If you’re in Amsterdam today or tomorrow, go hear the N-Event at the Muziekgebouw: http://www.n-event.net/, friday, 22.30 & the opening-concert of DNK-Amsterdam, saturday 22.30, also at the Muziekgebouw.
It’s my favorite music…
http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/
http://www.n-collective.com/
http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/
http://www.n-event.net/
Next thing to do here is listen to Steven Shaviro’s lecture at the Thinking Through Affect-conference http://affect.janvaneyck.nl. Shaviro blogs here: http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/.
Rob van Kranenburg is back to blogging: http://robvankranenburgs.wordpress.com/
Back to Amsterdam for a meeting of the jury of the ISOC Awards: http://www.isoc.nl/awards/. I’m a jury-member for the ‘Internet & the arts’-award. Nominees are:
Jan Robert Leegte: http://works.leegte.org
Joes Koppers: http://usemedia.com
Wilfried Houjebek: http://socialfiction.org/palimpsest
Peter Luining: http://ctrlaltdel.org
Niels Schrader: http://www.nielsschrader.de
Danielle Roberts: http://www.numuseum.nl
On friday I’ll fly to Dublin for a short visit. I’ll be offline for a few days then.
Very nice blog: http://www.waggish.org/. Mentions all my favorite writers :-)
I’ll be here the next two days: http://www.actingouttechnology.be.
Leonardo Sciascia, De Raad van Egypte (1963) — Dutch translation of Il Consiglio d’Egitto, buy it here: http://www.serenalibri.nl/romans.php. Sciascia continues to amaze me. This is a short historical novel, based on facts, set in Sicily (of course) at the end of the 18th century. A ‘fake translation’ of an Arabic manuscript about the history of Sicily disturbs the balance of power.
James Boswell, Life of Johnson (well, abridged version, until halfway and the rest via the index). Picked up a few old Penguin pockets, apart from this one also Selected Writings of Samuel Johnson. Why would I be interested in Samuel Johnson? Because he operated, euhm.. wrote at a moment when the press was changing, growing, becoming popular; when a General Reading Publick emerged. And because he was a voracious reader.
In Boswell’s Life Johnson comes across as, well, exactly the journalist type — spending to much time in the Coffee-House, talking too much, with controversial opinions. A quite unsympathetic conservative knowitall. But that’s Boswell’s fault as well, I understand — he met Johnson very late in his life, after Johnson did all the hard writing work — sort of defining modern journalism, modern criticism, etc.
This seems to be a good introduction to Samuel Johnson: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/.
Texts here: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/j.html#johnson
Excited & nervous: on sunday Oorbeek will indeed perform with Koichi Makigami, the wonderful Japanese vocalist, (overtone) singer, improvisor, jew’s harp-player: . See: http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/mondharpfestival/. The concert is at the BIMhuis and starts at 15.00.
Upcoming workshop at Mediamatic, from 11-13 september: RFID, Internet of Things: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-11944-en.html. There’s a reading list online at http://www.mediamatic.net/article-9691-en.html.
One of the features speakers is, yes, yours truly. Next to Julian Bleecker, http://research.techkwondo.com/ and Timo Arnall, http://www.elasticspace.com/.
Visit to the bookstore yesterday made me buy Latour’s Reassembling the Social — http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/livres/XII_tdmANT.html. Sort of outline of Actor Network Theory (ANT), a term that Latour is now happy to use. Sociology as tracing associations. I read the introductory chapter sitting on the beach of Zandvoort, of all places, early evening, trying to forget the blazing hot sun.
Also read Samuel Vriezen long poem ‘Gewrichten’ (‘joints’) that’s published in this month’s Yang, http://www.yangtijdschrift.be/.. First it seems as if the poem is just loose sentences and bits of sentences, but reading through them, pausing after each line (and each line is clearly a unit), a rhythm develops. Also some lines are repeated. (Samuel is a composer as well & I have been so lucky to be part/performer of his composition Motet; one of his pieces that deals with the rhythm of syntax — that is syntax of language). In the centre of the poem the lines that follow each other do sometimes form sentences together, or at least, can be read as sentences. If I counted right the poem consists of 496 lines, knowing a bit how he composes, and knowing a bit about his taste in poetry, I’m tempted to work out the algorithm, the schema, the form, that has generated this particular joining of words. But I could ask Samuel of course… Needless to say: this is the type of poetry that I love. Art made of language. Not anekdotes put in poetic phrases. (Excuse my wobbly English).
Samuel blogs — in Dutch — at http://blogger.xs4all.nl/sqv/