Week 6 Written Response: On Failure – Eric D. Roest

What is failure? It is an important and interesting question, and one that is deeply personal for me as I have listed the fear of failure as number one on my list of that which I am truly afraid of. Failure by itself however lacks specificity, it requires a target to attach itself to. Normally when speaking of failure it us used in the following manner: I failed to achieve _ , or the film failed to tell a coherent story. Failure is often that which falls outside a fixed set of parameters or standards, as is the case in our school system, “Jimmy failed to answer enough questions correctly to pass the test.” or the workplace “Jen failed to meet her projected sales quota for the quarter.”
In the article Thoughts on Failure, Idealism and Art, we find the following question to the audience: “There has always been an element of ‘progress’ to modernism (and modernity in general), whereby we ‘learn’ from failures, grow and move on. Is it possible to let go of this idea of progress without also losing this relationship to failure? How do you have a relationship to history that isn’t about progress?” I think that this notion of progress stems from a failure in perception, whereby progress and history itself (ie: time) is viewed as a linear event always inevitably moving towards the future, if however we change this (mental) construct of time to a circular or cyclical one many of these problems go away. For if history repeats itself, it is so we don’t make the same mistakes (failures) over and over again, yet there is nowhere to go, for here we are (and were and will be).
It is is this same “linear” notion of progress that stemmed from transcendental belief systems (ie: Christianity), the idea that heaven or God is “out there”, or away from us, which leads us to Utopianism. This endless march towards a better brighter tomorrow-land, rather than an acceptance of the here and now. This endless dissatisfaction and discontent which breeds countless bloody wars and revolutions, all in the name of progress, ever onward on the road to Utopia. So if we free ourselves from the constraints of progress and discard Utopian dreams will (the fear of) failure fall away?

Reading/Viewing Response: Wk. 4 – Eric D. Roest

Upon viewing Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film, Mysterious Object At Noon(2000), the first question that arose in my mind was: Why did he choose to film this in black & white? Having been to Thailand before I immediately recall a lush landscape bursting with color. Was this an aesthetic choice? A way of keeping the viewer more keenly focused on the meandering narrative?, or was it a case of using what was familiar/available to him (perhaps born from his time as a student at the Art Institute of Chicago)?
In the opening scene a narrator tells us of an accident and a woman for whom he feels much longing, this corresponds with what David Teh writes in his article, Surreally Yours.., “The nirat is a versified narrative. It is typical for each of it’s verses to begin with a place name that sparks recollections of a lover, and whose connotations prompt the verse’s sentiment – not exoticism or adventure, but usually weariness, longing and the alienation of the miserable homesick traveller.” (pg. 605-606) This idea of the nirat as narrative construct can again be seen later in the film when a troupe of actors & musicians continue the tale in a method similar to the troubadours of the west.
Lets return to the beginning of the film: we are shown a POV shot of Bangkok streets from inside a vehicle. The sounds of a radio and that of the street intermingle with the cries of a fishmonger offering their wares, this is in itself an example of “the exquisite corpse” in action. The interplay of words and phrases heard becoming a sort of poem in themselves. Surrealist tendencies abound throughout the film, as “the real” continuously intersects with the imaginary, ultimately blending into something that feels new. A sense of playfulness (or ludic quality, as Mr. Teh puts it.) is prevalent throughout the film. This is exemplified at the end when the camera stays focused on a small group of school children as they invent (and reinvent) the conclusion of the tale, and then we are shown these (same?) children at play with a soccer ball (from the soccer field to the water and back again.)
This continuous blending of the ongoing “story” (via the exquisite corpse concept) and that of the everyday reality of the people involved reminds me of another surrealist artist, Marcel Duchamp, particularly his “ready mades”. For just as Duchamp used everyday objects and presented (and rearranged) them in often startling new contexts, so too is Apichatpong Weerasethakul using what is at hand to create something startlingly new. By using untrained actors and asking everyday people to create a story we are somehow shown their “real” selves more clearly than would seem to be possible otherwise.

On Manifestos

Notes on Marinetti’s Futurism:

I am against the future. The future is not all it’s cracked up to be. Speed does not equal clarity only blurred lines…ending in oblivion. (masculine energy, orgasm = death). Over the cliff like rampaging buffalo. The Jettson’s/ Star Trek never happened. Fervor and foolishness of youth (30 = age of death in Logan’s Run) The Italian obsession with the automobile: ie: Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti…

These ideas directly contributed to the excesses of the 20^th century: Man + machine = GOD. Fallacy.

The destruction of the past (museums, libraries) to create the future… echoed (attempted) later by the Nazis. For all their faith and belief in THE FUTURE, they could not see it.

On Kandinsky and the preface to The Blue Rider Almanac:

I have always found Kandinsky’s writing to be superior to his paintings. His words never fail to move me, yet his abstracts leave me feeling blank. Triangles and primary colors arranged in 2 dimensions, leave me feeling flat. The whole is less than the sum of it’s constituent parts…Rothko however…I can sink into his paintings, his bi-colored rectangles acting as doors into another realm altogether. A meditative space in which “I” can dissolve.