Conorthoughts

Cathedral in the West Country

 

Weekend in Worcestershire

Having shaven, I went walking around Broadway, in the northern Cotswolds, for a day and a half. Hirsute hedgerows, bearded houses, not all clean Cotswold lines. The sun shone.  

My new friend Dieter

I exaggerate, I lie but it is like finding a friend.

"Wer die eigene Arbeit als die Quintessenz des von Kant, gar des von Parmenides begonnenen Denkens sieht, mag leider die Lebenssituationen von sich abschneiden, aus denen er zu dem wurde, als der er sich nun versteht. Die unendliche Macht des Begriffs bringt seine Wahrheit aus beliebigen, somit gleichgültigen Bedingungen des besonderen Individuums hervor, das ihn zuerst in seiner vollen Bestimmtheit ausspricht, – so ist gut hegelisch ein philosophischer Grund für das Vergessen zu formulieren."

Form Dieter Henrich Hegel im Kontext, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2010 (first published Frankfurt am Main in 1971, 2nd edition 1988), p. 10.

Translation on request

 

The value of work

"Wer aus dem sausenden Umschwung des Arbeitsprozesses herausfällt, fällt aus der Welt. Ebensowenig wie der nackte Heilige, der das ungeheure Rad dreht, darf man sich beim Arbeitsprozess fragen: Wozu das Ganze?"

From Wackenroder's story 'Ein wunderbares Morgenländisches Märchen von einem nackten Heiligen' quoted by Rüdiger Safranski (photo above) in his Romantik Eine deutsche Affäre (Carl Hanser Verlag, München, 2007), p. 206.

Translation on request

Afloat

I haven't posted for an age so here is an image to prove that I am still afloat. (The image is 'borrowed' from the naked capitalism blog.)

Angry of Tunbridge Wells and Pimlico

This is Oliver Goldsmith, drawn by a certain Gilbert and engraved by a J. Linton. He looks splendidly grumpy which is how I think I sound below, browned off this evening by his college.

Dear Professor Besson,

could you please explain to me - or get a colleague to explain - what happened to the presentation under the auspices of the anthropology department of Jean Rouch's work that was scheduled for Tuesday 1st December? I had found a notice for it on the college website, and paste it at the bottom here.

The event did not take place in the location that was given. There was no sign announcing a change of venue or cancellation, not did the person holding a seminar in the room at that time have any knowledge of the event or of its whereabouts. The college porter's office knew nothing about it. One of the other half dozen people I met in search of the event went to the anthropology department to enquire but the administrative staff there knew nothing about it.

As a member of the public, I am appalled and angry that a department in a college of Goldsmith's standing could announce a public event and then apparently give no further notice about it or its cancellation. I wasted my evening as a result travelling from Pimlico and back.

If I do not receive a satisfactory response, I will make it my business to lodge a complaint with the pro-chancellor of the college - or whoever its most senior officer is – and with the body which funds the department.

I have also written to some of your colleagues and have dropped an email to someone I happen to know at the college, Nick Couldry of the Department of Media Studies, to ask him whether this kind of apparently shoddy behaviour is a regular feature of academic life at Goldsmith's.

Yours Sincerely,

Conor Joyce

Joram Ten Brink-on the African cinema of Jean Rouch
Goldsmiths Anthropology Society:
Discovering Jean Rouch work- early works in Africa and their impact on film making in Europe (including screening of extracts from Rouch's major film productions in West Africa)
Joram ten Brink is a filmmaker and a Professor of Film at the University of Westminster. He works as a writer/director of documentary and experimental films in the UK and Holland. His films have been broadcasted and theatrically released in the UK, USA, Holland, Israel, France, Germany and Spain. His work has been screened at the Berlin and Rotterdam film festivals and at MOMA in New York. Prof. ten Brink heads the practice based PhD programme in Arts and Design at the University of Westminster and is the director of Centre for Production and Research in Documentary film. In 2004 he organised a major international conference and a programme of screenings on the work of the French anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch. In 2007 he edited the first major book on Rouch's work in English – Building Bridges- the cinema of Jean Rouch (Wallflower Press, London). http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/page-1163

Event Information
Location: RHB 137 Cost: Free to attend Website: www.calamma.net/anthropologysociety Department: Anthropology Time: 1 December 2009, 17:00 - 19:00

Leaf

A leaf came through the door, well, under it, from the school opposite. I brought it up to my flat, after some days. It was all on its own. Now we're together.

Toes

A postscript to my last blog. Here are the man's toes blown up (His fingers are holding up better.):

Holding hands

I was in the Mesopotamian rooms in the Louvre the week before last. Many people were holding hands but I was on my own. Here are some hands I came across in the Sumerian section:

 
 

Here they are blown up:

The fingers look to me like they might be in need of sucking not just holding. Do you think I am right in imagining that they are anxiety-filled? They must be the hands of a nobleman or a king: they are not those of anyone who has ever done much manual work. Here is the sculpture in full (well, almost):

 

A word for John Bull

Here is my quote of the day, of the week in fact (Why not throw in the month?):

"Many people in the world say that the English are racists. I don't agree."

Ali Farka Touré the late Malian musician in conversation with the BBC music journalist Andy Kershaw in 2003 north of Timbuktu.