The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive


Text from 2 Chicago Openport Performances

this is a placemarker for font and size
i learn nothing from my work. my work learns from me.
this is so stupid. this is so stupid. ehllo hello. nathan -
somewhere near the begimning of 'the silent film era'
actresses were accompanied by orchestras or musicians
of their choosing to get into the mood of the otherwise silent
so this is how it's going to be. what i do (here) is try to type,
well at one point someone told me I couldn't type (I'm showing you now
heheh! - anyway I try and TYPE something until you're bored or someonne
pulls me out of here (I mean Chicago, not Links Hall) - anyway so I try
to entertain you - wait, please there's more coming...
this part was videotaped at Rilke's Grave in Raran, SW
we're reading - well, Foofwa d'Imobilite and Maud Liardon - are -
reading the tombstone - and well, I"m playing the organ, that's
somewhere else in the alps -
the sooner a train comes along the sooner I'm saved here. i'd better
explain this
this is a model of a dancer moving through motion capture equipment
that has some broken sensors sending the signals out to infinity where
they collapse, grief stricken, and return, something like the rturn of
the repressed. Now here is the return of the repressed, just a second
here -
ok, it's more or less below freezing out there in the Gruyere
ok, this isn't getting anywhere yet. i'mm not a particularly good
performance artist. I'm cheating, I recorded this stuff beforehand -
look around you - there aren't any naked people in the room at the
moment, nor a waterfall for that matter... this is a deconstruction of
a gun and on the left is someone dancing more or less and disappearing
into the light.
<thinking of content... war, viollence, stupidity, let's all kill
President Bush! - ok, I knw you'rethinking, this is "illeagal," but
what if we do this together?" -> yeah, well, ok, this will happen.
let's back up.
we won't kill bush, we'll just wound him -
so - just in case you wondered, the hum you're hearing isn't from my
laptop, it's in the system here in Links Hall and in fact I tend to
love it -on the left is my avatar disappearing in Second Life because I
programmed it to get away with it so it can go through cliffs and stuff.
now yhou're hearing the hum of the planet, literally - this is very low
frequency radio stuff coming through - the antennas are modified by the
performers - transforming the sound - Maud Liardon atthe end of a
particularly exhausting day.
maud machine - there's a file here called rottate i'll try to find it
hold on the machine aspect is clearer
by the way: the title of this is "The Difference Between the Analog and
the Binary Mode of Relating Real-Time bodies to the world" -
this was shortened from the title "My Partner is My Buddha"
this is literally the Maud Machine - why literrally?
this is Azure generating very low frequency coupling with an antenna
somewhere in Orange County California
these are dead avatars
this is another dead avatar.
ok what you're hearing is an imitation of a 78 record created from an
event in very low frequency radio stuff.
this is really stupid.l i'll whos you what i feel like.
ok that's an assassin bug on the right. now we're looking at the
wilderness.
when we work and we always do and we work together sometimes and we
don't we try to harnass
we try to harness the digital and return it to the real world.
there of course is still a real world, don't believe the theorists.
where is it? it's among the polar bears who are starving and have
turned cannibal
it's among the elephans which have taken to raping as a result of
population pressure.
it among the fifty thousand birds that died at the world trade center
site as a result of the fucked up pillars of light which messed up
migration routes - as a result they died of exhaustion
this is the deconstruction of a tree, a real tree, with a ditial
scanner.
I'm not sure why this is important, but possibly in anotehr fifty years
or so we might not have trees.
well we won't have "we" either
this is my sad ronin in second life -
when I work in second life i go to thebottom of the ocean
then i don't have to deal with cleverness and messy building
and people flying by.
i can just do something maybe there
Cris Cheek should know where this sound is from, the only thing I
didn't do here, the rest for whatever is mine.
this was done after abu gharayb. those blades are from a wind farm in
West Virgina. think aboutg wind farms - like the beams of lightfrom the
world trade center, most of these have been responsible for the deaths
of tens of thousands of birds. they fly into it.
the avatar was takenpart and taken apart and taken apart
this is Azure Carter being scanned while moving - this results in the
disappearance of Azure Carter, any trace of her, in the digital realm.
I'd show this to you if I could remember where it is!
ok, this is the result of that maneuver more or less, you can see the
body sliced -
we're back trying to suture things back together from digital to analog.
if someone can tell me when twenty-five minutes or so are gone I can
wrap this up.
at the moment I'm thinking: abjection/politics
on the left, avatars imitating real-life people
on the right, real-life people imitatin avatars.
notice the people (on the right) we refer to as "The Bobsie Twins"
What coordination!
This took years to perfect
i used to do these things with the idea of a 'moral" or content or
"content" or a "sememe " or something behind what you're seeing on the
screen.
then it occurred to me
there's nothing we can do at this point to save - well, our own selves,
species from extinction, inundations, the stupidies - that's stupdi,
stupidities of fascist presidents - so we might as well just play and
make faces in restaurants
because maybe all we can do is dance
oh that's so stupid again
but it's true!
and it's true I can't dance!
so ...
so it's true that'
that there's a letter maybe beneath this one going somewhere
my partner exploding with the motion capture equipment going into
gunfire -
well I want you to believe this is gunfire
while a vacuum tube is deconstruct simultaneously
well I'd like you to believe it's deconstructed.
what's stupid here is I have only one screen and I want to have
equipment on the floro!
floor!
more and more equipment, something I can disappear into!
I'll have to settle for
for some sort of entertainment
i want to thank everyone here for allowing us to present!
and Foofwa d'Imobilite and Maud Liardon for their brillians
And Azure Carter for her support and brilliance
And President bush for making this possible
and the Swiss Government for funding this in part
and the Alps for just being there.
thank you.


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anguish disappears when our world suffers the most
an image weeps. an image does not suffer.
no, an image suffers the most.
dear buddha, i will suffer for you.
thank you, alan sondheim.
nothing is real anymore, is it? is what? is nothing?
i am your electric-onic
i am your electronic buzz bomb
i will kill all of you fuckers. i will kill everyone. don't forget -
when you leave here tonight YOU WILL BE DEAD (honest, I really mean
this more than I mean anything in the world) - signed, Mr. Bush. Let us
[...]
If I can't be Buddha I will kill myself.
Then after I kill myself I will kill you.
Today I thought about the French Empire and the American Empire.
The end.
Alan Sondheim.
ok if you have any questions.
Ok I have a question. What is that stuff moving about.
"Well, I'm glad you asked that,' Susan said. This is really something,
isn't it? (Susan didn't say that.) Well, what this , well, these are
avatars torn apart, By What you May AsK?
maBY by Abu Gharab, he replied lightly.
Christ, he thought (although he didn't believe in God). There are too
many things going on here. That zither is being sent around the usa
coming back to me. That woman is Maud Liardon danceworking performing
in a grange in the Gruyere. We need a cat.
So you think this is funny? I will KILL YOU. This is NOT FUNNY.
StOPPP IT
VLF radio runs around the world. The USA will use VLF radio antennas
to:
1. Disorient and kill whales.
2. Disorient and kill dolphins.
3. Communicate just where and when the BIG ONE will be dropped.
I'm a dope!
Just now, a reveleation:
EVERYONE IS TWITCHING ON THE SCREN
Suddenly he realized: There were people behind himn.
It wasn't paranoia. He was being watched.
Something had to be done, something drastic. Then he remembered:

"He would kill them all."
This is the compassion the Buddha speaks of so eloquently.
Now we're hanging around the Aletsch glacier.
I want to thank the Swiss government for making this possible:
a. Holding on to the Aletsch glacier in this period of global warming.
b. Giving my partner and I some money so we can eat again.
c. Making us stop worrying if we con't have any money for b.
I did this thing last night with different videos. And there I was
thinking, there's just nothing you can do about the world, is there/
so it's not enoght to dance, fuck dance, it's got to be something else.
if we could only just kill ourselves. then everything would be allright
in the worldl
but of cours we're just kidding, nothing like this can happen.
the whole history of the West: we're just kidding ourselves. (Honest.)
don't cry for us argentina.



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