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

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

Smout Allen-Ballistic Devices

Ballistic Devices

A series of ballistic instruments are designed to momentarily occupy the space between the sky and the ground. Camouflage strategies can be designed to accentuate and reveal figure and position. The instruments use shape, shine, shadow, and silhouette to enable visual recognition of form and consequently to examine the apparent depth of the horizon.

Three ballistic devices are deployed in the deep space of the horizon.

Constructive ambiguity

from wiki
Constructive ambiguity is a term generally credited to Henry Kissinger, said to be the foremost exponent of the negotiating tactic it designates. It refers to the deliberate use of ambiguous language on a sensitive issue in order to advance some political purpose. Constructive ambiguity is often disparaged as fudging. It might be employed in a negotiation, both to disguise an inability to resolve a contentious issue on which the parties remain far apart, and to do so in a manner that enables each to claim obtaining some concession on it. It warrants further hopes that the ensuing postponement of resolution on this particular point, in a way that causes neither side excessive discomfort, will enable them to make real progress on other matters. If this progress takes place, the unresolved question might be revisited at a later date, if not voided altogether by the passage of time. On the other hand, since ambiguity in agreements can generate subsequent controversy, the likelihood of its employment proving constructive in comparison to further attempts to negotiate the point in question in clear terms, is a question best left for historians.

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A DICTIONARY OF DIPLOMACY by G. R. Berridge & Alan James 2004

constructive ambiguity. [elaborated] A term widely attributed to Henry Kissinger and also known as 'fudging', the deliberate use of ambiguous language on a sensitive issue in order to advance some political purpose. In a negotiation, for example, constructive ambiguity might be employed not only to disguise an inability to resolve a question on which the parties remain far apart but to do so in a manner that enables each to claim that some concession on it has actually been obtained. (The UN Security Council's Resolution 242 of November 1967 regarding the withdrawal of Israel from territory she had occupied in the recent *Six Day War was such a case.) It may also be hoped that, having thereby shelved this particular point in a way that causes neither side excessive discomfort, they will be able to make real progress on other matters. If this should prove to be the case, the ground might be prepared for a return to the unresolved question at a later date; time might even see it dissolve altogether. Of course, such hopes often prove ill-founded, and ambiguity in *agreements can also generate subsequent controversy. Whether on balance, therefore, its employment proves 'constructive' in relation to any further attempts to negotiate the point in question is for historians to determine. See also step-by-step diplomacy.

Examples from wiki:
UN Security Council's Resolution 242

The UN Security Council agreed on the text of the Resolution 242 after the crushing defeat that Israel inflicted on joint Arab forces during the Six Day War in 1967. As a result of bargaining between the powers sitting in the Security Council, the resolution reflected the deeply polarized political opinion. The provision of the resolution which prompted different and incompatible interpretations was the one immediately following the preamble of the text, reading: “establishment of just and lasting peace in the Middle East should include the application of both the following principles:

• withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in recent conflict;
• termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for…territorial integrity…of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.”

The use of an unnatural English construction “territories occupied in recent conflict”, omitting the expected definite article “the”, made it possible to question whether Israel was asked to withdraw from all the territories occupied in the recent conflict, or to withdraw from some, but not all, such territories. Notably, the French translation of the document, unlike the English original, used the definite article, demanding the “retrait des forces armées israéliennes des territoires occupés lors du récent conflit”. Thus the French version, which together with the English version was an official UN version of the document, suggested that Israel must withdraw from all territories that it occupied during the Six Day War. Naturally, the French interpretation suited the interests of Arab countries, who made numerous attempts to prove its validity. By contrast, Israel opposed such an interpretation, and the sponsor of the resolution, Lord Caradon, appears to have had no intention of inserting the definite article into its text. Caradon additionally emphasized the additional and clarifying light that the second part of the first provision shed on its first part, and insisted that it must be given uppermost consideration. According to him, the boundary that existed before the Six Day War did not satisfy the right of Israel to live within secure and recognised boundaries. Consequently, under this interpretation, Israel did not have to withdraw to its pre-Six Day War borders.

quotes from Hollow Land, Israel's Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman-3

pg 8

Chaos has its peculiar structural advantages. It supports one of Israel's foremost strategies of obfuscation: the promotion of complexity - geographical, legal or linguistic. Sometimes, following a terminology pioneered by Henry Kissinger, this strategy is openly referred to as 'constructive blurring'. This strategy seeks simultaneously to obfuscate and naturalize the facts of domination.

...many settlements were indeed constructed with the aim of creating a 'irresolvable geography'