brewing up a collab with nathaniel katz, I received these notes from him in an email:
“create a defamilliarization of the everyday while maintaining it in the everyday. think about strategies, necessities of activities… see how we can potentially contrast those (or pit one against the other) in a collaborative piece.”
I found this trajectory interesting enough I thought I would make it public, and volley my first return in his direction thusly, with ugly metaphors mixed and all:
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strategies:
- assume the most basic cultural myth, and force it to work. This will cause friction.
- sidle an object with accepted cliches, and attempt to ride them out until you fall off that horse
- vehicles move, yet they are inert. Give them yearning, and see where it takes you
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necessities of activities
- confuse purpose with goal. now you have to help a confounded object achieve its goal, even though it can no longer have that purpose in its current state.
- i must fulfill the myth i have created
- i rarely realize that most of what i have to do, is invented and required by me alone
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And some rules that might be helpful for both of us:
- no nostalgia
- no personification
Allright, Nathaniel, your volley.
One Comment
i know… i was trying to use your language but make it my strategies and necessary activities. an act of cooptation. they are quite different though, don’t you think?
contain in both senses seems valuable. one is usually inevitable, one is often wished for.