BERNEVAL

It’s a lesson in humility and a lesson on the power of drawing to draw us to contemplate infinite series hence the humility.

Roland Barthes. all except you Saul Steinberg (Galerie Mæght, 1983)

Labyrinthe

L’énumération des choses du monde s’étend tout le long de l’œuvre ; à première vue, c’est une énumération plate : variée par glissement d’une image à l’autre (une encyclopédie n’est pas objet métaphysique). […] Tel est bien le malaise inlassablement exprimé par Steinberg : le monde se suffit à lui-même, le monde n’a pas besoin de moi : « All except you. »

Listings of things is found throughout the work; at first glance, the listings are flat: varied by the slide from one image to another (an encyclopedia is not a metaphysical object). […] This is indeed the malaise expressed without a break by Steinberg: the world suffices unto itself, the world doesn’t need me: “All except you.”

L’exception

Qu’est-ce qu’une collection, un défilé ? C’est quelque chose que je regarde. Et ce que je regarde, c’est ce dont je suis exclu. Le spectacle m’attire et me rejette tout à la fois. D’une part, je ressens un mouvement de solitude à l’égard de ce qui défile, et, d’autre part, je perçois, au loin la grande paix de tout ce qui se répète et se rassure de n’être pas seul. Une voix incessante parcourt l’œuvre de Steinberg ; on n’entend qu’elle et elle dit : All except you. Et de cette exception je tire à la fois profit et douleur.

What is a collection, is it a parade? It is something I look at. And what I look at excludes me. […]

Etc.

[…] Le défilé et la file sont infinis, les deux infinis se croisent et se renforcent : c’est comme si, à un degré second, le « etc. » lui-même était répété, réverbéré par deux espaces différents.

[…] the parade and the line are infinite, the two infinities overlap and reinforce each other: it is as if in a second degree of meaning the “etc.” itself was repeated, reverberating through two different spaces.

Loose translations, partial translations, and translations in the mathematical sense of transpositions, etc.

And so for day 1710
19.08.2011

Fulcrum and vanishing point.

Alain Badiou on the prose of Natacha Michel.

We can see how, in the absence of spectacle, the rhythm decides that any place, no matter how stable it may be, no matter how anchored in ritual and childhood, is never anything but the occasion for a journey of thought and, in this sense, takes place only once.

Still not clear on rereading several times as to why the “occasion” takes place only once.

Is there a universe of prose where sets of rhythms intersect and the question of origin is put paid to?

And so for day 1708
17.08.2011

Rebecca Solnit Wanderlust: A History of Walking

[A] certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane. It is the movement as well as the sights going by that seems to make things happen in the mind, and this is what makes walking ambiguous and endlessly fertile: it is both means and end, travel and destination.

Parents, especially fathers, who drive their children to sleep might want to take note. A bit of an amble in fresh air might do wanders for sending the child off to dreamland and the human perambulator might derive a bonus pleasure from the footwork.

And so for day 1704
13.08.2011