The idea of imageless Thoughts

" The gestalt notion "figure-ground phenomenon" refers to the characteristic organization of perception into a figure that 'stands out' against an undifferentiated background. What is figural at any one moment depends on patterns of sensory stimulation and on the momentary interests of the perceiver. Poets may rely on our habitual figure-ground organisations in extra-linguistic reality to exploit our flexibility in shifting attention from one aspect to another so as to achieve certain poetic effects by inducing us to reverse the habitual figure-ground relationships."

Sam Renseiw framed a particular figure-ground relationship; From a recent CITA workshop in Copenhagen, performed by Carol B. Grounding by Mette RT, sound-cut-up overlay by Casper BC. Focus in here, or click on the figure-ground above.

Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

"The apparatus composing the piece is comprised of three parts: a funnel, several open top cars, and a set of numbered balls. The placing of notes (numbers) in the score was determined by the way in which the balls came through the funnel and were taken out of the cars. The composition itself was determined by Duchamp in his description of the system and his examples of musical scoring" (1)

A pure Renseiw (re)view. Enjoy the open top car here or click on the pearls.

The society of the spectacle continues

“It is in these conditions that a parodic end of the division of labor suddenly appears, with carnivalesque gaiety, all the more welcome because it coincides with the generalized disappearance of all real ability. A financier can be a singer, a lawyer a police spy, a baker can parade his literary tastes, an actor can be president, a chef can philosophize on cookery techniques as if they were landmarks in universal history. Anyone can join the spectacle, in order publicly to adopt, or sometimes secretly practice, an entirely different activity from whatever specialism first made their name.”

Sam Renseiw indulges with this short documentary, to G. Debord’s commentary on the subject. Step in to the spectacle here, or enter the ballroom directly by clicking on the image.

Only your dance and your voice house

" In the summer of 1959 Brion Gysin painter and writer cut newspaper articles into sections and rearranged the sections at random. The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passers by and juxtaposition cut-ups. And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same. The best writing seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut-up method was made explicitó all writing is in fact cut ups. I will return to this pointóhad no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You can not will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors."

A pure Renseiw cut-up from a sunken garden in Berlin, with a humble reference to William B. Scissor your self in here, or click on the fairy maiden on the bench. Flowers are transparent, anyway...

She was an evanescent visitor

" Evanescence — the video’s, and ours — is built into the disappearing acts of the syntax. Facing this ostentatiousness of physical sense, reading unfixes the temporality, makes it fluid — open to translation. And under a more direct control than any contemporary gaze could allow. It puts it on the control panel.….I believe in actual plenty in plenty of time. Urgent action is not in graciousness, it is not in clocks… blessing instead of entirely. Are you willing to moisten rapid repetition with angular vibration. I am losing my individuality. It is a noise. Plan. All languages. We were astonished by all languages. Render yourselves further. Render yourselves together. Translate everybody…"

A Renseiw layered capture. Syntax from Gertrude S. and Robert A. Enter the loop here, or click on the physical presence above.

Metaphysics of the City

" But up in the day you, of course, are dancing over the asphalt with the soles of your feet on fire, and you have silk against your navel’s white eye and a new coat in the sunshine. And up in the light somewhere I, of course, stand and watch how the cigarette’s blue soul flutters like a chaste angel through the shopping window frames into the egg toward eternal life."

Metaphysics of the City, Renseiw altered. An Egg view from Berlin. Enter the through the chandelier, or click here to view the scene.

Alone, in the distant art gallery

“..In the streets and in society, I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean... But alone in the distant art galleries, in unpretending sprout-lands of white washed pastures tracked by electronic noise, even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine. I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get by churchgoing and prayer. I come home from my solitary gallery walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it…”

A Renseiw voyeuristic art gallery glimpse of two persons, unenthused. Somehow via Montreal and Walden. Enter here, or click on the boots to see them walk…

Towards a momentary whirlpool

Wilbur’s essay on Poe, published in 1962, summarizes the gnostic myth as follows: “The universe, as Poe conceived it, is a poetic or artistic creation, a “plot of God.” It has come about through God’s breaking up of His original unity, and his self-radiation into space; it is presently at the point of maximum diffusion, and will soon begin to contract toward a final reassembly in—and as—God. Since God, in creating the universe, fragmented Himself into his creatures … it is they who must by some counterimpulse, restore the original oneness of things… . And since the creation is a work of art, the counterimpulse that can reunify it must be imaginative. In short, the duty of God’s creatures is to think God together again by discovering, through the fusing power of poetic imagination, the primal unity in the present diversity.”

A Sam R. visual follow-up. A view from the right corner table in Paris Bar , Berlin, under Kippenbergers painting. Join in on the image, or click here to enter.

The market gate of Miletus

“…Sam Renseiw is making his way through the now empty building. The carpet is standard grey-blue in colour. The off white walls and sickly green doors are bathed in the artificial fluorescent light. He steps carefully through the foyer, past the three panel painting he has nicknamed "swirly". He heads towards the stairs and descends. It doesn't look any different, no natural light makes it down into the basement floor during the day anyway. Renseiw looks down at the key card in his hand. Printed neatly on its face is the code B05. He finally has it. He draws in a deep breath and looks behind him, over his shoulder. Tonight he will commence his orientation unofficially….”

A space-trip in time, via Australia, Greece, Rome; Yet, it might just be in Berlin, recently.
A genuine Renseiw multi-layered hyperview, with musical experpts. Walk in, or click here for more details.

The impact of modernist architecture

" For the poets of the Noigandres group, the concept of "concrete" was taken in an architectural sense: a structural material of "endless expressive possibilities," the element that not only would free architecture from the tyranny of beaux arts language, but also would enable it to address pressing social needs. This close association of concrete poetry with modernist architecture is revealing. The movement so strongly identified itself with modernism that its own modernity became obsolete; in other words, once the "concrete lexicon" was exhausted, the Noigandres poets were unable to develop their concrete project any further. Moreover, vlog concrete visual poetry also shared with modern architecture ideas that run from the broad social concerns of modernism-- such as utopia, utilitarianism, and sanitation-- to technical and stylistic matters involving structure, modules, form, and repetition."

A Renseiw concrete, material architectural (re)view, with clear links to futurism and Noigrandes. Join here or click in the crypt.

Meaningful, to talk about noise

" Some would say that it is no longer meaningful to talk about noise as something special, since we have finally reached a state in which all sounds are equal. That may be so for certain avant-garde artists and advanced listeners, but I will assert that we still hear a difference between noise and more traditional musical sounds. Noises are the sounds, which used to be denounced as non-musical. To include noise in video thus still has an effect and bears a certain aesthetic power. That power is the topic of this short film. There is a constant discrepancy between the essentially indescribable object and the attempt to verbalize and understand it. It is my hope that the following video is nevertheless able to sketch out an approach to understanding the important part noise plays in the music of today’s vlogs."

IX. tried with reasonable success. Sam R’s visual, paraphrases with some reasonable quotes, to give some insight on the topic. Enter the surprising short walk here, or branch in the picture above (click)

It is precisely this model

" It is precisely this model, it has been argued, that Renseiw’s video invokes and then frustrates. The characters are simply present. Vladimir and Estragon may not know precisely what happened yesterday, but they know that their present existence is confirmed, if only by the presence of each other; similarly, Hamm and Clov are adrift in the present moment, relying on the dialogue to fix them in place. Krapp’s past is, it seems to him, the tale of another man; Winnie’s past drains away from her as she sinks into the earth; but both confirm themselves in the present timespace of performance each time they utter or move. All these characters exist in a dramatic timespace that is indistinguishable from the timespace of performance. They cannot rely on a past history to confirm their own existence, their own subjectivity; but they can define themselves, even if it is only from moment to moment, in the actions and the words that they perform day after day and night after night."

Patatexting sign language, by Sam R. With some reminiscences of Photostatic and a great deal from Sam B. Click on the image or enter the performance here.