Jim Andrews
Since the beginning
Works in Victoria Canada

ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Jim Andrews does http://vispo.com . He is a poet-programmer and audio guy. His work explores the new media possibilities of poetry, and seeks to synthesize the poetical with other arts and media.
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DISCUSSION

history/herstory


i once wrote an essay called 'the impossibility of the mere existence of the
great works of the late twentieth century.' not that 'great' works are not
being created, but it won't happen again that which ones they are appears to
be so clear. it was never very clear, if you looked closely, given the
exclusions--look at the way that womens' writing was excluded from much of
'literature', but some has been brought to light recently (herstory). the
notion of trust in authoritative canons of art, authoritative versions of
history, is now itself historical in the history of ideas and, instead, one
seeks the principles of inclusion and exclusion operative in historical
narratives.

there is actually something called 'the principle of inclusion/exclusion' in
mathematics. it's for counting the number of elements that have (or don't
have) certain properties when the elements are among arbitrarily many
intersecting sets of elements. the situation is quite simple for up to 3
sets, but when the number of sets increases, the logic becomes more
complexly combinatorial.

in a similar way, the types of art, or poetry, etc, are proliferating quite
beautifully, out of the easily demarcated and categorized, judged and filed,
out into, let us hope, fresh experience and the usefully contemporary.

and, yes, new histories...

it's great to see the posts that have proliferated on this. mcluhan would be
delighted, i presume.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Marshall McLuhan, "actual destroyer of our civilization"


> > 'history is over'.
>
> Yes, I remember when people used to say that.

Is it back on now?

ja?

DISCUSSION

Re: Marshall McLuhan, "actual destroyer of our civilization"


the propositions i mentioned in my last couple of ees are aphoristic and
counter-intuitive, as well as compact and controversial. they are the koans
of popular culture. they're also headers/headlines for a larger data packet.
'history is over'.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Marshall McLuhan, "actual destroyer of our civilization"


also, overstated propositions like 'literature is over', 'the medium is the
message', 'evolution is over', 'we are post-human' etc, in addition to being
compact, are also controversial. this compact, controversial form allows
them to be easily propagated in popular culture. in part because dodos like
muggeridge and woodcock end up calling him 'the actual destroyer of our
civilization'. that's got to be worth a look.

my friend lionel kearns tells me of seeing mcluhan in 1964 in vancouver, the
year 'understanding media' was published. he was a kind of performance
intellectual. his talks were mostly in dialogue with the audience and, as
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-69-342-1820/life_society/mcluhan/clip6
indicates, he could really get them boiling.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Marshall McLuhan, "actual destroyer of our civilization"


Hi Regina,

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that you should read McLuhan before talking
about him. My point was that most people who talk about McLuhan know about
him elsewhere than from reading his books. One could say the same of Allen
Ginsberg or William S Burroughs or any number of writers whose media
presence is more prominent than their books. I don't mean that this
invalidates what people say about McLuhan. Instead, I mean it illustrates
that 'literature is finished'--in the sense that popular knowledge is much
less print-based than 'anchored' in other media.

Also, the assertion that 'literature is finished' operates much like other
equally overstated propositions such as 'evolution is over' or 'we are
post-human' or 'the medium is the message' etc: it is the popular face of an
argument or phenomenon that cannot be so easily summarized, but must be
stated compactly to travel in popular culture. It requires considerable
'unpacking'.

Paper books have real advantages over other means of distributing certain
types of work. And these advantages ensure that the book is not going away
any time soon.

You ask about McLuhan's books. I haven't read them all myself.
'Understanding Media' is the main one. I wrote an essay that people seem to
like as an introduction to his work:
http://vispo.com/writings/essays/mcluhana.htm

ja