i find the idea that things can make sense by not making sense quite annoying. annoying both because it’s true and because it makes it harder to make things that don’t make sense.
“The concept of ‘affect’ in contrast, works from a different foundation, where the alterity of the non-human (including film), is irreducible to human experience. Therefore the mode of enquiry into the affectual relation between human and non-human is charactertised by a search for connection, points of fleeting attachment that allow an imprint of a different order. Affect describes a very different marking to effect, in that it defies the distinction between bodily emotional response and rational comprehension, or in the demarcation of conscious and unconscious processes. The affectual as a sensory apprehension, however is not only a feature belonging to the arts, but can also be located in the illogical operations of a rampant image-based multinational capitalism…” (Harbord, The Evolution of Film 2007: 120-121). link.
william gibson on the appeal of transcendence, america and obama:
“Transcendence is part of the American cultural experience and I wouldn’t expect it to go away. It hasn’t been popular for a long time. It takes a particular kind of darkness to bring it out. It tends to emerge in times of major generational shift.” from.
here’s some american music. affectual abstraction as accumulated humming.
“…For affect is at once an in intensely experienced state, and a fleeting trance. Thus it both pulls us into a deeply felt resonant state, but fails to provide that as an enduring potential. The affectual phrased in this way, operates by capitalism’s rule, as a desirable state that is in need of constant renewal.” (ibid: 122)
the opening of the film is about descent – physically – pre-emptively – pre-post-ly (interpre-titles contextualise it as inbetween). the refix is a mirror of ascent – down to the crashing cannon. of course descent and ascent are much the same thing – transition/confluence (cut to river). and european high-culture doesn’t look so high when viewed from an aeroplane. but herzog is medieval not modernist.
In glacial-paced Taiwanese cinema news – RIP Edward Yang who died on June 29th aged 49. He was probably best known in the anglophone academy through Frederic Jameson’s chapter on his film The Terrorizer (1986). An obituary by Steven Shaviro can be found here.
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The king is dead, long live the king. What better way to start a new reign than a Diana concert – establishing a(nother) perpetual 10 year nostalgia loop. “Today we celebrate her rebirth”. Even the stars have to make way for the moon. Prince William claps in double time. Gordon Brown as avatar landlord of a maternal national body. Meanwhile apocalyptic weather betrays the new king’s inability to maintain ecological balance (now understood in scientific rather than relgiious terms).
puffy at Sunday’s Diana concert
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Further north Sami folksong (call it joik) from here. This is a marriage song in kildin.