the weather: the job

"ruthi gavin sat hidden among the bushes in the depth of night and observed the house of gordon scott. she wore dark leather gloves. once in a while she pushed slowly one of the bush's branches to the side only to then let it slowly move back to its previous position. one after another all lights disappeared in douglas gordon's house. gordon seemed to have gone to bed. as finally the day was about to break, ruthi gavin pushed the branch to the side for a last time, let it glide back one last time and tiredly crept home. she was so fed up with her job! it was so excruciatingly boring being a minor character in a rejected script of a fifth-classed crime novel in an old and dusty drawer."

... as before, the taz's truth's weather, monday 23 may 2011, while waiting in the lovely city that i visit so frequently. 

The presence of precarity

The presence of precarity
Self-employment as contemporary form
Gesa Helms



Aligning artistic and academic labour in their shared belief in creative and autonomous practices and work identity formation - the valorisation of one’s self in such relational labour practices - this study, drawing on Maurizio Lazaratto and Sergio Bologna, takes us some way towards unravelling some of the myths around creativity and autonomy in immaterial labour (be it as artists or academics). In doing so it calls into question assumed understandings of class divisions between a culture of (UK) middle classes and working classes:

"These, unfortunately, too often remain anything but new in the studies of working class lives and firmly rely on the examination of cultural preference if not socio-economic class indices. Instead, going back to a Marxist understanding of class in relation to the means of production and ownership of these allows us to consider that drinking latte, flat whites, or similar, may not determine one’s class belonging. Consequently, a dismissal of self-employment, or rather freelancing, as the territories of the middle-classes (i.e. not working classes) does not take us very far if we fail to consider how such ‘autonomy’ of self-employment is indeed firmly woven into a process of subsumed labour."

text    pdf

But then, make sure to take a look at the other articles in this fabulous edition of Variant

mobile sketch

[click image to get some air]

delimiter

lists (with birds)

lists: openssh; cydia; tinyumbrella; fw 3.1.3; itunes; tinyumbrella; rewind with fw 4.1.2; tinyumbrella; itunes; tinyumbrella; redsn0w; cydia; netatalk; finder. success. 1:40 hrs of sunday morning birdsong retrieved from phone. an extract here:

of love and withholding

the ghost of love is bookmarked now and here. bookmarked for two projections.

one to a workshop in may on ns family history for 2nd and 3rd generation - with questions around the common in the personal and of course the political too. the experiences that led to that what was (not) done.

 a bit of a rarity: a man not in uniform; yet: as usual, a woman to each side

on the kitchen table in wedding two weeks ago we three traced our own commonality and the extent to which family secret, guilt and the not-doneness reverberate. all of us in history, politics and social sciences. a sense of where we left from and how those identity constructions are laden with individual guilt of grandparents and parents; and are nonetheless the social relations as they are marked out across time between photos from 1936 and a profile pic.

and one week ago, another round of "do you remember?", "is she still alive?", "did she ever talk about this? that?" and yet more discovery of common threads, strands - some of these may only be constructed in our remembering - the past as made in the present.

in all this, my granny anni becomes the ghost of love. much of this love was indeed a withholding. from a present, towards a future. and then the regret at the end of having withheld all along. having hoped for a future that never happened.

the second projection? art practice, year 2: (inter)subjectivities. beginning autumn 2011. and i do need to find who has the copy of the helene cixous rootprints before that. anyone?

that's it for the bookmark right now.

mirror gaze

she is looking back at me. and so many of these photos could be a mirror. not just the hair, the eyes and the face but her expressions, the way she holds her head and hunches up her legs. how...

the last time i actually saw her was the evening of december 1 1992, a few hours before she died. her death was the first meaningful one. its announcements throughout the year before imprinted in memory.

there are many photos - four albums filled with her, her friends, and travels. they are stored now next to the bed that is mine when i visit and i went to look at them in winter. my mother (a bit unsurprising) was far less surprised: yes, we always knew how much you looked like her.

it is a strange knowledge - that image one holds of oneself, so close and yet so strange. and how much time needs to pass to be able to apply some distance between what i see and what i think i know.

my granny anni was born in 1915. which makes her 21 to 27 on the photos in those  albums. it makes her too old to have merely been a girl in the nazi girls' organisation, the league of german girls (bdm).

i always knew how much she loved her youth, her friends who remained with her all her life, the travels. these albums speak of it. there exist photos of myself in nazi uniform, taken between 1936 and 1942.

the ghost of love

forest riffle

... and the last one:

forest ruffle

a flicker of forest

still with the trees

... slightly to the right, or was it the left? slightly more marks. which ones are mine? and which one those of the graphite.
i don't think the photobooth minds though.