Intimate Bureaucracies and Kitsch

       While reading about some of the amazing mail art and Boggs’ bills in Networked Art, I was reminded of the National Park Passport book I own. The park system sells a small passport book for people to buy and have stamped at each National Park, Historic Place, or Monument they visit, exactly as one would stamp a passport when visiting a country. Each park or monument has their own unique stamp that mirrors the type of stamp one would get while going through customs (looking exactly like the canceling stamp of Guy Bleus on page 15). I have collected hundreds of these passport stamps over the years during my travels. In fact, the National Park passport program seems like it derives from (or at least is parallel to) the mail art movement.

       However, I would argue that these stamps are not mail art, but pure kitsch, precisely because they do not fit Craig Saper’s theory of intimate bureaucratic art. While these passport stamps are directly based on the bureaucratic passport system of international customs offices and are a part of a collective endeavor by travelers, they are not conspiratorial, do not share a new language, do not destroy the origin of the international passport system, and do not depend on an individual artist’s craft. In other words, these stamps are merely kitsch: mass produced imitations designed to appeal to the largest number of tourists.

       I find it interesting that a bureaucratic entity has turned a mail art element into a kitsch product that advertises its own governmental program. To me, this idea of an “intimate bureaucracy” is what separates mail art from kitsch. It seems like a very fine line—many of the mail art examples in the book seemed “kitschy.” However, the ultimately subversive qualities of this art that resists the label of kitsch can be found in the idea of the intimate bureaucracy, which the National Park Passport program fails to have. (But I will still collect those stamps!)

Hitchcock's Rope as Quasi-Oulipo

       This is a difficult blog entry for me to write, since I had trouble thinking of a text that uses Oulipo constraints, beyond the ones we have discussed in class. The only text that comes to mind is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, which attempts to show the on-screen action in real-time without a single cut. The technical difficulties of achieving this in cinema (as opposed to one long, 80-minute stage production) included trying to have consistent sound (and microphone placement) throughout extended takes that often moved from room-to-room, organizing props in a way that would allow the camera to move freely, silent stage-hands who would move set pieces off-camera to allow camera and microphone movement during filming, and actors who wouldn’t consistently ruin takes deep into filming. In fact, even after Hitchcock solved each of these problems, he still was forced to shoot the film in ten segments due to the limitation of film in each camera. Even if he had the capability to have more film in a canister, he would have had to deal with camera over-heating. Therefore, each long-take had to be timed so as not to run out of film before completing the scene. Each edit was masked so as to seem as if the film were shot in real time for one long, continuous take. Often, the cuts were masked in black (for example, an actor would step in front of the camera, momentarily causing a black screen, where Hitchcock would make the unnoticeable cut). The last limitation had to do with projecting the film in theaters, which required a projectionist to change reels (about three times for an 80-minute film). Since these moments would actually seem like they were interrupting the action, Hitchcock purposely made three unmasked cuts at the moments of reel changes, which would actually seem much more seamless to audiences watching the film in theaters.

       The result is a film that feels real-time and incorporates the best possible traits of cinema and theater. Unlike a staged drama, mistakes could be fixed with new takes and pauses were not needed between acts. Set pieces could be moved silently in one room behind the camera as action was being filmed in an adjoining room. Unlike the manufactured feel of cinematic multi-camera set-ups with over-the-shoulder shots and quick edits, this film felt more personal, with less technical distraction.

       This also brings up an interesting theoretical point: in placing these limits on himself, Hitchcock designed the entire film as a way to mask his self-imposed constraints. In the other works we’ve read or seen, the artists have been practically flaunting the constraints as obstructions that must be over-come. Perhaps the reason I like Rope (it is my favorite Hitchcock film) is that the constraints don’t actually feel like they are obstructing anything at all, just because they are disguised so well. It feels like a different text than the ones we’ve discussed in class because those works announced their constraints instead of trying to conceal them.

Episodic Obstructions

            There are a few similarities in If on a Winter’s Night, The Five Obstructions, and A Void, including direct reference to audience (in Vowel’s diary, in Lars Von Trier’s written monologue at end of the film, and throughout Calvino’s work) and  ekphrastic descriptions of works of art within each work (including Leth’s cinematic quotation of his own film). The one that struck me as being essential, as I mentioned last class, was the episodic nature of each.

            However, “episodic” is not quite the correct word, since episodes in the truest since can be arranged in any order without impacting the overall narrative structure of the work. The “episodes” in all three works do have a specific order that must be maintained as the story builds. For example, in The Five Obstructions we couldn’t have the Brussels segment occurring before the India segment (the punishment must necessarily follow the crime), while in If on a Winter's Night… we must have the chapter before the “anti-chapter,” with each chapter building toward a conclusion at the end of the novel. Perec’s novel is the least episodic, with each chapter feeling more like scenes from a play sprinkled with diary entries.

            We might conclude that the obstruction in each work is not leading to destruction of all order, but generating new systems within an older, necessary order. In that sense, understanding each work as episodic reveals how the function of each obstruction slightly changes the function of each episode while always fostering a structure that builds toward narrative closure of some sort. Of course, one wonders how these texts might be different if these episodes were re-arranged out of chronological order.

Research Project: Jungian Alchemical Cycles of Transformation in Locus Solus

        For my research project, I’ll be writing a short article-length research paper (16 – 18 pages) based on parts 1 and 2 of my blog entry on Roussel. Most of the primary works on Roussel and alchemy are only available in French (specifically works by Jean Ferry—a contemporary of Breton—and Ricahrd Danier). However, I’ve found sources in English that summarize and explain these sources, so I can have a basic understanding of how Roussel is already read in alchemical terms. In brief, previous scholars have focused on Roussel’s linguistic wordplay and cryptic metaphors connecting to alchemical materials and processes. Breton noted references to cabbalistic ritual and Tarot in Roussel’s work; however, he was primarily examining Roussel’s play La Poussiere de soleil. 

       Since my knowledge of alchemy is really only second-hand from Jung’s writings (in which he examines alchemy metaphorically to illustrate the functioning of the psyche—the union of the Self through opposites, as symbolized in the Lapis Philosophorum), I am doing a great deal of background research on the literal practices of alchemists. I am also researching critical interpretations and biographies of Roussel that don’t directly mention alchemy, such as Foucault’s Death and the Labyrinth and Mark Ford’s Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams. Finally, I’m tracking down as much of Breton’s readings of Roussel I can find in English. This week I’ll be reading Breton’s Arcanum 17, which includes discussions of Jung and Tarot. 

       My unique angle (which I haven’t seen any scholars address, although I’m still in the midst of my research) is to take into consideration Jungian alchemical cycles in Locus Solus. I plan to argue that the novel's cyclical structure (in the way I have mapped it out in the chart on my blog) reflects certain traits of alchemy that Jung also describes as metaphors for individuation. With this reading, I’m trying to understand the novel as the artist’s search for wholeness or completeness of the fractured self. Instead of focusing on wordplay or finding linguistic connections to alchemy (which previous scholars have covered), I will do a very specific Jungian reading. In the process, I also hope to illuminate the cyclical narrative structure of the novel, based on my chart, which I argue mirrors Jung’s claim of “inner alchemy” as a process by which imagination fosters a cycle of creative death and resurrection that leads to transformations of both the unconscious and the outer physical world. To me, the narrative structure that I’ve mapped out is essential for understanding how the novel emphasizes death and rebirth as inner, creative processes that are expressed through the act of artistic creation. I also hope this reading will compliment and extend Foucault’s analysis.

Oulipian Constraints

       The constraints of Oulipo seems to be directly at odds with the Surrealist emphasis on automatic writing or allowing the language of the subconscious to emerge through the creative process. Whereas the Surrealists break starkly from tradition, the Oulipos seem to reappropriate old forms. If the sonnet stands at odds with the type of poetry generated through automatic writing, then the Oulipian use of the sonnet form makes the old form new by revealing the freedom of restriction.

        Since I’m not a creative writer, the only time I’ve really dealt with constraints or restrictions on a regular basis is with academic writing. We don’t often think of the stylistic conventions of academic writing as being particularly liberating or creatively stimulating, but sometimes I do my best thinking when crafting a formal essay. How might I synthesize a complex idea into a fifteen-page maximum essay? Or how might I challenge myself to expand an idea into an article-length essay? How can I craft an idea in one field that might be of interest to readers across disciplines?

        In my experience writing story variations of this class, I was venturing into completely new territory. Whereas the poetry assignment was challenging, it didn’t feel overwhelming because I had at least some previous experience writing poetry when I was younger. But since I’ve had no experience writing short fiction or creating various plots and scenarios with re-written material, I felt as if I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know if I was doing the assignment in the right way (or even if there was a “right way”). I had to ask myself questions I had never asked before of my own writing (or at least, not in terms of writing short fiction): What exactly is a “linguistic” variation? How does a variation in narrative differ from a variation in genre? Can one story actually contain all three types of variations, and if so, is that allowed? (This might perhaps relate to Le Lionnais’ idea of “levels of constraint.”) After asking these questions and looking at the example from Queneau, I just barreled ahead and gave it my best shot.

        It’s hard for me to answer the question of which movement is more “revolutionary.” When reading the Surrealists, I felt I was encountering literature I had never experienced before. In reading the few Oulipo texts we’re been assigned so far, I feel as if some of these techniques are not as new or as unique as what the Surrealists were doing. Calvino’s novel in particular seemed too close to Hoffmann’s The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr with the idea of a meta-narrative of intertwined stories, complete with printer’s errors, parallel chapters, and shadow characters. The idea of Oulipo writers “embracing” previous writers as those who were Oulipo but just didn’t know it, seems to suggest that they also realized that perhaps their ideas weren’t new, even if they were trying to push boundaries with older traditions.

Zürn and the Wound of the Knife

        Near the beginning of her novella Dark Spring, Unica Zürn presents a striking image of a little girl mutilating “a big, expensive doll” given to her by her father’s female companion. The moment both reveals the inner psychology of the character and introduces a symbol that will become important later in the story: the knife. Because she is “[angry] and desperate about the unhappy conditions inside her home,” the girl “takes a knife and cuts out the doll’s eyes” and “slices open the belly of the doll and tears her expensive clothes” (40). At first glance, this appears to be an abortive act, slicing open the womb of the doll to express frustration in her struggle to understand her budding sexual desires and her inability to have her father all to her own. Two of the novella’s primary themes are a search for a lack of completeness and for a feminine identity, which are both symbolized in slicing through the doll’s womb.

        In The Uncanny, Freud links blindness and fear of losing one’s eyes to castration anxiety. For women, this happens is when a young girl attaches to the father and grows separate from the mother at the phallic stage. In the previous paragraph, Zurn describes the girl’s initial rejection of her mother’s body as monstrous, setting up a tension throughout the novel between the girl and her overbearing mother.

        The Freudian reading of the scene is even more apparent when the word “knife” again appears in the text when the girl’s brother forces himself onto her and “drills his ‘knife’ (as she calls it) into her ‘wound” (56). By referring to her brother’s penis as a “knife,” the girl links the aggressive sexual act to the violent dismembering of the doll—the moment at which she first acknowledges her own psychological wound. We must then return to the doll scene and understand the slice across the belly as not only abortive, but also sexual—both a creation of and an attack on the vaginal “wound” that foreshadows the sexual thrusting of her brother. In this sense, the doll scene can be read as the girl performing her own “wounding”—that is to say, both coming into the sexuality of her own womanhood and lashing out against the lack of completeness she feels as a direct result of that sexual awakening.

Cut-and-Paste Found Poetry Part II

Based on the poem I wrote in the previous entry (which you should probably read first), Lane asked me to do the following: "1) out of this, 'mine' a short poem that feels definitively 'modern' (in a contemporary way, not in a classical Modernist way) and 2) using only this text, (connective words are allowed) turn this poem into a sonnet."

Below I've written two new poems using only the words and punctuation found in my initial poem with no extra or connective words. The sonnet is first, followed by the contemporary poem. I loved writing Shakespearean sonnets when I was a teenager, but I haven't written one in over ten years (and never with these constraints). I don't think I've ever tried to write a contemporary poem, per say. In all honestly, I don't read much poetry beyond the 1970s, and mostly it's late stuff from James Dickey or Robert Penn Warren, both of whom rejected contemporary poetry in different ways. But, I gave it my best shot!

As mentioned in the previous post, these words all come from movie titles in my DVD collection.

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Strange Sanctum

Beyond the scarlet-golden sunset light,

A raven dreams of death. Condemned to fly

On silent wings across the winter night.

Her lonely sacred burden is to die.

The violent voyage of eternity

Will long escape this phantom with no name.

Her fugitive flesh now chained to body,

With soul reborn in rhapsodies of flame.     

A distant lightning echoes in my eyes--

The moonlight shadows at midnight are long.

The Darkness broken by savage sunrise.

I wake up to witness God's hollow song.

Passion of night now vanishes in fire--

My dream an illusion of inner desire.

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Bridal Shadows

My wife is chained

to my shame. I murder her

heart, and smile as I kiss

her naked tears.

We live a hollow life.

At night we scream

as in a tomb.

I speak of her

as a saboteur of my passion--

But I am her.