On unwinding the clue of tao

"the way is like walking aimlessly" from sam renseiw on Vimeo.

"We look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it 'the Equable.' We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it 'the Inaudible.' We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it 'the Subtle.' With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description; and hence we blend them together and obtain The One. Its upper part is not bright, and its lower part is not obscure. Ceaseless in its action, it yet cannot be named, and then it again returns and becomes nothing. This is called the Form of the Formless, and the Semblance of the Invisible; this is called the Fleeting and Indeterminable. We meet it and do not see its Front; we follow it, and do not see its Back. When we can lay hold of the Tao of old to direct the things of the present day, and are able to know it as it was of old in the beginning, this is called (unwinding) the clue of Tao."

With a quote from Lao-Tzu, Sam Rensiew presents a rare piece of docu-video; While embedded in an recent exercise in a distant Norwegian Fjord, Sam Renseiw (undercover as his alter-ego) captured footage of the way of walking aimlesly, following a prescribed text from a young korean explorer. View the ensuing audio-visual amalgam by cliking here or on the icon above. [" walking aimlesly // DL 16 " 07'34'', 266MB, Quicktime/mov, vimeo]

Of basic distortions and the sublime

"..It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it affecting to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects; but then (allowing for the effect of imitation which is something) my picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape, would have affected in the reality. On the other hand, the most lively and spirited verbal description I can give raises a very obscure and imperfect idea of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise a stronger emotion by the description than I could do by the best photographic image. This experience constantly evinces. The proper manner of conveying the affections of the mind from one to another is by Voodles; there is a great insufficiency in all other methods of communication; and so far is a clearness of imagery from being absolutely necessary to an influence upon the passions, that they may be considerably operated upon, without presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose; of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful effects of instrumental music.[…] In reality, a great clearness helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is in some sort an enemy to all enthusiasms whatsoever."

Paraphrasing the young Burke, Sam Renseiw ponders on the nature of clarity and the sublime while on a recent visual assigment to a sublime site. View the compressed wabi-sabi voodle footage from an interior space by cliking on the icon above. [patafilm # 861, 03'12'', 46MB, Qicktime/mov - other versions at Blip.tv)

Against forgetfulness: yet another compilation

 "Brown, thick curtains: it's best when they're drawn in towards the middle, the middle of the window, a small opening in the middle, a narrow strip of light, a September-strip or an April gash, as when you plunge a knife into trouser material and rip."..."Everyday tasks: wearing yourself out trying to find something new, a new word, a new sentence, a new book."..."Why travel? Why not just stay at home, in your room, in your house, in the place you like better than any other, your own place. The familiar house, the requisite rooms in which we have gathered the things we need, a good bed, a desk, a whole pile of books."

Paraphrasing Tomas Espedal, thoughts reawaken and lose their dullness, it's a thoroughly physical experience, my thoughts brighten, and I start compiling vines again, lighter this time, up towards the fjord, the cities centre(s) and al the many bouts of flying in (or out). Slowly it dawns on me, I am happy because I am Vining; Before that I used to Voodle around, and some few would watch. These days even less do. Yet it does fullfil my sense of diary, my duty of visual naration(s), my obsessive compulsion, also this year.

With all the best wishes for a happy new year to all patalab viewers, yours  sincerely, SamR.

(vinecompilation # 4 (winter), 15'32'', 273 MB, Quicktime/mov; mpg4 version at Bliptv)

On re-mapping(s) in memory voodles

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" We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. And we shall do so if we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we ornament some of them, as with repetitive black painted stripes on the floor, so that the similitude may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud and smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our voodles, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily "

Affected, once again, by the task of facilitating a certain order in produced material(s), Sam Renseiw attempts to visualize the striped outlays for (arte)facts with some in-depth probes of adjacent spaces. View the short ars memoria with montaged inserts from ways of losing oneself in an image by clicking here or on the links above.(patafilm # 831, 03'48'', 65MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features a straightforward detournement of body and space morphology.(Lum # 322, "ways of losing oneself ", 01'00'', 23MB, Quicktime/mov)

On the enigmatic in compiled voodles

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13. When we say: "Every voodle signifies something" we have so far said nothing whatever; unless we have explained exactly what distinction we wish to make. (it might be, of course, that we wanted to distinguish the images from voodles from images "without meaning" such as occur in Lewis Carol's poems, or images like Lilliburlero in songs.) 15. The word "to signify" is perhaps the most straightforward way when the object signified is marked with the sign….It will often prove useful in voodling to say to ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing."

Having (once again) an enormous pile of recent leftover footage to digest, Sam Renseiw compiled, in best montage fashion, some excerpts into yet another significant docu-voodle. View the philosophical investigative enigma slowly unfolding by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 824, 03'41'', 83MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video feature a straight forward view to a (per)parade exercise (Lum # 314, "drummer rehearse",01'00'', 17MB, Quicktime/mov)

On architectural investigations in voodle

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" 65./ Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations….- for someone might object against me: " You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of voodle games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a voodle-game and hence voodling, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into voodles or parts of voodling. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of footage recordings and of voodling." And this is true.- instead of producing something common to all we call patafilmic language, I am saying that those phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all.- but because that they are related to one another in many different way. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all "voodles".

Pondering on the intricacies of visual language & mixing cross-references, all the while attempting to maintaining an architectural stance, Sam Renseiw recently recorded pin-up footage in a closed space, accompanied by yellow submarine excerpts. View the condensed phenomenological docu-voodle essay from a norwegian re_mote exercise by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 819,42MB, 03'02'', Quicktime/mov - other versions at bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features a leafing-through more condensed re_moteness material. (lum# 309, 01'00''14 MB, Quicktime/mov)

And: a relevant patalab Lumiere (2010re-play mermaid_exchange) Free Ai Weiwei ! (free_aiweiwei-lum, 01'00'',13MB, Quicktime/mov)

On signs and other epistemologies

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"...The certainties of common sense and natural attitude to things... being the presupposed basis of any thought, they are taken for granted, and go unnoticed, and because in order to arouse them and bring them to view, we have to suspend for a moment our recognition of them.... We pass from double vision to the single object, not through an inspection of the mind, but when the two eyes cease to function each on its own account and are used as a single organ by one single gaze. It is not the epistemological subject who brings about the synthesis, but the body....We must not, therefore, wonder whether we really perceive a world, we must instead say: the world is what we (can) voodle."

Just splicing bits of accumultated footage together to fabricate a synthetic docu-voodle, Sam Renseiw paraphrases some surfacing Merleau-Ponty. View the ensuing cavalcade of compressed gaze with a camler ending by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 811, 03'19'', 63MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video is (again) a moving stil. (Lum # 302,"smoke-window", 01'00'', 24 MB, Quicktime/mov)

On open_form_voodling

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"..It seems that, today - utilising the large output of the closed form, with the support of new ways of visual education, and with the new organisation of resources - right now we are able to begin the creation of a new organic art of our time, the Voodling art that is compositionally based on the open form. It will awake the desire of existence for every one of us, it will help us to define ourselves and find ourselves in the space and time in which we live. (This new art of Voodling) will become the space which suits our complex and yet not unexplored psyche, and it will become so because we will constitute the organic elements of this art. We will walk through it, and not around it. Diverse individuality, in all its randomness and bustling, will become the wealth of this space, its participant."

Reflecting on Oscar Hansen's dynamic manifesto, Sam Renseiw concocted an organic voodle from recent slices of footage, keeping the form open. As manifestos and creative environments have a certain tendency to stiffen into institutionalised dogma (as if obscured by clouds) when not shaken once in while, continued, genuine efforts to unclutter, are essential. View some otherwise visual-structured imagery by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 809, 02'20'', 47MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features a reduced morphology of bodies in confined space-frame. (Lum # 300(!)," polka_dot_polka" 01'00'', 17 MB, Quicktime/mov) >Remenber to manufacture your own Lumieres! > see the fine Lumiere Manifesto.

On some artfull conditions in voodles

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"The necessary condition for an Voodle is sight," Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: "We voodle things in order to drive them out of our minds..." My Voodles are a way of shutting my eyes..."What the Voodle reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the voodle mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially... yet, a Voodle is always invisible, it is not it that we see."

Remembering Barthes considerations that "the age of voodling corresponds precisely to the explosion of the private into the public", (or rather into the creation of a new social value, which is the publicity of the private), Sam Renseiw concocted footage from two recent, semiprivate events, into a distinct diptych voodle. View some private glimpses of jump-cutted reality by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 806, 02'24'', 41MB, Quikctime/mov - other versions at Bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features a quiet moment of winter after sunset-glow. (lum# 297,"moon-house-boat"15Mb, 00'59'', Quicktime/mov)

On Impure Company in a gap

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“Where is my vote? Where is their vote? This is not the first time that votes are gone. Where have all the other votes gone? What? Have I forgotten? Have I forgotten how these people are? What they did, do and can do? Who is this green person? He is a little bit better than the other one so, what do I shout, screech, yell, and cry for? For something a little bit better? I know who is wrong, but who is right?”

Quoting Hooman Sharifi, Sam Renseiw proceeds to investigate Impure Company's recent unfolding in closed quarters in Bergen. View the footage of another performance of "Once upon time country" with deserts from Zupperia at the start and end of the moves by clicking here, on the icon, or on the links above.(patafilm # 797, 48MB, 03'13'', Quicktime/mov - other versions at Blip.tv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features another complex fly-tip investigation, as part of a workshop (Lum # 289 "fly-tip invest", 01'00'' 14Mb, Quicktime/mov)

On more aleatoric landscape_capture

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" A too-expected image (cliché) will never seem right, even if it is... [thus] set up your voodle while shooting. It forms for itself knots to which all the rest clings...[for] what no human eye is capable of catching, no pencil, brush, pen, of pinning down, your camera catches without knowing what it is, and pins down with a machine's scrupulous indiference... the insensible bond connecting your images which are the furthest apart and most different, is your vision. "

Remembering Bresson's kind & inspiring words, Sam Renseiw paraphrases (Notes on the Voodler) while concocting a quick aleatoric triptych docu-voodle from recent Norwegian footage. View one more attempt (slightly disturbed) at capturing more landscaping details, while preparing for a -more intense- upcoming cinematographic project involving silent language, by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 794b,03'47'', 53MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features old-fashioned space-mapping activities. (lum#286 "finishing touches" 01'00'', 12MB, Quicktime/mov)

PatArchive Video #2 features an older, box(ed) project, involving a dog and captured culture. (patArchive#2, 02'27'', 36MB, Quicktime/mov)

On slow but lasting simultaneities

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" Suddenly a few good images fitted for a sketch or voodle strike me, delicate visual hits of which I have (almost) never before found the equal. I immediately start recording. I lie and edit these bits of captured footage for myself, and find that they are capital. Little by little others come and fit themselves to the preceding ones. I grow keenly wakeful. It was as if a vein had burst in me; one sequence follows another, and they fit themselves together harmoniously with telling effect.[...] a wonderful sense of pleasure empowers me. I voodle as one possessed, and edit yet another post, without a moment's pause."

This time paraphrasing Hamsun, Sam Renseiw edits recently collected northern footage into a triptych docu-voodle (with dualism ending), enabling [a] delicate transition(s) of outer and inner spaces; View the slow conversion with persimmon overlay by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 790, 04'46'', 68MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features a moment of colourful spray. (Lum # 283, "tits spray", 01'00'' 12Mb, Quicktime/mov)

On beginning(s) as revenant

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"[A spacious garden-room, with one door to the left, and two doors to the right. In the middle of the room a round table, with chairs about it. On the table lie books, periodicals, and newspapers. In the foreground to the left a window, and by it a small sofa, with a worktable in front of it. In the background, the room is continued into a somewhat narrowerconservatory, the walls of which are formed by large panes of glass. In the right-hand wall of the conservatory is a door leading down into the garden. Through the glass wall a gloomy fjord landscape is faintly visible, veiled by steady rain.]"

Upon beginning the first act in a series of repeated Nordic displacement(s), Sam Renseiw, having some slight deja-vue(s) from Ibsen, concocted an appropriate ghost-voodle from footage on the premisses. View the investigation into space(s) and body morphologies by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 786, 03'18'', 49MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Bliptv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video, supplementing the above voodle, presents a fine fjord landscape with moving, urban elements (Lum # 281 "chop & cruise", 00'56'', 10MB Quicktime/mov)

On evidence of things unseen

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“ Diversity encourages creativity, while repetition anaesthetises it. Often architectural projects are too homogeneous, sometimes because of a self-centred desire to see buildings apart from their context, sometimes because of an exaggerated aesthetics commitment which tends to precious ‘architects’ architecture. But whatever the cause, such homogeneity makes it difficult for the voodler to add anything of their own, and we lose that rich resource of popular creativity which can transform a space into a place and give it life…”

Paraphrasing Lucien K, Sam Renseiw wanders through a recently opened exhibition, trying to find other footholds than the well meant attempts of Kroll-like repetitions reversing rich resources of architectural creativity into -probably -new homogenities... View the footage unfold with a UFO takeoff into urban space & other unseen evidences by clicking here or on the links above.(patafilm # 776, 05'25'', 63MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Blip.tv)

Today's Bonus Lumiere Video feature a quiet anticipation.(Lum # 276 " anticipation" 01'00'', 12MB, Quicktime/mov)

On re-tracing sustainability settings

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" More than often we pass from one place to the next, from one space to the following without pondering to measure, to chart, to realise theses lapses of space […] The problem lies not in the invention of space, even less in its re-invention, but in its questioning, or simpler, its reading; For what we label as quotidian is not evidence but opacity: a sort of blindness, a form of anaesthesia, to be redeemed by acts of hearty voodling."

Taking Perec's wise words to heart, Sam Renseiw recorded moving moments of a Norwegian setting(s). View a catcher-in-the-snow-like voodle complete with overlaid diegetic soundtracks by clicking here or on the links above.(patafilm # 748,03'47'', 50MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Blip.tv)

Toady's Bonus Lumiere Video feature a more lofty view. (Lum # 247 " sustainable approach", 01'00'' 7MB, 12,6MB, Quicktime/mov)