#obviously in experimental metaphysics

[tanadrin]

as i mentioned in the tags on the second post, pneumatons are composed of elementary particles called sophons, which are like bosons if they had feelings. sophons are the class of particle that obey Descartes-Chalmers statistics and have quantum numbers associated with various qualia.

i should elaborate: you remember how in the bohr model of the atom where electron shells can only exist where a whole number of electron wavelengths fit into an orbit (because otherwise destructive interference occurs)? it's a situation kind of analogous to that. pneumatons in their ground state have a wavelength of about 1 micron and so can't exist in smaller organisms. they can have a shorter wavelength if they have a higher energy, but then they can decay into other bound sophon states, like psions, animons, cognitons, or even pure inspirons (high-energy, low-mass particles a bit like neutrinos, that preferentially only interact with brains when they're bored and don't have a bit of paper handy to actually write stuff down on). otherwise their mass is too low to really decay into anything else, which is what allows pneumatons to be stable inside protein-based tissue.

long range structure of souls is built up by the exchange of psychons, the force-carrying particle of telepathy, prophecy, daydreams, and weird higher math that doesn't correspond to anything useful. in the late 19th and early 20th century it was hoped that the psychon could give us direct access to the realm of platonic forms, until Saussure's experiments in applied semiotics killed platonism dead in 1903. efforts to unify fundamental metaphysics moved on to antisymmetric Deleuze-Guattari theory in the 1960s.

nonetheless little progress has been made since. despite spending billions smashing phone psychics and mathematics grad students together in huge particle accelerators, no differenceons have been detected, and post-structuralists' predictions that sophons are fundamentally unstable have not been born out. experimental metaphysicians keep asking for more money and theoretical metaphysicians keep trying to come up with new ways of unifying the soul, consciousness, and religious experience, but frankly the field is in kind of a rut. even the most optimistic predictions suggest that we'd need a couple of religious kooks on the order of John Murray Spear to probe the lowest grand unification energies, and the world just doesn't seem capable of producing people with that kind of frenetic vision anymore. the best we can do is occasionally kidnapping Claude Vorilhon and bombarding him with x rays, and while that's good for like an undergrad demonstration of sophon tracks in a cloud chamber, we're not gonna get new metaphysics out of it.

Bacteria do have souls, but binary fission doesn’t produce new souls 99% of the time, so most single celled organisms share these sprawling souls that just get bigger every time they divide. Over time they compact down into these big mats of soul get compacted into geological layers that gradually accrete to the world soul. Sexual reproduction creates new souls but they’re much shorter lived as a result, and rarely make it into the bedrock, so most of the world spirit is from the Proterozoic.

[youryurigoddess]

Aziraphale’s secret investigation and overlooked Clues

Remember this frame from Good Omens S02E06? Apparently Aziraphale had been using the empty carton box brought by Jim to store things in. It became a new home to at least two out of three “Lost Quartos” — the supposedly lost Shakespeare plays briefly but hilariously mentioned in the Good Omens book — as well as a very mysterious legal document.

Thought probably half of the Good Omens analysts here, including the ever so wonderful @fuckyeahgoodomens, who managed to find some information about the deceased John Gibson from New Cumnock (1855 - 1905).

Unfortunately the most interesting thing about this early 20th century provincial postmaster was his youngest child James (1894 - 1973), a quite famous stage (West End!) and film actor immortalized on screen in The Master of Ballantrae (1962), Witch Wood (1964) and Kidnapped (1963).

After that particular discovery the fandom-wide search seemingly led nowhere and the topic died a premature death.

And I almost figured it out seven months ago.

“But Yuri, you’re so clever. How can somebody as clever as you be so stupid?”, you probably want to shout across a busy London street at this point. Well, let me tell you. Much like Aziraphale, I'm blindingly intelligent for about thirty seconds a day. I do not get to choose which seconds and they are not consecutive.

Only tonight the stars have aligned in an ineffable way.

For those of you who don’t follow this account, some time ago I��ve realized that John Gibson isn’t the only testator whose estate was being investigated by Aziraphale right before The Whickber Street Traders and Shopkeepers Association monthly meeting.

If you watch S2 finale closely enough, you should notice that Crowley not only stress cleans Aziraphale’s bookshop — he also goes through the books and papers on his desk between the last three angels leaving the bookshop and Maggie and Nina’s intervention. A seemingly permanent arrangement of the props post-shooting, visible in detail both on Radio Times tour and SFX magazine photo shoot, sheds even more light on this detail.

The close-ups published after S2 release are legible enough to refer us to a much more prominent historical figure, Josiah Wedgwood (1730 – 1795) — an English potter, entrepreneur and abolitionist. Founding the Wedgwood company in 1759, he developed improved pottery bodies by systematic experimentation, and was the leader in the industrialisation of the manufacture of European pottery.

Long story short, I transcribed the handwritten pages abandoned on Aziraphale’s desk, found out the source and the full text of what could be identified as Wedgwood’s last will and testament, took a walk to visit his Soho workshop, and proceeded to write a lengthy meta analysis about it.

I was today’s years old when I realized that there’s something else connecting those two dead British men.

The Scottish Post Office Directory of 1903 recorded John Gibson from New Cumnock as a “stationer and china dealer” (above) operating from the shop located in the town’s post office building.

Indeed, a close look at his post office shop window in the Henderson Building (below, bottom left) reveals an artful display of fine china and pottery next to postcards printed by Gibson.

There are multiple ways to connect this surprising link with possible S3 plot points, obviously, but it’s getting late, so let’s just name the two most important ones.

You’ve probably heard of the Holy Grail, maybe from Monty Python or Good Omens S01E03 1941 flashback. Depending on the version of the story, if can be a cup, a chalice, a bowl, or a saucer — but almost always a dish or a vessel connected personally, physically and metaphysically to Jesus (unless you’re partial to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s idea that the Grail was a stone, the sanctuary of the neutral angels who took neither side during Lucifer's rebellion).

A slightly more obscure dish related to the Son of God appears in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation as a vital part of His Second Coming. The Seven Bowls (or cups, or vials) of God’s Wrath are supposed to be poured out on the wicked and the followers of the Antichrist by seven angels:

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.” So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and harmful and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.

The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing died that was in the sea.

The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say, “Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!” And I heard the altar saying, “Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!”

The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire. They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.

The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east. And I saw, coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs. For they are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.  (“Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”) And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found. And great hailstones, about one hundred pounds each, fell from heaven on people; and they cursed God for the plague of the hail, because the plague was so severe.

[blindrapture]

and here it is.

arranged on Website as neatly as I could manage-- and, believe me, I got it looking neat.

this composition is unfinished just like the rest, but this time it's not on purpose. this one will be finished one day. it is an ongoing narrative, a good old-fashioned fictional Blog.

the writing style was selected in order to challenge myself, to push myself to be even clearer and even more lucid than ever before. this is inspired by Samuel Beckett's Molloy, a book that was a headache to read but felt inexplicably rewarding. you don't have to know Molloy to read composition no. 8, though. just, I suppose this is the closest I can really come to writing from a genuine "folksy" place. this is my folk. this is DJay Folk. immensely personal, local. this is the logical conclusion of the trajectory of the composition no. series.

the actual content was also selected in order to challenge myself. I want to mythologize the Weed Years, much as I would use Jordan Eats and Rapture to mythologize my early teenage years. the challenge here isn't necessarily in being honest and open about things, nor in dramatizing real events, but rather in putting words to processes that paralyzed me.

there's a much easier way to look at this, as this complicated set of requirements basically comes right around to describe a far more recognizable process:

this is poetry. old-fashioned, Symbolic-Surrealist, Metaphysical, every damn book I've taken interest in as an adult, poetry. I'm digging into my memories of the Weed Years and breaking it down into fundamental symbols and ideas. then I'm processing the interactions and crystallizing a genuine poetic point out of it.

the story itself openly acknowledges how and why this is so difficult.

I started writing this in 2021. I wrote a whole section of the story in 2023, then I only wrote one chapter of section 2 in 2024. in the past few days I have opened some notebooks and done some more rigorous preparation for what's to come.

hell, in all this time, we haven't even fucking made it to the Dolls yet. they keep getting brought up, it's obvious they will be a focus of the narrative. we kinda are coming close to them, though. I'm a little intimidated by the prospect, as I want the Dolls to capture a very specific undefined emotion. so I've gotta define that emotion first, then use the Dolls to make the reader feel it.

after the Dolls, there are some other upcoming structural elements I'm planning out at the moment. and eventually, the end of the story will involve the plot of my game Empty City, as I'd been meaning to fictionalize that one for a while. (it won't be a retelling of it, as Empty City is not about Jordan. but Jordan is a character in the game! and I want to explain what the fuck he's doing there.)

I do not know exactly how long this story will be. I would like it to be the length of a short novel, but I don't need to force that if the story doesn't call for it.

right, I guess I'll say some of the other kinds of things I say for all the other compositions.

so visually this blog feels more like an actual modern website. that's got to do with my decision to make the original blog using one of Blogger's newer dynamic styles, as Blogger will obviously try to use newer styles to capture a modern aesthetic. with this aesthetic, there is no image in the background, only a pleasant non-white color scheme.

I took the basic aesthetic of the original blog and simplified it further, removing the needless javascript and that confusing table of contents. the text is arranged neatly, as the priority here is the narrative experience, like a book. and even in the story so far, the text has drifted into "experimental" modes which offer a far more visual experience. I have been able to preserve those in the Website release.

there is also, rather front and center, a more obvious visual element. composition no. 8 will feature my art. I am actually drawing things for this story. so far we just have the "splash" image, foreshadowing the Dolls.

even just from this image alone, you can draw some conclusions and expectations for what the Dolls may end up being. the design of this Doll is based on the Rag Doll from composition no. 2. I knew I wanted to bring that dress back, I wanted to explore that Rag Doll idea.

I'll lay a couple more cards on the table here: I want composition no. 8 to be a scary story. I want the experience of reading it to be bizarre, considered, cerebral, and for it to feel like the reader has just kinda stumbled into horrors they haven't got the language for. maybe I just really want the composition no. blogs to have led to something substantial, something self-evidently worthy of being someone's favorite Internet Fiction. the same kinda thing I always want with my projects, but that's how I know this series is one of my projects: I'm getting optimistic about it!

and, like. what this story is so far is very dense prose getting at some very dense concepts through a short list of Symbols I find very aesthetically addictive.

the Dolls are one of those Symbols.

my self-insert is another.

EAT is another, and EAT does have a presence in this narrative, but it's indirect. EAT is the second-person this time. this story is being told to EAT.

and then there's the Eternal Mansions. they are related in some way to the Empty City. they may just be a geographical "feature" in the Empty City, I think that's a reasonable deduction. but if they are, they're the same Empty City that I made a game about, it's the Empty City as I myself see it. it's a land that doesn't really exist, and is just an allegory. but we must treat it as if it does, and feel around until we can identify some features this non-existent place actually has. it's a perfect place. it's not meant for humans.

composition no. 8 will continue. you can be sure of that. this is where it's currently at. I will update it on the Website and not the original blog. I mean, probably.

so this also means all eight installments of the series have been brought to the Website.

next up I need to make a unifying landing page for the series. that'll be much easier and will probably make use of these very rambles I've been putting on tumblr.

I'll see you when I see you. thanks for reading.

[null-siren]

Decided to finally get around to doodling an illustrated guide to this malcontent's life and changes throughout 😪 feat. my chicken scratch that I'm too lazy to transcribe. Below the readmore are just some silly additions.

The pun, explained, though it's rather obvious: since he's partly a Ghast on his father's side - yeah I'm not going to bother spelling it out it's just like. Right there.

Wights in his world refer to "undead of mixed origin" - his mother's side had enough skeleton for him to look exactly like one until just before the monster equivalent of puberty kicked in.

The apothecary he used to study under was a human dude in the little mixed human-monster village he and his family lived in. The guy liked to joke that he was an honorary human because "he has a skeleton inside him, too :)" (Gaster stopped trying to point out that the 'skin' was growing from/into/dissolving/otherwise removing the 'skeletal' part of him after a while; old guy thought it was funny).

His parents were in charge of funerary ritual for both monsters and humans until the war and unrest reached their village. It began with a human priest deciding to set up shop and sow suspicion among the people living there.

The Royal Archivist was a fluffy old crow, looked kind of like the lovechild of a honchkrow and Pokiehl. They met during some ceremony or another, became good friends, and then had a falling out over something stupid.

He ceased incorporating feathers into his wardrobe because it was due to a couple of them getting sucked into an experimental machine that caused it to explode. This explosion had two significant results: 1. he ended up injured to a degree that he could not physically nor metaphysically nor mentally heal from, and 2. a lab tech he had been working with that day died. Until his jump he maintained (even if only to himself) that he should have been the one to die that day, since it had been his fault.

That incident led him on a downward spiral which, combined with a few other life events that occurred afterward (like submitting his fallen mother to the DT trials run by Alphys) and some external coaxing by what he assumed at the time to be a hallucinatory influence caused by his own guilt, led him to try killing himself via the CORE. He thought it would be poetic to die via his greatest achievement. Obviously it did not work out.

Editing to add a doodle of the Archivist,

Muses can encounter him similarly to the COREsprite (via visiting the world this blog's drippy guy originates from).

[loving-n0t-heyting]

so much fiction that gets experimental and meta about the nature of fiction itself is irritating bc it consistently supposes this weird metaphysics in which fictional representations involve creating this half-real tiny created world-stage in which half-real ppl perform half-real actions against a half-real environment as like puppets of the godlike consummately real author and this seems like such an overwhelmingly obviously false and indeed dubiously coherent theory of truth-in-fiction it would not have occurred to me so many ppl buy into it were it not assumed this uniformly by the navel-gazier forms of experimental specfic

someone needs to preach the gospel of representationalism about semantic content to andrew hussie et al.

[moonie-presence]

canvas, wardrobe, & alternate for the oc ask game ?? any character(s) of your choice!! :3

omg hi!!! Ty

canvas: Does your OC have any scars, piercings, tattoos, or other markings? Do they display or cover them up at all?

Du Vide, unless im misremembering, is my only oc with tattoos. They span his entire body, neck to toes, and he did them himself, sewing needle stick n' poke style. I doubt he'd have trusted any one else to ink them.

Since du vide is an upcoming ttrpg character and my fellow players follow me i wont go into detail regarding why he has them by he definitely has them for a reason, relating to his work in experimental machinery/technology. Any good mad scientist tests things on themselves first, obviously.

As for covered up or not, he doesn't make any real effort either way, due to the size of the tattoos. he's usually pretty covered, but he doesn't care if they get seen, theyre not secret. as for why they don't show up in the art usually is because i hate drawing them. weeps

wardrobe: How big is your character's wardrobe? Do they wear things threadbare, or can they afford new clothes often? Are they any good at mending and repairing their own clothing?

Courtland is a notable character wardrobe-wise because i designed him to be so unredrawable due to my madness

pictured: madness

Courtland's wardrobe is relatively large but most of his clothes look the same. The clothes he's wearing up there are his work uniform, so it's what he's usually wearing day to day with a few changes.

however he does have other clothes in line with what you'd expect from an aristocrat, like day clothes, outing clothes, outrageous party clothes, etc. Courtland's got *very* extravagant party clothes. he doesn't get the opportunity to wear them often and isn't very fond of them anyway.

as for when his clothes get fucked up, he's very good at repair. sewing and the like is one of his favorite hobbies!

here's him under all that fabric;

alternate: What would your OC's alternate universe look be? If they're a fantasy character, what's their modern look? If they're sci-fi, what's their fantasy look? What AU would you want to see your OC in, and how would they dress themself? Bonus: Prompt an AU!

when it comes to AUs, the one i end up landing on a lot for the earthshakers is the classic "what if it all never happened"/"what if they lived"

theres exactly one post on here (or the art blog i dont remember) explaining what the deal is with purgatory so heres a quick rundown: In the spaces between realities exists a vast, wild, metaphysical plane referred to occasionally as purgatory, which is a roiling melting pot that chews people up and spits them out as fantastic monsters. getting there is extremely difficult, but the hands down easiest way is to die, and fall through a weakness or crack in your reality when transitioning from life to afterlife.

Since the creatures in purgatory are always changing to suit their needs and there is no true ceiling for what can happen to you, occasionally a particularly strong-willed individual will grab unmatched, omnipotent power and become something called an earthshaker, the highest most feared echelon of purgatorian life. not gods, but damn well close. The earthshakers i've designed are Wellium (aka Lux, or the White Light), Videns, and Seleen.

(psa: this is a creative project? headworld? thing? ive been working on for literally upwards of 6-7 years now. I consider it my special interest, but its kind of nebulous and wordy and i get Too Excited about it so i end up rotating it around in my head a lot instead of talking about it)

Each of the three come from wildly different places/settings, and each has a grisly death, leading to their conquering of the endless voidplane. It's a fun thought to think about, about where they'd be if they just never died at all.

Wellium was once a soldier, a test tube baby/experimental weapon used in an intergalatic war. Eventually after a life of training to kill the unfamiliar, her life was considered inconsequential enough to be selected to guide and activate an experimental bomb to attempt to wipe out their enemy. Videns was a child born with select supernatural powers, and out of fear and superstition was drowned in a river by a mob of villagers after a life of living on the run. Seleen, a magician, was born with too much magic, and died when her body couldn't handle the strain anymore.

like. Videns could have found a place where she couldve flourished and been accepted. Seleen couldve pursued other paths in life instead of obsessing over her own impeding death and the use of the very thing that doomed her. Wellium couldve gone home.

their deaths are tragic, but theyre what set them on the path to kinghood and make them the creatures they are now. however, due to the way their universes work, there are realities where they did live, and lived full lives. got the chances to become people. its fun to think about!

what is and what was.

again ty soooo much for the ask! sorry that this post is dashboard destroying lol

[townofcrosshollow]

Setting up my first solo RPG campaign!

I figure I might as well blog about my first real experimentation with solo RPGs, since I think some of y'all might be interested in it and it'll help me organize my thoughts. I'm just going to talk about my basic setup first, and I'll make some separate posts a little later down the line about the setting and the characters.

The tools I'll be using are the second edition of the Mythic GM Emulator and a cyberpunk adventure generator you can get on DriveThruRPG. I've printed out all of the relevant pages for reference, so I don't have to stick to my computer when I play!

For this little campaign, I'll be playing a custom PBTA hack I created about a year back. It does not actually have a name, but I'll be calling it Cybergnostics. It's a blend of cyberpunk and religious horror inspired by gnostic theology. The characters are downtrodden Heretics living in the slums of Arcadia beneath the watchful eye of the Church. It's got many of the typical trademarks of cyberpunk- cybernetics, gangs, heists, all that shit. Plus a religious twist. Keep your head down to avoid catching the ire of the militant Inquisitor force. Use mysterious cybernetic implants to open your brain to the truth beyond. Find gigs on the Aethernet through the mysterious Oracle. Tons of fun shit.

Rather than actually using all of the rules I created then, which are mostly just lightly edited versions of Apocalypse World, I'll stick pretty closely to the AW moves and simply mod them with some of the rules I created. Here are the big changes, under the cut...

Cyberpunk obviously requires some kind of mechanical skill, so I've decided that Sharp will encompass anything analytical and practical, while Weird will be replaced with Savvy to represent all things mechanical and cybernetic.

There's a new tracker alongside XP, and it's called Gnosis. It represents your metaphysical journey, and unlike XP, it can be increased or decreased in play through different moves. When the Gnosis gauge is full, it resets to 0 and you take a Revelation.

A Revelation is some dark truth about the world and the character's place in it that they've stumbled upon. Certain moves will allow them to walk these back and unlearn them. In addition, if the character's health gauge is empty, rather than dying they can choose to gain an Apocalypse- a dire, hopeless statement about reality which can not be removed once it's added. If you've got 5 Revelations (including Apocalypses) and would gain another, the character is done for.

Three new basic moves. Hack Into Something, which is pretty self-explanatory. Indoctrination, where the character can attempt to unlearn horrible truths about the world to reduce their Gnosis. And Appeal to a Power, where the character can request assistance from a higher being. I may also write a move for making a pact with a demon and for fixing shit, but I'm not sure yet!

Body mods. They're categorized as Aesthetic, Functional, and Psyche. Aesthetic mods are basically just for flavour. Functional mods have specific physical benefits. Psyche mods have more metaphysical benefits. You can only take as many mods as your mod capacity, which starts at 2 and can be increased with advancements.

My plan is to play several characters at once, as I don't think this will be particularly difficult for me and I would prefer to have several stable main characters rather than one and a bunch of NPCs.

The playbook concepts I'm thinking of going with for my characters are the Inquisitor (a holy lawkeeper inexplicably drawn to heresy), the Fake (a person with an addiction to cybernetics), and the Glitchmancer (one who wields their knowledge of reality to bend it to their will). I'm going to be fleshing out who they are and the world they live in tomorrow!

[youzicha]

Re: 3, I think the main reason the concept seems dubious is people like Searle or Chalmers who envisage things ("Chinese rooms", "p-Zombies") that talk about being conscious but aren't really. It's obviously a productive line of inquiry to try to figure out why people think they are conscious and what specific brain states that refers to, and you can do that using the normal framework of experimental science. But Searle &al think that's not the actual consciousness, which is rather some undetectable metaphysical thing elsewhere: that's what seems fishy.

This is also the reason for the claim in 2. If external behavior doesn't carry any information about whether "experience" is there or not, then there isn't really any argument you can make for why you have measured it, no matter what you measure.

Baffled by claims to the effect of "consciousness (in the sense of internal experience) doesn't matter/isn't real/might as well not be real because we can't measure it". True, we can't measure or detect it in an objective and repeatable way, as we'd very much like to be able to, but

That doesn't mean it's unobservable. I can observe it in myself. In fact I'm pretty sure I observe my own consciousness, very directly, every single waking moment. You'd be hard pressed to convince me it isn't there, about like how you'd be hard pressed to convince me my hands don't exist. It's right there!

Just because we can't measure internal experience objectively and repeatably right now doesn't mean we'll never be able to. Science abounds with things we couldn't measure until we could. Sure, maybe we'll just never be able to detect it in a way everybody can agree on... but maybe we will. It's a pretty strong claim to say with certainty that we won't.

This is probably the weakest objection of the three, but if consciousness is, you know, as good as bullshit... what is it that everyone keeps referring to when they talk about consciousness? And saying that they have? Uh like why, from the point of view that this consciousness stuff is Not Meaningful, does everyone keep going "I'm conscious"? Like what is the thing they are actually experiencing, if consciousness is a load of hooey?

I guess I just don't understand this position. It seems like denying what is plainly in front of your face. It seems, well, fiercely anti-empirical, to a degree even the big-daddy rationalist Descartes couldn't countenance.

To be super duper uncharitable, it sometimes seems to me like an ill-thought-through ingroup signal? Like "consciousness is a humanities thing, philosophy is a humanities thing, but I'm a Science Guy and we use measurement. Since I can't measure consciousness it is bullshit". And this ingroup signal leads one, as I said, to deny the basic empirical observation in front of them. Like, yeah, there is no objective and repeatable metric for pain either, but I think even the most hardcore Scientist would yowch and tell me to stop if I hit him with a big stick. I don't think he would say the concept of pain is meaningless because we can't (yet) quantify it objectively. And if he did claim that, I don't think he would live by it.

But, I don't know. Like I said, that is a massively uncharitable take. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the position. Or maybe I'm using the word "consciousness" differently. As I said, the thing I mean by this is internal experience, internality, the fact of there being some thing it feels like to be you.

[simonalkenmayer]

How can you expect to have friends when you lie about who you are? Friendship is based on trust.

Be sure to fill out the survey and make your opinion known in a productive way. I have a second one coming soon. You’ll have all the chances to express your fine thoughts that you could desire.

To answer your question:

This was always an experiment with the terms laid out in a disclaimer I’m often told is too long. It was always clear and there has been an FAQ for a dog’s age. Ambiguity was the game. You give your opinion. If you choose to interact with me to do your research, you don’t have to believe me, but you should be polite and presume I believe me. In other words, give courteous treatment. I treat everyone as courteously as their actions earn.

I am acutely aware that some of the people I most enjoy on the various platforms, are my experimental subjects. Very aware. But then again, I have conversations about life after death with my own food source, so this doesn’t bother me. I am capable of being kind, learn about them, offer help, build a community here, all while watching what I cam to watch. It’s actually very easy. It also doesn’t interfere with my data at all, because I account for it in my questions. The people who call me a friend, have learned that whatever I am, who I am is a constant and they enjoy my company. They know I have boundaries to interactions, and they adhere to them. They comprehend that ambiguity is the point, what they come to think is the point, their ideas are the point. So they play cards with me, don’t much care what I am, and then send me their surveys. Life goes on. Nobody is lied to, because no false word is ever a part of the discourse.

But really, come off it, because you meet highly curated versions of people every day. No one can prove you are who you say you are. They just trust you. You say you’re a trans person or gay or have a condition…nobody questions. They take you at your word and interact as if it’s true until they find out if it is or isn’t. In other words, no one is ever seen. All social media is metaphysically disconnected.

I have not ever and will never lie about how I feel, think, like/dislike, and so on and so forth, of that I can assure you. Everything else is up to you. And all this needless drama and gossip and fictitious manufactured garbage is completely ridiculous and the sort of thing I predicted, but truthfully hate to see.

None of the people I lost were ever my friend, obviously, as I have said. A friend respects what one is doing and the boundaries they set for interactions to maintain integrity. They help with goals. They participate in good faith. They talk disagreements through. They ask questions when something happens that they don’t understand. Friends maintain the friendship. They don’t latch on like a leech and demand one pay attention to only them. They don’t plot and scheme behind one’s back to sabotage. They don’t lie about what they feel. They certainly don’t go around bullying others you know so that they can enjoy being king of the hill for a day. I never had time for any of them. I made time. A real friend comprehends that. I have many friends to prove this out.

So is it possible to make friends in any meaningful way with one’s own identity an unknown? Yes. I do it all the time. With all sorts. Because of that wall between us, I’m often limited in what I can do. I’m also never able to actually be vulnerable in any way to people I enjoy. I cannot actually ever have friends here in the truest sense, and of that, I am also very acutely aware. But I maintain those whom I find are worth it. I don’t owe anyone anything. Not one thing. I give freely of my own will. Or I don’t.

If someone doesn’t like the terms of this arrangement, they are encouraged to leave, as I will not shift anything or cross my boundaries for them. If that bothers them, boohoo. I care only as far as I can, and if I meet resistance or feel my own borders shrinking, then I’m finished. I have my boundaries in a very succinct bio. You don’t like them, you can leave. That’s how the block feature works.

[perkwunos]

Like, obviously, when you read James, he is so mad about British idealism, and that is a sort of backdrop to a lot of his arguments in the book Pragmatism- idk do you have any takes on how [esp Bri’ish] idealism, kantianism and Hegelianism relate with pragmatism, especially the Jamesian kind?

I don’t know enough about British idealism or Hegel to speak much on that connection, though it’s certainly there. Anti-Hegelianism as with James is not a common feature of pragmatism, at least not in every sense; Peirce and Royce were influenced by Hegel and continued to affirm at least parts of his philosophy but distinct from the British idealist reception.

As to Kant, who I can speak on at least somewhat more intelligently, the major similarity to pragmatism as I think many have pointed out is that his critical philosophy shifts attention away from the objective contents of our knowledge to instead examine their conditions of possibility, thus attending to the means by which we actively produce our knowledge. There is in this sense a shift away from what Dewey terms the spectator theory of knowledge, as a kind of passive reception of our concepts, and towards an experimentalist view (and Kant explicitly cites the modern revolution of experimental physics to support his approach), where the knowledge our inquiry results in is mediated by our own interpretative direction of it, and thus involves concepts we ourselves have supplied. This is the beginnings of Peirce’s semiotic-logic that attempts to theorize the formal conditions of knowledge considered as interpretative, i.e. what must be the case for any scientific intelligence using signs to learn from experience. Of course James the anti-logician is even further from this formal viewpoint (Dewey perhaps somewhere in the middle, though perhaps closer to James). All of them are falliblists regarding this knowledge whereas Kant thought these conditions must be known a priori with certainty--but while Kant is very far from a falliblist, in many ways he did already have a pragmatists’ empiricism of a sort, considering knowledge to only be found in reference to our experience--either (empirically) in given experiences or (transcendentally) in the conditions for its possibility--and saw the use of (theoretical) reason beyond this as merely regulatory; for Kant this puts serious limits on metaphysics and speculation, whereas for the classic pragmatists it instead opened the way towards more of a non-dualist metaphysics of experience that theorized, following in the wake of Darwin, the continuity between our minds and the world around us (a path I of course think Whitehead reached the most sophisticated conclusions in so far). In matters of ethics or practical reason there may be even greater differences, since here the validity or invalidity of apodictic necessary, universal ideas comes to the forefront. There no longer is so much focus on a kind of idealized rational discourse as the basis for our ethics, but rather a real, material interaction with the world with the ethical problems therefore more particularized (I think this holds especially true for James and Dewey).

[prince-toffee]

She-Ra #0

- Karma -

[Two Years After The Defeat of Horde Prime]

Plumeria

The moonlight of the many Etherian moons rained down and coated the greenery of Plumeria. Plumeria was one of the smallest kingdoms on the planet, there wasn’t anything fancy or kingdom-ly about it. No enormous castles, not even real towns, just a bunce of tree-houses and empty fields. Which in a way was perfect for the refugee clones, the open fields were filled with makeshift tents, with tired, injured, and or defective clones with conditions that had to be looked after, taking up residence in them. Over the two years more and more shelters accumulated since the defeat of Prime and his main armada. It all worked out fairly well, with the clones populating the ground and the Plumerians residing in the trees. They much like most Etherians had mixed feelings about the clones, some were more welcoming than others. Fortunately brawls didn’t break out as often as in some other parts. It was clear that the Princess of the land, Perfuma, wasn’t too thrilled about their presence, but she put on a smile and played nice.

Modulok wasn’t quite sure what the title of ‘royalty’ or ‘Princess’ meant on this world, but it seemed as if the success criteria involved owning some land since there were apparently hundreds of Princesses, some with kingdoms the size of a town, or a nightclub, believe it or not. How the political landscape worked, he did not know. But he didn’t really care either. It was peaceful that was all that mattered to a surgeon and medic like Modulok. The settlement at Plumeria was one of the smaller ones, nowhere near as developed and packed as Doormat or the New Salineas. And again that’s why he liked it, quiet, far away from anything and everything, a grasshopper here, the rustle of leaves there. However something always seemed to go out of its way to find him. Case in point his quite drunk brother, Vultak, who barged into Mod’s tent in the middle of the night.

Vultak clumsily stumbled into the tent, two glasses of some sort of alcoholic drink in hand. He set the glasses on the operating table Mod was currently working on. Before Mod could protest, as he opened his mouth Vultak raised his pointing finger up to him to stop him. V then proceeded to drag a chair from the side to the operating table. V sat down and took a swig emptying one glass. The drunk clone just stared dazed at the patient Modulok was operating on, but caught a glance coming from Mod that was disapproving.

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all, carry on.”

That drew out a sigh from the medic, he was all too familiar with those snappy comebacks as well as his delusional pessimistic rants and ravings, which Mod was sure were about to follow. The two just looked at each other, a sedated individual between them, it was quite a comedic scene to be hold if there were a third party observing.

Modulok had lost his arms in one of the countless wars and had replaced them with cybernetics which could split in two giving him the total of four arms to work with. As a defect Modulok had blood red lenses, eyes and teeth. Not to mention his skinny frame, and lack of weight, and inability to gain weight. He wore a black and red tech suit, not bulky like Hordak’s, much thinner with tubes and cables hanging here or there. Under it you could see his bones and rip cage pressed tight around his skin, in some areas the white bone broke through the skin forming vein-like patterns across his body - common side effects for defects. A unique defect to Mod was that his skin was coloured red, it didn’t mean much, but others thought it looked neat.

Vultak was far more odd and different, some clones even called him the strangest clone alive. One of the oldest living too. V was a defect too, defects liked to stick together, at least most of them, not Modulok specifically. Vultak was thin too, like a walking toothpick. Vultak’s top half of his head was a red glass-looking dome resembling a radar display. No eyes. However a long witch-like nose. And shark-sharp teeth, though that was common with all clones. Possibly his most iconic aspect were his retractable wings being able to extend out of his under-arms, unveiling metallic feathers as sharp as knives. Various experimental technology was incorporated into his arms, giving his wings the ability to cause micro-hurricanes, and gusts of wind. And flight, obviously.

Also, he was thousands years old.

“V, you clearly want something so just say it and get it over with, the less time I spend with you the saner I’ll remain.” Modulok stated tiredly knowing fully well conversations with V could be exhausting. He leaned on his right arm which he placed on the table.

“What? Come on, can’t a brother just want to hang out with his other clone brother from another mothership?...” Mod was unamused and unphased, in the pause and silence his expression did not change. “And also my dearest, most awesome, talented brother, who is a doctor... I could... use some of that reeeeeally good tastin’ medicine that only a certified medic like you can hand out.” Vultak gave him a smile and tilted his head.

Mod gave him an eye roll, “I am not handing you the pills!”

“Oh come on, Mod! This stuff’s getting out on the street anyway! You’re not upholding some moral high-ground, you’re not holding society together! Come on, please, just one.”

Modulok waved him off, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. And I’m not trying to up hold anything, I don’t care what happens out there, but it just so happens that when some stupid non-sense takes place out there it means I’ve got more work here.” In a way he was right, Modulok was the most famous medic from the Galactic Horde, known across countless galaxies, being a defect medic and a medic for defects, that increased his infamous status. If anyone, any clone was in need of aid they turned to him for help, to say Mod was busy would’ve been an understatement. “Don’t even get me started on those pills that Hordak and Dryl made, I have no idea what they were thinking.”

The Isle Pills. Small capsules of biochemical engineering, synthesized from the ‘infected’ ‘tainted’ plants of Beast Island. That was the way people described the island, there were many theories about the landmass, a lot of scary campfire stories, disputes about whether it even existed. Its existence was apparently confirmed by the Princess of Dryl. Something about backstabbing and being imprisoned on the island, the clones weren’t sure, and they didn’t care much. But the nature of the island had been kept secretive, partially perhaps because the lab-partners studying the location don’t know many thing about it either.

It is also to be noted that they, the pills, weren’t meant for wide spread public use, apparently the Drylian Princess herself was against the production of it. But somehow they got out. Modulok was sure Hordak wasn’t thrilled that his experimental treatment for his defection was being distributed like hot buns at a bakery sale.

The pills have an altering affect on the consumer’s mood and how they perceive reality. Where the island would have enraptured an individual in their own fears and insecurities, somehow those mad-scientists altered the effect of the flora to envelop the individual in numbness and sleep-like paralysis. Hordak no doubt developed the pills as a way of coping with his defection and all the pain that came with it. So the product became quite popular with other defects. Including V, to no surprise. The pills were addictive and seemingly untested, and someone was making a profit off of it no doubt.

“They probably weren’t thinking, that’s what! If you ask me that Hordak guy is insane. All his bad decisions always seem to bit us in the rear.” The infamous Hordak, a general from a previous life, a defect that was sent to the frontlines by Prime personally, some even have speculated that he was meant to be Prime’s next bodily vessel. So in a sick twisted way, that defect saved him. Funny how life works.

Hordak somehow ended up on Etheria, he doesn’t even know how, somehow he amassed a large following and took over half a continent, destroyed a lot in the process. People hate him, his face, and that means of course many weren’t thrilled about hundreds of thousands of clones falling from the sky and finding a home and shelter on Etheria. Honestly, Modulok didn’t like him much either. Vultak unlike Mod actually quite liked Hordak as he served under him once, V trusted him.

“Mod, they would’ve hated us with or without him at the helm, at the end of the day he’s one of us, the whole universe hates us, we gotta stick together.”

“Where’s your ‘screw everything’ mentality gone to?”

V downed his second glass and wiped his mouth, “Washed away and washed down...” V just stared at the now empty glass inspecting it suspiciously as if he was looking if the glass was withholding additional liquid from him. It became obvious that V was thinking, contemplating something, he placed the glass down with a ‘clink’ on the table. “...I’ve been getting the nightmares again. And it’s getting worse, it always does. It’s not long ‘til the nightmares start coming out during the day, while you’re awake.”

Modulok understood, of course he did. He too had went through some harrowing experiences, war is never a good thing for the mind. Mod was an excellent surgeon and doctor, he can do some miracles with scalpels and bandages, he could take care of physical wounds. But there were wounds and scars that he couldn’t heal.

Vultak continued, “Do you believe in karma, Mod?” The question gave the medic pause, he didn’t quite know how to answer that, and he was sure this was one of those questions you don’t answer as V was going to no doubt continue and give his own answer. But the short reply would’ve been ‘no’, Mod didn’t believe in any higher power or any metaphysical concepts such as fate or destiny, it all rather felt far-fetched to him. “That our actions and deeds from our previous lives affect and decides our fate and fortune in the future?

That the future takes roof in the past? You do good, you have good fortune, a good life awaits you. You do bad, you have bad fortune, hell’s coming your way. Revenge and retribution on a cosmic level. It’s the universe’s way of punishing the evil and the wicked, that’s us by the way.

And we do deserve it, don’t we. I mean we’re literally walking, breathing, war machines, our sole purpose was to destroy, perpetuate war and cause all around carnage.

Everyone always wants to blame Hordak for Etheria hating us, but every single one of us has had a part in conquering half the damn universe! Countless worlds either chained or turned to dust, all thanks to us, all of us.

All the terrible things we’ve done, and now what? We just get to have a happy ending? No. No, no, no. Karma’s just getting ready, reeling back, ready to backhand all of us to oblivion. We gotta suffer first... Karma’s balance, karma’s proportional. Which isn’t good for us since we did a lot of wrong-doings. Remember the Siege of Denebria, the War for Primus, the Taking of Trolla, the centuries-long Massacres at Epsilon-19, everyone wants to forget that hellscape death-trap. But we just can’t, some things claw their way back to the surface from below all that brainwashing-sauce.

And that’s just the horrid stuff we remember!... Can you imagine how many lives we’ve forgotten? How many years we’ve lost? How many people we’ve forgotten? That four eyed freak robbed us of everything that made us, us!... All that stuff’s gonna bite us in the back.”

Modulok simply listened, he was used to V’s rants and ravings, but all that... seemed different. Usually V made out everything to be a joke, never taking anything serious, he was a jokester. The nihilistic joker seemed to be subdued, some sort of seriousness, some existential dread on his face. Vultak was genuinely opening up to Mod, and he appreciated that. But it was a shame they had to get drunk first before having conversations like that.

Mod became gradually more worried as V continued with the dialogue, after he paused and just began to stare blankly at his glass again Modulok responded, “I appreciate you opening up, kind of, V, I just wish it didn’t take the influence of alcohol... [sigh] Look, V, I know tomorrow is never certain, and that we all carry the weight of scars on our brittle shoulders... but please believe me when I tell you, that everything will be okay, everything will get better. Don’t drown yourself in poison. The world’s not falling apart, and neither should you.” Mod placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, trying to comfort his friend.

Vultak simply looked up at his brother, his face blank, he knew Mod meant well, but it didn’t help much to comfort him. And so V hopelessly replied, uttering almost a warning, “Just you wait doc, the sky’s gonna come crashing down on our heads.”

[bestworstcase]

one thing i think is probably worth keeping in mind is that grimm are ultimately the creations of the god of darkness—and he is a very emotionally-driven being himself and the brother credited with giving humanity the gift of knowledge. obviously he gave these qualities to humankind; it’s not that much of a stretch to think he might have also given them to grimm, and maybe the metaphysical distinction between a grimm and a human is just that the god of light had an equal share in making the latter. most grimm in the world exist beyond salem’s influence: she’s unaware of the lamp’s location and ozma’s latest reincarnation until hazel reports in, despite grimm encountering both; in atlas she is uninterested in mantle and clearly intends to wait until she can take the shields down and then concentrate all of her forces on atlas, but wild stragglers trickle into the city anyway; and when her agents orchestrate grimm swarms they do it by provoking mass hysteria, which suggests salem can’t just snap her fingers and make a grimm invasion happen wherever and whenever she wants. she seems to have fine control over the grimm she makes herself but otherwise has to work with their natural behaviors. and her experimentation seems geared toward developing specialized grimm to suit the needs of her organization (she makes a teleconferencing grimm after disabling the CCTS*, lol) and, for yet unexplored reasons, hybridization with humans and faunus. she doesn’t seem to be trying to push the grimm as a species toward evolving sapience. so my inclination is to assume that salem has had comparatively little hand in shaping grimm nature globally.

*IRRELEVANT SIDEBAR: moment of silence for the missed opportunity to have “CCTS” be pronounced “cactus” in common vernacular. it intuitively fits the silly team name schema!

it really is interesting just how much V4 shows of the grimm that blatantly contradicts what we’re told about them during the beacon arc. right out the gate, too, with bricks and complex improvisational teamwork and the beringel’s emotive reactions to its apparent victory and then realization that its opponent survived the fall through the roof all in the V4 short. everything we learn about the grimm in V1-3 comes filtered through huntsmen academy pedagogy and in the first two volumes every significant direct encounter occurs in proximity—whether diegetic or narrative—to a character who explains them authoritatively using the huntsmen model: pyrrha’s philosophical recitation on the nature of the soul and what makes grimm soulless gives context to the initiation, port describes the grimm as demonic monsters before setting one loose in class, oobleck helpfully provides dollops of exposition to fit the grimm of mountain glenn into the framework laid out in V1. by V3, we have a handle on what these creatures are and the onslaught against beacon plays out—almost—exactly as we would expect based on this understanding, with the singular exception that the grimm are clearly shown to be acting as allies to the non-grimm adversaries. (the white fang transports their own fighters and grimm side-by-side without coming to any harm, and cinder speaks to, makes eye contact with, and signals for an assist from the wyvern.) and the narrative reveals salem at the very, very end to imply an explanation for that singular anomaly.

but… beacon falls. in V4 the school environment is gone and we begin to encounter the grimm outside the controlled pedagogical environment of the huntsmen academy and like IMMEDIATELY the narrative starts throwing curveballs. a beowolf gets up on a roof to throw bricks at ruby. the beringel grabs a beowolf and they flawlessly execute a maneuver we���d call a team attack if a duo of huntsmen did it; later the beringel roars in satisfaction when it thinks ruby is beaten and then reacts with surprise and trepidation when it realizes she isn’t. the villagers in V4 shrug off weeks of provocations by a grimm four young huntresses and huntsmen struggled to defeat. jaune looks at the bodies strewn across the wreckage of shion and asks “who killed all these people,” indicating that “the grimm” is not a foregone conclusion—and the answer turns out to be not grimm but bandits. the sea feilong spends an entire day quietly circling beneath the boat, unnoticed, then reveals herself but doesn’t really do anything except roar and snap once at the huntress who shot her while looping over and around the boat itself—never making contact or actually attacking until after she has been fired on and hit repeatedly, and even then focusing her retaliation narrowly on the ship’s weaponry and the huntsmen attacking her. (the WOR ep notes that grimm are territorial; they don’t prey on animals but violent altercations over territory are not uncommon. what we see in 4.3 isn’t a grimm attack. it’s a territorial threat display that escalates because nobody on the boat can tell the difference between a grimm saying “LEAVE” vs one who wants to eat them.) and on the exact opposite end of the spectrum, the nuckelavee has a nest decorated with trophies it’s collected across a decade or more of haunting its neck of the woods: neither a mindless killer nor a powerful old giant with caution borne of self-preservation but an intelligent being who plagued this small region for years out of what seems to be active malice.

over and over and over again, V4 showcases grimm individuality and refutes the huntsmen academy understanding of what these creatures are and why they act as they do. and of course if you watch V1-3 again with the knowledge that the pedagogical lens is limited and inaccurate you’ll notice the small inconsistencies between what is said and what is shown: the ursai yang faces react to her rapid shift in mood with obvious confusion. the deathstalker dodges jaune’s attempts to grab its stinger several times before it either gets bored with the game or isn’t quick enough and rouses itself because it doesn’t like being grabbed. the grimm in mountain glenn know the kids are encamped in the ruin (ruby makes direct eye contact with one through her scope) but ignore their presence in favor of nosing around the ruins. none of the complexity that appears in V4 is really new: it’s just presented plainly, without commentary by an authority figure to elide everything that doesn’t fit inside the clear-cut, morally simplistic huntsmen academy stance that grimm are just an endless horde of soulless evil. and that transition occurs instantly, the minute the narrative leaves the confines of the academy setting.

it’s a neat storytelling choice. hello, welcome to the real world, the grimm are fundamentally just Creatures. they feel pain, and fear. they’re social beings. they’re smart. they aren’t all the same: some of them would prefer not to fight and need to be pushed really far before they’ll resort to violent retaliation and others hunt people for sport. and sometimes they’re not overwhelming existential threats; sometimes they’re just a chronic nuisance bad enough to make you wonder if moving is worth it.

[ask-powerwoman]

So, Villa how did Dot find out about Ultra Woman? And why did she leave in the first place?

*This story is heavily based on the Mega Man Archie comics.

“Hey, mum?” Dot asks her creator, Doctor Villa “I thought I was your first robot. WVN-00A.”

“That’s right.” Villa responds with a smile

“Then... who’s WVN-000, ‘Lyra’...?” Villa froze, and glances to the screen that her daughter was looking at.

“See?” Dot says pointing to the name, “I was cleaning up the database when I found this. Is it an error?”

Villa sighs. “That... that isn’t an error.” She says, “Lyra was your older sister.”

Dot’s eyes light up. “Really?! Where is she? When do I get to meet her?”

“I’m sorry, Dot. But I’m afraid you’ll never get to meet Lyra.” Villa says sadly “she was my first triumph, and my greatest failure...”

“I... I don’t understand. What happened?” Dot asks.

That’s when Villa began to explain what had happened many years ago. When she was younger, more naive, and just beginning her life’s work. Back when She still counted Doctor Wily as a friend...

~~~

“That’s it Albert! She’s all done!” Villa says with a smile, lifting the goggles up onto the top of her head.

“Mmm..” Wily placed a hand to his chin, examining Villa’s newest creation. “It’s awfully... human-looking, Winter.” He says “Your military contract was for an advanced combat robot. You’ve built a... young lady.”

“And” Villa says “And my robot master line WILL be capable of advanced warfare --as well as a myriad of other advanced mental processes. I’ll get them their weapon, but this prototype, My girl, will stay with me.”

“Hmph. I’d say... you were taking your love of robotics too far, but then I’d be a hypocrite.” Wily says with a softened smile to his friend. “Let’s wake her up.”

“Right. Wake up, dear, Good morning...” the robot girl sat up on the work table, her long blonde ponytail moving over slightly as she rubs her eyes. “...Lyra!”

“...hello?” Lyra says, hesitantly, before finding herself suddenly picked up off the table and into a strong hug.

“Welcome to the world my lovely girl!” Villa says happily “I am your creator, Doctor Villa!” She allows Lyra to sit down once again. “How do you feel? The self diagnostic should’ve kicked in first thing.”

“I feel... fine?” Lyra responds “all systems report nominal.” She looks around

“I... I feel... confused. Overwhelmed. Disoriented. I know we’re in the ‘lab’ and what a ‘lab’ is but... why?”

Villa smiles with excitement “do you hear this, Albert? She’s self aware! Not five minutes online and she’s already thinking metaphysically!”

“Mm-hmm.” Wily replies scribbling notes down on a pad “Don’t mind me... just taking the measurements you’ll need for the weapon upgrades later. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Lyra blinks and looks at her hands “w...weapons?”

“Don’t worry about that now. You’re taking the first steps to bridge the gap between humanity and robotics.” Villa places a hand on Lyra’s shoulder. “You have data, but what you need now, is culture.”

Villa took Lyra out to see the city. The large buildings that seem to tower over everything, She bought Lyra a long purple scarf that she was fascinated by, She took her to the museum to see wondrous pieces of artwork, to the forest area where she got to feed real, organic birds and a deer, and finally to the symphony in the park as the moon finally began to rise.

In retrospect, Villa was too enthusiastic back then. She pushed too much of the world--of her own goals--on Lyra at once. But she seemed to be accepting it all so well...

Unfortunately, this was also when Villa received a great deal of her funding from military research. Without it, she would never have been able to construct Lyra. However, her benefactors wanted something to show for their investments, so...

Villa placed a helmet on Lyra’s head carefully as they prepare for the demonstration.

“Remember your programming. Hit-and-Run, don’t be reckless, pick your targets wisely, don’t forget to use your cover to your advantage...”

“Relax.” Lyra says with a confident smile. “I got this.”

Villa let’s out a heavy sigh as Lyra walks into the field.

“G-good afternoon, gentlemen. Today’s demonstration is of Villa Labs autonomous combat robot, model number WVN-000.” She says to the military representatives. “Today you will see how a robot can be capable of independent thought. Villa Labs hopes to bring the same capabilities to the civilian sector one day. But first, we will demonstrate the versatility my d--er.. this robot can perform in a... in a live fire exercise. Future models will allow for military operations with no... um... risk to human life.”

The demonstration began. Lyra ducked behind one of the walls as the training drones began to rapid fire.

Lyra smirks, charging her buster and dashing out from her cover, taking out several drones before reaching the next piece of wall for cover.

The shots from the drones cracked the wall on the outside, but that didn’t stop Lyra from leaping up and grabbing a hold of the wall, using the top as cover to take out more drones.

But something wasn’t right.

Lyra lands back on the ground, pushing the wall hard enough to topple it over.

Her body sparking all the while.

As exercise 2 was about to start, the sparking grew worse. Lyra felt off. It was dizzying for her.

“Doc... Doctor V-Villa? Something’s...”

Lyra tried to fire at one of the new incoming drones, but it missed.

And the drones swoop down to cut her with the propeller blades

“Lyra? LYRA?!” Villa exclaims with fear and worry “STOP THE TEST!!”

She came running over to her daughter, who now lay weak on the ground.

“Everything was going so well.” One of the military representatives says, “What happened, doctor?”

“There... seems to be an imbalance in her power generator. She’s never been put under this kind of strain...” Villa says, examining the data she was receiving from the damaged prototype.

“You didn’t test it first?”

“Of course I did!” Villa exclaims “but everything about her is unique—experimental. A robot this advanced requires a tremendous amount of power, and when the output is pushed...”

“It certainly shows promise,” says one of the military representatives, “but the power failure is a concern.”

“Yes...” adds another, “A simpler model would require less power, a simpler battle software would still be sufficient.”

“Congratulations, Doctor, you’ve won us over. We’ll clear you for further research funding, get back to us when you’ve got a smaller, simpler model.”

“Y-yes, sirs...” Doctor Villa says as she held Lyra in her arms, “thank you...”

But that wasn’t Villa’s real failure with Lyra.

Later that night, Lyra woke up in the lab, her core plugged into several machines meant to keep it stable

“Ugh... Doctor Villa?” She asks, rubbing her head, but looking around, her creator was nowhere in sight.

But she could hear an argument from another room.

“Absolutely not!”

“Listen to yourself, Winter! You’re way too attached to her. Let me do the modifications.”

“I said ‘no!’”

Lyra pulls the chords out of her core, and slowly gets up and goes to see what was going on.

“Oh, so you’ll trust me to design her arm-cannon, but you won’t trust me to modify her power core?”

“You DESIGNED it, but you didn’t INSTALL it. I did!”

“And you obviously did it wrong, hence the imbalance!”

Lyra stood still, watching her mother fight with her friend.

“You were BANNED from directly working on advanced robotics.”

“Nice of you to reopen THAT wound, Winter.” Wily huffs.

“You brought that upon yourself!” Villa retorts, “But more importantly, Lyra is MY girl, and I’ll handle her redesigns.”

“Doctor Villa...” Lyra starts, gaining the attention of the two Doctors.

“Lyra!” Villa exclaims, “I didn’t know you were already recharged.”

Villa knelt down to her level, placing her hands on her shoulders.

“Are you alright? Do you feel off-balance at all?”

“I’m fine” Lyra replies, “what’s this about redesigning me?”

Doctor Villa sighs, “your power generator is flawed.” She says, pointing to Lyra’s core. “If I don’t fix it, the imbalance will eventually destroy you. I have to redesign your core to save you.”

“And what if you bungle it,” Wily starts, “and erase all her personal programming?”

“I’m sure you’ll retain all your personality traits!” Villa says, in an attempt to reassure her daughter.

“Heh—just as you were sure her generator would work properly?”

“Enough, Albert, you’ll scare her! You’re not helping!”

“I know. You won’t let me.”

“I said ‘Enough!’”

“Fine, fine.”

“Lyra,” Villa says to her daughter, “Go hook yourself up in the lab so your power remains stable. We’ll begin work tomorrow.”

“But...”

“Now, please. This is for your own good.”

“...But” Lyra says quietly, “What about what I want?”

That night... Well, Villa can’t be certain if this was how it played out, But she had run the scenario over and over again in her head...

Lyra hid behind the wall to Villa’s room, listening as her mother talked to herself.

“I just don’t understand. It’s to save her life.” Villa says to herself as she paced back and forth in her room. “I coded the closest thing to a will of her own, but I want her to use it to make good, logical decisions.”

She sighs “..who would be logical facing their own mortality? Oh, Thomas. If you were here, you would know what to do...” Villa says, looking at an old picture of Thomas light, Wily and herself.

“Perhaps if I... it would be a lot easier if I did rewrite that rebellious streak out of her...”

Hearing that, Lyra had enough. Gripping her fist she leaves before she could hear the rest of what Villa had said to herself.

“No, no, no... what am I saying?” Villa says facepalming, “Once she’s repaired I’ll have to make it up to her in some way. And, in the long run, she’ll see it was for the greater good.”

Lyra in the meantime, was sobbing. As she packed a bag full of E-Tanks for a long and lonely trip ahead of her, she glanced at a picture of Villa and herself.

Smiling as if they had a perfect life... what lies had Villa been feeding her?...

In a moment of anger, Lyra smashed the photo on a ground.

The she walked out the door, never to come back.

~~~

“I never heard of or saw her again.” Villa says to Dot. “My pride, My arrogance, My lack of foresight... they robbed me of my first creation... My first daughter.”

“Well, then, we can go look for her!” Dot says with a smile “Me and Bounce can start looking right now!”

Villa chuckles a little. “No, Dot. Lyra’s power generator would’ve gone offline by now. It pains me to say it, but she’s gone.” She says with a sorrowful tone.

“Although there are long nights where I wonder what happened to her after she left...”

*A/N: this was a good excuse to submit a story instead of a comic. Hope you enjoyed this little story!

[whileiamdying]

The Heroism of Disobedience and Deceit: Where Is the Friend’s Home?

By Robin Wood

Introduction

Kiarostami’s development has been remarkably swift, each stage marked by radical change. Essentially, he has moved from a traditional ‘realist’ narrative cinema, strongly influenced by Italian neo-realism. through various intermediate stages, to an experimental formalism. The shifts are by no means arbitrary: all his work, of whatever period, exhibits similar basic characteristics of commitment, humanism, integrity, a complex awareness of major issues (social, aesthetic, moral, metaphysical). Understandably, today, it is the recent formalism that is getting most of the attention, and one finds few references to the earlier work. I regard his early films (and especially the ‘Koker’ trilogy) as work of at least equal distinction to anything he has given us since. This essay is an attempt to do justice to one of them, examining it in detail.

One can make a broad distinction between film/novel and film/poem, while remembering that very few films are entirely one or the other. By film/novel I mean a film driven by narrative, the structure of the film being the structure of the story it tells; by film/poem I mean a film in which the image is dominant, a film (one might say) structured upon images, their recurrence, rhythms, their development. Un Chien Andalou, or a film by Brakhage, is a film/poem (though both have affinities with narrative); a film by Howard Hawks is essentially a film/novel, though if one examined it in great detail it might reveal ‘poetic’ elements (repeated motifs, for example, structuring it both narratively or formally). Where Is the Friend’s Home? is essentially a film/novel, but with striking ‘poetic’ motifs adding to its complex structure. Ten, consisting of ten long takes filmed in the interior of an automobile, is with its rigorous structure, a film/poem, though many seem ready to treat it as essentially a formal exercise. Yet it has a clear, and very important, narrative structure: each shot represents the woman driver’s progress towards complete independence. The film is both a formal exercise and a political feminist statement. Perhaps one might claim, in Kiarostami’s work to date, that The Wind Will Carry Us achieves the perfect balance (with no sense of contradiction) between film/novel and film/poem: it is structured both upon a narrative and upon certain recurring motifs and rhythms.

Through the Olive Trees

In case there are readers only partly familiar with Kiarostami’s work, let me explain that the three films of the ‘Koker’ trilogy (‘Koker’ being the name of the village in which the films are set), of which Where Is the Friend’s Home? is the first, move progressively from the dominance of narrative fiction, through quasi-documentary (And Life Goes On…) to the intricate self-reflexivity of Through the Olive Trees (a film about the making of a documentary about the making of And Life Goes On…, but also finding space for a love story with a triumphant happy ending). All three films of the trilogy culminate, at the last minute, in a moment of transcendence, a Kiarostamian celebration: in Where Is the Friend’s Home? a pressed flower is found in a notebook; in And Life Goes On…, a car, after several attempts, succeeds in surmounting a steep hill; in Through the Olive Trees, the young woman (in a longshot so extreme we can barely make her out) apparently accepts at last her devoted suitor’s proposal.

The White Balloon

An earlier film, The White Balloon, directed by Jafar Panahi (now famous for The Circle and Crimson Gold) but scripted by Kiarostami, has clear links with Where Is the Friend’s Home? Both are constructed on a child’s search (for first a goldfish, then for lost money in Panahi’s film, for, obviously, the friend’s home in Kiarostami’s); in both, the child has to survive within an adult world that is at best indifferent, at worst hostile (though the boy of Where Is the Friend’s Home? is much more appealing than the little girl of The White Balloon, who is something of a spoilt brat); both films cover, basically, one day or a few hours in a child’s life (the action of The White Balloon is continuous, Friend’s Home has a coda taking place the next morning); both are constructed on a series of encounters en route. Finally, the white balloon itself is clearly a Kiarostami fingerprint, paralleling the celebratory endings of the three ‘Koker’ films: as with the flower in Where Is the Friend’s Home?, the children are barely aware of it and it means nothing to them – it is simply one balloon in the wares of an itinerant balloon seller – but it is also the center point of the film’s last image, suggesting the film makers’ benediction.

Why were so many films about children made by progressive directors at this stage of Iranian history? It seems plausible that, for many filmmakers, the oppression of children stood in for the oppression of women, any protest against which was tabu within the regime of that period. Panahi, with The Circle,became the leader in defiance of that tabu; Kiarostami (whose films are generally male-centred), held back until Ten, some years later.

Journeys

It has been often noted that Kiarostami’s films almost always take the form of a journey; one might add that the journey also takes the form of a search: in And Life Goes On…, the journey to find the two boys, continuing past the film’s conclusion; in A Taste of Cherry, the journey to find someone who will help the protagonist commit suicide; in Ten, the women’s (perhaps unconscious) search for her social and spiritual freedom. Where Is the Friend’s Home? shares with The Wind Will Carry Us a series of journeys: from Koker to Poshteh on foot (twice there and back, though we are not shown the final journey), the repeated journey by car up and down a hill. The two films also have in common that the journey does not end the search, which is resolved only after the journey has been completed.. Friend’s Home, indeed, appears unique in Kiarostami’s work to date in that the search appears quite fruitless and ends in seemingly hopeless despair. Yet the despair leads to a decision and a culminating miracle (or act of nature), a celebration of moral integrity.

I want to examine the first and third scenes of Where Is the Friend’s Home? in detail, then suggest more succinctly from the rest of the film how the use of recurring imagery and motifs gives it its character of film/poem as well as film/novel. In certain respects the film brings to mind a naturalistic Alice in Wonderland: the celebration of the child’s resilience as he/she wanders from encounter to encounter within a world generally indifferent or overtly hostile.

The credit shot and opening scene

The film’s first shot, over which the credits appear, introduces at once one of the film’s two dominant and pervasive motifs, doors (the other is windows). The film’s poetic structure is built upon the opening and closing of doors and windows, the motifs recurring (separately or in conjunction) in every sequence. Sometimes (as Freud might say) a door is just a door, but in the majority of cases, through the repetition/development of the motif, the doors and windows take on overtones of entrapment/escape, imprisonment/freedom. Perfect, then, that the first thing Kiarostami shows us, in closeup, is a door which is neither open nor quite shut: it is moving slightly on its hinges, its near-closure suggesting imprisonment, its slight movement the possibility of escape. It is the door of the schoolroom, as we gather at once from the noise of children’s voices. Introducing the credits is a statement: ‘The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children presents…’ The irony of this is not at first obvious but becomes so as the opening scene progresses: the schoolroom in which, for the entire opening sequence, we are claustrophobically imprisoned (along with the children) is clearly dedicated to the repression of the children’s intellectual development. A shadow falls over the door: the teacher has arrived.

The interior. The teacher enters the classroom, leaving the door (for a moment) slightly open as he reprimands the class (‘Why all this noise?’). He’s only ‘a few minutes late’ – a fault for which children, only a minute or so later, get severely criticized. He closes the somewhat recalcitrant door, then slams it when it fails to shut. His voice is tense, at once dominating and anxious, his job may be at stake (‘The Principal’s going to complain again’). He closes the window, completing the sense of imprisonment. When a child reports the absence of a pupil he is told not to speak unless spoken to. We are then introduced to Ahmadpour (Ahmad) and the friend, Nehmatzadeh, whose home he will spend most of the film searching for, and to the crux from which the whole of the narrative will develop: Nehmatzadeh has committed the crime of not using his notebook for his homework. The teacher tears up, unread, the pages on which he has done it: the homework may be perfect but it is in the wrong book. Ahmad, in the film’s first closeup, looks worried and sad, Nematzadeh sobs, wiping then hiding his face; the teacher continues to harangue him, never pausing for an answer. A late child arrives from Poshteh (which we learn later is where Nematzadeh lives) and is promptly ordered to close the door, which immediately swings open again. The teacher slams it shut and tells the assembly ‘Boys who come from Poshteh should remember to get up ten minutes earlier and go to bed thirty minutes earlier so as not to fall asleep in class’. He then returns to the interrogation of Nematzadeh, who says that he left the notebook at his cousin’s house. Another boy says that he has the notebook, and the teacher instantly assumes that Nematzadeh was lying. ‘He is my cousin’ says Nematzadeh, at which point the teacher immediately changes the subject: `First you must learn that there are rules for everything’. Ahmad (to his embarrassment) is held up as a model (his notebook is impeccable), and Nehmatzadeh is told he will be expelled if it ever happens again.

I have described this opening scene in what may seem unnecessary detail because it establishes so thoroughly the entire basis of the film: its narrative, its atmosphere, its imagery, but also its continuing relevance, which seems to extend beyond Iran. Does it exaggerate the oppressiveness of what we call education? I would like to think that our educational system today is somewhat more humane and intelligent. On the other hand, I can parallel everything in this scene, and worse, from my own school days, admittedly sixty years ago, and another, more recent, film set in an Arab country (the magnificent Moroccan Mille Mois) also offers close parallels. One wonders how these children learn anything at all beyond How to get the hell out. Our schools today seem reluctant to teach essential values (tolerance and understanding, for example). Just a few years ago, here in Toronto where I live, a schoolboy in a class with an enterprising teacher in which every pupil had been asked to give a presentation on a topical subject invited me to visit the class and talk about gay liberation. I wore a Gay Rights T-shirt for the great occasion, and found I had to be led through the dining area at lunch hour, where I was subjected to everything but a custard pie (perhaps none was available). I don’t think we oh-so-progressive people in the supposedly enlightened West should be too complacent. In an ideal civilization (remote from our own) children would learn at their own speed what they want to learn. This would necessitate a cultured and humane home/family environment (as well as non-oppressive schools and teachers) that is currently unthinkable in a world where everything (including education) hinges on the making of money.

The brief second sequence requires brief comment. We see the boys dash riotously out of school as classes end, their violence and unruliness the product of the constant tension and constraint to which they have been subjected. The moment from which all the remainder of the film develops is given us, characteristically, in long-shot, with no explanatory ‘Look-at-this-it’s-important’ cut-ins: in the rush, Nemadzadeh falls, drops his schoolbag, his books and papers fall out, Ahmad helps pick them up, stuffs them in his own bag, preoccupied with his friend’s injured and bleeding knee. The scene also develops our awareness of the two boys’ sensitivity, setting them somewhat apart from their fellows: they stroke the stabled donkey, another boy teases it. Again, the moment is not underlined, we are left to notice it or not. It helps explain why these two boys are special friends, what attracts them to each other. At the end of the scene the white horse provides a neat visual link to the next sequence: its size and position in the frame closely anticipate the white shirt on the clothesline central to the first shot in Ahmad’s yard. Which leads me to a brief consideration of Kiarostami’s aesthetic sensibility…

Ahmad’s Home

The visual pleasure offered by the lengthy sequence in the family yard counterpoints, but by no means softens, the painfulness and tension of the action. If anything it intensifies it through the contrast. The spacious yard, the pots of flowering plants that line the balcony of the age- and weather-softened house, the perfect whiteness of the sheets hanging on the line to which Kiarostami repeatedly returns, are juxtaposed with the emphasis on constant work, continuous pressure, the impossibility of relaxation.

Throughout the sequence of approximately sixty shots, during which Ahmad (who has discovered that he has brought his friend’s notebook home in his satchel) attempts to explain what has happened and what the issues are to his mother and to persuade her to let him take the notebook to Poshteh, the mother is associated with blue and white, Ahmad with a rusty red (his pullover) and the brown of the house’s architecture, its doors and supports. The mother wears a white apron over a light blue dress; there is a bright blue tub in the background behind the pump where she washes and wrings out clothes (especially the baby’s white diapers). When she moves to the washing line it is covered with blue clothing and white sheets and shirt, and she hangs on it a dark blue sheet; the wet garment she throws at Ahmad at the height of their quarrel is dark blue; when she finally picks up the baby it is dressed in blue, and there is another blue tub in the area behind the baby’s hammock. With the cross-cutting, and the characters crossing each other as they argue, there is a continuous play of blue and the rust red of Ahmad’s pullover, but in general the colors are kept separate, the woman’s space, the boy’s space. The effect is not just aesthetically pleasing, it also underlines their separateness: Ahmad’s mother never really listens to what he is saying, his increasingly desperate efforts to make her understand are wasted.

The soundtrack is brilliantly conceived to intensify the discord. Kiarostami resorts to non-diegetic sound only at the end of the sequence, underlining the moment when Ahmad makes up his mind to defy his mother and escape with the notebook: a drumbeat. Otherwise there are two offscreen sounds, the cries of the baby, the crowing of a cock, creating a continuous and increasing unease and irritation.

The father is only referred to once in the film, and we see him only very briefly at the end; he never speaks. Presumably in the opening sequences he is still at work. Similarly, the aged grandfather, introduced in an early scene in the village, near the beginning of Ahmad’s first journey, is seen again only in the penultimate sequence, sitting propped against a wall, silent. The mother, constantly harassed by the baby’s cries, struggles throughout to get the work done, the diapers washed, the clothes and sheets hung on the line. The aged grandmother offers no assistance and is never asked for it. The family hierarchy is clearly and swiftly established: Ali, the elder son, is privileged, left to do his homework in peace in a quiet upstairs room then sent out to play. Ahmad, as mere second son, is accorded no such respect. Repeatedly told to get on with his homework, he is just as repeatedly interrupted before he can even begin by other orders, chiefly the reiterated order to feed or rock the baby, fetch clean diapers, his homework regarded as of no importance. His heroic status is firmly established in this sequence, the rock on which it is founded his friendship with Nematzadeh, the positive center of his life. His attempts to stand up to his mother and make her listen are already heroic and result only in her telling him to go and buy bread and throwing a wet diaper at him. It is surely refreshing, in our generally (and I’m afraid understandably) cynical and desperate age, to find a filmmaker reaffirming a belief in fundamental human goodness and the power of commitment.

Door and window images, two of each, punctuate this sequence symmetrically. It opens with Ahmad arriving home through the courtyard door, and ends with him rushing out, leaving the door, in his haste, slightly ajar. The two window shots occur roughly equidistantly from the beginning and end of the sequence and are connected both stylistically and thematically: both are static shots (within a sequence containing a considerable amount of camera movement); in both, the window is in the background of the image but central; in both it is shut. In the first (downstairs, when Ahmad is sent indoors for a clean diaper), children outside call to him to come out and play; the second is in his brother’s room, the older boy is finishing his homework, and asks Ahmad to come out and play with him. In both cases Ahmad of course has to refuse.

From closed doors to open windows

I shall not attempt the laborious (and surely tedious) feat of detailing every door and window image in the entire film (sometimes a door really is just a door!), but single out some of those that carry thematic resonance. I’ll take the film’s (and Ahmad’s) four journeys (two from Koker to Poshteh, two back) in order. In general, my argument is that a door ajar suggests the possibility (that may be deceitful) of success, an open door a stronger possibility, a closed door failure or blockage.

Journey 1: Koker to Poshteh. In Poshteh Ahmad encounters Morteza, a boy from the same class, helping his father carry milk containers in through an open door. No, he doesn’t know where Nematzadeh lives, but he knows his cousin Ali Hemmati’s house: ‘There’s a staircase in front and a blue door’. En route, Ahmad finds an old man clearing out broken masonry through his open door, who points him the way to Khanevar (the neighborhood where Nematzadeh lives). There, he finds a door ajar, goes in, leaving the door open behind him (it is visible in the background throughout the ensuing shot), and finds a pair of trousers identical to his friend’s hanging on a washing line. (The abrasive noise of a cat mewing recalls the use of cockcrows in the earlier scene at Ahmad’s home, the discord here perhaps anticipating failure). No one seems to be at home. He knocks repeatedly on a neighboring closed door, opened finally by a sick old woman with her mouth covered. Despite her protests he makes her come with him to help him. A woman has returned, is taking the trousers into the house: she doesn’t know Nematzadeh. She goes in, closing the door behind her.

Ahmad at last finds Hemmati’s house. The door is closed. A neighbor tells Ahmad he’s gone to Koker – left five minutes ago. Abandoning the search for Nematzadeh, Ahmad dashes back the way he came. The journeys and the way they are shot play an important role in the film’s rhythms: for each Kiarostami uses the same stretches of ground, shot from the same angle and camera distance; in each, Ahmad remains in longshot, a tiny figure struggling up a hill or dashing through a small wood.

Journey 2: Poshteh to Koker. Back in Koker Ahmad has the great misfortune to find his grandfather, the film’s most actively unpleasant character (the schoolmaster at least has his anxiety about his position to explain, if not justify, his meanmindedness). The sequence as a whole introduces a whole new thematic dimension, the question of whether or not things were better in the past, and Kiarostami’s treatment of this is remarkably complex. On the one hand the old man represents a grotesquely cruel and immoral past (all in the interests of morality!): he boasts to his pal that he used to beat his son regularly each fortnight whether he’d done anything wrong or not, and he now exploits Ahmad cruelly and irrationally, ordering him to go and buy cigarettes he doesn’t need (he already has plenty), just to make him obey (‘I want the kid to be brought up properly’). However, this is followed by his argument with a clearly exploitive door salesman, who is cajoling people (including the grandfather) to invest in his iron doors (far superior to the old wooden ones). Kiarostami presents him as a modern capitalist entrepreneur, anxious to make a quick buck with inferior (if more permanent) goods.

Just as he is leaving (on horseback), it is revealed that his name is Nematzadeh. Ahmad (understandably) assumes he is his friend’s father, and pursues him (on foot) back to Poshteh, where, when he discovers the rashness of the assumption, a boy tells him ‘There are lots of Nematzadehs around here’).

Journey 3: Koker to Poshteh. By the time Ahmad gets back to Poshteh night has fallen. In the street a window opens – the window of an aged window-maker who knows everyone in the area, including Nematzadeh’s father who ‘…just left, with his son.’ But they will have reached their home now, and he can take Ahmad there. He also knows Ahmad’s father: he made the door for his house… But today, he tells Ahmad, the doors he used to make are being replaced with iron ones. Here Kiarostami develops the past/present theme, with the sense that though something has been gained (Ahmad’s parents don’t beat him, just have no interest in listening to him!), much has been lost in the rush into capitalist exploitation. The old man shows Ahmad the beautiful stained glass windows of his home (‘I built them with my brother’). The next sequence, as they slowly walk the streets (the old window maker cannot walk fast) to Nematzadeh’s home, is punctuated by the beautiful windows of the houses they pass, further instances of the old man’s artistry and craftsmanship. They are (the old man tells Ahmad) rapidly disappearing, replaced by plain modern ones. Old and discouraged, he no longer makes them.

Rising wind, increasing darkness. The old man suddenly finds a flower growing in the gutter, picks it, puts it between the pages of the notebook Ahmad is carrying, though Ahmad, intent on finding the house, seems barely to notice. Rising storm, deep darkness. The old man points out the closed door of Nematzadeh’s home, low down below street level. A horse is pawing violently at the ground. At the last moment Ahmad, really frightened for the first time in the film, draws back, returns to the old man, remembering that he has to buy bread. But of course it is too late. Ahmad goes home.

But, for the only brief scene in the film from which Ahmad is absent, Kiarostami remains behind (so to speak) with the old man. We see him go back into his house, up the stairs, among piles of clothes, building materials. Cut to exterior. The old man comes to the window, closes it, shuts himself in… We are left here with a sense of irremediable loss. The past (as embodied in the film by the grandfather) was even more oppressive and Kiarostami does not sentimentalize it, yet it had room and time for a sense of beauty, craftsmanship, grace: the qualities that the relentless advance, now world-wide, of corporate capitalism is annihilating.

The last two scenes

Ahmad is back at home, a failure. His father, tired and preoccupied after a day’s labor, is fiddling with a transistor radio, paying no attention to whatever else is going on. His grandfather is on a chair propped up against the wall, staring ahead at nothing. Ahmad’s mother tries to get him to eat (her first act of concern for him in the film), but he can’t. He goes to his bedroom, squats on the floor with his schoolbooks open before him. He seems to be copying from one to the other. Suddenly the wooden shutters over the window burst open in the storm, the sheets are blowing wildly on the clothes line, his mother is out struggling to gather them in: the culmination of the film’s door/window imagery. To me, this is among cinema’s great moments. Ahmad is committing a revolutionary act (though this is not entirely clear until the final scene), and nature erupts against corrupted human meanmindedness, celebrating friendship, fidelity, commitment, independence, generosity.

Hence the final scene, where the film comes full circle. We are back in the classroom. The teacher enters, and opens the window. Ahmad is reported absent, Nematzadeh is in despair, head on desk. A boy gets into trouble for helping his father on his farm (should have been doing his homework!). Enter Ahmad. Just in time, he sits down by Nematzadeh, hands over a homework book. It’s the wrong one, but the exchange is swift. The teacher looks at his book (‘Good’), then at Nematzadeh’s (also ‘Good’). And in Nematzadeh’s book is the flower the old window maker put there…

What exactly do we make of this ending? Nothing essential has changed. Ahmad has committed a revolutionary act, but it may not even have been necessary (it seems very unlikely that a mere class teacher would have the power to expel a boy for writing his homework in the wrong book!). The last shot, the flower (clearly a Kiarostami ‘epiphany’) can easily be misconstrued. Kiarostami makes it clear that Ahmad did not put the flower there and, though he may have noticed it, there is no reason to suppose he attached meaning to it or was more than vaguely conscious of it. Nor are we shown Nematzadeh reacting to it: it appears to mean nothing to either boy. I read the flower as a gift from Kiarostami: his blessing on the two boys and on their friendship in a hostile or indifferent world, his celebration of an act which, by conventional moral standards, is ‘cheating’ and dishonesty. It is a moment (not the only one in the film) where I burst into tears whenever I see it. Once, indeed, more embarrassingly, this happened when I lectured on it, after a screening. But I think my students understood…

Robin Wood was a groundbreaking critic and historian of cinema.

[herenortherenearnorfar]

Notes from Ósanwe-Kenta

I recently had a chance to full read the essay Ósanwe-kenta, or Enquiry into the Communication of Thought (I’d previously only gotten snippets as needed to write) and it’s really good! I’m disappointed I didn’t read it sooner since it clears some stuff up and gives a much clearer picture of the metaphysics of Tolkien.

Notes below the cut. 

In addition to fea and hroa, which most fans use these days, there are also terms for mind and willpower. Of note is níra (will, distinguished from avanir which is unwill), indo (state of mind), enda (heart), and sáma (mind). There’s also a term for mental openess and privacy. 

I didn’t realize how explicit the concept of unwillingness as a sacred principle was. I first encountered it in thearrogantemu’s works and loved it so it’s good to know it’s such an important part of the present ethos. It’s a natural law of the world that you can’t force people to bend to your will. 

Obviously Morgoth isn’t a huge fan of that. The narrator’s obvious disdain for his attempts to break the laws of psychic physics is very funny. 

The Valar don’t eat except at major Valinorean festivals! It ties them dangerously to their physical manifestations so they avoid it. That’s such a good little detail. I wonder how it works for other Ainur? Do Maiar also avoid food? Are their hedonist/ascetic splits in the Maiar community?

Another act that ties the Ainur to their bodies is “conceiving and begetting”. I like that this is very different than sex. Sex is fairly simple, physically speaking. But reproduction is a whole other ballgame, one that requires a very high level of material investment. 

The same might be true of food. Do the Valar digest things? Is the act of forming a digestive system similar to the act of making and using reproductive organs? Is just-the-tastebuds eating safer? 

It’s also noted that most foresight in the Tolkien verse isn’t actually seeing the future, it’s just educated guesses. Only really powerful Valar can see the future (and share those visions) and even they have gaps in their knowledge. Direct info from Eru is super rare. Which makes sense! It’s an extension of the free will thing. 

It just puts, say, Galadriel’s behavior in a slightly different light. She’s not a seer just a passive psychic with enough wisdom to connect the dots and put together info she collects from a lot of different minds. Finrod has been getting non-stop tips from Ulmo since before the First Age. Elrond has very good instincts. Faramir keeps dream-raiding other people’s brains.  Language suppresses psychic powers but more than that, language is also innate to bodies. It’s a natural function of physicality to communicate through sound and symbol first and foremost. Gives me loose ideas about Vanyarin osanwe experimenters trying to limit their use of language to better engage the power of their mind. One elf accidentally ended up with locked-in-syndrome in the mid-second age and now he’s the foundation of an entire field of study. Este keeps offering to heal his spine but there’s too much science being accomplished. 

There’s an entire paragraph of Manwë justification that boils down to “you can’t fight bad behavior with worse behavior, all beings have an innate right to freedom and autonomy) and man, I vibe with that. Original Manwë apologist JRRT. 

The whole underlying morality of the piece is very humanist. There’s a very broad sense of the innate need for independence, the fundamental right of free will, the necessity of kindness. It’s an anti-carceral, pro-individual concept piece that makes a point of noting that warm-heartedness smooth the path of psychic communication. It’s just very gentle. Sometimes my man John can be such a progressive thinker, especially for his time. (It makes it all the more baffling when his work is just obliviously bigoted. Please, you’re so smart and clearly so thoughtful.)

[anti-kawaiist]

Week5 Tradition&Contemp WuHung

Several years ago after I gave a talk on contemporary Chinese art, I was asked how Chinese art could also be contemporary. The person who asked the question obviously found these two concepts incompatible. To him, China or Chinese art was intuitively—and necessarily—situated in a time and place outside the realm of the contemporary. I pointed out the falsehood of this presumption, but also confessed that a systematic explanation had yet to be worked out to account for the creation and operation of a "local" or "national" contemporary art in today's world—not only contemporary Chinese art but also contemporary Iranian art, contemporary Indian art, contemporary Mexican art, and contemporary Algerian art—to name just a few. The purpose of this essay is to develop this explanation. In this regard, it is a case study meant to shed light on a larger issue. The direct subject of my discussion is a kind of Chinese art that self-consciously defines itself as "contemporary" (dangdai yishu) and that is also accepted as such by curators and art critics worldwide, judging from their inclusion of this art in the many exhibitions they have organized to showcase recent developments in visual art. To be sure, many brands of "Chinese art" are produced today, but those in traditional mediums and styles (such as literati ink landscape or realist oil portraiture) are not conceived—nor do their creators label them—as dangdai yishu. "Contemporary art" in Chinese thus does not pertain to what is here and now, but refers to an intentional artistic and theoretical construct that asserts a particular temporality and spatiality for itself. Therefore, the first step of my study is to map this temporality and spatiality in terms of art medium, subject matter, exhibition and circulation, and to trace the people and institutions involved in its creation and promotion. This initial investigation leads me to define certain general spheres for the production, exhibition, and collection of contemporary Chinese art, and to propose a model in interpreting this art in its various contemporary contexts.

The need for a new interpretation of contemporary Chinese art naturally arises from dissatisfaction with earlier interpretations, which have often approached this art (or in a broader sense, any contemporary art from the so-called Second and Third Worlds) either exclusively in its domestic context or as a straightforward manifestation of globalization. The first approach follows a traditional art historical narrative defined by nations. The second privileges a totalizing, global perspective that stymies local angles of observation.' To this end, even the notion of a "local" contemporary art already implies this dilemma, demanding reconsideration. Deconstructing the global versus local dichotomy is a vital component of the new understanding of contemporary Chinese art I am pursuing.2 In this essay, I argue that contemporary Chinese art is simultaneously constructed in different yet interrelated spaces, and that it subtly changes its meaning when artists and curators (or their works) traverse and interact with these spaces. Tracing such permutation enables us to develop a spatial model for contemporary Chinese art. This model further helps us interpret a burgeoning "international contemporary art" in today's world, which encompasses various "local" or "national" brands of contemporary art, as a unified field of presentation and representation. Generally speaking, instead of assuming that this type of contemporary art is linked with modern (and postmodern) art in a linear, temporal fashion and within a self-sustaining cultural system, this interpretative model emphasizes heterogeneity and multiplicity in art production, as well as the creativity of a new kind of artist. This new artist creates contemporary art through simultaneously constructing his or her local identity and serving a global audience.

A "CONTEMPORARY TURN" IN CHINESE ART

The Chinese art critic Lii Peng is the main author of two comprehensive introductions to new Chinese art (also known as avant-garde or experimental arts) which emerged after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The first book, which he co-authored with Yi Dan and published in 1992, is called A History of Modern Chinese Art: 1979-1989 (Zhongguo xiandai yishu shi, 1979-1989).4 The second book, which he authored alone, came out in woo under the title A History of Contemporary Chinese Art: 1990-1999 (Zhongguo dangdai yishu shi, 1990-1999).5 The change in the titles from "modern" (xiandai) to "contemporary" (dangdai) was no accident. It is symptomatic of a general (but so far unnoticed) shift in the Chinese art world from the '80s to the '90s, which I call a "contemporary turn." Simply put, throughout the '80s, Chinese avant-garde artists and art critics envisioned themselves as participants in a delayed modernization movement, which aimed to reintroduce humanism and the idea of social progress into the nation's political consciousness (FIG. 2_1).6 From the '90s onward, however, many of them abandoned, or at least distanced themselves from this collective undertaking. Looking back at Chinese avant-garde art of the '80s, some of its original advocates contrasted that exhilarating but chaotic era with the much more practical and diffuse period following it.' According to Li Xianting, a major voice of new Chinese art in both the '80s and '90s, artists of the '80s "believed in the possibility of applying modern Western aesthetics and philosophy as a means of revitalizing Chinese culture." Starting from the early '90s, however, many of them turned "against heroism, idealism, and the yearning for metaphysical transcendence that characterized the '85 Art New Wave movement."' Other critics and curators share this view and have used "modern" and "contemporary" to encapsulate the many differences between these two periods. For instance, they wrote books and articles in the '80s to promote "modern art," and titled the enormous exhibition that concluded the '85 Art New Wave A Grand Exhibition of Modern Art (Xiandai meishu dazhan).9 In contrast, many books, art journals, and exhibitions since the early '90s have used "contemporary art" in their titles.'°

Underlying this change was a major shift in conceptualizing new Chinese art over the past twenty-five years. Most importantly, the two terms indicate two different ways of contextualizing this art, one temporal and diachronic, the other spatial and synchronic. When avant-garde Chinese artists and critics called themselves "modern" in the '80s, they identified themselves, first of all, as participants in a historical movement which had been interrupted in China by Communist rule. Lii Peng and Yi Dan thus opened A History of Modern Chinese Art: 1979-1989 with a passionate introduction, linking new Chinese art to the May Fourth Movement that started in 1919. In their view, although this early twentieth-century "cultural revolution" had the correct goal of bringing China into a modern era of democracy and science, its heavy emphasis on the social function of art and literature finally led to an extreme pragmatism, as realism willingly turned itself into political symbolism in the '60s and '70s to assist a "proletarian dictatorship." To regain the spirit of a genuine cultural revolution, therefore, their introduction exhorted "modern artists" of the '80s to not only uphold humanism as their fundamental ideology, but also to take upon themselves the role of cultural critic, "reexamining the relationship between art and society, religion, and philosophy in all possible ways."" Similar claims characterize many other writings from that period.'2 In contrast to such spirited discussion of "modern art" in the '80s, no particular discourse has qualified the art of the '90s as "contemporary," even though the term has gained wide currency among Chinese artists and critics. What the term indicated in the early '90s was, above all, a sense of rupture and demarcation—the end of an era as well as the kind of historical thinking associated with it. This meaning is made clear in Li Xianting's writing cited above. But as veterans of the art movement of the '80s, Li and his colleagues perceived the art of the new era pessimistically as visual forms without genuine historical, political, and social engagement. Others writers explained the artists' break with history and ideology in terms of China's changing political situation. For example, Chang Tsong-zung, who sponsored and co-organized the first major international exhibition of contemporary Chinese art in 1993," attributed this change to the ill-fated June Fourth Movement (the pro-democratic demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989): "In shock, artists came to a sudden realization of their impotence in the face of real politics. The idealism and utopian enthusiasm so typical of new art in the `80s met its nemesis in the gun barrels in Tiananmen."14 Applying this understanding to visual analysis, he pointed out that two major styles in

post-8 9 Chinese art—Cynical FIG. 2.2: LW WEI, Two Realism and Political Pop— Drunk Painters, OIL ON CANVAS, 1990. both translated idealism into sarcasm (FIGS. 2.2, 2.3). Chang's observation has a broader significance in alluding to a general pattern that distinguishes the development of postwar Chinese art from that of the West. It is a "pattern of rupture" caused by violent intrusions of sociopolitical events such as the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen incident. The result has been a series of deep ruptures as a general historical and psychological condition for artistic and intellectual creativity. Each rupture has forced artists and intellectuals to reevaluate and reorient themselves. Instead of returning to a prior time or space, the projects they have developed after each rupture often testify to a different set of parameters and are governed by different temporality and spatiality. This pattern of response explains the sudden change in artists' attitudes after '89, and also enables us to see the "modern art" of the '80s and the "contemporary art" of the '90s not as two consecutive trends, but as disconnected endeavors conceived in separate temporal and spatial schemes. Earlier, I mentioned that avant-garde artists and critics of the `80s linked themselves with the May Fourth Movement, a cultural movement that aimed to transform China based on a western, Enlightenment model. It is therefore not surprising that these artists and critics also developed a strong desire for cosmopolitanism, eagerly seeking inspiration in western modern art, art theory, and philosophy. This desire became both the cause and the result of an "information explosion" in the '80s. From the start of the decade, all sorts of "decadent" western art forbidden during the Cultural Revolution was introduced to China through reproductions and exhibitions; hundreds of theoretical works, from authors such as Heinrich Wolfflin to Ernst Gombrich, were translated and published in a short period. These images and texts aroused enormous interest among younger artists and greatly inspired their work. It was as if a century-long development of modern art was simultaneously re-staged in China. The chronology and internal logic of this western tradition became less important; what counted most was its diverse content as visual and intellectual stimuli for a hungry audience. Thus, styles and theories that had long become past history in the West (such as surrealism or Wolfflin's categorization of artistic styles) were used by Chinese artists as their direct models. The meaning of their works as "modern art" was located, therefore, not in the original historical significance of the styles and ideas, but in the transference of these styles and ideas to a difference time/place.

Like any transference, this dislocation of modern art was based on the idea of precedents. Although separated by time and historical experience, Chinese artists of the '80s saw themselves as direct followers of great modern philosophers and artists in the West. A historian of western contemporary art may be shocked to find that in Lii Peng and Yi Dan's A History of Modern Chinese Art: 1979¬1989, the most influential figures on Chinese artists in the '80s were, in fact, "Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Albert Camus, and T. S. Eliot."" But it makes perfect sense if we understand these artists' longing to rediscover their modernist roots. This situation changed completely after '89. These grand names suddenly became infinitely remote, and few Chinese artists, if any, continued to seek guidance from them. Rather, the sharp historical gap created by the Tiananmen incident distanced them from the previous era, enabling them to develop a radically different relationship with history and with the surrounding world. In this process, they also disengaged themselves from yundong, the Chinese term for large-scale political, ideological, or artistic "campaigns" or "movements. Although seldom analyzed by historians and sociologists, yundong was one of the most fundamental concepts and technologies in modern Chinese political culture until the '90s. This was especially true for the period from the 50s to the '70s. Upon ascension to power, the Chinese Communist Party mobilized various yundong to realize both short-and long-term projects, and to unify the "revolutionary masses" against internal and external enemies. Three major characteristics of a yundong include a definite and often concrete political agenda, a propaganda machine which helps define and spread this agenda, and an organization which helps forge a cohesive "front" among participants. Yundong became the norm. It is therefore not surprising that a yundong mindset continued to control artists' thinking even after the Cultural Revolution had ended. The persistence of a yundong FIG. 2.3: FANG LIJUN, Series 2, No. 2, OIL ON CANVAS, 1991.

mentality is clearly seen in the avant-garde art of the `80s: while attacking official ideology and art policies, the advocates of this art tried hard to galvanize experimental artists into a unified front and to develop this art into an organized "movement." (In fact, they called their collective activities a yundong.) It took a hit as hard as the Tiananmen tragedy to disengage Chinese artists from this yundong mentality. Almost overnight, they were transformed from soldiers in a heroic struggle into lone individuals facing an alien world. The unfamiliarity of the world in the early '90s, however, had less to do with the Tiananmen incident as with two simultaneous, contemporary happenings. First, China had entered a new stage in a profound socioeconomic transformation. Beginning in the late '70s, a new generation of Chinese leaders led by Deng )(hoping had initiated a series of socioeconomic reforms, but the consequences of these reforms were only fully felt in the '90s. Major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai were completely reshaped. Numerous private and joint ventured, including privately-owned commercial art galleries, had appeared. Educated young men and women moved from job to job in pursuit of personal well-being, and a large "floating population" entered metropolitan centers from the countryside looking for work and better living conditions. As I will discuss below, many changes in the art of the '90s were related to this larger picture. Second, China had also entered a new stage of globalization. If the "modern art" of the '80s was predominately a domestic movement linked closely to the country's internal political situation at the time, "contemporary art" since the '90s has unfolded across multiple geographical, political, and cultural spheres. Consequently, my discussion will now turn to the three most important spheres of this art, which overlap but do not constitute a coherent framework for a continuous narrative. These are: 1. China's domestic art spaces, 2. the global network of a multinational contemporary art, and 3. individualized linkages between these two spheres created by independent artists and curators. THE CONTEMPORANEITY OF CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART 1. Contemporary Art as a Domestic Avant-Garde In the domestic sphere, the term "contemporary art" conveys a strong sense of avant-gardism and signifies a range of experiments that aspire to challenge established art institutions, systems, and forms. Over the past ten to fifteen years, most of this experimentation has been conducted in three areas: art medium, subject, and exhibition.16 A simple but powerful strategy employed by many avant-garde Chinese artists to make their works explicitly "contemporary" is to subvert traditional art mediums. The trend of subverting painting emerged in the '80s. (Before this, independent artists, even the most radical ones, still worked in the domains of painting and sculpture). But it was only from the mid-90s onward that new art forms, such as installation, performance, site-specific art, and multi-media art, prevailed (arcs. 1.4-2.6). An increasing number of younger artists abandoned their former training in traditional or western painting, or only made paintings privately to finance their more adventurous but less marketable art experiments. One can draw interesting parallels between them and an earlier generation of westernized Chinese artists, who abandoned the traditional Chinese brush for the "modern" medium of oil painting. But if those artists in the early twentieth century chose between different types of painting, their successors in the present choose whether to abandon painting altogether.

As I will discuss in the following section, new, experimental art forms provide contemporary Chinese artists with an "international language." Inside China, however, these forms have served to forge an independent field of art production, exhibition, and criticism outside official and academic art. In denouncing painting, artists can effectively establish an "outside" position for themselves, because what they reject is not just a particular art form or medium, but an entire art system, including education, exhibition, publication, and employment. Such a break is sometimes related to an artist's political identity. But it can also be a relatively independent artistic decision, as these artists find new art forms both liberating and challenging. On this level of individual experimentation, these artists negotiate with painting in different ways: some of them squarely reject painting, while others subvert painting and calligraphy from within, and still others reframe painting as a component of installation or performance.

Contemporary Chinese artists have also distinguished themselves in the domestic sphere by developing site-specific projects and "experimental exhibitions." One type of site-specific project can be called a counter-monument or anti-monument. Set in important political spaces such as the Great Wall or Tiananmen Square, a counter-monument or anti-monument transforms such spaces into a stage for individual expression (FIGS. 2.7-2.10). Additionally, the pursuit of contemporaneity has given rise to many "ruin images," which comment on or interact with the drastic transformation of Chinese cities. Over the past ten to fifteen years, one striking aspect of a major Chinese metropolis like Beijing or Shanghai has been its never-ending destruction and construction. This situation furnishes both the context and the content of a large group of works, which represent "demolition sites" or take place in such places (FIGS. 2.1 I-2.14). 1 have discussed some chief characteristics of these images and site-specific projects, especially the skewed temporality and spatiality contained in them.17 A demolition site in real life is a place that belongs to everyone and to no one. It belongs to no one because the breakdown it effects between private and public space does not generate a new space. Captured by contemporary artists, a demolition site signifies a kind of "non-space" outside normal life. Its suspended spatiality is further linked to its suspended temporality. The contemporaneity of these ruin-related projects should be distinguished from the concept of the present, conceived as an intermediary, transitional stage between past and future. As the subject of contemporary art, demolition sites break the logic of historical continuity, as "time" simply vanishes in these "black holes." The past of these places has been destroyed and few people know their future. Unlike war ruins, however, demolition sites inspire not only anxiety but also hope. FIG. 2.8: XU BING, Ghosts Pounding the Wag PERFORMANCE AND INSTALLATION, 1990.

Some artists and curators have staged exhibitions at demolition sites. In doing so, they have identified their projects as "experimental exhibitions," which shift the focus of experimentation from the content of an exhibition to the exhibition itself: its site, form, and social function." These issues loom large in present-day China because of an intensified conflict between a rapidly developing, aggressively active contemporary art and a backward official system of exhibition. Since the late '90s, independent curators and artists have tried to discover new exhibition spaces and to transform old exhibition spaces into venues for contemporary art. Most significantly, they have organized a considerable number of contemporary art exhibitions that have taken place in versatile, non-exhibition spaces, bringing works of contemporary art to the public in a dynamic, guerilla-like fashion. That many such site-specific exhibitions have used commercial spaces reflects their curators' interest in mass commercial culture, which in their view has become a major force in contemporary Chinese society. While affiliating contemporary art with this culture, their exhibitions have also provided channels for artists to comment on it.

2. Decontextualization as Contemporaneity

The close relationship between the development of contemporary Chinese art and China's sweeping transformation has encouraged the compilation of a kind of macrohistory, which interprets this art in light of domestic social and political movements. This history, however, fails to document or explain the global presence of contemporary Chinese art and its growing contribution to a burgeoning international contemporary art. We cannot simply expand the domestic context of contemporary Chinese art into a global one, because these two spheres are governed by different forces and present different problems. Neither can we study contemporary Chinese art in the domestic or global spheres in complete isolation. Our task, I propose, is to observe and analyze how this art negotiates with these two spheres and how it changes its roles and aims in responding to different spaces and audiences.

Most important, as part of an international contemporary art, the relationship between contemporary Chinese art and contemporary China becomes submerged. Such decontextualization is coupled with a recontextualization of this art in a different socioeconomic network. The beginning of this twofold process of decontextualization and recontextualization can be dated precisely to the early `90s, when contemporary Chinese artists first appeared in the 45th Venice Biennale and were featured in mainstream western art magazines. Around the same time, contemporary Chinese art became a global commodity, promoted by transnational commercial galleries and collected by foreign

collectors and museums (FIG. 2.16). Direct ties between Chinese artists and western art institutes were then forged both inside and outside China, as international curators flocked to the count search for new talent, and as Chinese artists increasingly participated in international exhibition; workshops, some of them immigrating abroad for good. These facts are well-known and need little elaboration, but the question of their impact o, meaning of contemporary Chinese art remains. In other words, the recontextualization of this art s1 be thought of as a reconstruction of its defin and identity. While the term "contemporary Ch art" remains the same, its purposes and strat have undergone crucial changes. On the most level, displacement and translation already alt work's significance. For example, I discussed how in China, new art forms such as installed performance, and site-specific art convey a strong s, message to subvert established norms. This significance largely disappears when these works are display international exhibitions (such as the many biennial and triennials staged extravagantly around the we that feature endless installations and multi-m work. Contemporary artists from China contribute to these events by immersing themselves in kind of "international contemporary art" these transnational exhibitions promote. Unlike and ink paintings, installation, performance, multi-media art defy a rigid cultural identity. NI they provide to Chinese artists on these occasiom an "international language" that not only conf their own contemporaneity, but also allows t to incorporate indigenous art forms, mater and expression into contemporary art. In so dc they can maintain their identity as Chinese ar within international contemporary art.

Such immersion inspires creativity as well as simplification and misinterpretation. On the one hand, some of the most compelling works of contemporary Chinese art have been created in the global sphere, where they reflect on current international and intercultural issues through genuine artistic innovation (FIGs. 2.17, 2.18).2" On the other hand, international art exhibitions encourage the tendency to reduce a local tradition into ready-made symbols and citations. The wide circulation of contemporary Chinese art brings it to a global audience, but such circulation also removes this art from its roots and erases its original, historical significance. On the one hand, the new context challenges Chinese artists to compare themselves with the best contemporary artists around the world. On the other hand, they can seldom avoid the audience's expectation of finding Chineseness in exotic, self-orientalizing forms. The advantages and disadvantages of such decontextualization and recontextualization is best demonstrated by the changing meaning of Cynical Realism and Political Pop, two contemporary Chinese art styles that are best known in the West (see figs. 2.2, 2.3). As discussed earlier, both styles were invented in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident to express, among other things, artists' disillusionment with their own political engagement. But when paintings in these two styles appeared in a series of international exhibitions in the early '90s (including the 45th Venice Biennale, China Avant-Garde in Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and China's New Art, Post-1989 in Hong Kong, all organized in 1993), they were immediately taken as representatives of an "underground" or "dissident" art under a Communist regime. Ironically, such an interpretation based on a Cold War logic led to the artists' commercial success and changed their status in their home country. Soon thereafter, some of these artists built large villas outside the Chinese capital in order to live an affluent lifestyle in a tightly guarded environment, painting largely for an unfamiliar, overseas audience.

On a methodological level, the decontextualization and recontextualization of contemporary Chinese art implies a shift in interpretation from historical context to broad theoretical implication that can be applied to works created anywhere. The numerous self-portraits by contemporary Chinese artists lend themselves to both types of interpretation. Historically, these images signify a desire to reconstruct the self through visual representation. This desire comes from an absence: self-portraiture disappeared entirely in China during the Cultural Revolution. In a period when every action and thought had to be directed by a collective ideology, self-portraiture was naturally identified with bourgeois self-indulgence and was therefore counter¬revolutionary. On the other hand, the art of portraiture was given an exaggerated importance by reducing it to the mass production of the image of one man. The desire to represent the self resurfaced after the Cultural Revolution was over. But the form and logic of these representations have been conditioned by both the country's recent past and present. Instead of representing one's personal appearance and emotional state, a more common tendency among contemporary Chinese artists has been a conscious denial of explicit self-display. Numerous "self-portraits" by these artists demonstrate a voluntary ambiguity in their self-images, as if the artists felt that the best way to realize their individuality was to make themselves simultaneously visible and invisible (FIGS. 2.19-2.21). These ambiguous, fragmentary images express their anxiety, frustration, and dilemmas in a rapidly changing society, and are therefore still concerned with the authenticity of the self. Displayed in an international exhibition, however, these images are given a broad rhetorical significance related to a general redefinition of the self in the contemporary world, and are used to exemplify how in our time, the traditional view of a fully integrated, unique, and distinctive individuality has been increasingly compromised, causing the fragmentation of the self and a decline in the belief of the individual as a legitimate social reality.

3. Artists as Mediators of Contemporaneity

This section focuses on the third sphere of contemporary Chinese art, comprised of individualized spaces and channels generated by artists and curators through their independent projects and physical movement. Although the domestic and global spheres of contemporary Chinese art are connected on an institutional level, either through a transnational commercial network or through government-sponsored art exhibitions, the main linkage between the two spaces, I would suggest, is provided by contemporary Chinese artists themselves. Thus, they function not only as creators of contemporary Chinese art, but also as mediators among the multiple identities of this art. Many of these artists have become world travelers in the past decade. Some of them have returned to China after spending several years abroad. Others maintain a residence in New York or Paris but have become increasingly involved in domestic exhibitions. The majority of artists never officially emigrate, but it is not unusual for them to spend several months per year outside of China, traveling from one exhibition to another. Some thoughtful artists have created site-specific works for locations outside China, or have expressed their experience as global travelers in their works.22 Because of the unsystematic nature of such movement and activity, it is difficult to generalize about these artists. The channels opened up by these activities remain highly fluid and flexible. The "sphere" that they constitute vaguely encompasses the domestic and international spaces of contemporary Chinese art, but again in an unsystematic and undefined way. Despite its elusiveness, however, this sphere is most intimately connected with individual artistic innovation, the result of an artist's internalization of broad social and cultural issues (FIG. 2.22). This recognition demands close analyses of individual artists and their works. Unlike traditional "biographical" studies in art history, however, such analyses must show how contemporaneity is constructed through an artist's personal engagement with the domestic and global spheres.

Many Chinese artists can and should be discussed this way. For example, Zhang Dali, the most famous graffiti artist in Beijing in the `905.2' Like many other contemporary Chinese artists, his life has been filled with unexpected turns. To make a long story short, he grew up in northeast China and studied traditional painting at a top art school in Beijing. He graduated in 1987 and then immigrated to Italy in 1989, after the pro-democracy student movement in Tiananmen Square ended in bloodshed that year. In Italy, he first made Oriental-style commercial paintings for a living, but later became a spray-can graffiti artist and forged the image of a bald head as his trademark (FIG. 2.23). He continued to paint the same head after moving back to China in 1995, and by 1998, he had sprayed more than two thousand such images all over Beijing. These images, which he created secretly at night, eventually became the focus of a public controversy and were widely discussed in Beijing's newspapers and magazines (FIG. 2.24). It was only then that Zhang Dali revealed his identity as the creator of these images. In one interview he explained his art: "This head is a condensation of my own likeness as an individual. It represents to me a communication with this city. I want to know everything about this city—its state of being, its transformation, its structure. I call this project Dialogue."'

Zhang Dali's basic technique in developing such "dialogue". was to fill in a half-demolished, empty house with his own image. He was therefore able to "reclaim" an abandoned site, however temporarily. The locations he selected for such a project always highlighted certain contrasts between different political identities and social spaces. Sometimes, he juxtaposed the graffiti head with an official monument; other times, he juxtaposed a preserved traditional building (a palace) with a half-demolished one (an ordinary residence). But most of the time he contrasted urban destruction and construction. This mode is forcefully demonstrated in a 1998 performance/photograph (FIG. 2.25). In the foreground of the picture, standing amidst scattered garbage, are some broken walls as the remnants of a demolished traditional house upon which Zhang Dali has sprayed a row of his famous heads. Two huge modern buildings rise behind this wasteland. Still surrounded by scaffolding, one of them already advertises itself as the future "Prime Tower" and offers the telephone number of its sales department. Many aspects of Zhang Dali's artistic experiments in the '90s are related to the notion of contemporaneity. These aspects include art medium and form (he abandoned painting in favor of performance, site-specific installation, and photography), social function and audience (his graffiti images became part of Beijing's public space, encountered by Beijing residents everyday), and identity-Regarding this last aspect, by inscribing his own image on old Beijing houses, Zhang Dali defined a specific space around which he could construct his identity as a "local artist" opposed to globalization and commercialization. But this identity contradicted his other identity as an "international artist" working for a global audience. (Since 1999, his photos have been shown in many art exhibitions outside China and have been collected by foreign collectors and institutions.) We should not simply consider such contradiction negatively. As I have suggested, tensions between various spheres of contemporary Chinese art problematize straightforward answers to complex problems. Partly responding to the commercialization of his "graffiti" images, Zhang Dali has developed a new project in recent years, making sculptures directly from the bodies and faces of migrant workers from the countryside—people who are rebuilding Beijing but who remain anonymous, deprived laborers in the Chinese capital (FIG. 2.26).

Zhang Dali's example supports one of my methodological proposals, that a general sociological contextualization does not automatically reveal the contemporaneity of contemporary Chinese art. If such contemporaneity has anything to do with China's social transformation and globalization, these external factors must be internalized as intrinsic features, qualities, intentions, and visual effects of specific art projects. This interpretative strategy discourages the broad reduction of contemporary Chinese art to either its domestic or global contexts, but encourages us to forge micronarratives that emphasize artists' individual responses to common social problems.

CODA: CONTEMPORANEITY AS INTENSIFICATION

In a seminar held in Beijing in 1999, a well-known European curator confessed that he actually knew little about the history of contemporary Chinese art. He nevertheless decided to include some twenty young Chinese artists in his forthcoming exhibition because he found "the intensity of creative energy in their works irresistible." I told him that although I did know something about the cultural background and sociopolitical circumstances of this art, I was attracted to contemporary Chinese art for exactly the same reason. I then wondered what this "intensity of creative energy" actually meant—a feeling shared by two observers with very different backgrounds and experiences that seemed to capture the essence of new Chinese art at that moment. If intensity results from intensification, then contemporary Chinese art is a consequence of a double intensification. In other words, this art not only responds to China's startling transformation over the past ten to fifteen years, but further enhances the feeling of speed, anxiety, and theatricality inherent in this external transformation through artistic representation. The strength of this art certainly does not depend upon the solitary perfection of individual masters over a prolonged time span. What makes it "irresistible" is the speed and depth of the artists' internalization of the sweeping changes around them—changes that have altered Chinese cities and the country's economic structure in a short period, transformed people's lifestyles and self-identities, and made China a major economic power in the world. Similar transformations took place years ago in other parts of the world; China's ambition is to accomplish a century of development in the West within one or two decades. The same desire and urgency, often combined with self-doubt and uncertainty, is found in many works created by contemporary Chinese artists. As a result, many of these works strike viewers as containing something "real" and raw—ambition, rage, struggle, yearning, hope. The rapidly changing art mediums, styles and subjects further generate a sense of constant happening. All these characteristics contribute to a particular kind of contemporaneity in art, which is often lacking in works produced in peaceful, "normal," and more individualized societies.

This observation, however, also implies a predicament: as China's explosive development eventually slows down, and as contemporary Chinese art is eventually "normalized" to become a routine aspect of social life, the "intensity of creative energy" in this art will diminish. From such a historical perspective, therefore, the kind of contemporaneity described in this essay can only be a momentary quality of contemporary Chinese art. But this only proves that instantaneity and simultaneity are inseparable from the conception of contemporaneity, which inevitably involves the condensation of time. Originally presented in the "Modernity and Contemporaneity: Antinomies of Art and Culture After the Twentieth Century" conference, held on November 4-6, 2004, at the University of Pittsburgh.