Bill T. Jones - The honest demagogue

I have just finished watching an interview with Bill T. Jones. I have seen him perform both live and on video. His story is touching and controversial. He is an authority.
But he is also a demagogue. There is a way of presenting oneself which has something incredibly irritating. Some sort of self-confidence and a way of declaring one's own experiences as universal truth.
You can only say this does not imply a similar attitude on stage if you've never seen Bill T. Jones on stage. The man constantly talks to the audience, his dancing is show-and-tell, it is lectures, sermons accompanied by dance, or joined by it, explained by it. And the tone of his voice has something distant, impersonal, that disturbed me. Now, I've also heard it during the interview. His powerful voice becomes too powerful, and sentences like "Dance is the first art." leave no space ofr anything else. No other areas, interests, points of view. And he is not saying this is what he thinks. Even when descirbing his most personal experiences, he says "The only way one can go through losing someone one has loved is by becoming what one has loved in that person". He doesn't say "I". He speaks for the rest of us. Demagogue? Prophet?
It is strange to discover that what I have been considering as an art of intimacy has the flavor of prophetic discourse. Can this be honest?

Jump tomorrow!

--------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> WORLD JUMP DAY REMINDER >>>> http://www.worldjumpday.org/
--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------
20 JULY 2006
Only days to the historical WORLD JUMP DAY!
You have asked to be notified one day prior to the event.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Send your images and videos of your jump and get the chance
to win a special WORLD JUMP DAY T-shirt!

For information about uploading, emailing or sending your
images/videos a special page will be available on the WORLD
JUMP DAY website shortly after the jump has occurred.

Please be sure to begin jumping at the calculated time of
11.39.13 GMT on 20 JULY 2006. The duration of the jump
should be no less than 2 Minutes. Timing is very critical
in this experiment. We thank you for your help.

Have a good Jump!
Your WORLD JUMP DAY Team
www.worldjumpday.org

PS: Just remember that this time is calculated for Lisbon. Check the web page for your local jumping time!

My Portuguese flag

The poet's responsibility: the Peter Handke Affair

This is far from the first time Peter Handke is being controversial. And it's not the first time he describes the "Serb question" in a scandalizing way.
But after he spoke during Slobodan Milosevic's funeral, all hell broke lose. All cultural hell.
Shocking? Certainly. The question is: why?
Among the many fascinating opinions, one exchange I particularly appreciated.
Botho Strauss:

Those who fail to see guilt and error as the stigmata (or even as stimulants in some cases) of great minds, shouldn't busy themselves with true poets and thinkers.

And Guenter Grass, answering:

Heine – like Goethe too, by the way – remained a fan of Napoleon until his death. The horror and the terror that Napoleon spread, how he used up his armies on the way to Russia – all of that was of no consequence for his admirers. Heine runs equally afoul of today's criteria whereby Handke is condemned for his absurd, one-sided support for Serbia... Handke has always tended to adopt the most nonsensical arguments and counter-positions. But what I dislike about the current discussion is the double standard, as if you could grant writers the right to err as a special kind of favour. The writer Botho Strauß said something along these lines (text in German here)... I have a hard time with granting writers a kind of bonus for geniuses which excuses their partisanship for the worst and most dangerous nonsense.

After this whole affair, Handke gave several interviews. Some of them (copy here) witty and slightly aggressive, others invoking Yugoslavian history to explain, to justify. But how well does he know history? I certainly am no specialist in this matter, but whenever someone explains history too well, even it is to correct what someone else said, I have my doubts, and look for a second opinion.
Probably the most fascinating thing about this affair, is that a poet still has that much power. Yes, you will say, but acting as a politician. No. Acting as someone for whom the polis matters. Zoon politicon - the social animal.

The Brown Dress Performance

365 days. one brown dress. a one-woman show against fashion.

Have an idea. Make it simpler. Make it one idea. Then work on it. Mould it, so it lives, not like a number, but like a word. Study it until it makes sense. (I love the expression to make sense). Try it. And again. Live it. Assume this is it, and it isn't any better, but it isn't any worse. And since you assume it, it can only get better. Which, if you check the site I found it at, as well as the author's, Alex Martin's, journal, did happen.

David Gallaugher's grass-lined wheel

FOR
Excellent. Funny. Smart.
It's a brilliantly simple idea. It makes us think - and smile. It is all about ecology. And nature in the city. And taking a real break from all of this. And let's all live together like one happy family.
And above all - don't take it all too seriously. Because it's conceptual - i.e., it is about the concept more than it is about what comes out of its realization. Because it's unpretensious - i.e., it doesn't intend to change the world (at least not the whole world at once). Because it's pretty - i.e., it is a relief from all this...hmmm... down to earth thinking. Oh, and because they got to hear a lot of hamster jokes, apparently.

AGAINST
How do you know where you're going? How long is the grass going to last? So this is the version of nature that architecture students have for us? Don't ask what nature can do for you, but what you can do for nature.

BOTTOM LINE
I like it.
"Even in the Public Gardens [in Halifax, NS], you're not allowed to walk on the grass."
(which is a much better statement than another reported one: that they want to "draw attention to what he considers a North American obsession with manicured lawns.")

ALTERNATIVE
Teresa Murak, Procession (1974)

thank you Jan for the link!
UPDATE: The photo of the Grass Wheel is by Andre Forget, a Halifax-based photographer. I'm terribly sorry for not putting the credit before. It is often difficult to execute on the internet (to get to the original source), but it's mainly laziness, and not incapacity or bad will, that is to blame.

Installation for the soccer maniacs

Police in Berlin said on Wednesday they had arrested two men on suspicion of placing cement-filled soccer balls around the city and inviting people to kick them. At least two people injured themselves by kicking the balls, which were chained to lampposts and trees alongside the spray-painted message: "Can you kick it?"

I agree with ann that the message seems unnecessary, but the work does have a pleasant, sadistic thing about it. Especially if you're living in a country like Portugal.

(via, originally from)