7/13/2011
7/08/2011
7/07/2011
W.I.P for Women In Prison and Work In Progress (First Episode)
W.I.P for Women In Prison and Work In Progress (First Episode)
The head turns. The arm touches the ground, stopping violently. Movement comes out of the speakers. It starts from zero on the timeline and leads to the end of the loop, its beginning.
Is it the machine that’s in question? Do you obey? Do you try to exist within it, against it, around it? The machine--machina in ancient Rome, mechane in ancient Athens--is still what we call the apparatus of war, all the weapons bought and sold, used and lost during battle: the armor, the gas masks, the Molotov cocktails, the cybernetic networks, prohibitions, negotiations, settlements and the camps (office camps, party regulations, yoga memberships, etc). It is the theater and its apparatus: the entertainer's tricks and special effects, the lights going on and off, the curtains opening and closing, the fake blood, the props and costumes, the fluorescent paint on the masks that pin down the characters, the strings that hold ex-machina gods up in the air ready to turn various histories upside down whenever they settle, finally, for just a second on stage. It is the dubbed sound in Italian Spaghetti Westerns, the actors counting “one, two, three, four, five” instead of speaking sentences. It is Pier Paolo Pasolini adding sound to the film while editing the recorded images. It is Godard's subtitles, his obsession with texts on film and the way he reduces cinema’s speed. It is Roberto Rosellini's remote control gadget for zooming in and his preference for working with amateur actors. It is Maya Deren's cuts and the way she worked with film exposure. It is Jacques Tati’s mime routines, his micro-gestures and their connection to comedia de l'arte.
The machines of theater and the machines of war: they are interchangeable.
“How did it go?”
“Was it successful?”
Machine and tool are one and the same.
There are a million ways to compose and re-articulate a smile, a cry, and the hand holding a glass. A million ways to rehearse and present a cry, a smile, and the hand holding a glass in real time.
They are modules: “the principle behind the distribution of breaks and intervals.”
There is no representation, only presentation and the analysis of the symptom’s mechanisms existing at the moment of the performance.
The tool I use in the performance is my female body. I was born with that body. I could resist it. I could change gender for the performance or pay other people to perform for me. Instead, I insist on presenting myself as I am. The female body with its texts, imagery, history, pain, criticism, revolt. With my female body I can do the gestures of a man and be that. I can be the lion and the fish and the tree and the woman again, another woman perhaps, another posture. I can't pretend I am a non-smoker but I can look like I am a non-smoker. I can't hide my rotten teeth but I can smile in such a way as to camouflage them. That is what I have, simulations.
The women in prison told me that they have learned the techniques and the sensitivities of the State. They told me: “You must move from one point to the other and then back and forth without end.” I do what they told me in their letters. Is it cinema, then, and not performance? It is the war of the war machine, but not the war machine alone. The architectural plans, the social definitions, the prisons, the schools, the asylums, the houses, the offices, the pavements, the public spaces with their park security. It is life under the constant control of the structural, behavioral and moral architects, with their pose of authority and calculated plans. And then there are the ideal citizens, the syncopated rhythms among thousands of them on the streets.
During a riot, though, different politics arise. There are expectations of change, forgotten demands, and the repressed imagination of the lower class. What does it mean to pretend to be a citizen? What does it mean to shout phrases that you don't believe in? What does it mean to shout together with a group of workers? Who are you when you are doing that? Are those your machines of survival your survival kits? Were you born with them or did you just get used to them as you grew up? The Father, the Mother, the Teacher, the Emperor and How am I to obey? When is the right moment to put up the poster and when is the time to go home? Do I want to go to my place or do I want to live at our home?
This is not the end of the text.
Georgia Sagri, New York, 2011
The performance W.I.P (First Episode) was presented as part of the exhibition Skin So Soft, organized by Josh Kline at Gresham's Ghost, 401 Broadway, NY, 6/22/2011, photo by Linda Norden
The head turns. The arm touches the ground, stopping violently. Movement comes out of the speakers. It starts from zero on the timeline and leads to the end of the loop, its beginning.
Is it the machine that’s in question? Do you obey? Do you try to exist within it, against it, around it? The machine--machina in ancient Rome, mechane in ancient Athens--is still what we call the apparatus of war, all the weapons bought and sold, used and lost during battle: the armor, the gas masks, the Molotov cocktails, the cybernetic networks, prohibitions, negotiations, settlements and the camps (office camps, party regulations, yoga memberships, etc). It is the theater and its apparatus: the entertainer's tricks and special effects, the lights going on and off, the curtains opening and closing, the fake blood, the props and costumes, the fluorescent paint on the masks that pin down the characters, the strings that hold ex-machina gods up in the air ready to turn various histories upside down whenever they settle, finally, for just a second on stage. It is the dubbed sound in Italian Spaghetti Westerns, the actors counting “one, two, three, four, five” instead of speaking sentences. It is Pier Paolo Pasolini adding sound to the film while editing the recorded images. It is Godard's subtitles, his obsession with texts on film and the way he reduces cinema’s speed. It is Roberto Rosellini's remote control gadget for zooming in and his preference for working with amateur actors. It is Maya Deren's cuts and the way she worked with film exposure. It is Jacques Tati’s mime routines, his micro-gestures and their connection to comedia de l'arte.
The machines of theater and the machines of war: they are interchangeable.
“How did it go?”
“Was it successful?”
Machine and tool are one and the same.
There are a million ways to compose and re-articulate a smile, a cry, and the hand holding a glass. A million ways to rehearse and present a cry, a smile, and the hand holding a glass in real time.
They are modules: “the principle behind the distribution of breaks and intervals.”
There is no representation, only presentation and the analysis of the symptom’s mechanisms existing at the moment of the performance.
The tool I use in the performance is my female body. I was born with that body. I could resist it. I could change gender for the performance or pay other people to perform for me. Instead, I insist on presenting myself as I am. The female body with its texts, imagery, history, pain, criticism, revolt. With my female body I can do the gestures of a man and be that. I can be the lion and the fish and the tree and the woman again, another woman perhaps, another posture. I can't pretend I am a non-smoker but I can look like I am a non-smoker. I can't hide my rotten teeth but I can smile in such a way as to camouflage them. That is what I have, simulations.
The women in prison told me that they have learned the techniques and the sensitivities of the State. They told me: “You must move from one point to the other and then back and forth without end.” I do what they told me in their letters. Is it cinema, then, and not performance? It is the war of the war machine, but not the war machine alone. The architectural plans, the social definitions, the prisons, the schools, the asylums, the houses, the offices, the pavements, the public spaces with their park security. It is life under the constant control of the structural, behavioral and moral architects, with their pose of authority and calculated plans. And then there are the ideal citizens, the syncopated rhythms among thousands of them on the streets.
During a riot, though, different politics arise. There are expectations of change, forgotten demands, and the repressed imagination of the lower class. What does it mean to pretend to be a citizen? What does it mean to shout phrases that you don't believe in? What does it mean to shout together with a group of workers? Who are you when you are doing that? Are those your machines of survival your survival kits? Were you born with them or did you just get used to them as you grew up? The Father, the Mother, the Teacher, the Emperor and How am I to obey? When is the right moment to put up the poster and when is the time to go home? Do I want to go to my place or do I want to live at our home?
This is not the end of the text.
Georgia Sagri, New York, 2011
The performance W.I.P (First Episode) was presented as part of the exhibition Skin So Soft, organized by Josh Kline at Gresham's Ghost, 401 Broadway, NY, 6/22/2011, photo by Linda Norden
5/28/2011
what I understand that you suggest about space of ease
As far as I can understand what you suggest by space of ease in connection to friendship could be habitus, but maybe we want to avoid the sociological connection of this word. We can use the word's origin which is hexis (έξις in greek) which means possession or disposition (διάθεσης in greek) power to use. The actual translation tends to be too pragmatic which suggests something that could be forcefully learned and then easily forgotten. I think Aristotle's refers to this notion as a having but it is always very controversial of how it is perceived this having. For how I understand it, is a topological, potential and formal term, but when we refer to it in relation to something else outside of himself then it is more as a state of action. An act can be good or bad and that's i think why friends are crucial. Because a friend for good that includes pleasure and benefit but it is not only one or the other, will express the good or bad of your act of the having. Isn't then space of ease the space of friendship that is cultivating truth? Certainly urgency isn't a pleasant feeling but in a moment of urgency wouldn't be urgent for something to be addressed ? For example if I feel sad because something needs to be said, happen, change, I need to say it. If that saying is articulated in a clumsy way it is because perhaps we haven't created a space of ease, space of comfort and pleasure where we don't feel like criminals as you said or we don't feel in survival and I think we both agree on that: I don't want to make you feel bad but I want you to feel free to address the good or the bad of the having.
x
g
x
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100%ad (sleep cat)
The advertisement 100% (sleep cat) was created in March 2010 and was hosted for six months at the site of the publication company 100%. Georgia Sagri as the advertising girl, the producer and the crew of her advertisement company, used here smiling styles and voice temperatures of 80's advertisements.
3/25/2011
12/15/2010
Note- Yesterday and Today
Yesterday a new labor law passed urgently from the Greek parliament. It annules several fundamental labor rights as we knew them in Greece for decades.
For example:
- Each business can make a special contract-agreement with it's own workers, paying them less that it is required by the contract-agreement between businessmen and trade unions of workers of a whole sector. Practically the agreements between businessmen and trade unions of each sector are annuled. Practically there will be unions only (apart from the general confederation, of course) at a level of each single enterprise (where the workers are fewer and less powerful, than the total of workers in a whole sector of economy). This will have an immediate effect at wages in the private sector.
- The provisional period of work is raised from 2 months to 12 months, 1 year. That means that a boss can fire a worker after 1 year without giving him any redundancy pay.
And several other harsh neoliberal changes both at the private and the public sector.
So after London and Rome, today, in Athens, Greece, at the General Strike, we had wild clashes between protesters and police.
They are maybe the wildest clashes since the "troika" lenders (IMF, European Commission, European Central Bank) took over the control of the economy of the country, this spring, because of the debt crisis. Although the participants in the demonstration were probably less, the clashes were harsher than those at the 5th of May demonstration (when 3 employees of a bank were accidentally killed by rioters).
Molotov bombs were thrown to the anti-riot policemen guarding expensive hotels, close to the parliament. Similar attacks occurred in many places in the center of Athens. 2 police motorbikes were destroyed. An ex-minister (of the opposition right-wing party that ruled from 2004-2009 and destroyed the economy, while changing the statistics to deceive the people and the E.U.) was beaten (video) (photo) by people who saw him in a street in the center of Athens. Workers and anarchists, returning from the demonstration, tried to occupy the offices of the General Confederation of Workers (which is controlled by well paid professional "tradeunionists" affiliated to the ruling "socialist", but extremely neoliberal party), but were prevented by the anti-riot policemen.
The police made extensive use of chemical gases. (bought by Israel). Lots of people have been beaten.
Till now we don't know the exact number of people arrested and injured.
You can see some images and videos here:
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1237676
http://www.babylonia.gr/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1296%3A%CF%80%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%B5%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%B1%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE-%CE%B1%CF%80%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B3%CE%AF%CE%B1-15-%CE%B4%CE%B5%CE%BA%CE%AD%CE%BC%CE%B2%CF%81%CE
These were the second clashes of this week. Residents of Keratea, an area outside Athens, are clashing with anti-riot policemen for 4 consecutive days, protesting against a new waste dump in the area. Not only molotov bombs but also gunfire (at the air) was reportedly used by the local residents. The Greek Police for the first time made use of a water-cannon vehicle.
Some photos ot these clashes here:
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1236686
Meanwhile scores of prisoners are on hunger strike in Greek jails because of the conditions there.
For example:
- Each business can make a special contract-agreement with it's own workers, paying them less that it is required by the contract-agreement between businessmen and trade unions of workers of a whole sector. Practically the agreements between businessmen and trade unions of each sector are annuled. Practically there will be unions only (apart from the general confederation, of course) at a level of each single enterprise (where the workers are fewer and less powerful, than the total of workers in a whole sector of economy). This will have an immediate effect at wages in the private sector.
- The provisional period of work is raised from 2 months to 12 months, 1 year. That means that a boss can fire a worker after 1 year without giving him any redundancy pay.
And several other harsh neoliberal changes both at the private and the public sector.
So after London and Rome, today, in Athens, Greece, at the General Strike, we had wild clashes between protesters and police.
They are maybe the wildest clashes since the "troika" lenders (IMF, European Commission, European Central Bank) took over the control of the economy of the country, this spring, because of the debt crisis. Although the participants in the demonstration were probably less, the clashes were harsher than those at the 5th of May demonstration (when 3 employees of a bank were accidentally killed by rioters).
Molotov bombs were thrown to the anti-riot policemen guarding expensive hotels, close to the parliament. Similar attacks occurred in many places in the center of Athens. 2 police motorbikes were destroyed. An ex-minister (of the opposition right-wing party that ruled from 2004-2009 and destroyed the economy, while changing the statistics to deceive the people and the E.U.) was beaten (video) (photo) by people who saw him in a street in the center of Athens. Workers and anarchists, returning from the demonstration, tried to occupy the offices of the General Confederation of Workers (which is controlled by well paid professional "tradeunionists" affiliated to the ruling "socialist", but extremely neoliberal party), but were prevented by the anti-riot policemen.
The police made extensive use of chemical gases. (bought by Israel). Lots of people have been beaten.
Till now we don't know the exact number of people arrested and injured.
You can see some images and videos here:
http://athens.indymedia.org/
http://www.babylonia.gr/index.
These were the second clashes of this week. Residents of Keratea, an area outside Athens, are clashing with anti-riot policemen for 4 consecutive days, protesting against a new waste dump in the area. Not only molotov bombs but also gunfire (at the air) was reportedly used by the local residents. The Greek Police for the first time made use of a water-cannon vehicle.
Some photos ot these clashes here:
http://athens.indymedia.org/
Meanwhile scores of prisoners are on hunger strike in Greek jails because of the conditions there.
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