am a little... biased (for lack of a better term) about this film, on account of the circumstances in which I viewed it.

First of all, there was my literal point of view. I cannot help thinking that the film was not designed to be viewed from below, but that is how I watched it: lying on my back on the floor, part of me beneath the screen. So I was looking up at things unfolding above me, rather like when one watches the sky.

Secondly, this was definitely a film that was seen more than anything else. My Russian vocabulary being a paltry five words (smikhotvornei*, I know), I was totally dependent on the subtitles to understand dialogue. And unfortunately the two central characters had amazingly similar voices, and since we see events through the protagonist's eyes (and since his companion often had his back turned) it was impossible to tell, at times, who was saying what.

That being said, I would argue that these "inconveniences" actually lent something positive. One thing I had to notice was the scale of the Winter Palace: large paintings, huge walls, very high ceilings. Being on the floor and looking up at these things drove home that point. Secondly, my difficulties understanding what was going on helped me to identify with the protagonist. He, like me, had to rely largely on what he could see - for although he had knowledge of Russian (even if he didn't know how he came by it!) he couldn't really interact with the people he saw. (It seems to me that the one person he could talk to was, even for him, more confusing than anything else!) For both of us, it was about deriving an understanding of the situation almost entirely from visual cues - like noticing that "time-travel" was occuring only because we recognised costumes or historical figures/events belonging to vastly different periods.

Amazing what this little thing called Point Of View can do!

________________
* ridiculous

Now in DW we're moving into portraiture. I am glad to be moving back into my comfort zone, but at the same time, I am determined not to fall into the temptation of getting back on an old track without considering new possibilities...

Last time we talked, Maralynn brought to my attention that this theme of The Veil ties in really well with the notion of portraiture. It seems like an obvious connection, yet it had never occurred to me before... that being said though, I was not eager to pursue it at first. The last thing I want to do is put out a polarised version of either perspective - The Veil As Oppressor or The Veil As Liberator - and initially I couldn't think of any other way I could deal with the theme. The former is in line with my experience, but I could not portray that with a clear conscience and add to the stereotypes held by the grossly uninformed; at the same time, I'd feel hypocritical being a spokesperson for the other point of view when it reflects quite the opposite of what I went through.

But I had forgotten that The Veil is not always a literal veil.

Not only that, but I have been reminded that dealing with people online is a very powerful example of being behind a metaphorical Veil. Nobody can see you online, unless you let them; even then, they only see of you as much or as little as you let them. More than that, the Internet veil gives you concealment and control to the point that you can construct a persona - or several - extremely far-removed from your offline self...

So we say, anyway. I would argue that while you can give a different story every time for what you look like or where you're from or your biological gender, your online persona(e) still reflect(s) you. They talk like you talk and only know what you know... not to mention, it speaks volumes about a person when you consider what things (if any) they choose to "lie" about in their online personae, and why.

So... for this upcoming self-portrait assignment that's been hinted at, I'm thinking to do something about different personae I've held - Internet and otherwise. As always, I find myself thinking that the biggest challenge lies in having to make my point visually (since this is, after all, a visual arts class!)

It was one thing playing the flaneur when there were people to tell about it. Those were the days when Woolf and Eliot were new to me, and there was comfort in knowing that I wasn't the only one who derived pleasure from seeking out beauty in odd places (including, sometimes, my own distress) in the course of these urban ramblings. More recently, those were the days tou= xoreu/thj: rain-dancing in NYC and three weeks of text messages scrawled from a cellphone in Chicago

standing on a bridge & watching the nightlights dancing in the water like we did & how I wish you were here... <3

Then they disappeared to be replaced by people who've heard it all before & read it all before and the best I can hope for is oh that's nice, dear.

No enthusiasm. Just hurting.

& desperate not to sound emo if it won't manage to move people

In the opening scenes (the ones with text), it was claimed that this was turning film into new artform distinct from painting and theatre, and if I remember correctly there was specific mention of doing away with plot.

And sure, the film was a stream of random images that appeared to have nothing to do with each other. Painful to sit through, I won't deny it (and I'm sure it would have been unbearably boring without the music). And then I happened upon a line of thought which made the film suddenly interesting.

The Man (with The Camera) became, in my mind, the central character. I found myself identifying with him quite well, as one who pays attention to things observed in everyday life and collects mental images which contain puncta* for me, if for nobody else. So I, not being The Man, could not understand the significance of his images. Doesn't matter. Giving them this context, I found myself trying to piece together what sort of fellow this Man is, that these of all images should leap out at him. Perhaps if I had paid closer attention (or considered the film in this vein from the very start) I'd have had some theories about his character worth sharing.

I think the music was what inspired this line of thought: at one point I noticed that it was presented along with particular images (and juxtapositions of images) so as to create certain emotional / interpretative responses. It seemed obvious to me (though I will admit I could be wrong) that there was some evidence of contexts being intentionally given to things, even if the contexts changed for each image (or set of images).

I nonetheless get the impression that the filmmakers would feel I was imposing this characterisation and sense-making where they didn't intend it. Sorry guys; that's what your presentation evoked in my mind!

_________
* plural of punctum, as in the Barthesian sense

I decided to follow a hunch.

I put on all the music that reminds me of him, and prepared my wire and dowel to craft another chain by Viking Wire-Knitting (VWK). I listened to my music, I talked to people, I wove. I felt like the Lady of Shallott:

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web

and I let my thoughts run freely.

I felt I was having trouble focusing because of the recent events with him that kept invading my mental space - but then I realised, all this academic talk of The Geometric vs. The Lyrical in my sketchbooks was a smokescreen of sorts for the real issue: him and me. He stands for the things the Geometric stands for, and I stand for the realm of the Lyrical. They seem to be polar opposites, yet the Geometric falls into the Lyrical - for the Lyrical is composed of the Geometric, and the Geometric is simply a means of describing the Lyrical. Which is why we seem to have everything in common but nothing in common.

By the end of it, I had a page full of sketches and notes. I still have to actually put the thing together, but at least I know now what I'm doing!