[Xmca-l] Re: "cultivating Minds

Tue Mar 3 15:32:29 PST 2015

David,
Reiterate, if it resonates, I always say. 
I am really interested in what I take to be your subject line of your archived xmca post from November 2010:
"Why is performance art?” The grammar in that question is longing for closure. My head swam. I was going to write a longer response, but I lost my way.
What I ended up with most was how expansively fortunate that you went to see Shu Yang!  I am most struck by how Shu Yang really was listening to the audience. Each and every one willing to engage with him. Shu Yang evoked a third space for, and used it for "an injection of art”. I take him at his word that he really would have stopped if no one had wanted to engage with him during his performance. The show must NOT go on just for performance’s sake. I am thinking about authenticity again. I love my one-track mind, but I’ll submit you to no more of it.
Cheers,
Henry

I was going to write 
> On Mar 3, 2015, at 2:58 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Sometimes xmca reiterates.
> 
> This isn't always a good thing; it's often because someone (usually me)
> wants to say the same thing a second time and just can't come up with a
> better way of saying it. But sometimes it's a good thing, either becuase
> the list as a whole has forgotten something it once knew or (better) there
> are new people who weren't here for the first part of the conversation, or
> (best of all) a thread has really turned into a kind of Moebius strip and
> is doubling back on itself, but in a way that brings something that was
> only implicit out and makes it explicit.
> 
> All of which is an excuse for me to recycle the following posting, which I
> wrote many years ago when my friend the performance artist Shu Yang was
> last in Seoul.
> 
> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2010_11.dir/msg00242.html
> 
> I think the point I'm trying to make here--but it is implicit and I will
> try to make it a little more explicit--is that we should have predicted all
> the sensationalist and EXHIBITIONISTIC excesses of today's performance art,
> simply from the fact that performance art is ART, and art in a bourgeois
> society will inevitably centre on the all-conquering, all-absorbing,
> all-obscuring individual. So today performance art sees the body as its
> main asset, but by doing this it has turned the body into its main
> obstacle. Seeing performance art as a projection of performance, the body
> denies performance art as an injection of art.
> 
> If performance art wants to be art and not just performance, then it has to
> grasp the basic Vygotskyan principle that art is not the socialization of
> bodily feelings, but on the contrary, the individuation of a social
> feeling. That's what made Shu Yang's performance art, and the other
> performances mere performance.
> 
> Reiterate xmca...sometimes.
> 
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
> 
> On 4 March 2015 at 02:51, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Larry,
>> I am mashing up serveral themes lately in the chat braid:
>> Style and authenticity: Are they compatible? I am thinking about the
>> discussion of performance art. Annalisa posted a radio podcast about
>> professional wrestling. Is it fake, and if so, so what? it’s just
>> entertainment. And makes lots of money. Your three definitions of FREEDOM
>> come to mind (boiled way down, leaving just the salt): 1) autonomy, 2)
>> expression of AUTHENTIC self, 3) collaborative/creaiive hoping. So, I see
>> PLAY saving the day in that third, hopeful space, that sweet spot. Where
>> people play at being both stylish and authentic. That would never go out of
>> style. That would be vital. And wouldn’t be dreadfully boring.
>> 
>> I look back at the previous paragraph and thought I might try to unpack
>> it, but that would be even more arrogant than having written it in the
>> first place. So, let’s just leave it there. Play with it. Come on, peeps,
>> come out and play!! Snow has melted here in the Break Bad City, all mud
>> puddle luscious. We’re high desert, so this is a real treat. Sorry can’t
>> send some of our mud to Mike in San Diego.
>> Henry
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mar 3, 2015, at 7:45 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Henry,
>>> Let's follow further the opening comment of the song [this is an
>> "approach
>>> that has gone out of favour in the scientific world]  Poetry as
>> "metaphor"
>>> but not "mere" metaphor as the handmaiden of the "realistic" and the
>>> "conceptual"  Rather "metaphor AS realistic" and also the reciprocal "the
>>> realistic AS metaphorical"  Chemicals as personifications
>>> [anthro-morphisms] "attract" each other.
>>> 
>>> I am "implicating" metaphor and valences AND rational conceptions as
>> equal
>>> "partners" in "approaching" the notion of life as "vitality" [another
>>> notion that has gone out of fashion  I am suggesting that this "theme" of
>>> "life" as vital/dead seems to "play" out and also
>>> "play" within  internal/external "dramas".
>>> Daniel Stern most recent book is on the notion of "vitality"  Also
>>> Heidegger's notion of "care and concern".
>>> 
>>> Just saying -
>>> 
>>> Larry
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 9:43 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Larry and Mike,
>>>> I think you guys are on to something. Thank goodness for valence, the
>> salt
>>>> of the earth according to the McGarrigles:
>>>> 
>>>> KATE & ANNA MCGARRIGLE
>>>> "NaCl"
>>>> Just a little atom of Chlorine, valence minus one
>>>> Swimming through the sea, digging the scene, just having fun
>>>> She's not worried about the shape or size of her outside shell
>>>> It's fun to ionize
>>>> Just a little atom of Cl with an unfilled shell
>>>> But somewhere in that sea lurks handsome Sodium
>>>> With enough electrons on his outside shell plus that extra one
>>>> Somewhere in this deep blue sea there's a negative
>>>> For my extra energy
>>>> Yes, somewhere in this foam my positive will find a home
>>>> Then unsuspecting Chlorine felt a magnetic pull
>>>> She looked down and her outside shell was full
>>>> Sodium cried, "What a gas, be my bride
>>>> And I'll change your name from Chlorine to chloride!"
>>>> Now the sea evaporates to make the clouds for the rain and snow
>>>> Leaving her chemical compounds in the absence of H2O
>>>> But the crystals that wash upon the shore are happy ones
>>>> So, if you never thought before
>>>> Think of the love that you eat when you salt you meat!
>>>> 
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpTzawl3OmI <
>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpTzawl3OmI>
>>>> 
>>>> Henry
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Mar 2, 2015, at 8:47 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Mike,
>>>>> I will follow further in Simmels and Urs Furher's footsteps as this
>>>>> theme also brings in Ernst Boesch's theory of "symbolic action" which
>> was
>>>>> developed as a notion that all phenomena [including action] have both
>>>>> objective and symbolic "aspects". Boesch wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> "This 'pervasiveness' of symbolism may be easy to grasp for a
>>>> psychologist
>>>>> with psychoanalytic experience or with strong artistic tastes; in my
>>>> case,
>>>>> however, although I believe myself to have a bit of both, this insight
>>>> had
>>>>> much more 'rational' roots. ... I trace its inception back to the 1963
>>>>> article 'Raum und Zeit als Valenzsysteme', in which I formulated, for
>> the
>>>>> first time, the close *interrelatedness of 'valence' *[LP- worth/value
>> ]
>>>>> and 'structure': the conceptual structuring of space depends, I said,
>>>> upon
>>>>> the location of valences [worth/values] - it was the *'wish to return'
>>>> *which
>>>>> led to the specification and stability of *places.*"  [cited in
>> "reasons
>>>>> For a Symbolic Concept of Action" in Culture and Psychology 1997
>>>>> Volume 3(3): pages 423-431]
>>>>> 
>>>>> I am suggesting that Simmel, Urs Furher, and Ernst Boesch were all
>>>>> following in the footsteps of the concept of "polyvalence" [multiple
>>>> worths
>>>>> and  values] as symbolic actions.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Larry
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 3:23 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Amazing "coincidence" Larry--- I just wrote to Urs who I have not
>>>>>> corresponded with for years as a result of going through his book on
>>>>>> cultivating minds. It has a chapter on behavior
>>>>>> settings as media for promoting children's development that has me
>>>>>> re-thinking a number of issues. Among other things, there is a very
>>>>>> interesting discussion of Roger Barker's research program. Very worth
>>>> while
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I could not open that file you sent, but I found the link to the
>> journal
>>>>>> article. Its here:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/Histarch/ja93v15n1.PDF
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There are a number of other interesting/relevant articles there. "The
>>>> sound
>>>>>> of the violin" is a favorite.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks for reminding us of Simmel.
>>>>>> Today, March 1, was his birthday!
>>>>>> Coincidence?
>>>>>> mike
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 3:01 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Mike,
>>>>>>> I continued to explore Urs Furher's book that you mentioned on Simmel
>>>>>> that
>>>>>>> would be potentially beneficial to follow. In my explorations I came
>>>>>> across
>>>>>>> this article on the metaphor of "traces" or "footprints" in the XMCA
>>>>>>> archives. It was written in 1993 and is an interesting perspective on
>>>> the
>>>>>>> metaphor of cultivation AS FOOTPRINTS.  It is the third article in
>> the
>>>>>>> newsletter.
>>>>>>> Urs is pointing to the reciprocal processes of "internalizing" and
>>>>>>> "externalizing" the inner "affective sense" of "place" through
>>>> attachment
>>>>>>> to "home" and "vehicle" as concrete ways to form one's identity
>> through
>>>>>>> attachment/security needs and  autonomy needs.
>>>>>>> Larry
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
>>>> object
>>>>>> that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 