Two Books for closing this Blog

Jacques Ranciere, contemporary French Philosopher, may give us an answer for our question of ethical aspect of this project. How can we aesthetize such a terrible ethical and political despair? He answers both regimes (politics and aesthetics) have the same origin (the theory of representation originated from Plato’s political writing, “Republic,” for example). Both, in terms of “the Distribution of the sensible”, may be the same in the end. Therefore, political voice and ethical responsibility will culminate when they are most deeply engaged with aesthetic sensibility.

Above all, I introduce this book in Homage of Professor Gregory Ulmer. Following is a part of review that I found from google…

“Jacques Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster is a text that has been throughly dissected for its pedagogical uses. In the book Ranciere documents the intellectual adventures of Joseph Jacotot, a man who in the 18th and 19th centuries, struggled to further his views of intellectual emancipation.

Jacotot, who due to the dominating politics of the time, was forced to teach students who spoke a language he did not know. Using an interpreter Jacotot instructed the students to read a bilingual edition of a book and then, through their reading, he instructed them to write and think in the French language. Amazed at the results, Jacotot decided on three principles:

1 – All men have equal intelligence

2 – Every man has received from god the ability to instruct himself

3 – Everything is in everything

Jacotot singlehandedly waged war against the Old masters and, in particular, attacked the idea of explication. Jacotot questioned why one mind needed to explain a text to another mind – why couldn’t the mind of the student figure out the text, what did explication do? Jacotot went on to argue that parents could teach their children subjects they didn’t know – all that was needed was that these new instructors could verify not the details of the particular knowledge, but that the student is confident in their knowledge.”

Last time, Dr. Ulmer said that Instructions should be given from himself to us. But what we were given was “two different grammer books”. You knew that we were going to find out how to speak another language that we have never spoken before. I deeply appreciate that.

Logo for America – Alfredo Jaar

The representation of geography and the intricacies of global relations influence Alfredo Jaar’s work as an artist. In the Project „A Logo for America“ this led to critical investigations of cartography. „A Logo for America“ was an explicit demonstration of the significanca of the images and language of geography – its representation and articulation.
The Artist, born in Santiago de Chile, lives and works in New York, was one of thirty artists invited in 1987 to produce a 45sec. Computer animation/intervention on the Spectacolor lightboard in the heart of Times Square. For a month, his designed animation was featured every six minutes surrounded by private advertising and promotional campaigns for the city. Jaar’s animation began with a solid image of the United States of America. In the next frame it was transformed into spare outline. Next, „THIS IS NOT AMERICA“ was inscribed across the silhouette of the 48 states. Replaced by a red, white and blue flag of the USA. Finally the flag was drained of color and imprinted with „THIS IS NOT AMERICA’S FLAG“. Then, a brightly illuminated „AMERICA“ stood alone. The center letter (R) slowly tranformed to a hemispheric image of Canada, the USA, Central America, and South America. As letters dissolved and reappeared, a complete – and accurate – represantation of the American continent coalesced. In a wild conclusion, the image was doubled, twisted, upended, and superimposed over the word „AMERICA“.
Alfredo Jaar used this prominant site to deliver a clear message about identity and language. Using a selective taxonomy of communicative systems – maps, flags, and words – he reminded viewers of the propaganda that perpetuates power. Amidst the gaudy glitz of Times Square, Jaar seized the corporate world of promotion to introduce another reality.

Logo 5 – the scar

“There must be a way to talk about suffering without making the victim suffer again.” — Alfredo Jaar

Logo 4 – the World Remember rWanda

WMW is a human form that comes out of the words “the World reMember rWanda”
Major attractor of this logo is Language as a reservoir of knowledge
What makes this interesting is simplicity of it…

Logo 3 – scar with Black WMW

Logo 2 – the scar

The Logo from prototypes

The Attractor here is TRIANGLE as a perspectival form or vanishig point, which can be said as a tragic reduction of a culture to its own end, losing its visibility eventually. I added to it a kind of fractal that Dr. Ulmer suggested to me in order to represent the infinity of this reduction.
Another attractor is the name, RWANDA.I think the name, Rwanda, will be a signifier( a kind of image that can be spoken)on which one can project thier desire to experience (to see, to hear, or to
say) the very essence of thier culture; a tragic essence, a disaster.
Finally, overall shape of this logo is a human face that is directely looking at you. Face-to-face encounter is one of the dramatic factors this logo touches upon, generating responsibility to the other, as Levinas says…
I want this to be seen as a spector of the other that was slaughtered in Rwanda..

logo- prototypes for triangle energy pattern

A question; how can I make a connection between a highly individual memeory of this kind and universality of memory?
1. collective unconsciousness
2. Kantian commonsense or A priori
3. Romantisits’ distinction between symbol and allegory in terms of relation of universal and special
4. Gnosism

The Reader – Literacy and Illiteracy

-A Self-Reflective Meditation on the darkside of Enlightment – a Tragic Absurdity that occured between Literacy and Illiteracy (The Reader (Der Vorleser) is an award-winning novel by German law professor and judge Bernhard Schlink.)

The movie begins in a small town of post-WWII Germany. A young fragile boy Michael gets sick on his way home and is helped by Hanna, almost twice older and illiterate woman. Seeking a way to thank her, Michael finds that she loves being read. Reading books for her, Michael is drawn into a secret but passionate affair with Hanna. But this affair ends when Hanna suddenly disappears. Michael is left confused and heartbroken. Many years later, Michael, now a law school student, meets her again, at a Nazi war crime trial; Hanna was there because of the war crime she made, during the period of her disappearance, as a concentration camp guard. Being observed by Michael, the judge asks her why she did not unlock the door of a church where many Jewish people were imprisoned and eventually burned to death in fire. She answers that keeping the door locked was the order that she had to obey. Ilana, the only survivor of the disaster and other guards testify that Hanna was in charge of the event with her own written order. Hanna, who lived her entire life as an illiterate, however keeps silent; maybe she doesn’t want people to know her shameful secret. Watching all of these lies, Michael finds nothing to help her. Henna, eventually, is sentenced to life imprisonment. Michael sends her tapes on which his readings are recorded until she dies in the prison.
After she dies, Michael visits Ilana, the only survivor to hand in a money that Hanna left for her…

MICHAEL
Perhaps you heard. Hanna Schmitz
recently died. She killed herself.

ILANA shakes her head.

ILANA
She was a friend of yours?

MICHAEL
A kind of friend. It’s as simple as
this. Hanna was illiterate for the
greater part of her life.

ILANA
Is that an explanation of her
behaviour?

MICHAEL
No.

ILANA
Or an excuse?

MICHAEL shakes his head.

MICHAEL
No. No. She taught herself to read
when she was in prison. I sent her
tapes. She’d always liked being
read to.

ILANA shifts slightly.

ILANA
Why don’t you start by being honest
with me? At least start that way.
What was the nature of your
friendship?

78.

MICHAEL
When I was young I had an affair
with Hanna.

ILANA looks at him for a moment.

ILANA
I’m not sure I can help you, Mr.
Berg. Or rather, even if I could
I’m not willing to.

MICHAEL
I was almost sixteen when I took up
with her. The affair only lasted a
summer. But.

ILANA
But what?

MICHAEL just looks at her.

ILANA
I see. And did Hanna Schmitz
acknowledge the effect she’d had on
your life?

MICHAEL stares back, understood for the first time.

MICHAEL
She’d done much worse to other
people. I’ve never told anyone.

ILANA
People ask all the time what I
learned in the camps. But the camps
weren’t therapy. What do you think
these places were? Universities? We
didn’t go there to learn. One
becomes very clear about these
things.

ILANA looks at him, unrelenting.

ILANA
What are you asking for?
Forgiveness for her? Or do you just
want to feel better yourself? My
advice, go to the theatre, if you
want catharsis. Please. Go to
literature. Don’t go to the camps.
Nothing comes out of the camps.
Nothing.

Images have an Advanced Religion: They Bury History

In Real Pictures, an installation work in 1995 about the massacres in Rwanda, Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar decided to reveal most effectively the terror and despair of this African country by concealing the photographs of the genocide. As a motto to this image-less exhibition, Jaar quoted a text from Catalan writer Vincenç Altaio: “Images have an advanced religion: they bury history.”