The Digital Archive 2014



  
Cheers! 
[from The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)]

By mid-year last year, I changed the way I read books, watch films, and write notes. I became more instinctive with my choices. I dropped the Map and scurry through jungles and deserts like a nomad. I hopped from book to book (except for novels), from one film genre (or director) to another, and wrote aimlessly on my notebooks and journals about these encounters, guided only by the spirit of adventure and sense of 'connected-ness' with the world.

Emotional responses to anything visual, auditory, or textual triggered these instinctive drives. Instinct is a force that destroyed borders and limits within me: a total liberation. It also encouraged me to think differently. When I leave an incomplete idea I read from a book or an article, in order to move to another, I allow that unfinished idea to grow inside me, and 'finish' its form by myself, only to find out that, upon checking the material again, I diverged from the path of the writer making my own path.

These activities were, of course, influenced by the fan of the instinctual and nomadic: Gilles Deleuze. Instinct fuels productivity, he said. It's what drives civilizations to progress and allows the creation of new pathways, discoveries, new art. Instinct connects us to the world outside the 'systematic' flow of life. Some moments, revelations, and decisions in our lives came from our instinctual responses to the world. Instinct, on the contrary, is not spontaneous or natural. It is an empowered choice. It can be irrational (not all things in this world can be explained using rational thinking). Instinct is, most of all, a force opposite and against the oppressive, traditional, and conformist 'common sense'.

All the things that we grasp and feel instinctively are not individual objects outside us. They are not imaginary. They are real. They sit within the assemblage (or nested connections) of our lives. It's our eyes, our limited vision (fact: we cannot see the back of our heads or we cannot see the future) that prevents us to recognize these things, and in turn, give value to these events and objects. Instinct allows us to see (fact: we need a mirror to look at the back of our heads or we need to put our future selves into actualities to move forward) the things that we cannot see at present. It extends the range of our vision and our knowledge of the world. To live is to seek the things hidden or absent at present time. To live is to move to a future, to the hours that await us, by instinct.

The whole 'being-instinctive' activity didn't turn out that bad. It was actually enjoyable, even orgasmic. But the problem is I didn't keep track of the texts and books I've read for the past six-months. The films I've watched last year were logged here. But I didn't record the date when I watched them. Also, it's hard for me to somewhat recall who's who and who wrote this or that. They're all mixed up now.

This year, I will try to resolve the lack of documentation. Instinctive forces can be uncontrollable, but I'll try, as hard as possible, to capture these 'seen' objects, and maybe make sense of how they are connected to my life, by creating a digital archive. This archive is not styled in a 'stream of consciousness' fashion as far as modernist literature is concerned. It is a systematic and chronological machine in a list form, the one that you can see below. Although, like 'stream of consciousness,' it will involve a documentation of several notable encounters (anything visible, auditory, and/or textual)  that I will be making this year. 

Anyway, here goes the archive: 

Books

January
  1. Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1/1-6/14) [The truth is I'm getting old, I say. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.]
  2. Night, Again ed. by Linh Dinh (1/10 - 27/14) []
  3. The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (next; re-read) - change of book, Wind and Stone by Masaaki Tachihara (1/11, 27 - 31/14)
  4. New books: Mystic River by Denis Lehane (55php) and Long Day's Journey to the Night (play) by Eugene O'Neil (35php) [from a bookshop at UP Shopping Center Stall 1. For 8 years, I used to go there to buy books. Most of my Virginia Woolf books came from there. Awhile ago, while browsing the stacks, it felt rather empty having seen most of the books taken out. The woman said it's their last day because they cannot afford the rent. She said that if ever the owner of the stall agrees on the idea of putting up a computer shop within the bookstore, then it wouldn't be the last day of the bookshop. I left so many memories there. I hope they get the extension. Sad day.]; Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader edited by Grauerholz and Silverberg (150php) [purchased at Fullybooked The Fort before the Sana Dati screening] (1/11/14)
  5. Recent Loot from blink: (1/23/14)
    a. Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood (200php)
    b. The Berlin Stories. A Single Man. A Meeting by the River. by C. Isherwood (175php)
    c. The World in the Evening by C. Isherwood (200php)
    d. Four Novels by Marguerite Duras (250php)
    e. Last Exit To Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. (225php)
  6. Reading The Berlin Stories. A Single Man. A Meeting by the River. by C. Isherwood
    a. Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1/31 - 2/28, 2014)
    b. Goodbye to Berlin (2/28 - , 2014)
  7. Reading The Beggar by NaguibMahfouz (2/28 - , 2014)

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Writings


January
  1. Having an Idea of Cinema (On the Cinema of Straub-Huillet) (1998) by Gilles Deleuze trans. by Eleanor Kaufman (halfway; read 1/1-2/14) [text] [further info]
  2. A glimpse of Alain Badiou's Cinema (2013) (1/4/14) [further info]
  3. Reading the Figural's Chapter Six: A Genealogy of Time by D.N. Rodowick (2003) (reading since 1/1/14) [further info]
  4. [I] a glimpse of Undocumenting History: An Interview with Filmmaker Jill Godmillow by Lynn C. Miller (1/5/14) [text] (for future reading)
  5. A glimpse of Kill the Documentary as We Know It by Jill Godmillow (1/6/14) [link] (for future reading)
  6. The Anatomy of a Marcos Apologist by Leiron Martija (1/6/14) [link]: It says: 'Listen to me, you blundering little kid. I am a child of democracy. I am aware of its limits, of its inconveniences, of its disadvantages and of what it requires from every one of us. I see you.' Is he truly aware of what he's saying? 
  7. A graphological study of Virginia Woolf's last letter before her suicide. [link] (1/7/14)
  8. Book Review of Daniel Morgan's Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema by Codruta Morari. [link] (1/7/14)
  9. Re-reading Gestural Cinema?: Giorgio Agamben on Film by Benjamin Noys [link] (1/8/14) [The power of cinema, and the power of cinematic montage, is to free the image from its frozen state and transform it back into gesture. It can reveal the potential of the image, and release what has been frozen in the image. Montage is not simply a repetition of the identical, because in repetition this dynamic potential of the image is returned to us. On the other hand 'stoppage' in montage interrupts the stream of images. It brings the image to a stop and exhibits it as such, again as gesture. In this way these two opposing conditions, repetition and stoppage, both work to free the potential of the image and to return it to the movement of the gesture.]
  10. Serge Daney's The T(h)errorized (Godardian Pedagogy) [link] (1/9/14) [The great suspicion cast by May '68 on the "society of the spectacle," a society which secrets more images than it can see and digest (the image runs past, recedes, runs away) affected the generation that had invested the most in it, the self-taught cinephiles for whom the movie theater had taken the place of both school and family - the generation of the New Wave, formed in the cinematheques. Beginning in 1968, Godard proceeds to pull out his stake and move in the opposite direction: from cinema to school, then from school to family. Regression? Why not say, instead, "regressivism"?]
  11. A glimpse of The Total Film-maker by Jerry Lewis [link] (1/10/14): They say it's one of the best books on filmmaking.
  12. [Obit] Amiri Baraka's Legacy Both Offensive And Achingly Beautiful by Neda Ulaby [link] (1/10/14): [When asked if he has regrets on writing the 9/11 poem, he said: "No — I have regrets that they didn't pay me my money — cheap criminals. I have regrets about that. But I don't have regrets about writing the poem. Because the poem was true."]
  13. Examining Violence: The Critical Potentials of Superiority and Mockery in The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Cynthia Cynn, and Anonymous, 2012) [link]: Interesting assertions, but I need to watch The Act of Killing. (1/12/14)
  14. A glimpse of Framer Framed Framing: A Critique on Porno (2013) by J. Pilapil Jacobo [link] (1/13/14) (for future reading)
  15. A glimpse of Rilke on Embracing Uncertainty and Living the Questions by Maria Popova [link] (1/16/14): ["I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."]
  16. from Destruction of Meaning  by Simon Hardy Chapter 38: Post-Marxism (B) - Guattari and Deleuze - 'Communists like us' [link] (1/17/14)
  17. Speculative Humbug's Thanatotropism, communism and desire in Anti-Oedipus [link] (1/17/14)
  18. Kasama Project's 40 Helpful Tips for Anti-Communists [link] (1/17/14) [Laugh out loud satire of the right-wing movement]
  19. A glimpse of Jacques Derrida's Spectres of Marx. [link] (1/17/14) 
  20. How feminism became capitalism's handmaiden - and how to reclaim it by Nancy Fraser[link] (1/18/14): [what a weird conclusion. It seems to tell that the writer is not a leftist. I'm not sure.]
  21. Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequence by Slavoj Zizek [link] (1/19/14) [a review in Amazon says: Most of the time Zizek is just spouting off (and it's not even the inspired kind of spouting that got him famous!)]
  22. Chapter 3. Consciousness of the World and the World of Consciousness from A. Spirkin's Dialectical Materialism. [link] (1/22/14) [The basis of conscious action is termed LOGOS]
  23. Film Quaterly's Polcats: Debating Chris Marker's 'A Grin Without A Cat' [link] (1/23/14)
  24. What I owe to Chris Marker by Patricio Guzman [link] (1/23/14)
  25. Some articles on Time in Cinema:

    [Rhizomes.net] Feeling Time: Deleuze's Time-Image and Aesthetic Effect by Dyrk Ashton (2008)
    [Screening the Past] Untimely Cinema: Cinema Out of Time by Jodi Brooks and Therese Davis (2012)
    [Cineosis] Cineosis Table by David Dreamer. (2010) [This guy blogged about Metro Manila (2013) using Deleuze theories.]
    [Sense of Cinema] Antonioni's L'Avventura and Deleuze's Time-Image by Hamish Ford (2003)
    [WebCache] Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonian Project Part 1 by Donato Totaru (1999) and Part 2.
    [Film International] Andrei Takovsky's Mirror viewed Through Gilles Deleuze's Time-Image by Kierran Horner (2011)
    [personal blog] Guide to Reading Deleuze's The Movement-Image, Part I: The Deleuzian Notion of the Image, or Worldslicing as Cinema Beyond the Human by Christopher Vitale (2011)
    [MUBI] Deleuze's Theories on Cinema: The Time-Image
    [Wig: Journal] The Dimensionality of Time in Cinema by Laura Ivins-Huley (2010)
    [SSRN] Movement and Time in Cinema by Thomas Powell (2004)
  26. E-Flux Newest Issues [link] (1/30/14) [I missed three issues.]
February

  1. Additional articles on Time in Cinema:

    [BLOG: networkologies] Guide to Reading Deleuze's Cinema II: Time-image, Part I Towards a Direct Imaging of Time in Crystal-Images by Christopher Vitale (2011)
    [BLOG: Media Assemblages] Deleuze, Cinema, and Zen: Break the Motor by Amit S. Rai (2008)
  2. How do we Recognize Structuralism? by Gilles Deleuze from his Desert Islands and Other texts [link] (2/7/14)
  3. At Some Other Berkeley by Katy Fox-Hodess from Jacobin/A Magazine on Culture and Polemics [link] (2/11/14)
  4. The Greatest Affirmation of Life by Naxos [link] (2/11/14)
  5. Gilles Deleuze by Daniel Smith and John Protevi. Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2012) [link] (2/13/14)
  6. Happy Death of Deleuze by Finn Janning. [link] (2/12/14)
  7. A Conversation with Nicole Brenez: 'Each film is a Laboratory' by Raul Arthuso and Victor Guimaraes [link] (mid-Feb 2014)
March
  1. Top Ten Philosophical Issues of the 21st Century. [link] (3/2/14) [I'd add:
    * Finding new modes of resistance in the age of control societies.
    - Addressing Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control

    * What is philosophy of the new media?
    - extending D. N. Rodowick's Reading the Figural

    * Who/What is the new enemy?
    - ruptures from Negri's Empire

    * Can emerging radical philosophy still be institutionalize by traditional educational institutions/publications?
    - addressing the Sokal Affair

    * What is 'memory' or 'remembering' today in the age of internet?

    * Finding New Modes of Learning
    - Addressing recent Educational Strikes against rising cost of education around the world
    - Anthony Fontana's Multichronic Classroom
    - Initiative of The Global Center for Advanced Studies

    * What is accelerationism?
    - implications of Virilio's writings
    - (link)]
  2. Reviewable Books. Invisible Culture. [link] (includes D.N. Rodowick's Elegy for Theory)
  3. [Rhizomes.net] The War Machine and Capitalism: Notes Towards a Nomadology of the Imperceptible by Dr. Robert P. Marzec (3/27/14)
  4. [Verso Books Blog] True Communism is the Foreignness of Tomorrow by Alain Badiou (3/30/14) 
April 

  1. [Axon Journal] Naming the Ruins: Towards a Southeast Asian Poetics by Dinah Roma (4/6/14)

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Images and Other Visual Ephemera 

January
  1. Beyonce x Frida Kahlo [link] (1/5/14): Chimeric. Pop art. 
  2. Frida Kahlo x Ripped Male Body [link; thru Teng Mangansakan's FB page] (1/5/14): Chimeric. Digital transformation. Queer. Pop art.
  3. Negative of Jesus (look at the dot on the nose for 15 seconds) [link] (1/17/14)

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Videos 

January
  1. Movement-Image and Time-Image in Deleuze's Philosophy of Cinema by Thomas McDonald [link] (1/4/14)
  2. Prehistoric Megastorms: Hypercane from The History Channel [link] (1/6/14): Apocalyptic hurricanes from the old world re-imagined on screen for television. 
  3. Megastorm: World's Biggest Storm from Discovery Channel [link] (1/6/14): Featuring the wrath of Typhoon Haiyan
  4. A talk on Giorgio Agamben. Gesture, or the Structure of Art from the European Graduate School. (2011) [link] (1/8/14)
  5. A glimpse of Who are you, Anna Karina? [link] (1/8/14): A peculiar interview with Anna Karina, her origins, her initial career as a model.
  6. The 400 Blow(job)s [link] (1/13/14): A spoof involving The 400 Blows by Francois Truffaut
  7. UCBerkeley Lecture Series: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on Situating Feminism [link] (1/18/14)
  8. Short Film: Brotherly (2008) [link] (1/22/14)
  9. Docu: Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control [link] (1/26/14)
February

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Sounds 

January
  1. Ikot-Ikot by Sarah Geronimo [check youtube]: Sang by a transgender on a jeepney. She sang it well. (1/5/14)
  2. The Double Life of Veronique Soudtrack [link]: Musical works by Zbigniew Preisner interest me, especially his collaborations with Kieslowski's latter works. (1/6/14)
  3. Gustav Mahler's Adagietto for Symphony No. 5 played by Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra [link] (1/8/14)
  4. Hooray for Today! Medley [link] (1/10/14): Heard this at McDo Pantranco while I was reading the book Night, Day. It was catchy. I never thought it was a McDo Medley, until I search the lyrics online. 
  5. Recordings of Daniel Smith's Lecture Series (Sep 2009) [link] (1/13/14): Materials - Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus, “Savages, Barbarians, Civilized Men,” pp.139-271 and A Thousand Plateaus, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology–The War Machine,” pp. 351-423 + “7000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture,” pp. 424-473.
  6. Audio Interview: Lav Diaz and Hazel Orencio [link] (1/14/14): This is actually the interview that gives authority for people to post Lav Diaz films on Karagarga. 
  7. Top 13 Circuit Tracks of 2013 by Tony Vuong [link] (1/23/14)
  8. Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (Animated) [link] (1/25/14) [I love this guy's illustrative videos on several avant-garde music of the 20th century]
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Sites 

January
  1. Antonio Da Silva's notorious site. [link] [gay content, R-18] (1/3/14)
  2. Kurt Kren: Structural and Action Films (1957-1995) [link] (1/6/14) (for future viewing)
  3. Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan's site with Published Works and Unpublished Notebooks. [link] (1/9/14): I miss mathematics! 
  4. British film critic Raymond Durgnat resource site [link] (1/9/14)
  5. French film critic Serge Daney in English resource site [link] (1/9/14)
  6. The Third Persona [link] (1/10/14): A blog on movie characters facing away from the camera. It's a rather creepy and strange sight, but very intriguing. 
  7. 50 of the World's Best Breakfast [link] (1/12/14): I need to cook this for my partner. 
  8. 35 Famous People's Darkest secrets [link] (1/22/14): I couldn't believe that Mahatma Gandhi is an anti-semite (further proof). My doubts on his nonviolence campaign has doubled. This is unbelievable. 


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Others 

January
  1. NYTimes Blog: The Scientific 7-Minute Workout [link] (1/10/14)
  2. ABS-CBS: The 4-minute Workout [link] (1/19/14)
  3. Neila Rey Workouts [link] (1/23/14)
February
  1. Baked Tomatoes and Eggs Recipe [link] (2/5/14)
  2. Global Center for Advance Studies [link] (2/28/14)

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Posted by at Wednesday, January 01, 2014
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