Of hearing, thought, intelligence, etc.: distinct, clear; indicating clear understanding.

Distinctly jointed or marked; having the parts distinctly recognizable; distinctly constructed.

divided into syllables or words meaningfully arranged

Watching Jason tell his stories of trauma and survival while getting super wasted and giggling uncontrollably strikes a deep chord within my soul. He represents such a glorious fuck you. Often the “fuck the system” standpoint is decidedly washed in youthfull (read: false and irrelevant) rebellion that one is supposed to grow out of. It is seen as a position taken by bored and cranky youngsters rather than as a position continuously forced on the marginalized individual by the hegemonic supremeacy of the majoritarian public sphere. But what other choice does Jason have, has he ever had? He is stuck in the dream of pulling himself up by his bootstraps when he clearly doesn’t even wear boots. His life, as much as we sensible bourgois (clean, white) academics want to ignore it, screams defiance. We may be tempted to think of his life as a failure, after all his night club act never took off, but I don’t think so. Through his stories he describes in hilarious detail (of the laugh so you don’t cry variety) the attempts often made to shape him into an upstanding citizen. He may never have found success, but he clearly never let anyone tell him who to be or how to act. I can admire that. It makes the beatings ok in some fucked up way.

Project:

By Hook Or By Crook was one of the films Shannon and I watched for our project this week. The think I like about this film is that it isn’t about being queer, it isn’t draped in queer theory, it doesn’t postulate a possible existence for the queer individual. It is just a buddy film about people who are queer. But their queerness is not the point at all. Sometimes I just have to stop explaning and exploring and surviving and just live. This film does a wonderful job of showing what that looks like. As I continue to be creatively productive, I want to follow the example set forth by this film. I should mention that while the film doesn’t take up queerness as its central question, it doesn’t diminish the queerness of the characters either. There are unabashed queer sex scenes along with events that could only happen to and with queers. As I understand it, the film focuses more on the actual lives of people who happen to be queer, among other things like totally bonkers, orphaned and poor, instead of making it a defense of the queer life. It can’t be a defense, because this film doesn’t even leave room for the possibility that the queer life should be up for debate.

Week 3:
“By Hook or By Crook”
“A Clockwork Orange”
finalize text for project
text for seminar

Week 4:
Sound Theory/Sound Practice
Telephones With a Memory
Gender Studies: terms and debates
“Tron”
Tracy and the Plastics
Michael Jackson/Fred Astaire
record audio tracks
finalize seminar abstract
sound section of ubu.com

Week 5:
“Anatomy of a Blow-up Doll”
seminar plan and study guide
sound section of ubu.com

Week 6:
Queer Theory: An Introduction,
teach seminar,
begin project edit

Week 7:
edit project

Week 8:
The Grain of the Voice,
final edit

Week 9:

Week 10:
“Tron”

Our project is based on the assumption that buried within form can be found either given signifiers or room to make signifiers up that can (mis)inform. Our aim is to disrupt this problematic by jamming the cues of the form so that the content may become more clear. We will accomplish this by using altered voices in a recording that narrates transition. We will attempt to disengage the text from the body that made it, to disentangle the story from any gender, to dislodge the transition from any point of origin or destination, to distance the content from the form in order to see what happens. We hope that by “ungendering” the piece it will leave room for our audience to inscribe their own experiences into the text. By removing the ability of our audience to make assumptions about the story they are hearing, we will create new perspectives through which our audience may engage with the dominant discourses on sex and gender.

In order to displace the author as the authority we will disentangle the text from the body that is its author/subject. In the introduction to Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card, says: “The story of Ender’s Game is not this book, though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is the one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something we made together.” The piece as it will be presented will beg for participation in the minds of our audience members, in this way the audience will take part in creating the experience (the text). This idea is drawing from Sound Theory/Sound Practice, in that the text is rewritten/reinterpreted/transformed with each reading (listening). It is created through its interaction with the audience. This desire for the text to perform differently per viewer, to be a mutually constructed “story” will motivate the work of the project.

Any sort of documentation must be understood as a version of a truth, and by that we mean a version of an original. Pollock approaches the idea of “participatory” text, addressing performative writing as evocative. She says, “…a performative perspective tends to favor the generative and ludic capacities of language and language encounters—the interplay of reader and writer in joint production of meaning. It does not describe, in a narrowly reportorial sense, an objectively verifiable event or process but uses language like paint to create what is self-evidently a version of what was, what is, and/or what might be.” The first part of this quote supports the idea of letting readers etch their own experience into it, the second part is connected with the form that we are choosing to use.

We will begin with a found text that focuses on gender in both a philosophical way and also a deeply physical way. Put simply, this piece takes the form of a personal journal that chronicles an individual’s physical transition as they have surgery and start taking hormones. With a careful eye (or four) we will comb through this piece and lift out 7-15 minutes worth of pertinent content. Once we have the text finalized (by the end of week 3) we will record it and begin the second phase of the project. We will explore different ways of editing the material to create a piece where the gender-specific signifiers both present in language and assumed in bodies are manipulated. Recording is both a tool to replicate an original and alter a piece of audio beyond recognition. We are trying to create a voice with no gendered signifiers, however, the intent is not to create a robot. Is it possible to strip the voice of gender and still have a human voice? Are we trying to take gender away or male/female coding? How much can we alter a sound? How much can we alter the body?

We will employ several different techniques in order to use voice as a tool to accomplish our goals. We will experiment with playing certain gendered words backwards with the intent to jam/trip the audience. Also, the voice will be pitch shifted and we will potentially add some atmospheric noise: Foley, music or some evocative sounds. In addition, we will attend to how silence can be used to our advantage in this piece. We are also playing with the question of whether we need to run it in a linear fashion or if there should be several tracks that can be shuffled. In his introduction to Extended Play, John Corbett discusses his love of shuffle and advocates that one read his book in any order. We are drawn to this idea because it allows for a different juxtaposition of the “scenes” every time it is played, generating a new text with each play.

We want to use this class as an opportunity to explore how changing the form affects how the content is perceived. But will the distortion of the form distract from the content? By presenting a multiplicity of signifiers in some cases and by rendering other signifiers indiscernible, while keeping the ‘originals’ hidden/absent, we will create the perfect androgyny. We will produce a cohesive piece that requires our audience to move out of traditional modes of inquiry. We are attempting to draw attention to the concept of gender, but not any specific gender. Will this be so distracting that the content is lost? Does this matter if we can point to how easy it is to get stuck on gender? With this piece, if one aspect fails, another aspect succeeds. If an audience member gets stuck on the form i.e., the backwards-played gendered words and pitch shifting, it is a failure because they aren’t listening to the content i.e., the story of transition, but it is also a success because it brings to light how often we get stuck on gender and how much something not fitting quite right is unnerving/disruptive. When this is highlighted, we create a passageway into fruitful dialogue about gender rather than an antagonistic/defensive and unproductive argument. On the other hand, it will also be a success if the audience member doesn’t get stuck on the form, but manages to focus on the content of the piece.

The way the piece has been written – a series of vignettes – mirrors the actual process of digital recording. It is a series of “snapshots” used as reference points. When they are played one after another, a whole emerges. The more “snapshots” you take (the higher the sampling rate), the higher the resolution or fidelity will be. Being a sound engineer is like being a surgeon: the text will be cut apart and rebuilt to form an entirely new piece. We will produce a version of the cracks, the not-quite-one-or-the-others, the space between breaths, the liminoid. Isn’t that where all the magic is? In the chrysalis, infinitely shedding skin, regrowing cells. In the land of possibility, nothing is solid; we have no destination but the space between question and answer.

…how a norm actually materializes a body, how we might understand the materiality of the body to be not only invested with a norm, but in some sense animated by a norm, or contoured by a norm…

cultural legibility-legible to whom? what happens when you are illegible?  When can my actions be just for me without having to talk about how they are read? Is there any action done without the watchers watching?

seriality- repeat the gesture until it becomes authentic. the repeated gesture creates the authentic self? From whence the motivation for the gesture? The repeated gesture as force of habit unfurls the identity of the authentic self. Identitatem – sameness, identidem means over and over.  This brought me to the question of how our body betrays us before we say anything. and also to the question of how I may use gesture to invent the language my body speaks to others in. Repeat the gesture until it becomes authentic. am i always only just repeating a gesture?

A norm. I am material. norm invested in me. I am clothed-by a norm. What then is my naked body? My normcloak animates my body, but is it my body? I think no. but whenever am I naked gesturing? Never.

contour. The outline of any figure: the line separating the differently coloured parts of a design. Separating the skin from the invest(gar)ment.

PROJECT:

CLASS:

So I totally hate Bitch, she annoys the crap out of me, but I thought I’d post this as a good example of a manifesto and of a performative text.

If that wasn’t performative, I don’t know what is. I’m amused thinking about when Bitch says, “Let pussy manifest,” while remembering the etymology of manifest. To bring into being (with the hands). One definition of a manifesto that Julia gave us on Wednesday was that it invents the conditions for its own existence. What are the implications of inventing the conditions for your own existence? What are the implications of holding that possibility within and doing nothing with it? As we move through this world, as we become, we are each living manifestos. The implication of this last sentence is that we may/are constantly inventing the conditions for our own existences. But what happens when we are unaware of this power of invention? Strangers walking around with a hidden power, thought locked down by a system that rings our necks with its own seemingly arbitrary but in fact purposive conditions. What is there between being given the conditions of my existence and inventing them? Is it true to say that “the system” is a default setting for the conditions of my existence.Thinking about it in these terms I am beginning to imagine the categories of “male” and “female” as default conditions of existence and the queer individual as one who has been (somehow) empowered to, or maybe they just remembered that they can, invent the conditions of their own existence.

PROJECT:

This week was spent mostly slogging through the vast amout of material we are working with and beginning to cut it down to a reasonable size of text for our recording. We are starting to have a more final idea of the text we are going to read including: The Audible Past by Jonathan Sterne, Sound Theory/Sound Practice by Rick Altman, Bodies That Matter and Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and others to come.