User:Zuhui//Personal Reader/House of dust

annotating from
The House of Dust journal, Benjamin Buchloh section
Alison Knowles wikipedia
korean blog I lost the link

the BooK of the future:

.Benjamin Buchloh

Each social formation generates its own conventions to bar the subject from experience and speech, and each social formation accordingly requires specific and urgent discoveries of linguistic strategies that rupture such collectivization of silence and prohibition.
From the perspective of the bourgeois division of labor (with its assignment of cultural specializations and its principles of condensing talents in chosen individuals, and investing them with mythical expertise), the capacity to rupture the collectively imposed interdiction of subjective speech has been identified conventionally as ‘poetry’ within the domain of language, and as ‘art’ within the realm of visual representation or alternate percep- tual models of object experience.

Poet's dilemma: two contradictory task

• Undermining the vast number of socially produced simulacra and substitutions

19세기 후반부터 신문, 광고, 인쇄매체, 이후 대중 미디어가 급격히 발전하면서, 사람들은 더 이상 직접적인 경험이 아니라 미디어가 제공하는 간접적 경험을 소비하게 됨. 즉, 사람들은 자신이 경험한 것이 아니라, 매체가 보여준 이미지와 이야기를 경험한 것처럼 착각하게 됨. 이러한 미디어적 경험(대체적 경험)은 시뮬라크르(실제 경험의 모사품)에 불과함. 시인들은 이 상황에서 진짜 경험을 되찾기 위한 새로운 언어적 개입 방식을 찾아야만 했다.

↘︎ 사람들이 광고와 미디어가 만들어낸 언어적 세계만을 받아들이게 되면, 시와 같은 언어 예술은 어떻게 존재할 수 있을까?
↘︎ 시인은 언어를 통해 이 거짓된 현실을 무력화해야 한다.

• Leaving the ‘spaces of exemption’

기존의 ‘면제 공간’에서 벗어나야 한다. 전통적인 문화가 제공했던 자유로운 예외 공간(gratuitous spaces)이 급속히 사라지면서, 개입은 이제 대중 매체의 영역 안에서 이루어져야 하게 됨. 과거에는 시인들이 자유롭게 실험할 수 있는 공간이 존재했음.

예: 문학 살롱, 서적, 문예지 등은 상업적 미디어의 영향 없이 자유롭게 창작할 수 있는 ‘예외적 공간’이었음. 하지만 19세기 후반부터 이런 공간이 급속히 사라짐. 신문, 광고, 대중잡지 등의 상업적 매체가 문학과 예술을 압도하기 시작함. 이제 대중은 "순수한 문학"이 아니라, 미디어가 제공하는 ‘빠르고 소비하기 쉬운 언어’에 익숙해짐. 따라서 시인들은 더 이상 보호받는 문학 공간에서 활동할 수 없으며, 대중 미디어의 환경 속에서 시를 해야 하는 상황이 됨.

↘︎ 이제 시인들은 기존의 보호된 공간을 벗어나, 신문·광고·라디오 같은 대중 매체 안에서 싸워야 한다.
↘︎ 과거처럼 문학 잡지에서만 활동할 것이 아니라, 대중 매체 속에서 새로운 언어 실험을 해야만 했다.

• Stéphane Mallarmé

Rather, from now on, as Stéphane Mallarmé was the first to recognize, these interventions had to operate at the very sites and within the very patterns of speaking and reading where the subject’s silences and the collective reification of language were socially encrypted: in the newspapers where the industrialized and instrumentalized forms of linguistic production were touted as promises of universal ‘information’ and ‘communication’ (to be replaced in the twentieth century by the new technologies of media culture, radio, advertising and industrial music). What might have been at one point the communal conversations of social groups would now be performed by professional ‘speakers.’

그는 언어가 개인의 경험을 표현하는 도구가 아니라, 미리 정해진 기계적인 구조로 변하고 있음을 인식함. 즉, 사람들이 자신의 생각을 표현하는 것이 아니라, 기존의 언어 체계를 따라 말하게 됨.

주체의 침묵과 언어의 집단적 물화가 사회적으로 암호화된 장소. 특히, 신문이 이런 현상의 대표적인 예였다.

말라르메는 신문과 같은 미디어가 언어를 기계적으로 생산하고, 사람들을 특정한 방식으로 말하게 만든다고 보았다.

↘︎ 사람들은 자신의 경험을 말하는 것이 아니라, 언론이 만들어낸 언어를 반복하는 것이다.

• industrial voices of the ‘experts’
• prefabricated idioms

Why the house?

“집”은 오랫동안 주체의 언어적 정체성이 형성되는 핵심적 개념이었으며, 정신분석학에서도 인간 주체성과 긴밀히 연결된 공간적 상징으로 기능했다.
언어가 곧 인간의 사고와 존재를 형성하는 구조적 공간.

"Language is the house of Being", Martin Heidegger

↘︎ so Knowles transformed the concept of 'home' into a space for algorithmic and linguistic experimentation.
↘︎ using computer programs to generate random 'homes', she shifted the idea of home from a fixed concept to a fluid structure.
↘︎ Home is no longer just a physical space but really became a linguistic and process-driven concept.

House of Language

A tension between the concept of “home” and mechanical enumeration

If a space that shapes personal identity is randomly generated through mechanical operations, can it still be considered a real home?

↳ Knowles saw the mechanically generated “home” as a space where language itself becomes the foundation for constructing subjective identity.

↳ In this process, the home is no longer a fixed space of identity but instead becomes a fluid, changing structure shaped by algorithms.

The house of language is a system made up of phonetic, lexical, grammatical, and syntactic structures --it existed long before we were born and will keep running long after we’re gone.

↳ We’re born into a language system that already exists, and our way of thinking is shaped within it.

↳ In a way, language is its own thing--an independent structure that exists beyond any one person’s identity.

Language as both a foundation and an infinite System

↳ Through language, we think, express ourselves, and make sense of the world.

↳ language provides a structured framework while remaining flexible enough for infinite transformations and reinterpretations.

"The Prison House of Language"

↘︎ Nietzsche defined language in this way.

↳ One of Nietzsche’s concepts suggests that the subject’s desire to find a “home” within language ultimately leads to bodily and mental subjection (oppression).

• 언어는 국민국가(nation-state)와 같은 거대한 제도의 규범을 내면화한 공간이다.
• 따라서, 주체는 언어 규범, 관용 표현, 어휘적 가용성(lexical availability) 등의 엄격한 체계에 종속된다.
• 언어 속에서 ‘집에 있는 느낌’을 가장 강하게 경험하는 순간, 사실은 가장 깊은 편견과 거짓된 신념 체계를 받아들이는 순간일 가능성이 크다.

↳ 즉, 언어는 억압적이고 자기기만적인 질서를 제공하는 동시에, 사회적으로 동원된 불합리성(irrationality)의 기반이 될 수도 있다.

Language is a structure that justifies all moral and ideological beliefs, as well as fixed orders. So, to free the subject, we need to constantly break down the rigidity and confinement of language.

How to escape the prison: endless creation and deconstruction

in house of dust, subject formation is framed as an ongoing process of construction and deconstruction.

How does it resist linguistic confinement?

• refuses to be bound by fixed linguistic structures.
• does not reduce language to a belief system.
• ensures that subject formation is not dictated by a single system.

→ language served as the primary foundation for shaping subjectivity
→ but language can no longer be the sole basis for identity formation.

the List

in the 1960s, some conceptual artists actively embraced the “list” as a new linguistic form, rejecting the lyricism and expressiveness(?) of traditional poetic language.
e.g

Lawrence Weiner – Statements (1969)
Ed Ruscha – Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963)
Richard Serra – Verb List (1967-68)

why?
from traditional art, conceptual art shifted its focus from creation to structural manipulation and linguistic intervention.
#Oulipo #Georges Perec

The list as an anti-literary and anti-poetic form could credibly claim to be merely the indexical accounting of accumulated qualities or serially aligned objects, taking on the guise of a readymade text that might have been generated, if not written, by these objects themselves.

↘︎ it's funny because a list is just a sequence of objects, like he wrote, it can appear as if it was not created by a person but rather generated by the objects themselves. I like this expression.

...Equally, in their choice of materials, both Knowles and Weiner alternate rapidly from the most peculiar to the most common, seemingly in order to avoid predictability or systematicity of any kind, and in order to achieve the type of non-taxonomy that Borges famously invented in his description of a Chinese encyclopedia.

↘︎ this is a great lesson, sometimes it feels like what makes poetic is a tension between words, a constant push and pull between the familiar and the unexpected. Knowles and Weiner’s approach remind me that meaning emerges not just from the materials themselves but from the unpredictable relationships they form. ↘︎

Knowles’ lists, which he provided to James Tenney, may seem to emphasize indeterminacy at first glance, but in reality, they contained distinctly poetical elements.

- 4개의 언어적 범주는 극단적으로 이질적인 요소들을 포함하도록 설계되었다. 따라서, The House of Dust의 시구는 전통적인 어휘적·의미적 패턴을 따르지 않으며, 매번 새로운 조합을 생성했다.

- 문법적 구조는 필연적으로 일정한 논리를 따르지만, 각 시구에서 단어들의 배열 방식은 의미적 일관성을 유지하지 않았다. 이는 의미의 확산과 분산(lexical dissemination)을 강화하는 방식으로 작동했다.

- 전통적인 건축 재료(벽돌, 돌, 강철, 유리)와 이질적인 재료(버려진 옷, 낙엽, 모래, 종이, 잡초, 뿌리, 깨진 접시)를 동시에 나열했다. 이는 건축과 개념미술 사이의 경계를 허무는 장치로 작동하기도 한다.

aesthetics of administration, green striated paper, sprocket holes

1960년대 후반 개념미술가들이 관료적 문서 형식과 데이터 수집 방법론을 차용했던 것처럼, 놀스의 시 역시 관리 체계의 물리적 형태를 차용하면서도 그 구조를 조롱하는 성격을 가진다.
또한, 출력물을 펼쳐 읽으면, 이 시는 처음과 끝이 없는 두루마리처럼 작동한다. 이는 전통적인 서사의 시간적·공간적 경계를 제거하는 방식과 연결된다.

Unfolding the sheets in order to read the ‘poem’, one becomes aware that the printout functions like a scroll without beginning or end, as is only appropriate for a poem that does not know either of these traditional ordering principles (there is neither a first nor a last quatrain, quite simply, and every printout of the poem begins and ends with a different page of quatrains).

The House of Dust has consciously jettisoned the traditional spatio-temporal demarcations of textual structures. Instead of turning pages, we read by folding and scrolling a textual band (in this respect the poem anticipates the radical transformation of the reading order that computers have brought about in general). The effect of a textual rotation results from the semblance of limitless permutations, as much as from the seemingly endless number of possible and different printouts.

As for its distribution form and presentational devices, it is important to recognize that The House of Dust as a book is equally open ended, refusing to have been bound, and the folds of the printout paper determine the sequence of pages, not the cuts of the page or the binding of the book. It is only appropriate then for the poem to appear in a transparent plastic pouch, a container within which one would usually carry a set of maps or construction plans.

Electronic permutations and linguistic deconstruction

Decentering of poetic experience

In the house of dust, Alison Knowles amplifies the contrast between random yet highly deterministic electronic permutations and her own (perhaps unintentional?) poetic choices.
↘︎ 이러한 조합에서 발생하는 모순적인 다양성은 주체의 경험을 완전히 탈중심화하는 결과를 초래한다.

• No particular material, location, or inhabitant takes precedence.

• 컴퓨터가 무작위적으로 조합한 언어적 요소들을 통해, 특정한 의미 중심을 두지 않고 의미를 생성하는 방식

↳ 특정한 메시지를 의도적으로 전달하는 것이 아니라, 알고리즘적 조합을 통해 생성된 순간순간의 언어적 관계를 경험하는 것.

• The coexistence of mechanical structures and the unpredictability of poetic moments.

• Each element interacts on equal terms, continuously generating an entirely new spectrum of meaning at every moment.

↳ As a result, individual “poetic” linguistic moments remain in a state of constant fluctuation rather than settling into fixed meanings.

↳ Through its perpetually transforming mutual and modular relationships, house of dust creates the process of elements redefining one another.

↳ 이 프로젝트의 목적은 특정한 의미를 전달하는 것이 아니라, ‘의미가 형성되는 과정’을 보여주는 것.

+ Alison Knowles was one of the first artists to really embrace advanced electronic technology in her work. this goes to show that modern subject formation is inevitably tied to technology.

Concept of the subject and the house of dust

• plurality of positions
• discontinuity of functions

"subjectivity as something that is always in a state of disappearance and becoming."
#Maurice Blanchot --I remember trying to read one of his book "The Space of Literature" and then immediately gave up. I should try again.

1. Language no longer provides a fixed identity.

2. Subject formation must exist as a continuously deconstructing process (perpetual transformation).

3. Linguistic structures are fluid and can be constantly reshaped through technology.

4. Individual poetic moments do not hold fixed meanings; they exist within a relational network, constantly reconstructing one another.