Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics by Rebecca Solnit

page 2-bold and italics mine

I realized that in order to describe the rich tangle of experience there [at the antinuclear actions at the Nevada Test Site in the late 1980s] I needed to describe, to analyze, to connect, to critique, and to report on both international politics and personal experience. That is, I needed to write as a memoirist or diarist, and as a journalist, and as a critic--and these three voices were one voice in everything except the conventions that sort our experience out and censor what doesn't belong. [...]

Since then, I have been fascinated by trying to map the ways that we think and talk, the unsorted experience wherein one can start by complaining about politics and end by confessing about passions, the ease with which we can get to any point from any other point. Such conversation is sometimes described as being "all over the place," which is another way to say that it connects everything back up. The straight line of conventional narrative is too often an elevated freeway permitting no unplanned encounters or necessary detours. It is not how our thoughts travel, nor does it allow us to map the whole world rather than one streamlined trajectory across it. I wanted more, more scope, more nuance, more inclusion of the crucial details and associations that are conventionally excluded. The convergence of multiple kinds of stories shaped my writing on one way; this traveling by association shaped it in others. Early in my history of walking, I wrote that "if fields of expertise can be imagined as real fields, fenced off and carefully tilled, then the history of walking is a path that trespasses through dozens of fields." So are most unfenced lines of inquiry. I learned two kinds of trespassing at the test site, geographical and intellectual.

Queen Elizabeth II - construction images

stills taken from BBC TV show-QEII final voyage (w/Bruce Peter, GSA)

Strangeways/prison interiors

Strangeways Prison

Strangeways and its image problem

BBC Manchester: Saturday, 4 September, 2004
Manchester Prison, formerly known as Strangeways, hit the headlines in 1990 when a riot ended after a siege lasting 25 days.

Starting in the chapel, the violence claimed the lives of two men and caused damage put at £66m.

Its then governor spoke of "an explosion of evil" as images of a rooftop protest dominated the news.

Although rebuilt at a cost of £55m and even renamed, to most people the prison will always be known as Strangeways.

In 2000, the then governor John Smith said the jail was no longer a "penal dustbin" which saw inmates locked up for 23 hours a day with no access to sanitation in their cells.

But in 2002 inspectors condemned staffing levels there as "unsafe" following cuts of 30% in the workforce.

Work and training

In a report, the Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers also said some prisoners were kept in "degrading conditions", sharing one-man cells with unscreened toilets.

Built in the Napoleonic era, at the time of the 1990 riot the jail contained 1,647 prisoners in accommodation designed for only 970.

The prison takes people jailed and remanded in custody by courts in the Greater Manchester area.

The current regime, with an operational capacity of 1269, includes both full and part time education classes.

Training and work is provided in the workshops and laundry, farms and gardens and the works departments.

There are courses in anger management, alcohol awareness, improving coping skills and courses for prisoners convicted of sex offences.

Strangeways Prison

Strangeways Prison in Southall Street, Manchester was built to replace New Bailey prison in Salford which closed in 1868. It was designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1861, using the Panopticon (radial) concept that was being employed all over Britain at the time. Waterhouse was assisted by Joshua Jebb, the Surveyor General of Prisons, who had also been involved with the design of London's Pentonville Prison. Construction was completed in 1869 at a cost of £170,000.

The new brick built prison stood on the site of the original Strangeways Park and Gardens, hence its name, and was able to house a 1,000 prisoners. There are two imposing gatehouses and a central dodecagonal hall, with wings A to F radiating off from it. The 234 feet high tower, which was used for heating and ventilation, has been a local landmark ever since it was built. The T-shaped F wing is used to house the administration on ground floor with the prison chapel above. A plaque in the entrance commemorates the official opening on the 25th of June 1868.

Strangeways also became the place of execution for the area after the closure of Salford prison. It initially had a purpose built execution shed in one of the yards, as this was the normal practice for private executions from 1868 up to around the end of World War 1.
The later 20th century condemned cell and execution room were situated at the end of 'B' wing in the central area. Strangeways had a permanent gallows, one of the few English prisons to do so, up to the abolition of capital punishment. In total, there were 100 hangings carried out within its walls, all in private. Twenty eight men and one woman were hanged there between 1869 and 1899, the first being a young man of 20 called Michael Johnson, who was hanged by William Calcraft for murder on the 29th of March 1869.

A further 71 people were executed at Strangeways in the 20th century - 68 men and 3 women. In the latter part of this period, executions became quite rare - no one was to be hanged there between 1954 and 1962. James Smith was executed in that year and then one of the last two UK hangings of all was carried out at Strangeways at 8.00 a.m. on the 13th of August 1964. Gwynne Owen Evans (real name John Robson Walby) was hanged by Harry Allen (assisted by Royston Rickard) for the murder of John West, a laundryman, in the course of robbing him in April 1964. Peter Anthony Allen was hanged at the same moment in Liverpool's Walton prison for his part in the crime. Murder committed in the course of robbery was still a capital crime under the 1957 Homicide Act.

There were 4 double hangings, all the rest being carried out individually. William Calcraft officiated at the first 3 executions within the walls of Strangeways (Michael Johnson plus Patrick Durr in December 1870 and Michael Kennedy in December 1872) before William Marwood replaced him and introduced the long drop method.

The condemned block is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of one of the hangmen who officiated there. Staff on night duty have reported seeing a mysterious man in a dark suit carrying a small briefcase. He is always seen walking along 'B' wing from just outside the condemned cell towards the central control area. When they try to follow this dark suited man, he vanishes just before the old iron staircase leading up to the main office. One wonders if this could be John Ellis who committed suicide in 1932.

more on executions

Artist Stelarc gets an extra ear implanted into his arm

The Guardian, Tuesday 14 April 2009

A man with 3 ears at the Edinburgh Science Festival. Performance artist Stelios Arcadiou, known as Stelarc, says his extra ear, made of human cartilage, is an augmentation of the body's form. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

A man with three ears will appear at Edinburgh Napier University today to talk about his "extra" ear, which has been surgically implanted on to his forearm.

Australian performance artist Stelios Arcadiou, known as Stelarc, had the third ear created from cells in a lab in 2006. At the Edinburgh Science International Festival today, Stelarc will discuss his plans to install transmitters in his new ear, so people listen to what it is hearing online. He also hopes to grow a soft earlobe using his own stem cells.

The ear is made of human cartilage. Stelarc, who is visiting professor at Brunel University School of Arts, took 10 years to find a surgeon willing to perform the operation. He uses medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality and the internet in his work.

"I'm trying to help you, to keep you."

Friday 1 April 2005 Guardian

Strangeways here we come

On April 1 1990 a riot in Manchester triggered a wave of protests in prisons across Britain.

Strangeways prison rooftop protest, 1990. Photograph: Denis Thorpe

On April Fools' Day, 15 years ago, 300 prisoners filed into the chapel at Strangeways prison, Manchester, to attend the Church of England service. They heard a sermon from a visiting Church Army preacher, and at 11am, the prison's chaplain, Noel Proctor, rose to continue the service.

What happened next was tape recorded, along with the sermon. The transcript of the tape reads thus:

Noel Proctor: "After that remarkable message that has ..."

A prisoner (later identified as Paul Taylor): "I would just like to say, right, that this man has just talked about the blessing of the heart and how a hardened heart can be delivered. No it cannot, not with resentment, anger and bitterness and hatred being instilled in people."

(noise, over which) A prisoner: "Fuck your system, fuck your rules."

Proctor: "Right lads, sit down."

(More noise)

Proctor: "Right lads, down. Down. Come on, this is no way to carry on in God's house."

(More noise)

A prisoner: "Fuck your system."

Proctor: "Right lads, sit down. This is completely out of order. Sit down."

A prisoner: "Why is it [out of order]? It's been waiting to happen forever. It will never change."

Proctor: "Come on. This is terrible."

(More noise; banging, shouting, cheering)

Proctor: "All of you who want to go back to your cells, go to the back of the church please."

A prisoner: "What? You're a fucking hypocrite, you."

Proctor: "I'm trying to help you, to keep you."

A prisoner: "Leave it, mate."

(More noise until microphone goes dead)

rest of article

Steve McCaffery

reading from Carnival panel 2a (portion of above)

from Wiki
Steve McCaffery's poetry attempts to break language from the logic of syntax and structure to create a purely emotional response.^[2] He has created three-dimensional structures of words and has released a number of sound and video works, often in collaboration with other poets.^[3]

reading from book, Panopticon -->lense/photography/juxtaposition

general info/links

Kenneth Goldsmith

neither fish nor fowl

http://www.answers.com/topic/neither-fish-nor-fowl

Also, neither fish nor flesh; neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. Not one or the other, not something fitting any category under discussion. For example, They felt he was neither fish nor fowl--not qualified to lead the department, yet not appropriate to work as a staff member either. This expression appeared in slightly different form in John Heywood's 1546 proverb collection ("Neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring") and is thought to allude to food for monks ( fish, because they abstained from meat), for the people (flesh, or meat), and for the poor (red herring, a very cheap fish).

full text of proverb (confusing layout)

David Antin - self definition as Euglena (neither plant nor animal)

from Q&A at UPenn accessed at
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Antin.php

UPenn student:
"Are you a poet, do you intend to be a poet, um, do you think about your own categorization, or how do you categorize yourself?"

David Antin:
"When i think of myself, which is not as much as all that, and not as necessarily so frequently, what comes to mind is something i learned in biology that there is a microorganism called a euglena. And a euglena has chloroplasts which allows it to absorb solar energy and turn it into metabolic energy and material, so that it ingests like a plant.

It also has a whip-like attachment that is called the flagella. And this flagella allows it to whip around and capture prey.

My question is about the euglena is it a plant or is it an animal and i don't know which it is, and neither do the biologists know what it is, and i have always regarded this as my identity."

David Antin - "talk-pieces"

From Wiki

David Antin (born in New York City, February 1, 1932) is a United States poet and critic. In the late 1960s, Antin began performing extemporaneously, improvising "talk poems" at readings and exhibitions. In the late 1960s Antin moved with his wife, the writer and performance artist Eleanor Antin, to Southern California to take up a post at the University of California, San Diego, in the newly formed and experimental Visual Arts Department. He served for a time as gallery director and much longer as a professor there. In the early 1970s, his influence on a nascent group of conceptual photographers among the graduate students there was powerful. He has a fellowship in the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEH. He also received the PEN Los Angeles Award for Poetry in 1984. Antin lives in San Diego with his wife.

Works

David Antin has said that as a child he wanted to invent things, and that to him this meant he must either become a scientist or an artist. His early published poetry, collected in "Selected Poems: 1963-1973," was experimental, using found or "readymade" texts to address issues of language. In "Definitions for Mendy," a poem from this book, he uses definitions of "loss" from both a dictionary and an insurance handbook to fuel a meditation on the death of a friend. In his "Novel Poems" from the same book, he pages through popular novels, choosing a line or a phrase from each page to assemble poems.

After gathering some experience reading his poems, he began to find the convention of reading his own previously-written poetry stultifying. He turned instead to improvising poems that are a kind of thinking out loud about the act of creating meaning. The themes of these "talk-pieces" are often inspired by their location and audience. The talk pieces can be viewed alternately as poetry that seeks to re-connect with oral and performative aspects of the poetic tradition, as philosophy in the tradition of Plato's dialogues or Wittgenstein's lectures, or as a "site-specific" artwork like Robert Smithson's earthworks. He tape-records each performance and often composes subsequent written versions, which are collected in books like "talking at the boundaries," "tuning" and "what it means to be avant garde."

In his talk pieces Antin blends personal narrative with philosophical reflection to address issues of meaning. In "tuning," for example, he critiques the concept of "understanding" and offers an alternative model. In "what it means to be avant garde" he suggests that the avant garde attempts to address not the future but the present. In "the fringe" he tells a story about resistance to the Vietnam War that offers as a central figure a bucket containing the urine of several Guggenheim poets.

more:

interview

audio from UPenn

general backround/more links