Larry Weaves the Unweavable: An Exploration of Synthetic Materials

For those of you who missed my performance the other day, here is some documentation of my woven structure in the service elevator. Security took it down rather quickly. It didn't make it through the night.

Minoo's Spring: A practice of Textile Cuff

Following up our last session's concentration on textile cuff, I'd like to show you one of my old works which now that I'm watching again make more sense in terms of a cuff like result that happened at the end of the practice.

Dr. Asqar Minoo is one of the leading figures of Iran in science and culture. He devoted part of his properties to an institution for orphan children before his death on 2011. Me and my colleague were so lucky that we could have access to his untouched house after his death. While we were searching in his place, we found a big case full of around hundred beautiful ties. So we thought we could make something as a hommage with those most personal belongings of him. Something that could reflect his presence.

So we came across with the idea of hanging his ties on a leafless tree and document our performance with time-lapse animation recording. The work started right before the sunrise at around 5 a.m. and ended three hours later. But when we finished hanging all the ties something unpredictable happened which satisfactorily surprised us at the moment.

I'm not gonna ruin the ending. So please watch the video and think if you've felt an automatic! cuff happened then or no?


https://vimeo.com/62105293

MISE EN SCÈNE CUFF

Some weeks ago a possible cuff appeared on a theater's stage in Valencia, Spain during "Fer-se unlloc" (Make your Spot) a dance production by a local dance company "La Coja Dansa"

During 4 days dancers, producers and the audience had to relate their-selves and their work conditions to many Giant blocs of recycled Styrofoam that were forming the negative space of the stage. As a part of the production team I felt that everyday was the cuff of the previous day while also was provoking the next days cuff...

Day 1

Day 4

Lines, bodies, materials

The lines are inscribed on a Body without Organs upon which everything is drawn and flees, which is itself an abstract line with neither imaginary figures nor symbolic functions: the real of the BwO.

This body is the only practical object of schizoanalysis: What is your body without organs? What are your lines? What map are you in the process of making or rearranging? What abstract line will you draw, and at what price, for yourself and for others? What is your line of flight? What is your BwO, merged with that line? Are you cracking up? Are you going to crack up? Areyou deterritorializing? Which lines are you severing, and which are you extending or resuming?

Schizoanalysis does not pertain to elements or aggregates, nor to subjects, relations, or structures. It pertains only to lineaments running through groups as well as individuals. Schizoanalysis, as the analysis of desire, is immediately practical and political, whether it is question of an individual, group, or society. For politics precedes being. Practice does not come after the emplacement of the terms and their relations, but actively participates in the drawing of the lines; it confronts the same dangers and the same variation.

Gilles Deleuze ¬ Felix Guattari. p.203

thinking with fibres

I’ve been thinking about different kinds of fibres, 

land-born and animal-born, human made, and water-born  

         - - -  and what if land-born fibres are submerged in water and water-born fibers then mix with air

Could we try weaving underwater or weaving with air?

I've been thinking about fibres as being both of the world 

and as scaffolding to weave with more world that is yet to come, 

From appearance, with its qualities, and then tendencies, came thinking about the components that combine in this concrescence. Each fibre, appearing already as a weave, the result of conditions and the occasions from which it emerged - - -

                 that colour, that length, the coarseness, its taste

                                                                        

I'm thinking about fibres as being both of the world 

and as scaffolding to weave with more world that is yet to come, 

                 think stalks of grass and now with seed,  think the wind that carries the seed,  think that same wind filled with the scent of cut grass  - - -  into thatched roofs, broom, mat, and offering

                                                       - - -  in the world and to weave with more world that is yet to come

                                         Apparatus and agent

                 
a maple tree, February, a warming sun, 

think surge, then sap and a sweet taste  - - -  think buoyancy in the wood  - - -  a future boat

In India they say that there's fire in the wood.

                                                                                                          a maple tree - - - now a carved cup

                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                      a carved cup filled with sap

A cuff: a fold between folds?

A fold, a cuff.

There is a somewhat renowned (in certain circles, I guess) critique of Alain Badiou on Deleuze's concept of the fold. Badiou says that the fold is, for Deleuze, a return to his style before his work with Guattari, a classicism of philosophy that fails to affirm a proper pluralism. The problem, for Badiou, lies in the figure of the fold, in how it retains an outside/inside by nature of its figure.

Badiou however is rather blind for Deleuze's emphasis on the movements of the fold; it is not the fold that is what is at stake, but to fold. Perhaps he never read more than the title of the book, which is indeed somewhat misleading.

The tension between the figure and action seem to leave some space, nonetheless. Perhaps that is where the cuff comes in?

In Le pli Deleuze, right at the start, makes clear what the action of the fold is, where it tends to: a middle.

"Il n'en forme pas moins une façon de représenter ce que Leibniz affirmera toujours, une correspondance et même une communication entre les deux étages, entre les deux laby­ rinthes, les replis de la matière et les plis dans l'âme. Un pli entre les deux plis ?" (6)

A fold between two folds. Could that be another definition of the cuff?

Unsatisfying Compilations

A couple of days ago an animated short video called "Unsatisfying Compilations" about small unsatisfying moments in everyday life became viral. The sequences (as the title says) were not desiring, even for some viewers they seemed to be annoying. However the negative senses were not that much that could stop people from watching the whole video. The overall feeling which was provoked by following these short stories is even so intimate that all of sudden everyone recognize that they encounter with the same dissatisfactions everyday.
As I have found "infra-thin" as the most tangible term to percieve a sense of cuff, I can not think of a better setting to practice and recognize it other than time based mediums. So in this case, we have some happenings. Some of them contain a climax where an award or a satisfaction is anticipated, and the others do not necessarily have such moment. Dissatisfaction suddenly appears in ordinary situations.
In any case, there is a very short moment between past and future (which resembles the state of now) when the twist is about to happen. In immediate actions (like the nailing scene) it is a frame and in more slower ones (like the basketball scene) it is a couple of frames. Former situations are more shocking since the spectator is expecting to see not a unsatisfying moment and then suddenly face with a dissatisfaction. Therefor, in these cases there is no time for the viewer's senses to be transmitted between two different states.
On the other side, the more gentle unsatisfying moments give more time to the spectator to not being before nor after the twist. His/her state of sense shifts as the basketball ball slowly falls off the basket. That very short moment may consists of only a few frames, but it is still long enough to put the viewer in a suspension mood when a lot of other feelings like curiosity, question, hope, fear and etc. would happen at the same time.
This is a specific infra moment between two opposite states which could be regarded as the cuff moment in more slow paced sequences of this video, which are short, temporary, hence unrecognizable, but at same time so strong and intense that can impress the spectators a lot and make them distribute the video to share their feelings with others.

Here is the link to video:

https://vimeo.com/189919038

I also captured that particular moment of uncertainty where photographically speaking, the punctum forms and in that sense could also impress a sense of cuff regardless of its' before or after events.

Can a cuff be its own un-cuffing?

Can a cuff be its own un-cuffing?

With all sincerity it feels like it could be after the recent US election results. 

If a cuff is a capture, 

       and like it was proposed in last class – one frame frozen from a

  continuum, isn’t that just like me waking up in the morning

                                                                 to re(as)sume I am that me again? 

      In a day after day return to the lap of a familiarity, despite slight morphing,

I again take up with the traces and folds that still appear from what was yesterday. 

"Are you a Mexican?” 

“Are you a gorilla?” Is that the same cuff that catches the world into its worldliness that is doing this asking? 

                     Am I sum of these occasions?

              Is she also a gorilla when both she and the world are still asleep?

The Internet was down again yesterday and it was already late afternoon when I heard that the election result had been called. I needed to go outside and find myself in something familiar. The sun was still out and I could hear the traffic below as I headed down the dry footpath path, my head anticipating the future. 

As I headed down to the road, I realized that I was passing through many worlds on my way, and none of them reflected back to me the cares in my worries.

the house on the path above me

The path became timeless and my presence felt like it carried no impression. It was like the valley that afternoon had no need and it gave me no confirmation.

Without that recognition, it all began unfolding. Arriving down to the road, to the noise and the dust, I felt the uncuffing.