The Cave of Montesinos

Sunday, November 15, 2009

To My Little Girl

Happy Birthday! There's nothing better than being your daddy.

The body is the Figure, or rather the material of the Figure. Above all the material of the Figure is not to be confused with the material structure in space which is separate from this. The body is a Figure, not structure. Conversely, the Figure being a body, is not a face and does not even have a face. It has a head, because the head is an integral part of the body. It can even be reduced to its head. As a portraitist, Francis Bacon is a painter of heads and not of faces. There is a big difference between the two. For the face is a structured spatial organization which covers the head, while the head is an adjunct of the body, even though it is its top. It is not that it lacks a spirit, but it is a spirit which is body, corporeal and vital breath, an animal spirit; it is the animal spirit of man: a pig-spirit, a buffalo-spirit, a dog-spirit, a bat-spirit... This means that Bacon is pursuing a very special project as a portraitist: unmaking the face, rediscovering or pulling up the head beneath the face.

The deformations which bodies undergo are also the animal features of the head. There is in no way a correspondence between animal forms and forms of the face. In fact, the face has lost its form in the process of being subjected to operations of cleaning and brushing which disorganize it and make a head burgeon in its place. And the marks or features of animality are moreover not animal forms, but rather spirits which haunt the cleaned parts, which draw out the head, individualizing and qualifying the head without a face.¹ As procedures used by Bacon, cleaning and features here assume a specific meaning. What happens is that the man's head is replaced by an animal; but this is not the animal as form, it is the animal as outline, for example the trembling outline of a bird which spirals over the cleaned area, while the simulacra of face portraits, beside it, serve only as 'witness' (as in the 1976 triptych).

1.Felix Guattari has analysed these phenomena of facial disorganization: the 'features of faceness' are released and become equally well the features of the head's animality. See Felix Guattari,L'Inconscient machinique (Paris: Editions Recherches, 1979) p. 75.

From Tracy Warr (ed.) The Artist's Body, Translated by Liz Heron, Phaidon Press, London 2000, p. 197. Originally published as "Le corps, la viande et l'espirit, le devenir-animal" in Francis Bacon (Paris; Editions de la difference, 1981) p. 19-22.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Tron Reboot: Episode 1

I'm a fan of Tron, yes I am a nerd, yes I am excited for next years Tron: Legacy. This video is always good for a laugh when I need a quick break from school stuff, like right now.

Friday, November 6, 2009

"No Quiero, Triste Espíritu" de Luis Cernuda

Comparto con Uds., queridos lectores anónimos, uno de mis poemas preferidos. Para mí el poema revela una arte poética invertida del fantasma. El deseo de no volver, no recordar se opone a la naturaleza del fantasma.

Ahora estoy investigando la noción derridiana de la différance como modelo temprano de hauntology. Tal vez al fin del quarter tendré más que decir con respeto. Sólo sé que Derrida, en su búsqueda de “the otherness of philosophy” se encontró cara a cara con el fantasma.

No quiero, triste espíritu, volver
por los lugares que cruzó mi llanto,
latir secreto entre los cuerpos vivos
como yo también fui.

No quiero recordar
un instante feliz entre tormentos;
goce o pena es igual,
todo es triste al volver.

Aún va conmigo como una luz ajena
aquel destino niño,
aquellos dulces ojos juveniles,
aquella antigua herida.

No, no quisiera volver,
sino morir aún más,
arrancar una sombra,
olvidar un olvido.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Escenas de una playa llamada Balboa

Is this heaven?

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Rockin SoCal in my Minivan

We're in CA now, and sometime I'll write about how this whole place is one big simulacrum, really, it's bizarre. We decided to keep our Idaho plates to save some cash and so that people would know why I was driving slower than them. We've gotten some strange looks as we get passed on the 405 or just in local traffic, I think some folks are surprised that there isn't a big potato in the front seat. For them, Idaho is a place that they once heard of in the title of a David Lynch film they didn't see, for me, it's the closest thing to home...I digress.

In honor of my minivan, I'm posting this rad video that my brother showed me. It's at once a homage to my g-ride and to my dad, because he used to rock the midi tapes and he worked with a bunch of guys like these for many years. But also, this is to inform you, anonymous CA driver, that when you pass me in your Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Suburban/Acura, you can know that I am proud to be riding in my minivan.