Tag: quotes

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Matter Matters

What compels the belief that we have a direct access to cultural representations and their content that we lack toward the things represented?

How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter? [emphasis mine]

Why are language and culture granted their own agency and historicity while matter is figured as passive and immutable, or at best inherits a potential for change derivatively from language and culture?

How does one even go about inquiring after the material conditions that have led us to such a brute reversal of naturalist beliefs when materiality itself is always already figured within a linguistic domain as its condition of possibility?

– Barad, K 2003, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’, Signs, 3, p. 801,

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God of Triangles

If triangles had a God, he would have three sides.

– Charles de Montesquieu, philosopher and writer (18 Jan 1689-1755)

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Everything

Everything important that has happened or is happening takes the route of the American rhizome – Dolce and Gabbana 2004, A Thousand Mesas

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To paraphrase Duke paraphrasing Quantz

An increase in the number of people performing reduces the proportionately the freedom to improvise – Quantz

Quantz, Johann Joachim. On Playing the Flute. Edited with introduction and notes by Edward R. Reilly. New York: The Free Press, 1966.(First German edition by Johann Friedrich Voso, Berlin, 1752.)

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Oh, the Places you’ll go

This means that every act that is composed of A, is also composed of A’s  predecessor and successor. – Phenomenology & Mind : Noema and Thinkability : An Essay on Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality by Lukasz Kosowski pg 67.

in other words: Where you are is determined by where you have been and determines where you can go.

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Teleological Posited Goal

“Investigation…uncovers what is going on independent of any consciousness in the objects in question, while on the other hand it discovers in them new combinations and new functional possibilities which need to be set in motion in order to realize the teleologically posited goal.” pg 11-12 The Ontology of Social Labor 3. Labour by Lukács.

This to me sounds like the experimentation phase of improvisation.

Also had the thought that improvisation has no teleologically posited goal. Unless it is scored and that is the teleologically posited goal.

 

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Improvising the technically pedestrian choreography

“While improvisation initially offered Jones a reprieve from the demands of technical training…” – page 115 from I Want To Be Ready by Danielle Goldman.

This quote refers to the choreographer Bill T. Jones. While it may be true that improvisation did offer Jones a respite from the rigors of technical training, I find that this statement sets up, or rather is indicative of an old and antiquated antagonistic binary about improvisation and technique.

I would say that good improvisation requires technical training.  The opposite of improvisation is choreography.  And to do choreography doesn’t require technical training but merely memory.

A dancer’s relationship to time, i.e., improvisation or choreographed, has nothing to do with technical training.  Choreography can be technical or not, improvisation can be technical or not. Though, I would posit that untechnical improvisation isn’t improvisation, but merely futzing about, regardless of how enthusiastic it is. Choreography, on the other hand, is merely remembering a sequence of events.

Technical, pedestrian, improvised, choreographic…one does not imply the otherScreen Shot 2015-11-19 at 6.29.36 PM

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Labor and Dance

the edited phrase 

“Lukács emphasizes that in the course of history, the [critical], [theoretical] understanding of [dance] becomes more and more detached from the labor process, and less and less immediately bound to the immediate material constraints of the [dance].”

the original phrase

“Lukács emphasizes that in the course of history, the abstract, scientific understanding of reality becomes more and more detached from the labor process, and less and less immediately bound to the immediate material constraints of the real.” – Henry Staten

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Interdisciplinary

“However, for interdisciplinarity to have any meaning, it must be based on competency in at least one discipline.” – B. Spatz

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Visual Presentation

“I think that, maybe unlike a lot of other improvisational people, I’m very visually oriented and very interested in presentation.”

from Kent De Spain’s thesis quoting one of the dancers in his study