Beyond Standard Model

die Wende

2010-10-04T11:34:00.001-04:00

00:00 CET, October 3, 1990

What was the frame of my mind then in Beijing?

Where is the soul of the class of 1994 students whom I left behind in a hurry a year later?

It has been raining since last night.

I am beginning to watch "Satantango."

my first tentative attempt at beginning again

2010-09-27T14:36:00.002-04:00

It is buried or embedded in the fabulous sounds, images and texts of "out of nothing" (#4) originated in LA. The only thing i am sure of now is that it will go through more corrections, revisions, iterations and expansions.

Li Xiaoxia led Shandong to victory in the Chinese Table Tennis Super League Championship

2010-09-18T12:19:00.006-04:00

Li Xiaoxia almost single-handedly beat both Liaoning and Datong in the semi and final respectively. She seems unbeatable at the moment. But can she maitain her form in the coming Asia Games or Olympic Games in 2012? We have to see.

But I have to sing Datong's praises for its miraculous run to the final. A young team of youth: Li Xiaodan, Wu Yang, Feng Tianwei, and Liu Juan. And I have to sing praises of Li Xiaodan, of Wu Yang for their hard fights and enormous progress throughout this season. I hope the coaches of the national team will give them more opportunities for important international competitions. New stars are being born. Pain and violence are inevitable and necessary before the first explosions of the chorus of joy.

My answer to questions about death

2010-09-09T11:49:00.002-04:00

A couple of days ago, I received an email from a ping pong friend with questions regarding the immenant death of my friend's friend

"quest. #1. would you live another day until the last day of the month? or a week as per the doctor said? If so, why?

quest. #2. what would you love to do if you know that your death is coming close to that day? If so, why?"

My answer:

"The only thing certain about life is that we are all going to die. The only differencews are how and when. There's no afterlife but legacies and memories. Mao Zedong died today 34 years ago and China has since changed beyond his belief. On the scale of the universe, a man's death is nothing significant, even the death of sun will be uneventful. But individually life is always a battle with death, with all its pains and joys. And metaphorically, we die periodically or even dayly. To live another day is to fight for another day. Yes I would live another day if I have a choice and the means and the ability to do what I want to do.

I would like to pay my debts and indebtedness to people who have supported me and settle accounts with my enemies. Yes, I won't forgive my enemies. And I can't forget my friends.

I wish him peace of mind at the moment of the inevitable.

Writing is a great way to think and feel about and live life.

And 'Writing is an aid to memory.'"

I am listening to Alban Berg's "Violin Concerto."

But death cann't stop the birth of new life, however different it may be.
I want to send my autumn greetings to my nephew Gabriel, who turned eight today in Houston.
To Leo Tolstoy (b. 1828).
To Feng Kang (b. 1920).

Zhang Jike came of age in Suzhou

2010-08-22T14:04:00.001-04:00

Winning his first ProTour Men's Singles title with style this morning, this man showed he has the right combination of efficient techniques, mental quickness and strength. I root for him to win in London in 2012.

Bastille Day forecast from Weather Underground

2010-07-14T11:38:00.000-04:00

Today

Showers likely with a slight chance of thunderstorms. Some thunderstorms may produce heavy rainfall. Highs around 80. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph...becoming east with gusts up to 20 mph this afternoon. Chance of rain 70 percent.

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of thunderstorms. A chance of showers...mainly in the evening. Lows in the lower 70s. North winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent.

Leslie Scalapino (1944-2010)

2010-05-31T23:10:00.005-04:00

I heard this influential American experimental poet read three times, at City Lights, ACA Galleries, and Belladonna respectively. I can't say I agree with her on poetics, but I was much impressed by her genre/ formal and syntactic liberty in composition, her amazing productivity, her autonomy, her O Books publishing machine, and her enormous influence on some camps of younger American poets. Is this the sign of the beginning of the end of an era? I wish her mind still alive and moving in another world.

Feng Tianwei brought down the Great Wall in Moscow

2010-05-30T09:57:00.003-04:00

Led by two spectacular wins from Feng Tianwei, Singapore won the first Women's Team Table Tennis World Champion. It's also the fist loss for the Chinese Team since 1991. I am really happy for the hard-fighting Singapore team. I think the final collapse of the Chinese team is mainly due to the bad judgements and decisions by the head Coach Shi Zhihao in terms of everyday team training and education, team selection, and coaching on the court. He has destroyed the team from inside and should be replaced immediately by another coach (not Kong Linghui, but somebody else) and the team be rebuilt around the new coach to secure China's victory in London. Cheer up, Chinese girls. Moscow doesn't believe in tears...

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

2010-05-27T10:03:00.000-04:00

”Loong Boonmee Raleuk Chaat," Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Save Public Library!

2010-05-24T13:22:00.000-04:00

Arise! Arise! Arise!

Queens Library is facing a potential funding cut of $16.9 million this year, or a cumulative 30% reduction of budget.

Stop further attacks on children, students, senior citizens, the unemployed, cultural workers, artists, and many many other workers.

On the steps of City Hall
this Tuesday May 25 at 1:00 p.m.
Fight to restore library funding!

Happy Birthday!

2010-05-17T13:02:00.001-04:00

Dear "Deen"

Dear "Thunder"

Dear "Lake of Solidarity"

Dear "22"

Dear "23"

Dear "Autumn"

from Athens to Berkeley to ...

2010-05-06T10:54:00.003-04:00

(from Financial Times, May 6, 2010 )

(from Daily Californian, May 6, 2010)

Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s statement to UC Berkeley students involved in the hunger strike :

SB 1070

I am horrified by the passage of a law by the State of Arizona that appears motivated by deep racial divides and that has the potential for human and civil rights abuses, particularly against Chicano/Latinos. Immigration is a highly complex and difficult matter for our country and it is regrettable that the State of Arizona has chosen to deal with the issue by enacting this law. I am personally prepared to speak out against this law and add my voice to those of other citizens urging President Obama to work with the State to find a way to repeal Arizona SB 1070 by repairing a clearly broken federal immigration law system...

Make UCB a Sanctuary Campus and provide extensive protection for undocumented students

We share your concern for the safety of our undocumented students. At the request of La Raza, I recently spoke to our Chief of Police and was assured that our undocumented students would in no way be put at risk if they contacted our police to report crimes or threats...

Drop all student conduct charges related to protest actions that occurred during the 2009-10 academic year

As was announced to the campus community this week, we are not pursuing student conduct actions against students involved in activities during Live Week on the morning of December 11, 2009 given the genuine confusion on the part of some students regarding dispersal orders. However, we are not dropping other charges...

Stop cuts to low-wage workers on campus and stop attacks against union activists; rehire all AFSCME service workers and UPTE union activists and Cal performance employees

The campus is undergoing severe budget cuts necessitated by the withdrawal of State support for the university. Staff at all levels have been affected. Salary reductions and lay-offs are an unfortunate consequence of the people of California’s disinvestment in public higher education. ,,,

Suspend the Student Code of Conduct and initiate a democratic student-led process to review the code

We have already modified some processes to improve the implementation of the Student Code of Conduct...

Accept responsibility for the violence and escalation of the confrontation surrounding Wheeler Hall on Nov. 20th and Dec. 11th 2009 . . . Additionally, commit to using non-violent means of ensuring safety at student demonstrations in the future

As I said publicly after the November 20th protests, we truly regret the incidents that brought physical and emotional injury to members of our community. We are committed to fashioning policies and procedures that honor the University’s commitments to freedom of inquiry and expression, and to maintaining the kind of secure and safe environment without which free inquiry and expression would not be possible...

Begin again

2010-05-01T23:03:00.004-04:00

it's over 80 degrees
it's May Day
stayed indoor
went underground
into the darkness
think about the weather and man
think about laws of nature
think about nature of law
think about contingency
think about the relation between art and capital
between love and revolution
reimagine light
rediscover 1971
and the meaning of 39 Steps
and universal history
and the limits of documentary
of democracy
eat more Swiss cheese
Mayflower went off course and will never arrive in May
"flowers of May bloom in the fields
veiling the blood of freedom fighters"

Jia Zhangke & Zhao Tao at MoMA

2010-03-08T23:30:00.000-05:00

For the first time, I saw Jia's first two feature-length films "Xiao Wu" (1997) and "Platform" (2000) on the big screen over the weekend. And for the second time, "Unknown Pleasures" (2002), which I first saw acciddentally at Cinema Village in 2003 as I was struggling for my first book of poetry. At that time, I was mainly drawn to the theater by the facts that the director is from Shanxi and the location is in Datong. At MoMA it's still a deeply moving experience even though I have seen both films on DVD quite a few times. Especially precious are Jia's remarks about the making of the films, the brilliant presence of the leading lady, Zhao Tao, and my being lucky to talk to her briefly. Poetry must be filmed somehow. I do hink film can do more than just observing.

Third Blizzard

2010-02-26T11:01:00.007-05:00

While the last autumn rain still remain unresolved in composition,
the early spring rain pressed on with urgency and deepened my anxiety over the much-delayed project.
But it turned into snow again, melting almost immediately upon the ground.
Stuck inside the subway just before the tunnel for more than half an hour,
we bore the repeated bombardment of contradicting messages from the driver, "we are being held because of a track fire at Grand Central," "We are going back to Main Street," "We are going to Grand Central!"
It's in Schermerhorn, not Schermerhorn Extension.
60 years or 30 years?
I was late in the talk.
The snow turned more and more relentless and solid in solidarity with the ground.
Where is the Robot?
Commensurate among German, Cultural Anthropology, History, Engineering and Poetry are: vegetable congee, three-fresh congee, wide noodles with beef, fried rice mixed with fried bean curd, seafood with rice steam-cooked in bamboo case, plus rice ice cream embedded with cherry.
How do you teach an undergraduate class?
How do you convince them the truth is always otherwise?
How do you erase the false beliefs and consciousness?
It's still so hard to leave the school, after 9 years.
Cambridge is always Cambridge, on the phone or in the video, in English or in foreign languages
Institutions are built to resist changes.
No demands is also a set of initial conditions.
Looks like everyone is rushing back to school again.
Due to the budget crisis, History of Consciousness is not accepting applications or admitting students for the 2010-11 academic year.
This morning I walked into the knee-high snow with unprecedented joy.
Ludi just emailed me, "I am so glad there's No school!"
Imagine the next storm.
Imagine moments when the whole society freezes, like long takes of static shot.
Is the false dawn of fusion believable?
I have decided to grow my hair again to get rid of the old cap.
18 inches of snowfall.
All poetry readings are cancelled.

Thirty-two-year-old three-time world champion was revived in Qatar

2010-02-21T09:56:00.017-05:00

(ITTF, Photo by Adel Hakouz)

(Xinhua, Photos by Chen Shaojing)

With his signature devastating forehand loop and much-improved and solid backhand, Wang Liqin dominated the ten years younger rising star Zhang Jike in the men's singles final and re-asserted his position in the national team and his strong candidacy for 2012 Olympic. Before that, he had slaughtered the current world No.1 Ma Long whom he has been losing to again and again in recent years. This is a milestone performance for Wang after nearly three years' dry spell. His hard-training and perseverance finally paid off. I wonder who can beat him now.

I have to congratulate Zhang Jike. Being in his first protour final and obviously intimidated by the superb "Hurricane King", he showed extreme technical talent and class on his way to the final. With continual improvement on his forehand loop, mental strength and resilience, and strategies, he will definitely get his first Singles' title in other protour events this year, maybe in Kuwait next week.

Center of Milky Way: Spitzer + Chandra + Hubble

2009-12-30T11:24:00.004-05:00

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/D.Wang et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSC/S.Stolovy

near-infrared data from the reinvigorated Hubble (yellow) with infrared signals from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red) and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue and violet)

Nature Vol 462, 24/31 December 2009

The future of table tennis

2009-12-16T18:49:00.008-05:00

(Gu Yuting)

(Wu Yang)
(Photos by Rémy Gros)

As I watched the ITTF live stream of semis and finals of individual events at the 2009 World Junior Table Tennis Championships, Cartagena de Indias, COL throughout the day, I was quite impressed by the levels of play. The most exciting new player is the 14-year-old Gu Yuting from China, the winner of mixed doubles, girls' doubles, and the runner-up of girls' singles. It's hard to believe the davastating power of her forehand loop, even against the Great Wall of the world's top female defender, the 17-year-old Wu Yang of China, who defeat Gu in the final of girls' singles. With more international competition experience, improvement of backhand loop for Gu and forehand attack for Wu, I will not be surprised to see the two ladies in 2016 (if not 2012!) Olympics.

"Open University" in Wheeler Hall

2009-12-10T00:22:00.003-05:00

One possible class: Poetry and Poetics in Crisis

Wheeler Hall protest at UC Berkeley

2009-11-21T15:52:00.005-05:00

According to the statement by Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau, "our students are justifiably angry over the fee increases and reductions in staff necessitated by the egregious disinvestment by Sacramento in the University of California. They are not alone in this."

I've been to Wheeler Hall on numerous occasions to attend poetry colloqia and readings in 2003-2004 during my short return to the Bay area and I really enjoyed the time there. How can poetry say something meaningful at a time of crisis?

Zhang Jike led the young Chinese team to victory over Japan at the Asian Championships

2009-11-19T19:17:00.015-05:00

(from ITTF)

With his two victories including the decisive fifth match victory again, Zhang Jike is the soul of the new generation of Chinese players. Though I have to applaud the young and dynamic and talented Japanese team, which matched the Chinese almost evenly. I think the most exciting worldclass competition in the next few years will be between China and Japan.

Remember Qian Xuesen

2009-11-01T06:29:00.008-05:00

(December 11, 1911 – October 31, 2009)

Jiaotong University (1934)
Caltech (1939)
First director of JPL (1949)
Founder of China's rocket program.

My conversation with Kate Schapira

2009-10-29T17:00:00.005-04:00

I had very stimulating and productive email exchanges with the wonderful poet Kate Schapira between Nov. 2008 and Jan. 2009, and it just came out in Mantis #8 (from Stanford University), which I just received this afternoon, while strugglling for the final touch of a new piece. Thank you, Kate.

Zhang Jike's first World Team Cup title in Linz

2009-10-27T00:08:00.007-04:00

Photo By: Georg Diener

With superb attacking and control and confidence he methodically destroyed Oh Sang Eun in three straight games to set the tone for China's three straight match victory over Korea last Sunday. This will be the starting point for many more titles to come. I root for him in 2012.

"Class of 1978" in Flushing

2009-10-26T12:02:00.007-04:00

It's sunny again yesterday and I walked to Flushing Town Hall on Northern Boulevard for the first time to hear Ensemble ACJW performing works by the composers from the Class of 1978, the first class of composers in China's music conservatories after the Cultural Revolution. I had encountered their lives and stories in Liu Sola's novella "You Have No Choice" and been quite shaken and delighted while I was still in Xi'an, and I have read and/or heard more about them and some of their works sporadically in the past few years, but this was the first time I met the constellation of works in a live performance. The performed works included

CHEN QIGANG: Instants d'un Opéra de Pékin for Solo Piano (2000)
CHEN YI: Qi for Flute, Cello, Percussion, and Piano (1996-97)
BRIGHT SHENG: String Quartet No. 3 (1993)
GUO WENJING: Parade for Six Peking Opera Gongs, Op. 40 (2003)
ZHOU LONG: Taigu Rhyme for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Percussion (2003)

The extraordinary inventiveness and energy exhibited in the works were quite refreshing. I was particularly fascinated by Zhou Long and Chen Yi's pieces. I wonder how differently the composers think and compose now and tomorrow from when they were in the conservatories in China or US or Europe or six or ten years ago.

Zhang Jike won the decisive match (vs. Ma Lin) in the team final in the 11th Chinese National Games

2009-09-29T19:34:00.011-04:00

Most impressive display of the devastating backhand banana loop in returning services from the forehand side! This has to be his most important win so far. I wish him more successes in the Men's Singles event.

Walkout at UC Berkeley

2009-09-25T09:43:00.004-04:00

What is to be done to truly effect positive social change?

Today 33 years ago

2009-09-09T22:47:00.013-04:00

I was 11 and into my second semester in high school. The "Criticize Deng and Counterattack the Right-Deviationst Reversal-of-Verdicts Trend” campaign was running into high gear. We were put on constant alert for possible afterquakes following the devastating earthquake in Tangshan. In the afternoon I heard the news either from the radio broadcast or other classmates. I tried very hard but tears just couldn't fall. On my way from classroom back to home, I saw the young soldiers who belonged to an artillery unit stationed in the school playground to help produce artificial rainfall in the area plagued by draught. I saw them wailing seated on the ground in a perfect circle. I had longed to be a soldier since my first memory. But I didn't. I didn't cry. For a moment I had infinite doubt about my true feeling towards the great Chairman. I recalled his frail frame and shaky gestures greeting foreign visitors in the newsreel I saw the day before. I actually had a vague feeling of the inevitable right there in the movie theater.

The first English sentence we leared in high school is "Long Live Chairman Mao." And the first song we learned to sing in English is "I Love Peking's Tiananmen."

The poem I liked most in high school is his "Shangsha."

长沙

独立寒秋，
湘江北去，
橘子洲头。
看万山红遍，
层林尽染；
漫江碧透，
百舸争流。
鹰击长空，
鱼翔浅底，
万类霜天竞自由。
怅寥廓，
问苍茫大地，
谁主沉浮。

携来百侣曾游，
忆往昔峥嵘岁月稠。
恰同学少年，
风华正茂；
书生意气，
挥斥方遒。
指点江山，
激扬文字，
粪土当年万户侯。
曾记否，
到中流击水，
浪遏飞舟。

CHANGSHA

Mao Zedong

(1925)

Alone I stand in the autumn cold
On the tip of Orange Island,
The Xiang River flowing north.
I see ten thousand hills crimsoned,
And the woods in deep-dye;
The mighty stream, saturated with bluish green,
A hundred barges racing by.
Eagles cleave the air high up,
Fish glide in the shallow bottom;
Under the frosty sky all creatures are fighting for freedom.
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, who decides the destiny
Of this boundless land?

Once I was here with a hundred companions,
Vivid yet thick those rugged times.
Young we were, schoolmates,
At life's full bloom;
Filled with students' enthusiasm,
Boldly we cast all restraints aside.
Pointing to the land,
Setting the people afire with our words,
We counted the marquises in those years no more than muck.
Remember still
How, venturing midstream, we struck the waters
And waves stayed the speeding boats?

(my translation compiled and edited from various sources)

His words will stay...

6/9: Belladonna's last elder event of the season

2009-06-16T09:57:00.007-04:00

This is the first time I heard readings from the three poets Jane Sprague, Diane Ward, and Tina Darragh, all from outside NYC. The three made the most intimate group among the elder series events of the season I have been to, their being on the stage together throughout the reading, sharing frankly and passionately about their poetic inspirations and lives, with energy from Los Angeles and Maryland. What struk me is their explicit concerns about WAR: growing up in Viet Nam War, which I can remotely relate to; sites of the war against the native American Indians, which I will be very interested in visiting someday; World War 2, which I learned exclusively from films and books, most recently the Chinese expeditionary army's debacle, sacrifice and heroism in the Burma Campaign against Japanese invasion; and spitting on the veterans, which I heard for the first time. What was missing is the Korea War in-between. While I certainly share their sentiments and frustrations, I feel we need to move beyond the purely phenomenological level, to probe the root causes of Wars. A strong point was made against Silliman's Philly talk (?) and blog, the context of which is unclear to me, about monopoly of cultural space. I think it's a very interesting issue. But I am not so sure about the fixedness and finiteness of the cultural space as claimed by the poets. After all, the universe is expanding, and the expansion is accelerating! One thing I liked to see but didn't is intense arguments between contesting positions and propositions among the three. Open debates on poetics appeal to me enormously. The dangers of being deeply entrenched and institutionalized in NYC poetry scene are ...

T

2009-06-04T14:40:00.003-04:00

10100
3+17
13+7
T
XX
Egypt
Calcium

Wang Liqing's new life

2009-05-17T17:29:00.012-04:00

After watching some of the videos of matches at the 50th World Table Tennis Championship held in Yokohama, Japan from April 28 to May 5, 2009, I was quite impressed by Wang Liqing's performance. Though he lost to Wang Hao in the final and failed to capture Men's Single's title for the third consecutive time, he played his best matches in two years, and I am sure he will maintain this form and reach to another new level in the years to come.

Spandrel and class struggle

2009-04-23T11:48:00.001-04:00

On the Edge: New Independent Cinema from China

2009-04-23T11:19:00.009-04:00

ON THE EDGE
New Independent Cinema from China (In Search of Reality II)
Co-sponsors: Weatherhead East Asian Institute,
CU Arts Initiative, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures,
School of the Arts Film Division, and The Center for Korean Research

April 24 - 26, 2009

All screenings to be held at Film Society of Lincoln Center

Independent feature films in contemporary China have entered a new phase. Diverging from the beaten path of the Fifth and Sixth Generation, a new group of filmmakers emerges to articulate more daring, experimental, and politically challenging voices vis-à-vis the country's drastic social and economic transformation. While neorealist style continues to triumph, we see in quiet development a steady undercurrent heralding distinct film languages and film styles. In the films we showcase in this series, ripples of surreal seep through the real; an absurd theatricality traverses a minimal and austere realism; and the corporeal camera stages the cruelty and ethical dilemma of visual witnessing. The filmmakers' unrelenting commitment to reality is also increasingly complicated by aesthetic and technological innovations, particularly the digital media.

This event brings together seven of the most recent films from five award-winning directors, whose works persistently challenge our perceptions of China. There will be five Q&A sessions with select filmmakers, along with a panel discussion to be held on Columbia University's campus to further the conversation.

FRIDAY, APRIL 24

6:45 PM
Chongqing (重庆 / 중경) - dir. Zhang Lü
95 minutes, 2008

Director Zhang Lü originally intended for Iri and Chongqing to be a single feature, but found that the footage he shot in Chongqing, China was enough for a film of its own. The story provides a dark portrait of contemporary China, through the tale of a Chinese language teacher who becomes sexually involved with a policeman while living with her restless and unemployed father. The film's eponymous setting is China's most populated urban conglomerate, home to 40 million people. In the crowded and busy streets of industrial city Chongqing, the story depicts marginalized populations who have no hope or future. Images of shock, black humor, stark sexuality, and poetic contemplation make this film a memorable experience.

9:00 PM
The Other Half (另一半 Ling yiban) - dir. Ying Liang
111 minutes, 2007

Xiaofen lives in one of southwestern China's rapidly growing cities, but her work interviewing clients and documenting cases for a law firm is merely routine. When not at work, she must deal with her down-and-out boyfriend, an on-the-lam drunk and gambler. Life is also hard for her girlfriends and her mother, and Xiaofen is increasingly distressed by what she witnesses around her. In his second feature film, Ying (Taking Father Home, 2005) playfully pits youth culture against tradition as he interrelates one woman's reality with the changing economic and social structures of contemporary China.

SATURDAY, APRIL 25

1:30 PM
Er Dong (二冬) - dir. Yang Jin
150 minutes, 2008

In this sober story about a teacher in a poor district of China, Yang's commitment to those who seem have missed out on economic progress is clearly visible. His second feature, named after the protagonist Er Dong ("winter child"), is a documentary-style portrayal spanning several years in the life of a simple country boy looking for his roots. Er Dong lives alone with his mother in a small village. Frustrated with his misbehavior, his mother takes him to a Christian school with the hopes that he will find God as well as a new direction in life. Ultimately, Er Dong is a meditation on life uncertainties in contemporary China.

4:30 PM
Ma Wujia (马乌甲) - dir. Zhao Ye
95 minutes, 2007

Director Zhao makes use of grim realism to reveal the dark side of human relations in Ma Wujia. Ah Jia is a youth who loves his family to a point of desperation. He lives with his ailing mother and younger brother Wu Ding in a small town in Guangxi, and couldn't do more for the brother, who has a kidney disease. Caught between interpersonal struggles and growing pains, he begins to rebel with growing discontent. Persuasively acted by the non-professional cast and expansively photographed in widescreen, Zhao, a former animator, makes his feature film debut with this engrossing and morally challenging experience. Set in the unique landscape of southern China, the beautifully shot scenery of small town serenity provides a sharp contrast to the human drama that unfolds with a shocking ending.

6:45 PM
Little Moth (血蝉 Xue chan) - dir. Peng Tao
99 minutes, 2007

Peng Tao's eloquent film simply and powerfully "melds the anger and storytelling scope of Dickens, the documentary-influenced immediacy and sensitive gaze of the Dardenne brothers, and the best tendencies of recent Chinese cinema" (Variety). An impoverished country couple, whose motivations are more mercenary than merciful, "adopt" a young girl (the Little Moth of the title) who suffers from a crippling blood disease, to work with them as a begging companion. Falling victim themselves to local extortionists they move into the territory of the dubious Mr. Wang, whose one-armed boy seems to have been acquired for similar purpose. The imploding story of the poor exploiting the destitute takes an unexpected turn when the children befriend each other. The performances of the non-professional cast are as devastating as they are mesmerizing.

SUNDAY, APRIL 26

2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Panel Discussion
Dodge Hall 511, Columbia University. Click here for directions.

Moderated by Professor Weihong Bao. Panelists include:
Lydia Liu - Wu Tsun Tam Professor in the Humanities (Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures)
Richard Peña - Professor (Film Division, School of the Arts)
Zhang Zhen - Associate Professor (Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU)

6:20 PM
Good Cats (好猫 Hao mao) - dir. Ying Liang
103 minutes, 2008

The name of the film is taken from reformist politician Deng Xiaoping's principle that it doesn't matter if a cat is black or white - as long as it catches mice, it's a good cat. The ends justifying the means mentality paints a picture of modern day China tainted by a money-hungry rat race. Good Cats follows the life of its irresponsible protagonist, a chauffeur for the head of a real estate agency, while showcasing the changes that rapid urbanization has brought to Sichuan. In the director's vision, human existence is dominated by impalpable paradoxes, and day-to-day life is permeated with surreal events playing out on the borders between reality, absurdity and hallucination.

8:45 PM
Iri (裡里 / 이리) - dir. Zhang Lü
108 minutes, 2008

A companion feature to Zhang's Chongqing. The Chinese-Korean director Zhang's first film in South Korea is set in the industrial city of Iksan, known as Iri before a devastating 1977 train station explosion. Iksan's citizens still struggle to cope with the aftermath of trauma while attending to the social implications of the country's stunning economic growth. Born shortly after the disaster thirty years ago, Jin-seo (Yoon Jin-seo) has the mental capabilities of a child. She lives with her cabbie brother Tae-woong (Eum Tae-woong) atop a Chinese language school and works as a cleaner in a retirement home. Easy prey for men, Jin-seo - presumably a metaphor for South Korea - is less bothered by the coercion than her brother is; he ultimately gets pushed to the limits of endurance.

DIRECTOR BIOS

PENG TAO (彭韬) was born in Beijing in 1974. He received his bachelor's degree from the Art Department of Beijing Film Academy in 2004.

He received the Outstanding Short Film Award at the Beijing Student Film Festival in winter 2002; his short film Story was shown at the 14th Festival Internacional De Arte Eletronica. His graduate project, a 35mm short film called Goodbye Childhood, won first prize at the 1st JINZI Awards established by Art Department of Beijing Film Academy, and it was screened at the Yokohama International Film Festival in 2004.

He wrote and directed his first feature Little Moth (Xue Chan), completed in March 2007. This film was screened as part of the "Here and Elsewhere" program of the 60th Locarno International Film Festival in August 2007 and won the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) Award, the Golden Award in International Competition for digital feature films at the 31st Cairo International Film Festival, the Norwegian Peace Film Award at the Tromso Film Festival, and the Silver Digital Award in the Asian digital competition at the 32nd Hong Kong International Film Festival. Peng was also nominated for achievement in directing at the 2007 Asia Pacific Screen Awards and Best Screenplay at the 2008 Asian Film Awards. Little Moth has been screened at over forty international film festivals and received thirteen awards.

In March 2008, he finished a short film Wait (produced by Jia Zhangke) as part of a longer collaborative feature with four other young directors. His second feature Floating In Memory (2009), developed with the assistance of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program and produced with support from the Hubert Bals Fund, was screened in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition at the 2009 International Film Festival Rotterdam.

YANG JIN (杨瑾) was born in 1982 in Shanxi. In 2000, he enrolled in the Shanxi Film School's photography program. In 2003, he enrolled in the College of Art And Communication at Beijing Normal University, where he majored in directing. He made a few of documentaries and some short feature films during his time there. Yang's first film The Black and White Milk Cow (2004) won the Ecumenical Jury Award and FICC Jury/Don Quijote Prize of the International Federation of Film Societies at the 19th Fribourg International Film Festival. He became a member of the Network for The Promotion Of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) at the 7th Osian's-Cinefan Festival.

YING LIANG (应亮) was born in 1977 in Shanghai. He received degrees in directing from the Chongqing Film Academy and Beijing Normal University. His short film The Missing House (2003) won the Best Script Award at the Beijing Student Film Festival and the Critics Award at the Hong Kong Independent Short Film Festival. After the success of his short films, he directed his first feature Taking Father Home (2005), which won awards at Tokyo Filmex, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the Singapore International Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Taking Father Home was also an Official Selection at over thirty international film festivals including the Tiger Awards Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Vancouver International Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, and Fribourg International Film Festival, among others.

In 2006, Ying completed The Other Half with support from the International Film Festival Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund (HBF). The film won awards at Tokyo Filmex, the Singapore International Film Festival, Jeonju International Film Festival, and Jogja NETPAC Asian Film Festival. It was screened at New York's Museum of Modern Art as the opening film of the ContemporAsian showcase. The Other Half has also been selected for more than thirty international film festivals including New Directors/New Films at MoMA, Rotterdam, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival. Ying's new feature Good Cats received the FIPRESCI Prize at the Brisbane International Film Festival. Ying is currently working on a new feature film entitled Salty Memories.

ZHANG LÜ (张律 / 장률) was born in 1962 in Jilin province. He graduated from Yanbian University and was a professor of Chinese literature as well as a novelist. He currently resides in Beijing. His 2006 film Desert Dream was invited to compete at the Berlin International Film Festival, as well as the Hong Kong Film Festival, the Paris Cinema International Film Festival, and the Pusan International Film Festival. Zhang's 2005 feature Grain in Ear was selected for International Critics' Week in Cannes where it received an award from the French Association for Distribution of Independent Cinema (ACID), and was also honored at the Pesaro Film Festival, the Vesoul International Film Festival, and the Cinema Novo Film Festival (Karibu Award) with much praise.

ZHAO YE (赵晔), born in 1979 in Beijing, is a graduate of Beijing Film Academy. He directed his first film Ma Wujia in 2007, winning the Grand Prize at the China Independent Film Festival. This film was also an Official Selection for international film festivals in Hong Kong, Vancouver, Tokyo, Osaka, London, Seoul, Portugal, Vienna, and Montreal.

PANELIST & ORGANIZER BIOS

WEIHONG BAO, assistant professor of Chinese film and media culture, received her Ph.D from the University of Chicago (2006). Trained in both film studies and East Asian literature and culture, she focuses on early Chinese cinema, with broad interests in Chinese cinema, drama, and visual culture from late Qing to the contemporary period as well as international silent cinema, film theory, and film history. Her book manuscript deals with questions of spectatorship and aesthetic affect across Shanghai (1896-1937) and Chongqing (1938-1945) cinema and their impact on New China cinema. Her research and teaching interests center on film and intermedial aesthetics, spectatorship and the history of perception, visual and acoustic modernity, and genre connections across modern Chinese literature, drama, and cinema. Her recent publications include "In Search of a Cinematic Esperanto" (forthcoming in Journal of Chinese Cinemas); "Biomechanics of Love: Reinventing the Avant-Garde in Tsai Ming-liang's Wayward 'Pornographic Musical,'" Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 1:2 (2007); "From Pearl White to White Rose Woo, Tracing the Vernacular Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927-1931," Camera Obscura 60 (2005); and "A Panoramic Worldview: Probing the Visuality of Dianshizhai huabao," Journal of Modern Chinese Literature 32 (March 2005).

LYDIA H. LIU is W. T. Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. She teaches in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Her work has focused on translation theory, the movement of words, images, and artifacts across cultures, and the evolution of writing, textuality, and technology. Her current research is on writing and digital media. Professor Liu has published numerous books and articles in English and Chinese, including Translingual Practice (1995), The Clash of Empires (2004), and an edited volume called Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations (1999).

GREGORY MOSHER served as Director of Lincoln Center Theatre (1985-91) and Artistic Director of the Goodman Theatre (1977-84) before coming to Columbia in 2004, and was a producer and director on Broadway, the West End, and in film and television. Many of his nearly 200 stage productions were premieres of work by emerging and established writers, among them Samuel Beckett, Leonard Bernstein, Spalding Gray, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, Richard Nelson, Wole Soyinka, Julie Taymor and Tennessee Williams. He is the director of the films The Prime Gig (Ed Harris, Vince Vaughn), A Life in the Theatre (Jack Lemmon, Matthew Broderick), and produced the film of American Buffalo (Dustin Hoffman). He has received every major American theatre award, including two Tony's for his work on Broadway.

RICHARD PEÑA has been the Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival since 1988. At the Film Society, Richard Peña has organized retrospectives of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Aldrich, Gabriel Figueroa, Kira Muratova, Youssef Chahine, Yasujiro Ozu, Kim Ki-young and Amitabh Bachchan, as well as major film series devoted to African, Chinese, Cuban, Polish, Hungarian, Arab, Korean, Soviet and Argentine cinema. Since 1996, he has organized together with Unifrance Film the annual "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Today" program. He is Professor of Film at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema, and since 2006 has been a Visiting Professor in Spanish at Princeton University. He is also currently the co-host of Channel 13's weekly Reel 13.

ZHANG ZHEN, Associate Professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, is author of An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896-1937 (University of Chicago Press, 2005), which received "honorable mention for the first book" by the Modern Languages Association. She is also editor of The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the 21st Century (Duke University Press, 2007). Professor Zhang has published articles and chapters in Public Culture, Asian Cinema, Postscript, Camera Obscura, Parachute, Art China, and numerous magazines, anthologies, readers, and exhibition catalogues in a number of languages, as well as liner notes on Anna May Wong for Milestone's 2005 DVD of Piccadilly (1937). Her creative work includes a poetry collection, Mengzhong Louge (Dream Loft), in women poets' series (Chunfeng Arts Publishing House, China, 1998), and numerous poems and essays in journals and anthologies in several languages.

Awards and fellowships: Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities (1998-1999); Society of Cinema Studies Dissertation Award (2000); Faculty Fellowship, the Project on Cities and Urban Knowledges at the International Center for Advanced Studies (NYU, 2000-01); J. P. Getty Fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities (2001-2002); National Endowments for the Humanities Summer Stipend (2006).

SERIES COORDINATOR
MIKE FU is an MA student in Chinese Literature & Cinema at Columbia University.

Human/Nature Reading at Berkeley on April 11

2009-04-19T13:26:00.004-04:00

The reading was held in the old BAM/PFA theater, where I watched at least four films every week in the academic year 1994-95, and returned regularly though less frequently thereafter. The images and sounds confined and resonated in that room are among my best Berkeley experiences. I arrived around 2:30m and was led to the exhibition hall by Sherry Goodman, where I saw maps of Yunnan on the wall and videos showing local lives by Marcos Ramírez ERRE . While I've never been to Yunnan, I learned something about it from a classmate while in college in Xi'an and I saw Xishuangbanna in the beautiful 1985 film Sacrifice of Youth. Robert Hass introduced every poet before she/he read. I enjoyed Robert Hass's elabration of "treeing" and recounting of his recent visit to the demilitary zone between North Korea and South Korea and possible ecological consequences of a war there, and found him quite engaging. Juliana Spahr generously contributed an essay and a creation story. It's great to hear Truong Tran read in Vietnamese. In addition to my own work, I read a passage from Arkadii Dragomenshchenko's Chinese Sun, not just because of the title words Chinese or Sun, the fates of which have been haunting my memory and imagination in the past few years. It turned out both Robert Hass and Paul Hoover like Dragomoshchenko's work. I also met Nathan Brown again and two UC Davis graduate student. It's such a gratification and motivation to write that younger people are really reading your work. But I was most pleased to reunite with my old table tennis teacher and friend Shonie Aki again after 10 years. It seemed a real break to get out of the hole in NYC.

I wish I could split myself into two

2009-04-09T10:18:00.005-04:00

I saw it in the almost empty theater at Anthology Film Archive two years ago and was shocked by the hard reality and deeply moved at the same time. It was a wake-up call to my immaterial dreaming and helped to refocus my diverging thinking. Suddenly China was so close and workers were alive and film making was relevant. Though I'd never been to or seen Shenyang in a film. I have been looking forward to seeing it again ever since. Yes, it's a shame I have to miss it this Saturday.

TIE XI QU: WEST OF THE TRACKS (dir. Wang Bing, 2003, 556 min.)

WHEN: Saturday 11 April 2009, 10.45am-9.30pm
WHERE: Cinema Studies Screening Room 648, Tisch 721 Broadway

The last 30 years have not borne witness, as Francis Fukuyama predicted it would, to the end of history, but rather to its beginning. What has been unfolding in China has been a breathtakingly accelerated version of the Industrial Revolution, a violent and violating shift from state socialism to an embrace of free-market economics whose social and human impact is still far from being understood.

On a par, in its ambition, achievement and importance, with 'Shoah', 'The Battle of Chile' and 'Hour of the Furnaces', TIE XI QU: WEST OF THE TRACKS(2003) represents the boldest and most fearless attempt to document and narrate these upheavals. Nine hours in length, it is a quite extraordinary masterpiece, at once an unfathomably revealing x-ray of modernity and a map of China's future whose stunning, prophetic force takes it into science fiction territory.

Filmed between 1999 and 2001, it chronicles the slow death of the once thriving Tie Xi industrial district in the country's northeast, and the resulting transformations on the lives and souls of its workers. Writer Luc Sante has described it as presenting audiences "with the panoramic spectacle of progress collapsing". For the New York Times it is a "profoundly empathetic and humanist work bearing witness to a vanished way of life and the real cost of progress". Variety asked: "Is there a more sublime debut in recent history?"

Director Wang Bing (b.1967) is widely acknowledged to be one of the one of the foremost film makers in contemporary cinema. He creates towering, epic works - about migration, memory, deindustrialization - whose scope,intensity and affective power defy belief. No one with even the slightest interest in labor, globalization, the aesthetics of ruins, popular historiography, modern China - or the outer-limits possibilities of cinema itself - can afford to miss this film.

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Organised by the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture with the generous support of the Department of Cinema Studies.

I will be a Bay area poet for one day

2009-04-07T10:34:00.004-04:00

Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet

Poetry Reading: Poetry and the Planet

April 11, 2009; 3:00 p.m.

Museum Theater

Can conservation inspire poetry? Can poetry inspire conservation? Seven Bay Area poets whose work provocatively intersects with environmental issues will read from their own writing and that of other poets. Participating are Camille Dungy, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Paul Hoover, Juliana Spahr, Truong Tran, and Shanxing Wang.

Robert Hass, UC Berkeley professor of English, will introduce and frame the program as well as taking part in the reading. During his two terms as U.S. poet laureate, Hass became a spokesperson for literacy, poetry, and ecological awareness; at Berkeley, he regularly teaches a course in environmental studies.

Presented with support from the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley.

Two readings

2009-03-06T21:14:00.005-05:00

This week I went to two poetry readings, one being Belladonna (www.BelladonnaSeries.org) at Dixon Place on Tuesday, the other "Poets Out Loud" at Fordham University on Wednsday. It's great to encounter Etel Adnan's work (read by Stacy Szymaszek)for the first time and I wonder why I enjoyed more poetry with an accent. It's also a great pleasure to hear Hejinian's wonderful "Six Positions of the Sun," and the multivocal/viewpoint observations/reflections of Jennifer Scappettone's "Exit 43" on the natural/social landscapes. It's a great Belladonna idea for the younger poet to introduce the elder. And it should be even greater to structure an in-depth dialogue into the program. The questions is: how can poetry resist the state of affairs most effectively at both individual and collective levels? At Fordam, I heard Amy Catanzano reading from her new collection Multiversal, and I was quite impressed and inspired by her ambitious poetic venture into the scientific terrain. Michael Palmer's new work seems to have lost forever its momentum from the trilogy of the 1980s. I have a conjecture: for most poets, the poetic power peaks at about age 20(in terms of writing poetry).

I love Guy Debord and the big snow

2009-03-02T12:20:00.014-05:00

After toiling everyday in the Ping Pong Club last month, I had my first weekend free. And what a treat to see all his films at Lincoln Center yesterday afternoon and evening while the biggest snow of the year was gatrhering its momentum outside! That youthfulness, passion, energy, determination, and incisiveness. The world, including poetry, must be changed. But in what way? How?

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
1978, Runtime: 100

Hurlements en faveur de Sade
1952; 75m
screening with
On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time / Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps
1959; 18m
also screening with
Critique de la séparation
1961; 19m

The Society of the Spectacle / La société du spectacle, 1973; 80m
screening with
Réfutation de tous les jugements, tant élogieux qu’hostiles, qui ont été jusqu’ici portés sur le film ‘La société du spectacle’
1975; 22m

Nationwide French strike

2009-01-29T15:28:00.003-05:00

What is to be done?

I will participate in two events next week

2009-01-22T18:32:00.004-05:00

1. Triptych Reading

Monday January 26, 7 pm
11th Street Bar, 510 East 11th Street, between Avenues A&B

Charles Bernstein
Shanxing Wang
Christopher Stackhouse

http://www.triptychreading.com

2. UNTITLED NEW YORK: SPECULATIONS ON THE EXPANDED FIELD OF WRITING

Saturday, January 31st, 2009. Panels: 1:30pm & Readings 8:30 pm
At CABINET, 300 Nevins St, Brooklyn, NY 11217

“Untitled New York ” is a day-long conversation about writing which in some manner exceeds the printed page. Organized by Matias Viegener and Christine Wertheim, it assembles a notable group of experimental writers to discuss the currently expanded and still-expanding field of writing that challenges assumptions about the nature of writing and the potentials of text. While we are familiar with visual artworks constituted as a set of instructions, secrets written by visitors in a book, or one artist erasing of another artist's work, what would be their equivalents in the literary world?

“Untitled” is a common title of contemporary art works and also refers to the incipient moment of a new text or idea; it was chosen to convey a sense of openness and process. A variety of writers and artists will discuss the use of language and words and/or their object status, the book and the letter, the question of the "emptiness" vs. the fullness of language as a poetic medium, the pictorial versus the narrative, the incorporation of extra-linguistic symbols and signs (maps, diagrams, formulas, etc.), the question of conceptual writing, and words off the page – performed, sited, projected, incanted, or invoked.

Among the participants is Kenny Goldsmith, an “uncreative” writer who labels himself the “most boring writer in the world” and writes books that include everything he said for a week (Soliloquy, 2001), every move his body made during a thirteen-hour period (Fidget, 1999), and a year of transcribed weather reports (The Weather, 2005). Working through an interpolation of the English tongue, Christine Wertheim (author of +|'me'S-pace, 2007) deploys a litteral poetics, in which words are not taken as arbitrary signs the writer may use as s/he sees fit, but as compounds with substance and structures and, literally, meanings of their own. The broken narrative of participant Shanxing Wang’s Mad Science in Imperial City escapes and invades the political turbulence of Tiananmen through math, mechanics, music, film, and by dreams to create “a work of art-in-language” (Lyn Hejinian).

The event will begin with two panels. “Appropriation and Citation” will look at the many practices of appropriation so popular in the literary world in the last several years, asking questions about whose work and what material gets appropriated, cited or resurrected, who owns texts, and if there is a difference between appropriation and citation. The participants include Vanessa Place, Steven McCaffrey, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Julie Patton.

“Litterality,” examines how writers use what we normally consider non-linguistic elements, such as symbols, diagrams, maps, or scores placed in the context of writing. We will also look at invented writing systems, and what it might mean to think about the book as an object rather than as a collection of words or sentences. Its participants include Christine Wertheim, Latasha Diggs, and Shanxing Wang.

In the evening, beginning at 8:30 there will be a reading of the participants’ own work. “Untitled New York” is a reprise of “Untitled: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing,” held in October 2008 at REDCAT in Los Angeles, organized by Matias Viegener and Christine Wertheim of the Writing Program at CalArts, and funded by The Annenberg Foundation.

Rediscovering China's Cultural Revolution

2008-12-12T11:18:00.004-05:00

REDISCOVERING CHINA'S
CULTURAL REVOLUTION:Art and Politics, Lived Experience, Legacies of Liberation
A Weekend Symposium at Revolution Books and New York University
December 12-14, 2008

SPONSORED BY:
Revolution Books,
Set the Record Straight Project,*
and Institute for Public Knowledge-New York University

FEW EVENTS IN MODERN HISTORY have been as distorted and demonized as China's Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Yet few events are more deserving of rediscovery.

This unique symposium, REDISCOVERING CHINA'S CULTURAL REVOLUTION, offers an opportunity to rediscover--or discover for the first time--what this "revolution within a revolution" in socialist China was really all about.

There are people who participated in the Cultural Revolution who offer a vivid and exciting counter-narrative. There are youth who went to the countryside to work and learn from the peasants, artists who set out to create revolutionary art, women who struggled against feudal tradition--who look back at this period as some of the best years of their lives. Here is a chance to hear these stories which bring to life important truths about the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

There is work being done in academia uncovering important chapters in the Cultural Revolution that have either been ignored or discounted: its immense international impact and influence; contributions in the arts, sciences and education during the Cultural Revolution; and theoretical questions of economics, philosophy and politics that remain relevant. Here is a chance to hear from people with different perspectives and experiences who are doing work around these questions.

The weekend includes a Friday night book release event; two major panels on Saturday; a symposium-guided tour of the exhibition of artwork from the Cultural Revolution at the Asia Society on Sunday morning; and an afternoon cultural program with a theatrical reading, film clips, and discussion.

* A program of International Humanities Center, a nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code

(photo from Red Detachment of Women)
SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE
__________

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12

Revolution Books, 146 W. 26th St., near 7th Avenue
7:00pm: Book Release event for Dongping Han: The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village. Mr. Han will discuss what it was like growing up in a small village in China during the Cultural Revolution. Co-sponsored by Monthly Review Press and Revolution Books.

________

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13

Panel Discussions
New York University, Silver Center, Room 703, 100 Washington Square East
12 noon: "Art and Politics During the Cultural Revolution" with Lincoln Cushing, Bai Di, Aly Rose, Li Onesto
3:00 pm: "The International Impact and Historical Significance of the Cultural Revolution" with Dongping Han, Raymond Lotta, Andrew Ross, Guobin Yang

________

SUNDAY DECEMBER 14

11:00 am: Asia Society Museum, 725 Park Avenue at 70th Street
Symposium-Guided tour of "Art and China's Revolution" exhibition.

3:00 pm: Revolution Books, 146 W. 26th St., near 7th Avenue

The Culture of the Cultural Revolution: Theatrical reading from a Chinese revolutionary work, film clip from Red Detachment of Women, discussion.

Donations appreciated.

For more information and reservations:
212-691-3345, revbooksnyc@yahoo.com
www.revolutionbooknyc.org

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS

Lincoln Cushing-- Historian and archivist of social and political graphics, co-author Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. (participating by video)

Bai Di-- Director of Chinese and Asian Studies, Drew University; co-editor of Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up During the Mao Era.

Dongping Han-- Professor of History, Warren Wilson College; author of The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village; farmer and manager of a collective village factory during the Cultural Revolution.

Raymond Lotta-- Set the Record Straight Project; Maoist political economist; writer for Revolution newspaper; author of America in Decline; editor Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism.

Li Onesto-- Author of Dispatches from the People's War in Nepal; writer for Revolution newspaper, has written on the Chinese revolution, model operas, and art of the Cultural Revolution.

Aly Rose--Teaches Chinese Contemporary Dance and the Transformative Power of Political Art at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU; lectures and performs at the United Nations, China Institute, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College in New York; choreographed and danced for the Chinese National Song and Dance Operatic Troupe while residing in China for 11 years.

Andrew Ross-- Professor of American Studies, Chair of Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University; author of Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor; articles on China include "Mao Zedong's Impact on Cultural Politics in the West."

Guobin Yang-- Associate Professor in Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College-Columbia University; co-editor of Re-Envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China.

Workers' sit-in in Chicago

2008-12-09T09:29:00.003-05:00

Who is going to bail out the laid-off workers?
Who is going to bail out the broke poets?
Who is going to bail out the bankrupt nation?

Zhang Jike: the new table tennis men's singles national champion of China

2008-11-24T14:22:00.010-05:00

Zhang Jike, 20 years old

Wen Jia: the new table tennis women's singles national champion of China

2008-11-23T14:22:00.008-05:00

Wen Jia, 19 years old

Readings by Susan Howe, etc

2008-11-23T13:28:00.007-05:00

I went to two poetry readings last week. The first one was by Susan Howe at Columbia University hosted by Michael Golston on Thursday evening, the second one by Bernadette Mayer and Kit Robinson in the Segue Series at Bowery Poetry Club on Saturday afternoon. It's my first time to encounter anything from Howe and I found her work and the reading style quite interesting, with great intimacy and vibrancy and seriousness and wit. I shall check out her works. And the crowd of Columbia undergraduate and graduate students are a pleasing group. It's great to mix up with the crowd afterwards at a restraut later on. Thanks to Michael. It's vital that poetry reaches the students in their formative years. But I was disappointed again by Mayer's reading. The memorable words are "global fucking." I wonder how that can resist the global capitalism effectively. I heard her read five years ago and was not impressed at all. I know the large crowd was there for her. And I was promptly reminded by another poet that her earlier work is great. I hope to take a look later. But it will be hard to read the books after the readings...Sometimes I wonder whether there will be a day when I shall stop writing and try something else. I fell in asleep in the first half of Robinson's reading but was awaken by "long live the students!" And the poem he read from a little Berkeley magazine seemed moving quite interestingly. Again it's my first time to encounter this "towering" poet from Berkeley. At the party later at Sean's place, I heard "give me a gun" in conversation between an academic and a poet. It seems to vindicate my view that peace is not needed in art. Truth can only reaveal itself through struggle and battle.

Alain Badiou on Poetry, Philosophy and Politics

2008-11-07T12:59:00.002-05:00

Beyond voting

2008-11-04T11:19:00.003-05:00

Freedom = vote ???

California volleyball team beat Stanford in the farm for the first time in 29 years

2008-10-20T10:40:00.002-04:00

Untitled: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing

2008-10-20T10:12:00.001-04:00

Event Info Host: REDCAT/CalArts
Type: Music/Arts - Listening Party
Network: Global
Time and Place Start Time: Friday, October 24, 2008 at 12:30pm
End Time: Saturday, October 25, 2008 at 10:30pm
Location: REDCAT
Street: 631 W 2nd St
City/Town: Los Angeles, CA
View MapGoogleMapQuestMicrosoftYahoo
Contact Info Phone: 2132372800

Description

The Untitled Conference
Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing

With Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Latasha Diggs, Johanna Drucker, Kenneth Goldsmith, Robert Grenier, Douglas Kearney, Steve McCaffery, Julie Patton, Salvador Plascencia, Jessica Smith, Brian Kim Stefans, Stephanie Taylor, Shanxing Wang, and Heriberto Yepez.

The fifth in an annual series of experimental writing conferences at REDCAT, “Untitled” is a two-day conversation about writing which in some manner exceeds the printed page: word-art onscreen, the book as object, material appropriated from newspapers, hand-drawn texts, or writings on the wall. “Untitled” is a common title of contemporary art works and also refers to the incipient moment of a new text or idea. A variety of writers and artists will discuss the use of language and words and/or their object status, the book and the letter, the question of the "emptiness" vs. the fullness of language as a poetic medium, the pictorial versus the narrative, the incorporation of extra-linguistic symbols and signs (maps, diagrams, formulas, etc.), the question of conceptual writing, and words off the page – performed, sited, projected, incanted, or invoked.

Funded by The Annenberg Foundation
Organized by Matias Viegener and Christine Wertheim.

FRIDAY October 24th

12.30 Opening Addresses

1.00 - 3.00 – Litterality 1.
Writing is not speech, it is letters on a page. What do we make of the inclusion in writing of non-alphabetic signs, symbols, diagrams; writing as map or score; invented writing notations; or the book as object?
Johanna Drucker, Salvador Plascencia, Latasha Diggs, Shanxing Wang

3.30 - 5.00 – The Meaninglessness or -fulness of Language.
As a vehicle, is language empty, saturated with meaning, both, or something else?
Jessica Smith, Bob Grenier, Christine Wertheim

5.00 - 6.00 – Drinks at REDCAT with participants and audience

8.30 - 10.30 – Evening Readings/Performances
Brian Kim Stephans, Julie Patton, Steve McCaffery, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Heriberto Yepez, Vincent Dachy, Christine Wertheim [MC: Matias Viegener]

SATURDAY October 25th
Morning
10.30 - 12.00 – Appropriation and Citation.
Whose work and what material gets appropriated, cited and resurrected? Who owns texts? Is there a difference between appropriation and citation?
Steve McCaffery, Doug Kearney, Kenneth Goldsmith

12.30 - 2.00 – Litterality 2.
Writing is not speech, it is letters on a page. What do we make of the inclusion in writing of non-alphabetic signs, symbols, diagrams; writing as map or score; invented writing
notations; or the book as object?
Brian Kim Stephans, Julie Patton, Vincent Dachy

Afternoon
3.30 - 5.00 – The Concept of Conceptual Writing.
What is the relation between conceptual writing and the trajectory of conceptual art?
Stephanie Taylor, Heriberto Yepez, Young-Hae Chang+Marc Voge

5.00 - 6.00 – Summary Discussion with all panelists

8.30 - 10.30 – Evening Readings/Performances
Latasha Diggs, Bob Grenier, Johanna Drucker, Shanxing Wang, Jessica Smith, Doug Kearney, Stephanie Taylor, Kenneth Goldsmith [MC:Christine Wertheim]

Michelangelo Antonioni's China

2008-10-12T14:03:00.008-04:00

Chung Kuo/Cina (1972)

I watched the 207 min documentary at the packed auditorium at Asia Society yesterday afternoon. The film was presented in three parts, with a brief break after Part 2. I think Part 1 is most interesting, with footage of ordinary people's life in and around Beijing as well as in the village in Lin county, Henan. The school children's extracurricular performances and the commune meeting are fascinating records of life in 1972. Leading a simple life, the people are so pure, calm, friendly and upbeat. It is a dreamland. How far have we advanced from the commune to the current Wall Street meltdown? Part 3 was shot in Shanghai, the most developed city built by western imperialists and capitalists before the revolution, but is not as interesting, maybe Antonioni lost his stamina or interest or was simply lost in the vastness of crowd? But he did show us the birthplace of Chinese communist party, in the heart of the capitalist city.

Guy Debord's last film at NYFF

2008-10-08T10:19:00.007-04:00

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978)

"We can hardly expect revolutionary innovations from those whose profession is to monopolize the stage under the present social conditions. It is obvious that such innovations can come only from people who have received universal hostility and persecution, not from those who receive government funding."

"From the very beginning I have devoted myself to overthrowing this society, and I have acted accordingly. I took this position at a time when almost everybody believed that this despicable society (in its bourgeois or bureaucratic version) had the most promising future."

"But theories are only made to die in the war of time. Like military units, they must be sent into battle at the right moment; and whatever their merits or insufficiencies, they can only be used if they are on hand when they're needed."

"It was in the middle of the century, when I was nineteen, that I began to lead a fully independent life; and immediately found myself at home with the most ill-famed of companions."

"Once again, after all the untimely answers and the aging of youth, night falls from on high."

"They asked themselves why certain revolutions had failed; and whether the proletariat actually existed; and if so, what it might be."

"I drank their wine and I remain faithful to them. And I don't believe that anything I have done since then has made me better in any way than they were then."

"What is writing? The gurdian of history...What is man? A slave of death, a passing traveler, a guest on earth...What is friendship? The equality of friends."

"We turn in the night, consumed by fire."

"You want to prolong that first experience of illegality."

"Instead of entrenching ourselves in the thrilling fortress of a moment, we should break out into the open, make a sortie, then hold our ground and devote ourselves quite simply to ta tally destroying this hostile world - in order to rebuild it, if possible, on other bases."

"But there is no greater madness than the present organization of life."

"We did not go on television to announce our discoveries. We did not seek grants from academic foundations or praise from the newspaper intellectuals. We brought fuel to the fire."

"We would have to leave it, but not without having made an attempt to seize it by brute force; we would finally have to abandon it, after having abandoned so many other things, in order to follow the road determined by the necessities of our strange war, which hes led us so far."

"It's a beautiful moment when an assault against the world order is set in motion."

"The charge begins slowly, picks up speed, passes the point of no return, and irrevocably collides with what seemed unassailable: the bulwark which was so solid and well defended, but which is also destined to be shaken and thrown into disorder."

"It is the unfolding of an event that may or may not verify a theory. Risks must be taken, and you have to pay up front to see what comes next."

"Avant-gardes have only one time; and the best thing that can happen to them is to have enlivened their time without outliving it."

"I see her again, she who was like a stranger in her home town."

History, memory, and forgetting: Jia Zhangke and 24 City

2008-09-29T12:10:00.015-04:00

I went to see 24 City (2008, Jia Zhangke) in the huge maze of Ziegfeld Theatre this Saturday. It was raining and I was lost a bit in locating the theater in the rain and missed friends who I was supposed to meet there. And due to technical problems in the projection, the film was started at least three times before everything was in control. Despite all the troubles, this film turned out to signal a new height of artistic sensibility, range and depth for Jia. It tells stories of nine former workers (five real workers, four actors playing the workers) at a huge jet-engine plant, which was relocated strategically from Shenyang in Northeastern China and rebuilt in Chengdu in 1958 to be away from American imperialist military threats, and which now had to be demolished and relocated to the suburb to give way to the construction of a new real-estate complex in 2007. The main narrative form is through interview. Most of the workers recount their personal histories with great emotions and vividity. I was most touched by the workers' total dedication to their duty, and their enormous sacrifices, especially since the economic reform in mid-1980s. Aren't workers the real backbones of any industrial society? They create values. But who have benefited the most in the end? The state officials, the financial giants, the Wall Street excecutives? Several static shots of families are particularly powerful. A few pop songs pop up such as the theme song from a popular Japanese TV series in the early 1980s. And the Internatonale near the end of the film by retired workers (?)! Also texts of selected poems appear on the screen from time to time. I think this is the most poetic film he has made. Living visual poetry. I look forward to viewing it again in DVD in the future.

Yesterday, I heard Jia's dialogue with the film critic Scott Foundas in the packed Kaplan Penthouse. Jia talked about his poetry writing in high school, his study of painting after failing the college entrance exam. How he decided to become a filmmaker after viewing Yellow Earth in 1991. His passion for filming poverty, hunger, and hope. How he came to the concept of independent filmmaking through a book. His first short Xiaoshan Going Home in a Hongkong Short Film Festival landed funding for his first feature, which started as something quite different but evatually evolved into Xiao Wu after his shock by the changes and probelms among his friends during a trip back to Fengyang in Spring Festival. The desire, excitement and efficiency in writing the scriptin three weeks and shooting it in 19 days. The visual style development from the street scenes and noises in Xiao Wu to the distance and quietness in Platform. How The narrative structure evloved from well-ploted to more fragmented in Platform, inspired by real life of a girl of his neighbor. How his collaboration with Beijing Film Studio on Platform collapsed after they said he's too young to make a film about a decade. His mixed feelings about the pirated Platform. His lament about the absence of individual records in film from the Cultural Revolution, the disappearing memory. How his view towards film has changed from a medium for dream, to response to reality, to memory. Also his feelings towards China moved from concerning the ordinary individuals to questioning the essence of modernity.

After the dialogue, he stayed on answering questions from the crowd around him. It's quite a scene. A very small physique, but very engaging and sharp in conversation.

Jia's works, especially Platform, which I saw only a little over a yer ago, and now 24 City, made me want to make films, and rekinded my interest in contemporary China. How can poetry and film go hand in hand?

The sucessors of the revolution

2008-09-28T11:12:00.004-04:00

Last Friday I saw Children of the Revolution (1995, David Hinton), the third installment of the Cultural Revolution on Film at Asia Society. This film documents the experiences of a group of music students at the middle school attached to the Central Conservatory in Beijing. It is a powerful documentary. I think Mr. Hinton did a great job in engaging the now old musicians intimately and invested great affection and empathy as he followed their reunion and traveling. Morning Sun seems sloppy in comparison. The first-hand accounts of the students provides inner workings of the beginning and evolution of the Cultural Revolution at the Central Conservatory, like the spontaneous formation of red guards. And their revisiting the village in Zhang Jiakou, where they labored after 1968, is especially moving. Though some moments emotionally overwhelming: the two men's crying over the lost years, and Tsaikovsky's music. Now I can kind of understand why some of them later found comfort in Christianity. I think their understanding of music is quite limited, but I admire their great sincerety in their participations in the Cultural Revolution, frankness and composure and humor in their recollections. Personal emotion fixed in a particaular time and space is a great passge to truth, but not the only way. Critical reasoning in a larger context and time frame can uncover more universal truth.

Cycle of life

2008-09-26T13:18:00.010-04:00

Last Wednsday I saw my first Czech film Desire(1958, Vojtech Jasny) at Anthology Film Archive (I enjoyed reading Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being 20 years ago in Beijing but the American film adpated from the novel was unberable to watch later on.)The openning sequence of seven children chasing the ravens in the sky to the end of the world is the most moving and powerful shot. The landscape of Czech countryside is of such beauty, so are the Czech women. To make analagy between four seasons with cycles of life, ie, birth and childhood, youth, middle-age, old-age and death, is not entirely new but still an interesting way to structure the film. The most interesting sections are the childhood and the mother's death. I feel the weakeast section in the film is about youth falling in love for the first time. Why is it so difficult to film or write about first love? Also I don't think great film can be made from adaption of the novel. They are so different medium. Maybe poetry can be filmed better?

LHC Meltdown

2008-09-25T09:45:00.003-04:00

According to an old Chinese saying: A good thing has to suffer more setbacks to happen.

Yang ban xi: the eight model works

2008-09-21T11:13:00.004-04:00

Last Friday I went to Asia Society again to see Yang Ban Xi, a fascinating 2005 documentary by Yan-Ting Yuen, a filmmaker who was born in Hong Hong but grew up in Europe. Yang Ban Xi dominated Chinese stages and screens in the early 70s, and my earliest childhood memories via wall posters in my grandparents' village cave. Like the conceptual artist Xu Yihui in the film, my most vivid memory is images from the Red Detachment of Women. Despite lack of sufficient historical background accounts of the genesis of the model plays (except for a few moments of voice-over of Jiang Qing, Mao's wife, the main supporter and promoter of the model plays), obvious absence of the other very influential Beijing Operas, notably Legend of the Red Lattern and Sha Jia Bang, occasional mistranslations in the subtitle, the movie did a great job in weaving together stories of actors for the main characters from Red Detachment of Women and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, the original scriptwriter for Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, the rehearsals for the revival of Red Detachment of Women, modernized performances on the street and in the park in Beijing (?) by a group of dance school students, practice of teenage Beijing Opera actors, and interviews with artists born in the mid- and late 60s, the movie is full of energy and vibrancy, and quite uplifting, moving and relevant to the present. I thank Ms. Yuen for her talent and extraordinary effort in bringing up that period with wit and delicate touches. It's a much more interesting work than Carmen Hinton's Morning Sun. I think model plays such as the ballet Red Detachment of Women and White-haired Girl are among the most important 20th century Chinese art works. And we could say they were the very first of Chinese conceptual arts, revolutionary conceptual arts. In comparison, a lot of the contemporary art works in the west or China, are impotent and dead. The old conductor in the film complains about the political message in the model works, but what's wrong with the message? I think the messages are very important and the driving force of the works. Jiang Qing's crucial role in their creation and success can't denied, despite her excesses in quieting the opposition. She had a great artistic instinct and I admire her great faith in the revolution. Too bad she had to kill herself in 1991. We need more messages now, in the midst of unprecedented crisis.

David Foster Wallace (Feb 21, 1962 - Sept. 12, 2008)

2008-09-15T09:48:00.005-04:00

Apparently, while I was watching the dying morning sun at Asia Society in Manhattan on Friday night, David Foster Wallace hanged himself in California. I immensely enjoyed reading his Brief Interviews with Hidious Men seven years ago, though never finished Infinite Jest. I think his incursion into science writing like Everything and More is an utter failure. Does that bode exhaustion of the imagination of one of the the most imaginative American writers? the loss of faith in the system? in the possibility of fiction within/against the system? and the final disappearing act?

The death of morning sun

2008-09-13T11:57:00.017-04:00

13 years ago I saw Carma Hinton's The Gate of Heavenly Peace at Pacific Film Archive and my memory was refreshed and stirred up by her brave though controvertial project, and her fluent spoken Chinese. Last night I saw Mrs. Hinton's Morning Sun at Asia Society. Based mostly on extensive use of a large pool of existing film or news footages, plus a few closed-door interviews (date unknown, 2002?), Morning Sun strives to understand the Cultural Revolution from the viewpoints of a few prominent and/or well-connected former Red Guards members, who are contempararies of Ms. Hinton, born around 1949. I was most intrigued and moved by the students' self-organized networking trips across China in 1966. The extended quotations from the large-scale musical-dance piece East is Red in the beginning introduces the background of the Chinese revolution, but its influences on the interviewees' growing-up and world-view formation are hard to locate, though the Soviet film Gadfly is cited throughout the film by several interviewees. The events after late 1968 and their effects on the transformation of the students' thinking receive inadequate treatment, except the 1976 Tiananmen incident. The film was released in 2003, but the "present" leaves no trace at all on their reflections and the film. And I will be curious to know how most ordinary red guards members think about the Cultural Revolution and the conclusion of the film: Revolution is dead. Overall the film provides little new insights into the Cultural revolution or the making of documentary film.

The brightest astronomical explosion ever observed

2008-09-11T14:06:00.007-04:00

In the seconds after it first pointed at GRB 080319B, the infrared telescope PAIRITEL was blinded by the brilliant explosion (a). As the gamma-ray burst began to fade, PAIRITEL was able to track the light from the explosion for many hours (b and c). (Joshua Bloom/UC Berkeley)

The March 19 gamma-ray burst, catalogued as GRB 080319B, was the result of a massive star's explosion 7.5 billion years ago that sent a pencil-beam of intense light on a direct collision course for Earth. It is the only known gamma-ray burst to have had a visible component bright enough to see with the naked eye.

First Beam at LHC

2008-09-10T11:17:00.005-04:00

The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning.

“As some might say: ‘One short trip for a proton, but one giant leap for mankind!’ ” said Nigel S. Lockyer, Director of Canada’s TRIUMF laboratory.

Chinese Art and Chinese Revolution at Asia Society

2008-09-09T14:52:00.006-04:00

This is a very timely and much needed exhibition of the cultural production of China from 1950s to 1970s. And there're some aesthetically bold and innovative and socially-engaging works of energy and force and consequence by very young artists out of the period. It's especially inspiring in the present stage of capitalism and globalization. We can't simply dismiss arts because it is intimately involved with politics. And we can't overlook period of art history despite the utter failures of revolution and the surreal hype of contemporary Chinese arts. Autonomy of art is self-deception. Continual revolution and war in arts is necessary for its renewal. Is it still possible for arts to critique and resist the dominant ideology? Is it capable and and how?

Louise Bourgeois : verticality, violence, vunerability, closure, and finitude

2008-09-08T11:56:00.006-04:00

monolithic verticality
stacked-up verticality
twisted verticality
perforated verticality
clustered verticality
bundled verticality
grounded verticality
suspended verticality
finite verticality

no tendency to grow up
no horizontal gaze is invited
no traffic is possible

it's not "destruction of the father"
as in her installation of 1974
but the immortalization of the father
by her imagination dictated
by him by the phallus
which engenders/endangers life
which seems oddly absent

is this the reason for bougeois art
go to see Vertov

Tan Jing: Love from Afar

2008-09-06T11:24:00.005-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmXNZ72cOGI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJgXdS-QnkI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVuG2DpdWao&feature=related

This is title song from the 2006 TV drama Qiao Jia Da Yuan (Qiao's Family Compund), which is a fascinating account of the lives of the intellectual-turned bussinessman Qiao Zhiyong and his family in Qi county, Shanxi, in the Qing dynasty. Tan Jing, who is also from Shanxi, is the most exciting and beautiful Chinese singer I've heard since I left China and its culture behind 17 years ago. Now the temptation to re-visit the native land seems harder and harder to resist!

I will read this evening at Bryant Park

2008-08-26T13:52:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, August 26, 6:30 - 8pm Poetry Reading: Word For Word Poetry Program in Bryant Park

An evening of poetry in conjunction with the Bryant Park Summer 2008 Word for Word Series featuring Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, John Yau and Shanxing Wang.

@ Byrant Park Reading Roombetween 5th Avenue and 6th Avenue, adjacent to the James Earl Dodge monument

FREE and open to the public

I congratulate Ma Lin for his first Olympic Men's Single gold

2008-08-25T19:30:00.002-04:00

The only thing I was wrong in my prediction of the Men's Single's final is:
The champion is Ma Lin instread of Wang Liqin.

I think it made a huge psychlogical difference when Wang Liqin had to change his racket during the first game. Yet he should not have been disturbed if he were the true champion. 4 more years?

My prediction of table tennis Men's Single Final at the Olympic

2008-08-21T13:24:00.002-04:00

Wang Liqin defeats Wang Hao 4:1.

What Wang Liqin can explore: mix up different services including long ones down the line, attack Hao's service and service return first, use his own most powerful (inside-out) forehand to attack Hao's forehand mostly, attack Hao's body and backhand from time to time without hesitation, play steady with his own backhand.

Mao's sucessor Hua Guofeng died

2008-08-20T09:44:00.005-04:00

Hua Guofeng (1921-2008): Leader of China from 1976 to 1980.

I still remeber his handwriting in the first page of my college English textbook. 27 years of oblivion. I wonder what he thinks about today's China and what Mao thinks about him.

Li Na beat Venus

2008-08-14T17:53:00.003-04:00

Left, Jamie Squire/Getty Images; Elise Amendola/Associated Press

How soon will the Chinese woman tennis players replicate Chinese women's success in table tennis?

LHC start-up on Sept 10

2008-08-07T18:18:00.004-04:00

The first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made on 10 September.

‘We’re finishing a marathon with a sprint,’ said LHC project leader Lyn Evans. ‘It’s been a long haul, and we’re all eager to get the LHC research programme underway.’

Euro 2008: The King of Spain

2008-06-30T19:39:00.005-04:00

1 : 0
Spain : Germany
1 : 0
Poetry : Non-fiction
The road to victory for the Spanish Red Army
Attack, attack, relentless waves of lightening attack
The similarity between soccer game and filmmaking
Shoot, shoot, shoot
Goal is truth?

Reinhard Genzel wins Shaw Prize

2008-06-11T10:25:00.006-04:00

The Shaw Prize:

"in recognition of his outstanding contribution in demonstrating that the Milky Way contains a supermassive black hole at its centre "

Eliot Quataert: Reinhard Genzel "has continued to make quite remarkable strides, both in observing the orbits of stars around the black hole, which has provided evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that there is a black hole at the center of the galaxy, and then also pushing forward in trying to get observations of the emission from the gas that is spiraling into the black hole."

Is Wang Liqin era over finally?

2008-06-06T15:32:00.005-04:00

The early exit of the current World Champion at Singapore Open continues his year-long failure to capture a men's single title at international competitions since May 2007. Is the Olympic gold out of his reach? He's not yet 30 years old. I think the Chinese coaches have been ineffective in Wang Liqin's changes in his backhand techniques. I still think he can do it in August. He has to have faith in his ability.

When galaxies collide

2008-06-04T18:19:00.011-04:00

Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, NRAO, Stony Brook University).

This is a false-color composite of pictures taken in the 0.4-µm and 0.9-µm bands. It shows a pair of spiral galaxies, collectively known as UGC 09618, in their early stages of interaction 450 million light-years from Earth. Already, this so-called luminous infrared galaxy merger is emitting more than 20 times the total energy of our Milky Way galaxy.
(June 2008, Physics Today)

Ein Deutsches Requiem

2008-05-27T15:03:00.002-04:00

Last night, I went to hear Johannes Brahms's Requiem. For the first time I lost my way after emerging out of the subway staion on 57th St and &7th Ave. A testament of serious lack of practicing. It's interesting to note that he added the 5th movement to complete all seven movements this month 100 years ago. The huge choir sections were quite a scene. And I saw two new friends performing brilliantly in the string sections. I think this must be one of the reasons we sing, to answer Carter's question. And it's fitting to the recent dead in Wenchuan, Sichuan province, China.

Quotes:

V.
And ye now therefore have sorrow;
but I will see you again,
and your heart shall rejoice,
and your joy no man
taketh from you.
As one whom his mother comforteth
so will I comfort you.
Behold with your eyes,
how that I laboured
but a little,
and found for myself much rest.

VI.
For here have we no continuing city;

but we seek one to come,
Behold, I show you a mystery;
we shall not fall sleep,
but we shall be changed,
in a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trumpet.

For the trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible,
and wee shallbe changed.
Then shall be brought to pass
the saying that is written:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive
glory and honour and power,
for Thou hast created all things,
and for Thy pleasure
they are
and were created.

VII.
Blessed are the dead,
which die in the Lord, from henceforth.
Yea, saith the Spirit,
that they may rest from their labours;
and their works do follow them.

(The English text is drawn from the Authorized Version of the Bible.)

What other uses for gunpowder?

2008-05-25T16:30:00.005-04:00

Cai: I want to believe.

It's despairing and almost sounds pretentious.

This is only the second time I went to Guggenheim. I think Cai's gunpowder spectcles appeal to a mass audience, therefore investment capital, though I feel it's a little one-dimensional in artistic vision. But I thank him for reviving the statues of Rent Collection Courtyard, through blatant appropriation, which I must have forgotten for 30 plus years. And it truly says something about the spirit and situation of the new Communist China after 1949 and its immediate predecessor. I have to reevaluate socialist realism in the context of modernism and postmodernism in arts and literature. It's such a daunting challenge, at least poetically, to get out of the suffocating and seemingly invincible global capitalism and its cultual and artistic and poetic byproducts, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, to tread an alternative road...

What doe Cai try to believe and why doesn't he?

I believe...?

I believe.

Why do we sing?

2008-05-25T16:08:00.004-04:00

This is the question quoted (originally posed by Elliott Carter) in the panel discussion after the premier of the film version of the opera What Next at Moma last Wednsday, and I think it's a great question. I have to think hard about it further for answers.

I can't believe Mr.Carter is 100 years old and walks steadily and thinks and speaks clearly and is even humorous, and is still in such a creative output. Mr. Carter's music is very rich and vibrante and expressive, and with an almost un-american sounding, though the words therefore the singing in the opera are kind of distractions to the music. From time to time I have to close my eyes to focus on the music. I will check out his other non-operatic works. So what next? Defintely not another opera.

X-ray outburst from a massive dying star

2008-05-25T15:52:00.010-04:00

The galaxy NGC 2770, some 90 million light years from Earth, before and after a massive Wolf-Rayet star exploded as a Type Ib supernova dubbed 2008D. The images of 2008D and another recent supernova, 2007uy, were taken in the infrared by the PAIRITEL telescope atop Mt. Hopkins near Tucson, Arizona, in January 2008. (Credit: Joshua S. Bloom, Maryam Modjaz, UC Berkeley, and the PAIRITEL SN/GRB team)

In a Korean movie I saw last Friday at Anthology Film Archive, it is said that a person becomes a star after she/he dies.

Three days of mourning for all the dead in May 12 earthquake in China

2008-05-19T10:58:00.005-04:00

Especially,

the school children,

the teachers who died to save children.

the parents who died to save children.

This afternoon I am in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

2008-05-17T12:13:00.006-04:00

The Burning Chair Readings
present

Poetry Goose Up!

at East Coast Aliens

Saturday, May 17th, 3:00-8:00 pm
Doors 3:00 pm, readings from 3:30-8:00 pm
$6

Ana Bozicevic John Coletti Kate Greenstreet Sarah Gridley Katy Henriksen Shannon Jonas Jennifer Kronovet Mark Lamoureux Timothy Liu Chris Martin Jess Mynes Cate Peebles Christopher Rizzo Matthew Rohrer Frank Sherlock Joanna Sondheim Shanxing Wang Rebecca Wolff

Hosted by Cannibal, Saltgrass, Harp & Altar, & Tight

East Coast Aliens
216 Franklin St.
between Green & Huron
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
G to Greenpoint Ave (exit at India St.)B61/B43/B42

eastcoastaliens.com
typomag.com/burningchair
flesheatingpoems.blogspot.com
harpandaltar.com
saltgrasscontents.blogspot.com
tightjournal.blogspot.com

Worst earthquake hit China since Tangshan (1976)

2008-05-12T13:52:00.006-04:00

May = Mad.

I still remember the months we lived in the outdoor tents after the Tangshan earthquake. And we went to classes under the sun outside the classroom...My sympathies to all suffered.

Paris: 40 years ago

2008-05-11T14:45:00.003-04:00

This is new to me.
Paris May 1968.

To Verdener (Worlds Apart)

2008-05-03T11:32:00.011-04:00

A bold, sincere, simple and well-controlled work by the director Niels Arden Oplev from Danmark, the land of Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr, realized by the heart-breaking performance from Rosalinde Mynster. Oddly, the more closely I look at the girl's father, the more he looks like a Chinese father! Contemporary struggling among/against the forces of faith, love (at several levels), both of which are impossible to articulate, a rare quality seldom if ever atempted by the few contemporary Chinese or American films I've seen. Immediately I would like to add other forces: politics, and arts. I would like to revisit some classic works like Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev and Rossellini's Francesco, giullare di Dio. And some of Bergman's works. Yet we also have science. My pick among dozens of films (including many shorts) I've seen there in the past week or so.

Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?

2008-04-17T08:31:00.005-04:00

Edward Norton Lorenz (May 23, 1917 – April 16, 2008)

Lorenz: "As a boy I was always interested in doing things with numbers, and was also fascinated by changes in the weather."

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe at NYU

2008-04-14T21:04:00.014-04:00

Catastrophe and Caesura:
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe Today
(April 10-12)

Organized by Denis Hollier and Avital Ronell
Others there:
Marie-Hélène Huet, moderator (Princeton)
Richard Sieburth (NYU)
François Rigolot (Princeton)
Claire Nancy (Paris)
Michel Deutsch (Strasbourg)
Michel Deguy (Paris)
Anthony Abiragi, moderator (NYU)
Susan Bernstein (Brown)
Kevin McLaughlin (Brown)
Shireen Patell (NYU)
John Hamilton (NYU)
Eduardo Cadava (Princeton)
Micaela Kramer, moderator (NYU)
Anthony Vidler (Cooper Union)
Sam Weber (Northwestern/Paris)
Jeff Fort (Davis)
Jean-Christophe Bailly (Paris)
Peter Banki, moderator (NYU)
Ann Smock (Berkeley)
Christopher Fynsk (Aberdeen)

This is the first time I saw Jean-Luc Nancy giving a talk ("After Tragedy") in French and philosophizing real-time during the talk and in the Q & A. And it's quite moving to hear philosophers' "will to poetry" and listen to many of Lacoue-Labarthe's students and collegues from Berkeley. Though I was not totally surprised by the talks, though I missed another seemingly more exciting conference (Substance of Thought: Critical and Pre-Critical) at Cornell at the same time, I feel strongly the word "After", and this continuity of thinking and feeling and life in (spite of) the title word "Caesura". I wonder how many things and people I could have discovered and learned in addition to Pacific Film Archive and Quantum Mechanics if I pursued my interests in poetry, art and philosophy while still at Berkeley. After Berkeley. After engineering. After the first book. After New York city. After performance poetry. After conceptual poetry. After techno. After Tarkovsky. After Adorno. After Heidegger. After Deleuze. After Badiou. After Culture Revolution. After 1971. After This. After Gand Piano. After Today. After Futurepoem. After Collapse. After 20th Century. After Bush. After party. After capital. After Le Corbusier. After midnight...

John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911–April 13, 2008)

2008-04-14T11:32:00.002-04:00

In 1967, Dr. Wheeler coined the name “black hole.”

Wheeler:

“You can talk about people like Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Confucius, but the thing that convinced me that such people existed were the conversations with Bohr.”

“We are no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, or fields of force, or geometry, or even space and time...Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself.”

Max Tegmark:

“For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing.”

Freeman Dyson:

“He rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians.”

“Some people think Wheeler’s gotten crazy in his later years, but he’s always been crazy.”

Dark Matter

2008-04-09T20:49:00.005-04:00

isn't so dark

after all.

What draws me to it is the dark memory of Lu Gang's tragedy which happened two months after my arrival to the States, and theoretical cosmology, which has been fascinating me for the past few years, and of course the Chinese graduate student-advisor and academic dynamics on campus. I must solute the director and producer for initiating the project. The structuring use of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth from ancient Chinese philosophy in the film is an interesting idea and could have been explored more. Yet I feel the film's transparency, fast cutting, close-ups, professional actors, light and some times forced humors, and dazzling special effects seem to reveal the director's inability to penetrate deeper into the dark matter in the psyche and thought process of the troubled soul. Too much emphasis on the cultural surfaces can be too easy and is obviously distant at the personal level. What if the film were performed by non-professional actors, like a real physics student and professor, and shot with digital technology? I am thinking about the works of Bela Tarr and Theodoros Angelopoulos.

Happy Birthday, XJ

2008-04-08T02:25:00.004-04:00

I Don't Hear the Guitar Anymore

2008-03-14T11:09:00.004-04:00

The persistent and almost unbearable close distance between the characters and between the charactors and the cameras or viewers, the frequent long takes and silence, the difficulty of articulation and communication of emotional states and thoughts, the irrelevence of professions, the occasional haunting violin, sax, and piano... All these paradoxically reveal the remoteness and holes and yet passions and faiths and hopes in the continuum of life. I did hear the guitar at Cinema Village this time, therefore poetry. Water-based non-toxic speed glue?

Quotes:

I am too close to you to even look at you.

What does 'love' mean?

Don't think screwing solves eveything.

To speak of love.

Everything you didn't say.

How does grave differ from sad?

Fear of being loved.

I love you mortally.

Yeah, man.

It's like a hole I had here.

There's no paper here.

If we stoppedloving each other.

Music

I say it ... just to say something.

We can't change the past.

Hard?

Ibiza

CHOP SHOP at Film Forum

2008-02-29T23:35:00.003-05:00

I can't recall exactly when was the last time I saw a US-made film in a theater (I've been mostly drawn to European films, and films from other parts of the world), but the location of this film is the closest place I've ever gotten to filmically in my daily life, though I am totally igorant about life in the chop shop, under the rail, at Willet's Point, only one subway stop from Main Street, Flushing, Queens, though I had to travel all the way to greenwich village to watch it.

2008 Evergrande Real Estate World Team Table Tennis Championships, Guangzhou , CHN , Feb 24 -Mar 2

2008-02-29T12:20:00.006-05:00

".......

Adrenalin Flowed
Adrenalin flowed through the body of Wang Liqin as he faced Petr Korbel in the opening duel, a contest between two powerful players with the Czech star having in the past caused Chinese opposition many a headache.

The chant of “Wang Liqin Jiao You” reverberated around the gymnasium in Guangzhou; basically “Wang Liqin More Steam”.

Wang Liqin captured a close opening game; the importance of winning that game clearly to be seen in his reaction when he won the last point. It was fist in the air in celebration as he turned to his colleague; to a man they rose in adulation.

Focused
Composed, focused Petr Korbel returned to the fray; keen to show that he was the equal of the three times World Men’s Singles champion, he attacked the body of his adversay at every opportunity, the controlled topspins from the backhand proving successful.

He established a lead in the second game and he never relinquished that lead.

Tension Mounts
In the third game tension mounted with Wang Liqin ahead 8-7, Liu Guoliang, the Chinese Men’s Team coach called “Time Out”. Petr Korbel levelled; the next four points were shared with the Czech star matching Wang Liqin in counter topspin rallies.

Returning service superbly, attacking viciously with the forehand Petr Korbel won the next two points; he was one game to the good.

Responding
Petr Korbel was responding to the occasion, attack the Wang Liqin backhand with heavy topspin, force a passive response, then hard and fast wide to the forehand was a tactic that worked and caused Wang Liqin consternation.

However, in the fourth game, desperate to nullify the Wang Liqin forehand, Petr Korbel made mistakes attacking over the table, near the net. Wang Liqin led 9-6 but then lost the next three points. The crowd urged him to greater efforts, he responded to clinch the next two points and levelled the contest.

Good Start
It was “High Noon” in Guangzhou between Wang Liqin and Petr Korbel and certainly the crowd would not forsake him.

In the fifth game Wang Liqin raced into a 5-0 lead, then 6-0 following the rally of the week with counter topspin play of the highest possible; the crowd went beserk!

Wang Liqin was ahead, he was now confident, from the backhand he was more positive. He held on to the lead and duly secured victory. It was first blood to China. The crowd was reasonably pleased, well fair enough, ecstatic!

Style
“Petr Korbel’s style of play is not difficult, he’s not hard to play against; today he was very good on the first three attacks and with his backhand in the rallies”, said Wang Liqin. “In the second and third games I was too passive, I gave him chances and its important I concentrate on being positive and not think about the pressure.”

......"

Is film still possible?

2008-02-09T15:23:00.001-05:00

lost in Lost in Beijing
more lost in Summer Palace
......

New York city: It is hot. it is raining.

Cemetery of the Disgraced

2008-02-01T21:09:00.000-05:00

from Collector - The Journal of the Table Tennis Collector's Society (No. 46, Fall 2007)

A Sampling of New York City Poetry

2008-01-08T21:12:00.000-05:00

http://welcometoboogcity.com/boogpdfs/bc47.pdf

What does it mean to be a new york city poet?
How many poets are there in new york city?
Isn't boog Dutch?
It would be interesting to read a collection of poetic essays from the 72 poets in the anthology.

Pictures Received from Xi'an on Dec. 24, 2007

2008-01-03T10:56:00.000-05:00

The 34th Annual New Year's Day Marathon Reading at the Poetry Project

2008-01-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

This is the fourth consecutive year I've been part of the reading. I read I think around midnight. Though the initial excitement and nerversness have long gone, the late night and early morning hours I found are more intimate (dirty?) and a more rewarding listening experience. I am very happy to hear many younger poets read their works and show their spirits and tattoos...

2020 Olympic Game PingPong Champion

2007-12-28T23:48:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxnBSCTSbb0

White Haired Girl

2007-12-26T16:49:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4n8DdxXn6s&mode=related&search=

New York City Small Presses Night

2007-12-18T13:16:00.000-05:00

Boog City presents
d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press
New York City Small Presses Night

with
Belladonna Books, Cuneiform Press, Cy Gist Press,
Futurepoem Books, Kitchen Press, and Portable Press at Yo-Yo LabsTues.

Dec. 18, 6:00 p.m. sharp, free

ACA Galleries
529 W.20th St., 5th Flr.
NYC

This is the one event each season in our non-NYC small press series
where we honor NYC small presses.

Featuring readings by poets from
six of the city's finest small presses:

**Belladonna Books
--Latasha N. Nevada Diggs
--R. Erica Doyle
**Cuneiform Press
--Bill Berkson
--Ted Greenwald
**Cy Gist Press
--Mark Lamoureux
**Futurepoem Books
--Jill Magi
--Shanxing Wang
**Kitchen Press
--Erin Burke
**Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs
--Tonya Foster
--Julie Patton
--Nathaniel Siegel

as well as publications available from each of the presses.

There will be wine, cheese, and crackers, too.

Curated and with an introduction by Boog City editor David Kirschenbaum
--
Boog City 46, our New York City Small Presses Issue, published inconjunction with the above event, features pages put together by theabove six presses. To read the pdf version, and see work from 17poets, go to:
http://welcometoboogcity.com/boogpdfs/bc46.pdf

For more information on the various presses:
http://belladonnabooks.blogspot.com/
http://www.cuneiformpress.com/
http://www.cygistpress.com/
http://www.futurepoem.com/
http://www.kitchen-press-book-store.blogspot.com/
http://yoyolabs.com/

----Directions: C/E to 23rd St., 1/9 to 18th St.Venue is bet. 10th and 11th avenues

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Anne Waldman

2007-12-17T11:28:00.000-05:00

READING BETWEEN A&B
PAIRING EMERGING AND ESTABLISHED POETS

11TH STREET BAR. 510 E. 11TH ST. BETWEEN AVENUES A&B, NYC.
MONDAYS 7:30 PM. ALL READINGS ARE FREE.

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Jonathan Thirkield
Anne Waldman

DECEMBER 17
Please Join Us!

Two Readings in Two Days

2007-12-13T11:25:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, I went to Fiona Templeton's performance of the medead in the Belladonna* reading series at Dixon Place. This is the first time I learned the name Medea and I am fascinated by the Greek myth. Six Medeas played by six actresses, wearing the red scarf, with magnetic voices. I look forward to seeing it in full in the future.

Yesterday, I heared Abigail Child read at The Poetry Project. It's intersting she read new work about her recent visit to China, which I haven't set my foot on in 16 years. I was very impressed by her linguistic deftness and energy. And I also found her book of criticism This Is Called Moving: A Critical Poetics of Film provide another interesting angle to look at and think about poetry and its relationship with film.