The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

April 16, 2008


Let's begin.

Let's begin with the idea of reassemblage, structure of new identity, new
equalization between A and A; let us use the sign ~ for identity, i.e. A~A
reading as A is identical to A. Let's think of this in the true world, as
dynamic process, something Whitehead pointed out years ago; in this case,
A~A is temporally dependent; what act _identitizes,_ constructs the
perception of the object on both sides of the sign? In reassemblage, this
video for example, _humans_ are still, stillborn; immobile, they refuse
appearance on both sides of ~; they're unary, full of digital equivalence
but nothing else.

In reassemblage, this video for example, the subject, that is the viewer,
is produced in the midst of a mirrored hall which deconstructs as it
reveals; what move, what apparently move, are bodies filtered and re-
filtered, beginning with the bvh (biovision hierarchy) files of a dynamic
lacrosse player; the dynamism of such a player is embodied in the static
file which produces, at the other end of the transmission, a simulacrum of
dynamism.

Let us attach this movement to two bodies and two movements, and let the
bodies reconstruct from other memories, of two dancers embodied as one
with a third biovision file; let these memories produce stills modified by
suturing software constructing final objects attached to and replacing
anatomical parts of mannequins which are the first two bodies. So there
are four or six bodies: two separate bodies of the dynamism of a lacrosse
player, each with attachments constructed from numerous bodies temporally
sliced but configured from the choreography of two dancers.

Let us begin then with reassemblage, a placement as if upon the originary
scene of two dancers, in fact two other dancers, who appear as if lifelike
in background; upon this, let us assemble the deconstruction of the appar-
atus described in the previous paragraph, an assemblage that demands
reassemblage on the part of the subject-viewer. One might think of this as
an analogic/analog background of inert substance, as if there were no
editing in the digital image-photograph, no punctum - both of which appear
clearly upon close viewing. And against this analogic/analog background,
think of the assemblage-in-need-of-reassemblage as imaginaries of dance
and lacrosse, dance surmounted onto lacrosse, captured or seized by
lacrosse. These imaginaries are productions solely of the discrete or
digital (here used somewhat synonymously); they might-as-well-have-been
assembled in another way, or an augmented or diminished or otherwise
filtered way, or a foreign way altogether, not at all related, just as the
discrete towards a jump cut promises or is premised upon the potential for
anything appearing on the other side of the river, most likely not the
river but an element taken from elsewhere, an otherwise element, foreign
and unaccounted-for element, an uncounted element in fact. So this
discrete appears to produce within the viewing, the need for reassemblage,
the lowering of anomaly, something to make sense of it all. And it's
clearly produced with a configuration or armature pre-determined; there's
something of human bodies there, something of embeddings and prosthetics.
Who does this predetermining, what are the compressions, the protocols,
the exemplary decisions as to the parameters required in the construct of
a maquette-mannequin?

Here, in other words, is the history of the fecund universe parlaying
among subjects and objects, melding and obfuscating divisions until, like
the sleazy or tawdry processes they might as well be, everything becomes
simultaneously messay and true world and here, in other anysigns, or none
at all, they are.

http://www.alansondheim.org/myforestdream.mp4

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