starting the chase after mmm
Dictionary on top, some paragraphs and images below it. This is a super rough presentation. Also might be helpful to read my travel notes '23 prior to reading this.. I'm hoping to share these shards of ideas, see how they are received, so that i can actually take them further. i imagine the posts i make after this one will readdress the ideas brought up here and further continue the chase after mmm..... thank you xoxo
Beauty: a promoter of MMM. A will or volition to uncompromisingly pursue an order, inspite of external challenges, entropy, and forces of destruction which are inevitable in life, the results of which usually produce some sort of emotional response and inspire vitality. Different pursuits and attempts at beauty can coexist amongst each other to create complex, powerful and generous systems of life. Bennet suggests such an idea when referring to Lucretius' link of internal diversity to the degree of power a thing possesses (Bennet, 22).
Beauty can easily become fascist if the pursued order is used to to trick and trap people, as in the form of propaganda, or is imposed upon them to resist and exterminate alternative forces. (i.e. Le Corbusier’s manifesto via James C. Scott). While there is a lot of complexity and innovation behind Le Corbusier’s work, his goal of globally exporting his thesis and approach to design in order to create cities that kept no evidence of their history and had no tolerance for other forms of organization was rigid towards diverse ideas of beauty. He never obtained enough influence to fully mark himself in history as an extensive fascist, but the traces of his presence that are mixed in with other orders and architectures contribute to the multiplicity of styles on the planet.
Beauty, by my description of it in the first sentence, may be able to break through the buffers of taste.
Taste: There are several kinds of taste, but I would like to focus on two forms of it which I have observed affect people’s ability to perceive beauty and connect with MMM. There’s an individual and unique sense of taste that each being can carry and is modified as they bear witness to primal scenes, uncover fetishes, and go through other alterations to their bodies and psyches. There’s also more collective senses of taste, determined by social values and orders, trends, and cultural/temporal conditions.
i'll have to revisit the point below soon, because as i have written it right now i leave little room for there to be a collective arrival at MMM and i don't believe that to be true... perhaps this definition can even go all together because it might be too specific to something i experienced in art school... Erotic/Pornographic dichotomy: The difference between what is specific and peculiar and what is general, standardized, delivered to and followed by masses. This isn’t to say that the erotic can’t inform the pornographic, and that the pornographic can’t be erotic. However, I find that MMM is more likely to be activated in the realm of the erotic, unless the pornographic is approached from a critical perspective. This is what I understand Deleuze means when he says that “MMM” and “commercial” are a contradiction of terms. MMM cannot exist to simply satisfy some form of predetermined generality, such as the commonly assumed form of sex as promoted in pornography. It must actively resist. The Monica/Mom dichotomy: A relationship arrived at in Fia Backstrom’s institutional therapy class through an anecdote shared by a student. “Monica” is the student’s rich, personal, and individual experience of a motherly figure, while “mom” is a shared experience of such a role which may be imbued with projections and generalizations, some of which could be relatable. A work that operates solely on the basis of mom is less likely to be active as MMM, for it is less likely to ignite an effective spark within the maker and potential onlookers. In order to make a work of MMM with regards to mom, it appears imperative to me that the artist must enrich their understanding of the figure through their own particular relationship to it, make a delineation as to where their experiences would become projections if assumed that others could relate, and attempt to create something that would resonate as “mom” to others beyond logical and and commonly accepted notions. The more sparks the work can collect, the more lively it is. “Spinoza believes, for example, that the more kinds of bodies with which a body [MMM] can affiliate, the better: “As the body [MMM] is more capable of being affected in many ways and of affecting external bodies… so the mind is more capable of thinking.” (Bennet)
To See/To Show dichotomy: Acts pursued with the goal “to see something” are open-ended, granting ample room for the activation of MMM to ignite along its path and to discover the world, to unlock its many passageways, by the initiation of the pupil and fertilization of attentive audiences. Acts with the intent of “showing something” may be beneficial as well but their courses are short-circuited by the limited set of questions they call for, as they merely represent the world we are already familiar with. Resistance: The modes to resist vary in scale, form, duration, universality, and more. MMM calls for a state of resistance from one of the many perpetual dooms and discomforts life presents. Gilles Deleuze tends to focus on MMM’s resistance to fascism in society and in the minds of individuals along with its consequences. While those modes to resist are shared by various groups, they are not entirely homogeneous; meaning not all humans are working towards resisting the systems described by Deleuze since they don’t have the same kind of familiarity with them. There are more ubiquitous modes to resist such as destruction and death. Vitality: The announcement of surrender or victory from the sound of laughter at the face of discomfort. Some eastern religions repeat the notion that life is eternal suffering. If not one difficulty, then another. Therefore, to do away with suffering all together is a futile mission. However, inspite of life's immanent doom, there is absolutely no shortage of beauty, magic and wonder in the world. Pupils tend to make these characteristics of life more visible, to inspire in themselves and others the courage to persist, to grant them vitality. Persistence: Ability to withstand and adapt to change. This requires immense strength, courage, love, and prophecy. “This maintenance is not a process of mere repetition of the same, for it entails continual invention… if it is to persist, [it] must seek new encounters to creatively compensate for the alterations or affections it suffers.” (Bennet) A quality pupils would imbue their works of MMM, and the work fuels them with it in return. Doing a thing/Not doing a thing: Idea from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind of Shunryu Suzuki. Rather than categorizing MMM into empty and arbitrary judgements of good or bad, I propose to view MMM as doing or not doing. This relationship operates similarly to how we understand heat as being present or absent, rather than in opposition to “cold”. Work: Synonymous to efforts. A describe a variety of things in/through which MMM could become ignited or activated.
1.
The word “art” has been confused by its use as a misnomer in reductive contexts. In an attempt at preserving the integrity of the unnamable/indescribable thing at the core of this project, I shall refer to it as MMM.
In separate lectures, Gilles Deleuze states that MMM is resistance and that MMM could not exist as something commercial, or else it would be a contradiction of terms. A professor of mine once told me that MMM is anything done well. My friend Maya Bykuc has written about MMM as something that is prophetic in a firing that is too early or too late.
Part of the goal of this chase to unleash snakes to chase after this elusive matter so that we may better investigate it. Snakes come with a will to persist and fight that is best fit for the ceaseless motion of the target.
My observations thus far have led me to consider MMM as an energy that transforms and moves, in different ways, simultaneously. Sometimes it dies quickly, sometimes it has a delayed birth, and sometimes it lives beyond our perception of time, or has another type of lifespan in between and beyond the ones listed.
“MMM is a well-done resistance that is prophetically too early or too late.”
Western movements of MMM seem to form from urgent needs for creative resistance to pressing circumstances in order to inspire vitality. Some works produced within local time sectors and geographies outlive their origins if they are able to resist more constant and overarching conditions. This does not imply that they are more general, but in a way, they are actually more deeply precise. In many parts of the world, a common condition of difficulty has been capitalism, privatization and the systemic regimentations they impose, especially onto marginalized and less wealthy communities. To create works that would present a sort of embarrassment, resistance, and alternative place in relation to these conditions could ignite MMM, particularly when witnessed by people implied in their consequences, but for those who are completely unaffected or unaware of these systems, the MMM might never spark, or it could perish at the termination of the conditions which the work tries to resist. To create and witness works that present a confrontation with mortality or the embarrassment of death could potentially activate a MMM capable of persisting through the turnover of historical periods, since it is a condition people faced throughout their whole existence, and will probably continue to do so, regardless of cultural or temporal specificity.
Lately, I have been wondering if Duchamp’s urinal still has MMM. At the time of its appearance, it was punchy. It prophesied and revealed to the world that MMM will not stick to a single, by then easily predictable, format. In a moment when linear time was getting faster and marketability was becoming a powerful and oppressive force, Marcel Duchamp found a method for resistance and saving MMM. Duchamp ignited MMM in his choice of presenting a ready-made urinal as a work in a formal exhibition, causing people in his vicinity to rethink authorship and labor in relation to MMM as they had previously understood it. From my locality, my peers and I can recognize the MMM of this act at the time of its proposition, but a certain impact of it has probably expired. The quick response to the ready-made that “anything can be MMM” has become a repeated trend which the conditions to resist have caught up to. Though maybe the urinal’s reminder that we must let out bodily fluids is an embarrassment that could keep the spark of MMM ignited, especially for those of us in societies where our bodies and gross biological functions are concealed and taboo.
2.
Throughout this planet, there has been absolutely no shortage of MMM and beauty — attempts at uncompromising order, inspite the inevitability of chaos that could potentially strike at any moment and destroy people’s strenuous efforts. MMM is essential to vitality, contrary to beliefs that it is a luxury attainable only after core necessities (such as food and water) are satisfied.
During the industrialization of the land where I currently reside, as Maria Kaika describes in The Phantasmagoria of the Modernist Dream, infrastructure and innovation were followed by a consideration of MMM as a decorative means to highlight new symbols of progress. Kaika presents water towers and fountains as examples of urban dowries paid to beautify civil innovations. More recently, modern industrialized powers, particularly the land where I currently reside, began to hide infrastructural systems underground to be entirely out of public view or replaced them with more rapid and cheap means of display. An inclusion of MMM and beauty in their city planning has been almost entirely abandoned.
By contrast, there are places where designing well-functioning and beautiful infrastructure is itself a state of MMM. Where MMM, and the beauty that it is usually paired with, are regarded as fundamental human needs and integral to people’s well being inspite of its difficulty to attain and chances of destruction.
The Land of Everything Nice takes up a terrain prone to some of the most disastrous earthquakes on the globe. In addition, being surrounded by water, the damage is amplified by the likelihood of tsunamis. However, this recurrence of natural calamity has not prevented the residers from building some of the most beautiful cities in the world as celebrations of the marriage between tradition and technological innovation, incessant energy towards perfection and recognition of the knowledge embedded in entropic creations, guided by the principle that the places people inhabit should make them feel pleasant.
On another coastal civilization susceptible to earthquakes, earlier settlers designed beautiful infrastructural systems that were efficient, promoted vitality and appeared harmonious with the pre-existing wilderness. Upon the arrival of foreigners, the newcomers quickly called the natives and their systems “primitive”, initiating the discarding of their technology, including the knowledge of a masonry that did not require mortar and therefore was better equipped to withstand the intensity of earthquakes. To prevent other untimely wisdoms from being forgotten by the will of hegemonic forces, investigations of design, innovation, production and the occurrence of MMM from different places and chronological times should be conducted without a hierarchy of genius.
As I have pointed out in some of the examples above: calamity, somehow, is bound to reappear. If not by the hands of nature’s entropy, then by maniacal governments or other impacts. Even when avoiding destruction by some miracle, other entities may seek fulfillment of the ruinous fate. In one of the great wars of the last century, The Capital of Tradition in The Land of Everything Nice somehow came out untouched while nearby cities were heavily bombarded. Not being able to mentally bear this fact, a single acolyte burned one of his city’s greatest treasures, the golden pavilion of his temple, by initiation of his own hands. The pavilion has been rebuilt, shining in the sun rays that hit its reflective surface, carrying the flames of those who know of its history, and restoring the people’s love for their constructions, a beacon of MMM.
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