driftings
by exinfoam
J.R. Carpenter on Writing Coastlines & Along the Briny Beach:
In considering the conundrum of coastlines, caught, as they are, in the double-bind of simultaneously writing and erasing, I came to think about, read about, and undertake walking as an embodied spatialized way of writing coastlines.
(J.R. Carpenter, Along the Briny Beach)
Teri Rueb on Drift:
The ubiquity of GPS and other tracking technologies suggests that “being lost” may itself be an experience that is being lost. However, simply knowing one’s geographical location as expressed in longitude and latitude coordinates has little bearing on one’s personal sense of place or direction. “Drift” poses the age-old question “Where am I and where am I going?” in a contemporary moment in which spatial positioning and tracking technologies provide evermore precise, yet limited, answers to this question. [...] The Watten Sea becomes a metaphor for hertzian space as visitors are invited to wander among layered currents of sand, sea and interactive sounds that drift with the tides, and with the shifting of satellites as rise and set, introducing another kind of drift.
(Teri Rueb, Drift)
Annie Gosfield on ‘Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites’:
The composition is scored for violin, accompanied by recordings of satellites, shortwaves and radio transmissions. The static, sputter and concealed melodies of these transmissions are echoed by the violin, which drifts between extended techniques and traditional writing for the instrument. Like a radio that is gradually losing and gaining reception, the music shifts between these two worlds, hovering between notes and noise, and ultimately drifts into faraway static.
(Annie Gosfield, excerpt from 'Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites')
Miwon Kwon says:
“It seems our very sense of self-worth is predicated more and more on our suffering through the inconveniences and psychic destabilizations of ungrounded transience, of not being at home (or not having a home), of always traversing through elsewheres. Whether we enjoy it or not, we are culturally and economically rewarded for enduring the wrong place. It seems we’re out of place all too often.” “The Wrong Place” Art Journal 59.1 (2000): 32-43.
Nice article. Helpful to see Kwon riffing on “systems of movement” and “unknown logics of belonging” in relation to the DeLillo excerpt. Appreciate the way in which these pieces tap into a quality of systems coalescing and dissolving, subtly highlighting various kinds of currents and slipstreams for drifting towards, away from or along with.
Where a particular logic(s) or system(s) is experienced as inconvenient or not readily permitting a desired refuge from such a sense of drifting, the condition of enduring that the above quote highlights clearly becomes an important issue.