yungborzaya

[yungborzaya]

"How do I stop being scared of-" You do it scared. The courage arrives WITH the action, not before it. Don't wait to feel confident before you act because the key to confidence is usually doing the thing while still scared as fuck

[yungborzaya]

proof by contradiction

Binary logic is an important tool of Western thought. It is able to accommodate a wide range of power relationships, in which one side of the binary is dominant and the other is subject to repression. For example:

colonizer : colonzied man : woman good : evil

And so on. Much of postcolonial and feminist theory is devoted revealing the complexity of these simple power relationships, specifically how the terms are depend on one another to produce meaning. For colonizers to exist, there must be the colonized. However, colonial rule is undermined by the presence of the colonized. Edward Said writes in Culture and Imperialism that "nations are narrations," meaning that nation-states emerge from shared history and collective identity, and rely on the power belief to perpetuate their existence. Therefore, alternative histories and counter-narrative can threaten state power. Colonization, which we will just call "a practice of domination," is maintained by erasing and repressing the stories that threaten it, which means erasing evidence of its own existence.

However, the absence of something is only a shadow of its existence. Many postcolonial scholars use the concept of ghosts and haunting to describe the discrepancy between the wealth and power of colonizers, and the dislocation and disappearance of the colonized. Angie Merill writes that

"Hauntings require us to acknowledge how cities and academies are built upon disappearance [...] The ghost exists here with us because of violence, and haunting is the result."

How is haunting felt when we visit the Stedelijk museum, where Felix de Rooy takes center stage? What are we meant to think or feel? As Mendy pointed out, merely presenting two halves of the binary sign is nothing worth celebrating. Indigenous existence and co-presence is actually the starting point for conversations about the relationship between colonizer/colonized. Co-presence disrupts the binary status quo with tension, irony, and the sense of haunting. For an example local to the Northwest, Michelle M. Jacob's Yakima Rising describes how in 1989, children from the Yakima nation were invited to dance in celebration of Washington's 100 years of statehood. The interaction between the state that sought to destroy the Yakima nation, and the children who embody its future--what does it signify to the the audience? Irony, but also: celebration, disruption, survival & vitality. Haunting, and tension between what is there, and what could have been; all the futures that did not eventuate.

But what about the futures yet in store? Interpreting and re-interpreting these interactions help us create new, complex meanings that do not rely on old colonial logic. Bringing together the living and the dead, the dislocated, and the disappeared is an example of what Merill calls "co-presence through desire": that hauntings are not only about the interplay between absence and presence, but also answering the desire of the ghost. To reveal what must be revived and transformed.

[yungborzaya]

sprouts to be brussels

brussels gritty and bitty, but so is seattle ... i think the stark difference between amsterdam and brussels bothered some of my traveling companions (what else am i supposed to call them? though when i say it this way it sounds like a d&d campaign). it becomes really easy to see how amsterdam is a western european disneyland ... it becomes hard to see it as a place where Real People live.

seeing all the trash bags and large amounts of litter on the streets reminded me strongly of NYC, so read up on problems with their waste management system. we stayed in anderlecht (i know is not recommended but whatever), a very diverse area that shows a lot of signs of political disinvestment -- im sure its easy to dismiss waste and litter problems as a lack of civic mindedness among the residents, but all things considered the street cleanliness is probably a symptom of a larger issue.

also, there is something super weird going on with the official languages -- officially, everything is bilignual dutch and french, but the majority of people speak french, majority of services offered are in french. in theory you are meant to have both dutch and french made available to you (think in the case of an ambulance or police interaction scenario), but in practice most people speak french. brussels is functionally francophone. oh yeah and the whole issue of flemish and flemish seperatism. but anyways.

during our last day we spent hours with really cheap drinks at the hotel bar as we watched the first day of the tour de france held in the basque reigon of spain. naturally we were rooting for vindegaard and team jumbo-visma. funny how the foriegn-ness of brussels made the bicycle hotel seem homey .

[yungborzaya]

gaaru with pearl earring

[yungborzaya]

dutch designs

andrea at dans mentioned briefly a huge childcare scandal in the netherlands. it was brought on by an algorithm that labeled parents as fradulent if they were suspected of pocketing the remainders of their yearly childcare stipend. however, it used dutch nationality as a risk factor for fraud, which made the algorithm racist. From the amnesty international article:

"...racial profiling was baked into the design of the algorithmic system used to determine whether claims for childcare benefit were flagged as incorrect and potentially fraudulent. Tens of thousands of parents and caregivers from mostly low-income families were falsely accused of fraud by the Dutch tax authorities as a result, with people from ethnic minorities disproportionately impacted."

if i know anything about algorithms, it is that they reflect the biases inherent in the society that produced them, and the people that belong to them. so, as far as im concerned, these sorts of "baked in" prejudices should be considered a part of dutch designs as much as the cute houses lining the canals and tiny cars.

this is really a textbook example of the misconception that data and algorithms are objective. the reality is that these extremely complex systems rely on databses to draw their conclusions--and data is never raw and unprocessed; always cooked by the minds of those who choose to capture it.

on a similar topic, whenever we talk about equity and resource distribution in class all i can think is, where did all this wealth originate from? are the resources stolen from colonized lands equally distributed within the lands of the colonizer?" which is why there is no colonial past lol. theres only a colonial present

[yungborzaya]

look but don't stare

En wonen in betonnen dozen Met flink veel glas, dan kun je zien Hoe of het bankstel staat bij Mien En d'r dressoir met plastic rozen

And live in concrete boxes

With lots of glass, so you can see

How the couch looks at Miens'

And her dresser with plastic roses

when I lived in terry hall, I lived in a corner room with my desk at the window. on the street across from us was the Applied Physics Building, and in that window there was another desk at the window with a man working there during the day. we made eye contact once. I considered him my "study buddy"

but otherwise I don't enjoy living in a shop window, which is how I live here like many of the amsterdam denizens live: nothing (nowhere) to hide.

i noticed too as we were traveling going through the suburban areas that all houses follow the sacred doorzonwoning ("Sun House") principle, with a window that goes clear through the living room like a hallway.

i've read some interesting theories on why this is the case -the huge windows and no blinds--and have found a few answers having to do with closed blinds being perceived as somehow suspicious, or just wanting to maximize the amount of vitamin d the family gets. i've also read that people look (NOT stare) through their neighbor's, not for entertainment but for a stronger sense of gezellig, which we can roughly translate into english as "conviviality." i suppose i can understand that seeing people living and moving in their windows can increase the sense of togetherness. personally i would rather not live inside a fishbowl.

[yungborzaya]

[yungborzaya]

ultimately i believe the center of everything is clarity of intent.... creative writing, life, antidepression even like business pitches or cleaning your room or buying nice clothes, getting up in the morning u need to know to the bones exactly what you want inside and out, first and foremost. which irritates me bc i m indescisive and always shifting like a more colorful kaleidoscope and stability and solid goals even dreams elude me at every turn. but i will prevail

[yungborzaya]

evil cunts

Sooooo went to the Dutch Resistance Museum, which has recently received a lot of backlash for portraying the complexity of life in a dictatorship. Some people find the courage defy the system, either openly or secretly; others comply with the regime out of fear or out of greed or out of cruelty .... What I liked about the museum was how the curator thwarted the narrative of the Dutch Innocence, and focused on how dire circumstances turn people into victims as well as perpetrators.

I know its easy to criticize and talk about how I would have done it (without considering the limitations of the project), but there was one element of the museum that honestly appalled me and is worth criticizing. I don't care, I'm going to bash it: the portrayal of women during wartime. Specifically the nazi sweethearts. This all started when I read the fun little tidbit that Dutch women gave birth to about 15k children fathered by german fathers during the period of german occupation. funny, how there was not a single mention of war rape in sight--this lovely fact was accompanied by a love story between german soldier and a dutch woman.

I found the portayal of nazi sweethearts unsympathetic in general, with photos depicting how their heads were shorn by mobs in an act of public humiliation, along with a Real Nazi Sweetheart Shaver Razor. interesting that the museum claims to allow viewers to "decide for themselves" and not portray life occupation as a moral relativist gray area . and YET, it fails to portray women as complex humans and condemn their treatment, acknowledge intersectional oppression of womanhood and war rape as a tool of oppression ... why does moral complexity never apply to women? women have always to be either good or bad: proper virginal women who are loyal to the state, or evil cunts who fell in love and fucked the enemy and become traitors -- all the while failing to acknowledge that for women, our fathers, our brothers, and our lovers are also our oppressors.

[yungborzaya]

the ancient and noble art of Hating must remain distinct from the dogmatism of the moral crusade. hating has no greater goal. it is not about engineering change or imposing one's will upon others. to hate is a complete act in and of itself

[yungborzaya]

“Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving. Moreover the writer invents himself [or herself] as a character in this form. He shapes himself from the shards of the everyday, from the truth of that daily life. Which is also a truth not to be scorned.”

— Anna Kamienska, from “In That Great River: A Notebook,” trans. Clare Kavanaugh, Poetry (June 2010)

[yungborzaya]

do you speak nederlands ?!

as the child of a facebook mom, i feel an extreme resistance to the idea of photographing my life and publicly documenting my activities. i also have a bad habit to resist assignments in a weird self-righteous form of procrastination, so i have to find a way to make things more interesting to trick myself into thinking that doing the assignment was my idea. i figure the best way to do this was to go back to my roots as a chronically online middle schooler with unrestrained internet access, who was constantly using a shitty iPhone 7 camera to capture the most unflattering aspects of my daily life. this is the reason i have over 2k instagram posts. this is also the reason my "personal" instagram is private for the forseeable future, because those photos are Not For Human Consumption (this is the only way to use instagram; everyone else is doing it wrong). if i do this it will become easier to embrace the "taking photographs" requirement of the course. i rely heavily on my travel buddies to take the more aesthetically appealing photos for me.

what follows is a small selection of images that i would like to draw your attention to:

motortricycle

idk. this one has a lot of potential i think: "i wish i had eated more pooped" "i wish souped more pooped" "i wish i had more pooped"

obligatory penis in the top left

this was actually my favorite piece in the street art museum.

now that i'm writing this,i regret to have neglected to photograph the two plastic-wrapped corn cobs on the sidewalk outside of the Bicycle; they have since been unwrapped and eaten.

[yungborzaya]

[yungborzaya]

btw. your search for the most morally upright and ethical piece of media that has the most correct “representation” will destroy your ability to find the most profound and beautiful and human of stories. and may even destroy the stories themselves before they are created. if you even care.

[yungborzaya]

Brice Marden, Zen Studies, plate four from Cold Mountain Series, (etching and aquatint on white wove paper), 1990 [Art Institute Chicago, Chicago, IL. © Brice Marden / ARS, New York]

[yungborzaya]

[yungborzaya]