The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

Public Domain, Inc. is pleased to announce the call for PERFORATIONS 29.
Guest editor for this issue will be Dr. Thomas Mical, Carleton
University School of Architecture.

As usual with perforations, deadlines are somewhat fluid but please
notify Dr. Mical or Robert Cheatham of your intent by February 15
2007 in order to be included in the release notification.

Article length is at your discretion. Experimental hypertexts are
especially welcome. Other forms of media, video, etc., may have
length restrictions, please cc media editor Chea Prince or technical
editor, Jim Demmers.

If you have any questions please query one of the editors.

        -------------------------------------

Guest Editor:
          Dr. Thomas Mical
                   thomas_mical@carleton.ca

Senior Editor:
           Robert Cheatham
                    zeug@pd.org

Technical Editor
            Jim Demmers
                    Jdemmers@pd.org

Media Editor:
            Chea Prince
                    Chea@pd.org

Hauntologies, or Spectral Space
Call for Submissions

This issue of Perforations asks for informed speculations in art,
literature, architecture, and aesthetics concerning the ethereal
others which are never quite present or absent : including uncanny
presences outside the frame of representation, anamorphic blurs of
concepts or images; leaking, stained, or spectral spaces,
disappearing figures or soluble identities; of all that sometimes
works like miasmas, pneumas, and vapors; and all possible
manifestations of specters (real or imaginary). This includes
speculative revenants of repetitions of all sort including
catastrophic trauma (the spectral delays/deferrals of Freudian
'nachtraglichkeit') as well as any embeddings of notions of 'eternal
return,' as having hauntological portent for communities and thought
to come.

In its entirety, the issue seeks to selectively map an ephemeral
cartography (a haunto-topography) of the range of barely discernible
ghosts, these "ontological specks" or "pathological kernels", that
traverse the instrumental Cartesian worldview of "clear and distinct"
entities. Authors are asked to chase and capture the multiple
potential meanings and effects of their favorite ontological spectre.
                                  -----------------------------------------

Formed in 1991 to examine issues of theory, art, culture and
community in a saturated age of technical media, Perforations is
perhaps the longest continuously running journal on-line.


The call for perforations 30, HUT TECH, will be released soon.

Perforations raison d'tre here:
http://www.pd.org/~chea/Perforations/perf1/perf-intro.html

Perforations index page:
http://www.pd.org/~chea/HTML/perforations-index.html

podcasts, videos, and other projects here:
http://www.pd.org

my work is perfect roundness


my work is perfect roundness
there's nowhere to break in
perfect music's soundless
silent in the din
of others' cries and speaking
always in the light
of bodies cursed and leaking
wounded in the night.
i cannot stomach answers
i cannot harbor talk
languages are cancers
speech an idle squawk
the tension in my style
nothing is at stake
i'm thinking all the while
for buried closure's sake
bones are made from flesh
flesh is made from bones
caught in indra's mesh
speaking monotones
i closed the doors to thought
and opened wide to life
whatever is, was sought
appearances are strife
i closed the world's thick door
i gathered meanings all
and always what's in store
has always been my pall
i lived inside my death
and died outside my work
my breath was dying breath
i died inside the murk
that struggled spoke in cant
said nothing left to say
said nothing left to rant
decoded my mainstay
what fell apart lay far away
what's nearer haunted me
i conquered near and far alway
what's near taunted me
what's far deserted me
in utter quietude
i circled circled me
my language hewn and rude
i cast away the spell
and burned symbolic core
dark days upon me fell
and night upon me bore -
"my work is perfect roundness
i see within the night
i hear in perfect silence
i die within the light" -
so do not speak o stranger
o gods stay stock and still
i never was in danger
of thought i've had my fill
i worked my way through column
language text and poem
theory hard and solemn
allowed me in its home
theory cold and wondered
brought me to an end
from earth i am asundered
there's no way left to wend
there's nothing left to send
from earth i was and thundered
from death-life i did fend
from life-death nothing pondered
and this was what i penned
and this was vowed and written
and like a missive kenned
and sealed and forgotten
and brought once more to bend
against all conversation
against discussion's play
without equivocation
that closes down the way