Eero Yli-Vakkuri
There is a mug with the old TeaK logo in the Sturenkatu 21 Posti logistics backroom. A positive trace. The work easy.
Mailmans short term memory is infrastructure. #ॐ
Customers have five digit codes which correspond to packages they are picking up. To speedup delivery I memorize them and keep the numbers in mind for the twenty steps it takes me to reach the shelfs where I collect the packages. For those twenty steps, the internals of my brains are a part of the logistics network.
The taxpayer is the ultimate maintenance artist. #ॐ
Got a job as a temporary Christmas Maker (postal mail and package logistics worker). An epic month sliding from an artist, to a voice actor, to online event broadcaster, to art teacher, to a thesis inspector, to logistics. Skidding trough rough patches but I’m moving too fast to notice the burn.
As the pandemic pushes creatives, who have been seasoned by years commitment in busy productions, to temp-jobs where will the folk who previously worked these sites end up? The work I got is a work a first year art student didn’t get – What will they eat for Christmas? This is survivors guilt I guess.
Participated in a creative writing class at Aalto. The session was hosted by Nat Rahaa who presented poetry as a toolkit for defamiliarizing established rationals (poetry as an anti-imperialistic practice!). We were presented extracts form works by Samuel Solomon, Linus Slug, Caroline Bergvall, Will Alexander and others. Solomons reworkings of archive materials felt interesting and I really enjoyed No (2017) by Anne Boyer. We were offered multiple approaches towards defamiliarization: Critical Writing, Creative Writing, Experimental Writing.
I’ve experienced that texts always establish borders. I think all writing is punishment.
To start of the domain of creative writing feels like it is reserved for people who have been initiated to grammar. Writing, as a craft, is maintained by a vigilant clergy who have been indoctrinated to grammar since kindergarten. Most likely trough the exercise were we had to color letters while staying inside their bounds.
Language cops were friends in high school but they end up as lone rangers in adulthood. Most of them end up working for the establishment. A selected few gain a right of roam over all text. For them it’s all the same: If it’s letter-like shapes, it can be read and made sense of or its nonsensicality can be classified.
They gain their position from the trust folk show them when they need help.
Language cops and grammar-clergy are needed for surviving a bureaucratic world. Everyone should get know at least two members from this clan. It’s a passive aggressive arrangement. The grammar-clergies violence is subtle – They don’t even notice what they are doing: Pulling focus to the absence of punctuation marks, in a world we can’t stay still – Is a bitch move. Their actions echo a believe that texts, words and even letters perform and make stuff.
More effort would be put into teaching people how to read. Because reading is the performance of text. People should be taught to read wrong (I think one of the text collage exercises we did during todays Zoom session was after this). If more people would be taught how to read-wrong, it would enable folk to write like they feel, with out having to fear the grammar-clergy.
Text is a horizontal performance, which sets words in a list #ॐ
Below is a text we were tasked to write. I feel happy about it.
I will cycle in the sun, after work and play music as loud as my phone speakers allow.
I’ll see people drinking wine in the park as I pass by and think about my kids when I see some climbing a tree.
Cuentos Patrióticos (1997) Francis Alÿs. Artist forms a self-organising assembly with sheep. The assemblies uniformity can be verified from its geometry and pace. It starts to dispense after the shepard releases their leash. In the process the sheeps solidarity to each other, sence of routine-established-security and alliance to men is tested.
Someone Explains How Poland Uses Clams To Control Its Water Supply And It’s Pretty Crazy (2020) Judita K. The title is self-explanatory. Here is a link to an article on the matter in Polish (with super pictures). In short: If the clams close their shells it is a sign that there is something wrong with the water. Their hulls are attached with sensors which measure their movement. Selected animals serve the water company for three months after which they are released. The article is illustrated woth pictures of a film called Fat Kathy / Gruba Kaśka (2019) Julia Pełka.
Listening to The Strangeness of Dub (2019) Edward George. Music history merged with philosophy! In episode ‘Oh, Slavery Days!’ George links the tones of solos played by Don Drummond, philosophy related to memory and liberation with the living history of Atlantic slave trade.
Folk who don’t work with crafts to sustain themselves underline a belief that mastery is a process were an artisan develops an intuitive relationship to materials they use. In practice the artisan is in a relationship with their tools and only trough them with the materials they use for their craft. The maintenance of tools (such as a furnace) takes up a considerable chunk of labor efforts. Ultimately a craft is a process where tools are maintained and made. The proper placement of tools around a workspace is most important. #ॐ
Reciting Citations
A team of writers assemble in a circle. Each participant should bring with them a list of writers and thinkers, whom they have referred to in their latest draft or publication and a pencil for keeping track of events. The senior member of the group makes sure everyone understands the rules and initiates the song.