Exercises 27, 28, 29

Exercise 27

Choose a quotation from an author you admire.

What do you like about the quotation? How do you situate the quotation in your broader interests?

Write one paragraph that starts with the quotation and explains it.

Now write a paragraph that starts with your discussion, then engages the quotation as supporting evidence.

Where does the authority in each paragraph lie?

Sometimes archival images arouse dreams, half-felt longings; they become “lures to feeling,” in Whitehead’s term, and to thought. The most interesting archival films release perceptibles from their past configurations in order to draw them out as singularities, link them to other things, invent series,8 and intensify them by connecting to present experience in the affective response of viewers. (I use the term perceptibles, an expansion of Michel Foucault’s term visibilities, to indicate all that can be perceived by the senses, including those other than sight and hearing.) 

- Laura Marks Hanan al-cinema, S. 173.

Marks opens what can be expected of archival films and footage to broader possibilities.

Breaks time, there is nothing that is the past and that is present or future also images can be. Extracting a feeling/ sentiment out of a situation and then juxtaposing this emotion with another visually depicted situation. They magically come together and make sense. These are the most interesting archival films because they aged well. They were able to capture something that is not just an outward situation but the feeling of being in this situation. 

I am interested in the sameness of things – of instances that happened in the past to present situations. 

Sometimes archival images arouse dreams, half-felt longings; they become “lures to feeling,” in Whitehead’s term, and to thought. The most interesting archival films release perceptibles from their past configurations in order to draw them out as singularities, link them to other things, invent series,8 and intensify them by connecting to present experience in the affective response of viewers. (I use the term perceptibles, an expansion of Michel Foucault’s term visibilities, to indicate all that can be perceived by the senses, including those other than sight and hearing.) 

In her book hanan al-cinema Laura Marks discusses also archival films and footage and how they can be used by archival filmmakers. Archival here means…. Marks is explaning here how archival footage can transport emotions    from todays footage. 

Exercise 28

Choose an image from the media depicting a culture about which you know little. Describe the image. Interpret your description. To what extent does your description articulate your visual culture or that in the image? 

https://www.vassar.edu/vietnam/overview/

Sidewalk barber, Saigon 

A middle-aged man leans onto the handlebars of a bicycle in front of an old wall. Next to him hangs a small mirror with a shelf underneath with a brush, some bottles and some other equipment on it on the wall. On the other side there’s a satchel and a towel hanging from the wall. The mirror-shelf construction is in the center of the photography. The man is looking right into the camera, though is face is pointing past the camera and photographer. His mouth is closed and he seems serious and effortless at the same time. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt and hat. 

The man doesn’t seem too fond of the photographer, probably they are not that comfortable with each other. I think being photographed in a non-Western country in an earlier time, before the 70s/80s/90s, it’s deeply inscribed that the picture is taken by a Western white person. This proofs to be right. When I used the photography trough Google’s picture engine, it tells me, that the picture was taken by Kenneth Hoffman in 1970. It is titled “Sidewalk Barber Saigon”. It’s the expression in the man’s face that tells me he is looking at foreigner and probably doesn’t know what to expect of him. How could he? 

Also, this picture was taken in 1970 by an US American man, at the time of the Vietnamese-American war. I assume Hoffman took the pictures with the intention to publish them back home in the U.S.. What could have been his motivation to take this picture? Did he just wanted to show people – “ordinary people”? Ordinary people during a war? In 1970 the war had already been going on for 15 years so maybe was there the intention to give awareness that Vietnam is not just a place where war happens but people still have to continue to have a daily life. 

Probably the bike functions as symbol, since Vietnam is famous for it’s bike traffic. 

Exercise 29 

Listen to any piece of non-verbal music and write down your description of it while it plays.

To what extent is your ekphrasis of music about the music, and to what extent is it about your reception? To what extent can you interpret music as a sign.? 

Tschaikowsky String Sextet “Souvenir de Florence” – III. Allegretto moderato 

2011 München (ab 21:52)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6X2XcqjqMw

I love this part of “Souvenir de Florence” so I decided to write about it. But I am thinking actually I don’t want to describe it. Putting my feelings in words doesn’t express the emotions I feel listening to this in the slightest. 

Are there some things that shouldn’t be described, put into words? 

The way from image to text is shorter than sound to text or smell to text.

Is the way from image to text shorter than the way from sound or smell or touch or taste to text? 

I also see how I keep having to look up German words in English, since the German words I have in mind are so specific and I don’t know the englisch ones yet. But I feel how important it is to meet the right tone to describe it. 

You will like this piece even if you are not used to listen to classical music. It starts off a bit moderate but serene at the same time. Quickly the atmosphere becomes more impetuous and moving forward. The changing tempo and tones evoke a full-bodiedness. 

To me it’s serene but thinking about mood swings at the same time. The mood swings are there and strong but somehow ephemeral at the same time. Besides moving forward towards the middle, the piece becomes aspirational. Within this piece you can clearly hear a determined and playful voice interspersing itself. 

I tried to be close to actually describing how the music flowing. I talked about tempo and tone (high-low) which is pretty insufficient since I don’t know the accurate words and parameter for these criteria in music. The piece triggers something inside of me so affectively that it changes my mood while listening to it – which I called mood swings. But they are my mood swings (?). Actually, the mood – the atmosphere of the piece stays the same but changes mine.