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From The Classroom

Having just finished week three of the fall semester, I thought I’d share a list of the films I’ve screened (so far) for my “Introduction to 20th Century Experimental Short Stories” class.

I open every class session by arriving about ten minutes early and starting up an experimental film, so as students trickle into the classroom they can transition out of the ordinary and into our “unique learning environment” — which is my clever way of saying “very strange class” — plus, I like making interdisciplinary connections between the texts we’re reading and other art forms, as a way of creating and extending a wider conversation around the idea of artistic experimentation in general.

Anyway…

On the first day of class the students were met with Ryan Trecartin – P.opular S.ky (section ish) (2009), which is a really good way to blow minds right off the bat.

From there, it went like this…

Abigail Child – Mercy (1989)

Ken Jacobs – A Tom Tom Chaser (2002)

Man Ray – Emak Bakia (1926)

Ernie Gehr – Serene Velocity (1970)

Negativland – No Other Possibility (1989)

Luc Moullet – Genesis of a Meal (1977)

Today was David Lynch – Twin Peaks (1990)

and Monday will likely be Leslie Thornton – Jennifer, Where Are You? (1981)

154 Comments

  1. mimi

      Ever since I first saw Pasta and Wendy M-PEGgy
      Dang
      Wish I had time to watch these right now, but later baby

  2. Adam R

      Why the David Lynch though?

  3. jereme

      can i get some copies of these off you?

  4. Christopher Higgs

      To put it in conversation with the second part of Julio Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas, which is what they read for today — the crazy family section where they build a torture platform in the front yard and house a tiger and howl at the moon, etc.

      Wanted to show something that represented the domestic in an unfamiliar way. Thought first of showing a clip from THE ADAMS FAMILY, but although the characters are strange, the form is conventional — so then I considered showing a section from Harmony Korine’s GUMMO, but didn’t feel that kind of sinister this morning. TWIN PEAKS resists conventional storytelling in both form and content, although it is obviously more legible than those other selections.

      ps – I owe you an email, will get back soon, am waiting for my wife to say what is the what :)

  5. Christopher Higgs

      Hey Jereme,

      The only ones I own are the Moulett and the Lynch, the others I screened from Ubu (click on the purple title and it’ll take you to them) — but I’d be glad to send you stuff…later in the semester I’ll be moving more into my personal library…I’ll do another post later, maybe come November, and if you see some stuff you’d like, I’d gladly ship copies out to you.

  6. RICH BAIOCCO

      Damn Christopher! I don’t even like school and your class seems awesome. Where do you teach? Does a little Bunuel do the trick in a pinch?

  7. Christopher Higgs

      pps – will certainly be screening something of Stephanie Barber’s later in the semester!

  8. deadgod

      It sounds like an exciting class, Christopher – though ‘strangeness’-for-the-sake-of-‘strangeness’ usually has pretty conventional outcomes.

      It seems (to me) like most people who have an epinion on the topic think that “experimental” is a useless – at best – categorization of fiction. I disagree; I think it’s worth preserving (in this case) even such an easily-challenged distinction as experimental as opposed to conventional.

      How do you present the category ‘experimental’ to your students?

  9. Adam R

      Oh, that makes sense. I was comparing all the videos to each other, following the path out and thinking, well, I guess I can see the trail from Negativland to Lynch, but only sorta. Anyway, these are all great choices and it was fun to watch them, parts of them I mean. Experimental film, man, wtf.

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhV5RgcNJjE

  10. Christopher Higgs

      Hahah. Thanks, Rich. I teach at Florida State University. Good call on the Bunuel. Will be screening his & Dali’s short film UN CHIEN ANDALOU a week from today — which will be the last day we’re discussing Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas. Will probably do something by Jodorowsky on Wednesday of next week.

  11. Adam R

      Oh cool. And email me. We’ll work it out.

  12. Ridge

      Sounds like an awesome class!

      “Rabbit’s Moon” by Anger might be good if you’re teaching something with repetition and variation.

  13. m. lowe

      Looks like a fun class. I’m teaching three sections of freshman comp this term and am a bit envious, tell the truth…

      Ever considered showing something by Alejandro Jodorowsky? Fando Y Lis (based on a play by Arrabal), perhaps?

      ~m

  14. Christopher Higgs

      Hi deadgod,

      It’s a complex question that takes the entire course to fully unpack. But from the beginning I set out a three-pronged theoretical framework:

      (i) a distinction between Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics: the latter (Hegel – conventional) is predicated on the clear transmission of communication from the artist to the audience, while the former (Kant – experimental) is predicated on the excitation of the free play of the imagination.

      (ii) Barthes’s distinction between the Readerly Text and the Writerly Text. Readerly = Conventional; Writerly = Experimental.

      (iii) Gertrude Stein’s essay “Composition as Explanation” which foregrounds the primacy of Form over Content.

      The important thing to establish right away is that experimental literature requires readers to rethink their expectations. One cannot approach an experimental text with the same expectations as one might approach a conventional text: looking for the same elements, with the same criteria, because experimental texts are fundamentally different: they proceed from different assumptions, work under different guiding principles, and seek different goals than do works of conventional literature.

      That’s a start.

  15. zusya
  16. Christopher Higgs

      Hey m. lowe,

      Good call on Jodorowsky…I had planned to do either EL TOPO or HOLY MOUNTAIN next week — FANDO & LIS is great but it’s black and white and the colors burst so crazily in those other two, I’d be sad not to expose the students to it.

      Maybe you can find a way of sneaking some films into your comp classroom?

  17. Christopher Higgs

      Cool, I’ll check that out. Thanks, zusya! I remember seeing that video at the video store when I was a kid, but never rented it.

  18. jereme

      troll is like a dismal handjob.

      come the fuck on.

  19. darby

      i want to take this class please

  20. Christopher Higgs

      Thanks, Ridge. I have Anger’s “Invocation of My Demon Brother” on my list for later in the semester….I’m trying to do only one film per filmmaker in order to get the widest range…but someone like Anger has so many good ones, I might have to make an exception.

  21. jason preu

      now can we see the reading list that these buggers preface?

  22. Christopher Higgs

      Hahaha. Good point, Jason! Sorry, I forgot to include that…

      We are starting the semester in South America, so after reading the theoretical stuff, we’ve read:

      Jorge Luis Borges’s “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, Clarice Lispector’s “The Egg & The Chicken”, and the first two sections of Julio Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas (we will finish that book next week).

      After that we go to Europe and read Anaïs Nin “The Labyrinth” and Angela Carter “A Victorian Fable (with Glossary)” — then Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics.

      Then we come to America and read Kathy Acker “New York City in 1979”, Margaret Atwood “Happy Endings”, and Caitlin Newcomer “Only This Torn Room Forever Sleeps” — then John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse — then Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild.

      I’m missing some stuff, can’t think what though.

  23. jason preu

      now that’s what i call education. thanks for sharing.

  24. m. lowe

      Hi Christopher,

      Yeah, those are both great for sure. Have you seen Sante Sangre or any of his other films? I wish someone would do a proper DVD transfer and release them commercially…

      I’ll have to check out some of the films you’ve posted about. Many of them are new to me. The Trecartin looks especially intriguing.

      Take care,
      ~m

  25. I. Fontana

      I’m trying to imagine being spoonfed the Avant-Garde vs discovering things on my own. I don’t get it.

      Kenneth Anger, for instance. Arriving at him via Bobby Beausoleil vs A Safe Authority Figure Saying “This is what is Cool.” [In this situation a priori it is not.] [Because does this not this presentation of suchlike as Common Wisdom render it Safe. End of fucking story on that.]

      Of course I’m an autodidact, so from 14 on no one told me what to read.

      If you doubt you are an authority even outside Florida State and this blog, know that I hesitated to disagree with the Lovefest here anticipating possible bad reviews in 2011. I realize if I had attended more school I’d know better than to indulge in What the fuck.

  26. A. Alvarez

      In my experience, there is no such thing as a dismal handjob. A hand on your pecker that is not your own is a welcome hand indeed. I once smoked a sherman with a hypedramatical Jewish stand-up comedienne/actress who then proceeded to give me a vicious, bonedry handjob for the entire length of Alan Rudolph’s Choose Me. When she died of a drug overdose a couple of years ago I was invited to the funeral but did not attend.

  27. Christopher Higgs

      Hello, I. Fontana,

      I appreciate your comment and your disagreement. Valid points, all. I struggle with the fact that I’m a member of the academy yet my interests are in stuff the academy tends to dismiss. I know exactly what you mean about me presenting this material inside the academy and how that might nullify the power of it, i.e. make it “safe”. But the way I justify it to myself is that if I weren’t doing what I was doing, introducing students to this stuff, then there might not be anyone else doing it and thus students would be missing out on a whole other world of knowledge and art and experience,etc. Many students are not going to be as lucky as you were to find this stuff on their own.

      Isn’t it better for someone to find Anger, no matter how they might find him, rather than going through life without finding him?

  28. Christopher Higgs

      Sante Sangre is my favorite, or at least I think it is my favorite…I haven’t seen it for a long, long time…it’s never been put on dvd because of copyright stuff, right? I am with you, I wish that would happen. The cult of the armless women, the circus people, the knife thrower and the tattooed woman with the boa constrictor, the boy who bleeds out of his nose like the elephant who bleeds out of his trunk…oh man, that film has staid with me.

      Trecartin, yes! His stuff is MUST SEE. I’d recommend starting with I-BE Area.

  29. John Dammon

      i watched the first two videos linked in this post. i did not like the videos. if i was one of your students i would tell you that i don’t need ‘retarded’ videos to transition into your “unique learning environment”.

      that being said, i’m sure you sometimes show ‘good’ videos also. like Twin Peaks.

  30. Shane Anderson

      would be cool to see the full list of films and stories at the end of the semester.

      i wonder what would happen if you played some music as the went out. like if you played albert ayler as they were leaving. would smoke come out their ears?

      i wish i had teachers this cool. mostly mine just did really weird shit like unplug projectors while hanging from the projector, which i guess is pretty cool but the subject matter, presocratic philosophy, sure was a snoozer……….

  31. Pemulis

      What goals, principles, and assumptions are always present in conventional literature? What is conventional literature and how does one make it?

  32. justin

      fuckin’ teachers teaching and shit. fuck that.
      now, if you’ll excuse me, i’m going to drop the needle on some marvin gaye, dim the lights, break out the KY, and get to some sweet, sweet, auto-didactin’.

  33. mimi

      I remember hearing an SF DJ say once a long time ago “I’ve never had a bad orgasm.”

  34. deadgod

      You did invent “marvin gaye” and “the KY” all by yourself, right? No fair spoil-sharin’ before auto-didactin’.

  35. Reynard Seifert

      that essay is the shit

  36. deadgod

      Indeed, why let that “Kenneth Anger” totalitarian spoon-feed you anything?? Why not stay true to your self-created reality by indulging exclusively in self-created work in a self-created medium you created yourself exclusively out of your own raw self?

  37. Reynard Seifert

      feel like i don’t like I-BE area too much, but i’m all about a family finds entertainment

      don’t like fando y lis much either, but sante sangre and holy mountain make me feel like a pair of gypsy twins are scrubbing either side of my brain with scented lathers

  38. mimi

      Ever since I first saw Pasta and Wendy M-PEGgy
      Dang
      Wish I had time to watch these right now, but later baby

  39. deadgod

      Hmm.

      mimi, had that DJ never indulged a spurned-and-clinging lover in one last go of break-up sex? Had that DJ never squeezed gonorrheal pus out of her or his urethra? (There’s two examples of honky-tonk blues.)

      They say that when a man is anally raped, he can ejaculate spontaneously, despite the pain, terror, and humiliation of the victimization, because of the stimulation of his prostate through the rectal wall. That, to me, sounds like a “bad orgasm”.

  40. Adam Robinson

      Why the David Lynch though?

  41. mimi

      Hmmmm, well then I guess that was one lucky DJ.

  42. jereme

      can i get some copies of these off you?

  43. Christopher Higgs

      To put it in conversation with the second part of Julio Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas, which is what they read for today — the crazy family section where they build a torture platform in the front yard and house a tiger and howl at the moon, etc.

      Wanted to show something that represented the domestic in an unfamiliar way. Thought first of showing a clip from THE ADAMS FAMILY, but although the characters are strange, the form is conventional — so then I considered showing a section from Harmony Korine’s GUMMO, but didn’t feel that kind of sinister this morning. TWIN PEAKS resists conventional storytelling in both form and content, although it is obviously more legible than those other selections.

      ps – I owe you an email, will get back soon, am waiting for my wife to say what is the what :)

  44. Greg

      I’d just like to point out a relatively decent DVD of Santa Sangre is available (I got mine @ Amazon marketplace) for those as desperate as I was to grab a copy.

      It’s about as good as the VHS I remember from back when, but that’s fine by me.

  45. Christopher Higgs

      Hey Jereme,

      The only ones I own are the Moulett and the Lynch, the others I screened from Ubu (click on the purple title and it’ll take you to them) — but I’d be glad to send you stuff…later in the semester I’ll be moving more into my personal library…I’ll do another post later, maybe come November, and if you see some stuff you’d like, I’d gladly ship copies out to you.

  46. RICH BAIOCCO

      Damn Christopher! I don’t even like school and your class seems awesome. Where do you teach? Does a little Bunuel do the trick in a pinch?

  47. Christopher Higgs

      pps – will certainly be screening something of Stephanie Barber’s later in the semester!

  48. deadgod

      It sounds like an exciting class, Christopher – though ‘strangeness’-for-the-sake-of-‘strangeness’ usually has pretty conventional outcomes.

      It seems (to me) like most people who have an epinion on the topic think that “experimental” is a useless – at best – categorization of fiction. I disagree; I think it’s worth preserving (in this case) even such an easily-challenged distinction as experimental as opposed to conventional.

      How do you present the category ‘experimental’ to your students?

  49. Adam Robinson

      Oh, that makes sense. I was comparing all the videos to each other, following the path out and thinking, well, I guess I can see the trail from Negativland to Lynch, but only sorta. Anyway, these are all great choices and it was fun to watch them, parts of them I mean. Experimental film, man, wtf.

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhV5RgcNJjE

  50. Christopher Higgs

      Hahah. Thanks, Rich. I teach at Florida State University. Good call on the Bunuel. Will be screening his & Dali’s short film UN CHIEN ANDALOU a week from today — which will be the last day we’re discussing Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas. Will probably do something by Jodorowsky on Wednesday of next week.

  51. Adam Robinson

      Oh cool. And email me. We’ll work it out.

  52. Ridge

      Sounds like an awesome class!

      “Rabbit’s Moon” by Anger might be good if you’re teaching something with repetition and variation.

  53. m. lowe

      Looks like a fun class. I’m teaching three sections of freshman comp this term and am a bit envious, tell the truth…

      Ever considered showing something by Alejandro Jodorowsky? Fando Y Lis (based on a play by Arrabal), perhaps?

      ~m

  54. Christopher Higgs

      Hi deadgod,

      It’s a complex question that takes the entire course to fully unpack. But from the beginning I set out a three-pronged theoretical framework:

      (i) a distinction between Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics: the latter (Hegel – conventional) is predicated on the clear transmission of communication from the artist to the audience, while the former (Kant – experimental) is predicated on the excitation of the free play of the imagination.

      (ii) Barthes’s distinction between the Readerly Text and the Writerly Text. Readerly = Conventional; Writerly = Experimental.

      (iii) Gertrude Stein’s essay “Composition as Explanation” which foregrounds the primacy of Form over Content.

      The important thing to establish right away is that experimental literature requires readers to rethink their expectations. One cannot approach an experimental text with the same expectations as one might approach a conventional text: looking for the same elements, with the same criteria, because experimental texts are fundamentally different: they proceed from different assumptions, work under different guiding principles, and seek different goals than do works of conventional literature.

      That’s a start.

  55. jereme

      prostate massaging does not happen often with a penis. come the fuck on.

  56. Christopher Higgs

      Hey m. lowe,

      Good call on Jodorowsky…I had planned to do either EL TOPO or HOLY MOUNTAIN next week — FANDO & LIS is great but it’s black and white and the colors burst so crazily in those other two, I’d be sad not to expose the students to it.

      Maybe you can find a way of sneaking some films into your comp classroom?

  57. Christopher Higgs

      Cool, I’ll check that out. Thanks, zusya! I remember seeing that video at the video store when I was a kid, but never rented it.

  58. jereme

      troll is like a dismal handjob.

      come the fuck on.

  59. darby

      i want to take this class please

  60. Christopher Higgs

      Thanks, Ridge. I have Anger’s “Invocation of My Demon Brother” on my list for later in the semester….I’m trying to do only one film per filmmaker in order to get the widest range…but someone like Anger has so many good ones, I might have to make an exception.

  61. jason preu

      now can we see the reading list that these buggers preface?

  62. Christopher Higgs

      Hahaha. Good point, Jason! Sorry, I forgot to include that…

      We are starting the semester in South America, so after reading the theoretical stuff, we’ve read:

      Jorge Luis Borges’s “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, Clarice Lispector’s “The Egg & The Chicken”, and the first two sections of Julio Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas (we will finish that book next week).

      After that we go to Europe and read Anaïs Nin “The Labyrinth” and Angela Carter “A Victorian Fable (with Glossary)” — then Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics.

      Then we come to America and read Kathy Acker “New York City in 1979”, Margaret Atwood “Happy Endings”, and Caitlin Newcomer “Only This Torn Room Forever Sleeps” — then John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse — then Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild.

      I’m missing some stuff, can’t think what though.

  63. jason preu

      now that’s what i call education. thanks for sharing.

  64. I. Fontana

      Christopher,

      I acknowledge the “problem” — if problem here is the right word. There seems to exist a window of receptivity to something other than mainstream entertainment and art, a window that may soon close. I have bought people books, calculating whether they might actually finish it, much less like it, and in order to keep this from being an open act of vanity (though it is, insofar as I am seeking to have an influence, however occult) I never ask if the volume has been read.

      Sometimes a few years later I have discovered that “Nog” or “Tender Buttons” or some J. G. Ballard or Jamaica Kincaid’s “At the Bottom of the River” or “Wise Blood” has been passed on from a model or musician or whomever to infect several members of a social subgroup to which I have only the most peripheral or infrequent relation. There have likewise been been cases when a book or two has led to further investigation, the results of which have been of some value to these reader(s).

      And of course this is a good thing. I don’t think too much about it, but it’s hard this as bad.

      I realize very well that very few are going to end up committing themselves to my austere standards of what can only be called bohemian life. On some level this is exactly the way I want it. When I discovered “Maldoror” at 17 or 18 in the stacks of a library a minor part of the initial thrill was the fact that it seemed like I was the only one who knew, I was the only member of some rare cult, perhaps more accurately a member of an invisible aristocracy.

      To take this very far is mere vanity (which is far more petit than pride). It’s healthy and natural to want to share what is good — even if this entity or artifact may not be useful to or please everyone. People have other concerns in life. I tend to resist evangelists and am not so far one myself.

      So I’m sorry if I seemed to intentionally, obtusely misunderstand your project. [The “end of fucking story” colloquialism in my mind is not rudeness but allusive to Irvine Welsh.] I guess I would say I hope the students are entertained. Because within whatever quality “entertains” them (to insist on this word) may be something which will stick and/or lead them further into material I hope is not too readily explained.

  65. I. Fontana

      And everyone should see “El Topo.” But Jodorowsky’s footnotes in the screenplay tend to dull the perpetual surprise.

  66. m. lowe

      Hi Christopher,

      Yeah, those are both great for sure. Have you seen Sante Sangre or any of his other films? I wish someone would do a proper DVD transfer and release them commercially…

      I’ll have to check out some of the films you’ve posted about. Many of them are new to me. The Trecartin looks especially intriguing.

      Take care,
      ~m

  67. I. Fontana

      I’m trying to imagine being spoonfed the Avant-Garde vs discovering things on my own. I don’t get it.

      Kenneth Anger, for instance. Arriving at him via Bobby Beausoleil vs A Safe Authority Figure Saying “This is what is Cool.” [In this situation a priori it is not.] [Because does this not this presentation of suchlike as Common Wisdom render it Safe. End of fucking story on that.]

      Of course I’m an autodidact, so from 14 on no one told me what to read.

      If you doubt you are an authority even outside Florida State and this blog, know that I hesitated to disagree with the Lovefest here anticipating possible bad reviews in 2011. I realize if I had attended more school I’d know better than to indulge in What the fuck.

  68. A. Alvarez

      In my experience, there is no such thing as a dismal handjob. A hand on your pecker that is not your own is a welcome hand indeed. I once smoked a sherman with a hypedramatical Jewish stand-up comedienne/actress who then proceeded to give me a vicious, bonedry handjob for the entire length of Alan Rudolph’s Choose Me. When she died of a drug overdose a couple of years ago I was invited to the funeral but did not attend.

  69. Christopher Higgs

      Hello, I. Fontana,

      I appreciate your comment and your disagreement. Valid points, all. I struggle with the fact that I’m a member of the academy yet my interests are in stuff the academy tends to dismiss. I know exactly what you mean about me presenting this material inside the academy and how that might nullify the power of it, i.e. make it “safe”. But the way I justify it to myself is that if I weren’t doing what I was doing, introducing students to this stuff, then there might not be anyone else doing it and thus students would be missing out on a whole other world of knowledge and art and experience,etc. Many students are not going to be as lucky as you were to find this stuff on their own.

      Isn’t it better for someone to find Anger, no matter how they might find him, rather than going through life without finding him?

  70. Christopher Higgs

      Sante Sangre is my favorite, or at least I think it is my favorite…I haven’t seen it for a long, long time…it’s never been put on dvd because of copyright stuff, right? I am with you, I wish that would happen. The cult of the armless women, the circus people, the knife thrower and the tattooed woman with the boa constrictor, the boy who bleeds out of his nose like the elephant who bleeds out of his trunk…oh man, that film has staid with me.

      Trecartin, yes! His stuff is MUST SEE. I’d recommend starting with I-BE Area.

  71. John Dammon

      i watched the first two videos linked in this post. i did not like the videos. if i was one of your students i would tell you that i don’t need ‘retarded’ videos to transition into your “unique learning environment”.

      that being said, i’m sure you sometimes show ‘good’ videos also. like Twin Peaks.

  72. Shane Anderson

      would be cool to see the full list of films and stories at the end of the semester.

      i wonder what would happen if you played some music as the went out. like if you played albert ayler as they were leaving. would smoke come out their ears?

      i wish i had teachers this cool. mostly mine just did really weird shit like unplug projectors while hanging from the projector, which i guess is pretty cool but the subject matter, presocratic philosophy, sure was a snoozer……….

  73. Pemulis

      What goals, principles, and assumptions are always present in conventional literature? What is conventional literature and how does one make it?

  74. justin

      fuckin’ teachers teaching and shit. fuck that.
      now, if you’ll excuse me, i’m going to drop the needle on some marvin gaye, dim the lights, break out the KY, and get to some sweet, sweet, auto-didactin’.

  75. mimi

      I remember hearing an SF DJ say once a long time ago “I’ve never had a bad orgasm.”

  76. deadgod

      You did invent “marvin gaye” and “the KY” all by yourself, right? No fair spoil-sharin’ before auto-didactin’.

  77. Reynard Seifert

      that essay is the shit

  78. deadgod

      Indeed, why let that “Kenneth Anger” totalitarian spoon-feed you anything?? Why not stay true to your self-created reality by indulging exclusively in self-created work in a self-created medium you created yourself exclusively out of your own raw self?

  79. Reynard Seifert

      feel like i don’t like I-BE area too much, but i’m all about a family finds entertainment

      don’t like fando y lis much either, but sante sangre and holy mountain make me feel like a pair of gypsy twins are scrubbing either side of my brain with scented lathers

  80. deadgod

      Hmm.

      mimi, had that DJ never indulged a spurned-and-clinging lover in one last go of break-up sex? Had that DJ never squeezed gonorrheal pus out of her or his urethra? (There’s two examples of honky-tonk blues.)

      They say that when a man is anally raped, he can ejaculate spontaneously, despite the pain, terror, and humiliation of the victimization, because of the stimulation of his prostate through the rectal wall. That, to me, sounds like a “bad orgasm”.

  81. mimi

      Hmmmm, well then I guess that was one lucky DJ.

  82. Tim Horvath

      Chris,

      When does the add/drop period end?

      I dig what you’re doing…I also like the sense I get that maybe the films and lit are decoupled, at times linked by thematic and/or aesthetic concerns, but at times more ritualistic, a way of marking passage into another space, altering breathing patterns. Like chanting in yoga before the downward dogs.

      Thanks for this idea.

  83. jereme

      prostate massaging does not happen often with a penis. come the fuck on.

  84. I. Fontana

      Christopher,

      I acknowledge the “problem” — if problem here is the right word. There seems to exist a window of receptivity to something other than mainstream entertainment and art, a window that may soon close. I have bought people books, calculating whether they might actually finish it, much less like it, and in order to keep this from being an open act of vanity (though it is, insofar as I am seeking to have an influence, however occult) I never ask if the volume has been read.

      Sometimes a few years later I have discovered that “Nog” or “Tender Buttons” or some J. G. Ballard or Jamaica Kincaid’s “At the Bottom of the River” or “Wise Blood” has been passed on from a model or musician or whomever to infect several members of a social subgroup to which I have only the most peripheral or infrequent relation. There have likewise been been cases when a book or two has led to further investigation, the results of which have been of some value to these reader(s).

      And of course this is a good thing. I don’t think too much about it, but it’s hard this as bad.

      I realize very well that very few are going to end up committing themselves to my austere standards of what can only be called bohemian life. On some level this is exactly the way I want it. When I discovered “Maldoror” at 17 or 18 in the stacks of a library a minor part of the initial thrill was the fact that it seemed like I was the only one who knew, I was the only member of some rare cult, perhaps more accurately a member of an invisible aristocracy.

      To take this very far is mere vanity (which is far more petit than pride). It’s healthy and natural to want to share what is good — even if this entity or artifact may not be useful to or please everyone. People have other concerns in life. I tend to resist evangelists and am not so far one myself.

      So I’m sorry if I seemed to intentionally, obtusely misunderstand your project. [The “end of fucking story” colloquialism in my mind is not rudeness but allusive to Irvine Welsh.] I guess I would say I hope the students are entertained. Because within whatever quality “entertains” them (to insist on this word) may be something which will stick and/or lead them further into material I hope is not too readily explained.

  85. I. Fontana

      And everyone should see “El Topo.” But Jodorowsky’s footnotes in the screenplay tend to dull the perpetual surprise.

  86. shaun

      come the fuck on indeed

  87. Steven Augustine

      “I remember hearing an SF DJ say once a long time ago “I’ve never had a bad orgasm.”

      Was that DJ Woody…?

  88. Tim Horvath

      Chris,

      When does the add/drop period end?

      I dig what you’re doing…I also like the sense I get that maybe the films and lit are decoupled, at times linked by thematic and/or aesthetic concerns, but at times more ritualistic, a way of marking passage into another space, altering breathing patterns. Like chanting in yoga before the downward dogs.

      Thanks for this idea.

  89. efferny jomes

      come the fuck on indeed

  90. damon

      best thing I’ve ever read on HTMLgiant right there.

  91. Steven Augustine

      “I remember hearing an SF DJ say once a long time ago “I’ve never had a bad orgasm.”

      Was that DJ Woody…?

  92. rk

      sounds like a great class. i’m envious of both the teacher and the students.

  93. Christopher Higgs

      Hello, Pemulis,

      That’s a big question.

      In short, conventional literature is the product of a long intellectual history that can be traced back to the model presented by Aristotle in his POETICS, which was reinforced by Horace in his “Ars Poetica”, recuperated by Hegel in his “Lectures on Fine Art”, further codified by Gustav Fretag with his famous pyramid or triangle, and rearticulated in the 20th century by John Gardner. This form of writing has come to inhabit the schoolbooks of every classroom in the United States, thereby establishing it as the dominate/conventional ideology.

      A few of the primary elements this model argues for:

      *the primacy of mimesis/verisimilitude
      *unity: of time, space, character, and structure (it was Aristotle who codified the notion that a story must have a beginning, middle, and end)
      *the need for literature to both delight and educate
      *the value of communication, over expression/provocation
      *sameness in form with variation in content
      *the value of creating and maintaining a “fictive dream” in which the reader may forget he/she is reading

      That’s a start.

  94. damon

      best thing I’ve ever read on HTMLgiant right there.

  95. Christopher Higgs

      Hey Tim,

      The window has passed to add/drop…those who are stuck with me are stuck with me at this point :)

      Yes to your sense that sometimes the films and lit are decoupled. I try sometimes to find explicit connections, but more times than not the connections are implicit or non-existent yet still resonant. Yes to the idea of the ritualistic, marking passage — defining/creating new boundaries — establishing a bubble inside academia in which we can explore this wildness. And always trying to model the rhizome!

  96. Christopher Higgs

      Wish you were here in Florida, Darby. We’d be glad to have you in class.

  97. Christopher Higgs

      Thanks, Shane,

      I have used music before in previous classes, but never thought to use it at the end as a way of ushering us out of the space — this is a GENIUS idea! I am stealing it and using it from now on — excellent! Thank you!

      And yes, I plan to share the full list at the end of the course.

  98. Christopher Higgs

      Thanks for this tip, Greg. I didn’t know it was available on dvd, but will now go hunting for it.

  99. Christopher Higgs

      Thanks, Robert!

  100. Christopher Higgs

      Hey Reynard,

      I think I’m particular to I-BE AREA because it was my first encounter with his stuff. A Family Finds Entertainment is also amazing — truth be told, I love everything he does. There’s something about his particular kind of insanity that gives me great pleasure. I watch it and feel an emotional and intellectual connection as though he and I are members of the same tribe.

  101. Shane Anderson

      glad to be of service.

      if you drop some xenakis on those kids, you let me know.

  102. A. Alvarez

      Me too, Damon. Me too.

  103. rk

      sounds like a great class. i’m envious of both the teacher and the students.

  104. Christopher Higgs

      Hello, Pemulis,

      That’s a big question.

      In short, conventional literature is the product of a long intellectual history that can be traced back to the model presented by Aristotle in his POETICS, which was reinforced by Horace in his “Ars Poetica”, recuperated by Hegel in his “Lectures on Fine Art”, further codified by Gustav Fretag with his famous pyramid or triangle, and rearticulated in the 20th century by John Gardner. This form of writing has come to inhabit the schoolbooks of every classroom in the United States, thereby establishing it as the dominate/conventional ideology.

      A few of the primary elements this model argues for:

      *the primacy of mimesis/verisimilitude
      *unity: of time, space, character, and structure (it was Aristotle who codified the notion that a story must have a beginning, middle, and end)
      *the need for literature to both delight and educate
      *the value of communication, over expression/provocation
      *sameness in form with variation in content
      *the value of creating and maintaining a “fictive dream” in which the reader may forget he/she is reading

      That’s a start.

  105. Pemulis

      @Christopher Higgs:

      Damn, Christopher Higgs, I think you scored big with that answer! Thanks. I haven’t read the Hegel and the Freytag; think now I’ll have to. (Also looking forward to the syllabus).

      The difficulty I have is that we’re usually expected to think of these things in binary terms (as cliched as that may sound)… very problematic, when say, the new peeps like David Foster Wallace (or even David Mitchell, maybe, I don’t know) seem to fulfill the criteria for both categories.

  106. Christopher Higgs

      Hey Tim,

      The window has passed to add/drop…those who are stuck with me are stuck with me at this point :)

      Yes to your sense that sometimes the films and lit are decoupled. I try sometimes to find explicit connections, but more times than not the connections are implicit or non-existent yet still resonant. Yes to the idea of the ritualistic, marking passage — defining/creating new boundaries — establishing a bubble inside academia in which we can explore this wildness. And always trying to model the rhizome!

  107. Christopher Higgs

      Wish you were here in Florida, Darby. We’d be glad to have you in class.

  108. Christopher Higgs

      Thanks, Shane,

      I have used music before in previous classes, but never thought to use it at the end as a way of ushering us out of the space — this is a GENIUS idea! I am stealing it and using it from now on — excellent! Thank you!

      And yes, I plan to share the full list at the end of the course.

  109. Christopher Higgs

      Thanks for this tip, Greg. I didn’t know it was available on dvd, but will now go hunting for it.

  110. Christopher Higgs

      Thanks, Robert!

  111. Christopher Higgs

      Hey Reynard,

      I think I’m particular to I-BE AREA because it was my first encounter with his stuff. A Family Finds Entertainment is also amazing — truth be told, I love everything he does. There’s something about his particular kind of insanity that gives me great pleasure. I watch it and feel an emotional and intellectual connection as though he and I are members of the same tribe.

  112. mimi

      “The teacher’s task is not to implant facts but to place the subject to be learned in front of the learner and, through sympathy, emotion, imagination and patience, to awaken in the learner the restless drive for answers and insights which enlarge the personal life and give it meaning.”
      Nathan M. Pusey

      Nathan Marsh Pusey (4 April 1907-14 November 2001) was a prominent American educator. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and completed his education at Harvard (B.A., 1928, M.A., 1932, Ph.D., 1937), where he studied first English literature and then ancient history. He taught at Riverdale Country School, Lawrence College, Scripps College, and Wesleyan University. He served as president of Lawrence College (1944-1953), and later as the 24th president of Harvard University (1953-1971)

  113. Shane Anderson

      glad to be of service.

      if you drop some xenakis on those kids, you let me know.

  114. deadgod

      Nicely-chosen quotation, mimi – ‘not to impose, but rather to enable discovery’.

      I’d only wonder whether the ‘awakening’ that a good teacher catalyzes or inspires or somehow causes can be entirely free of direction, of government. Even simply in choosing the coursework, the teacher is ‘implanting facts’. I think teaching’s a matter, rather than of ‘either implanting or awakening’, of a judicious and affectionate mixture of sowing and making-growth-possible. (Judicious and affectionate in the sense of gauging the needs of each student’s self-propulsion – in classrooms where teachers interact with individual students – .)

  115. Steven Augustine

      Start your own blog, Mimi, and we’ll Paypal good money to comment on it

  116. A. Alvarez

      Me too, Damon. Me too.

  117. Pemulis

      Here’s some Allan Bloom:

      “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”

      BOOM!

      Old school.

  118. mts

      Start your own blog, mimi, and Steven will pay good money to comment on it

  119. mimi
  120. mts

      Mimi, pay me good money with paypal and I will read your boring links.

  121. Steven Augustine

      Mimi-

      I just zipped through the mimilog and was pleased to discover some poetry of closely-observant intelligence and aesthetic clarity near the middle of the August posts (the pictures are okay but not perverse enough to grab me) and I will dig and lurk more tomorrow (am enforcing today’s rule to get to bed before 3am). Most of the poetry I’ve read this past year has been utter shit (even when not entirely retarded, the stuff is too cluttered or twee or under-worked to exert any force) so finding not-utter-shit is always great!

  122. mts

      I think I hear wedding bells!

  123. Steven Augustine

      Nah, I’m married to a fox who resembles the Foreign Film heroines of my teenage dreams. But I appreciate not-shitty writing wherever it rears its sleek rare head, so my praise of those poems was sincere.

  124. mts

      Ok Steve!

  125. Steven Augustine

      Here’s my wife making an appearance in a Soap Opera (go to the one-minute mark)…

  126. Pemulis

      @Christopher Higgs:

      Damn, Christopher Higgs, I think you scored big with that answer! Thanks. I haven’t read the Hegel and the Freytag; think now I’ll have to. (Also looking forward to the syllabus).

      The difficulty I have is that we’re usually expected to think of these things in binary terms (as cliched as that may sound)… very problematic, when say, the new peeps like David Foster Wallace (or even David Mitchell, maybe, I don’t know) seem to fulfill the criteria for both categories.

  127. mimi

      I too am happily married. My husband is a goofy, affectionate puppy; also a gainfully-employed brainiac who gourmet-cooks my dinners! To each his own.

      and Thanks, Steve-er-roooooo!

      although I don’t consider anything I’ve written to actually be poetry –
      just musings –
      it is, after all, ‘just a blog’
      and tame rather than perverse, oh well

  128. Steven Augustine

      Oh I disagree, Mrs Mimi! THIS is a pome:

      *************

      i’ve lost an arm i’ve lost a leg i’ve lost a few body parts i’ve lost an eye but i can still feel your hand across my back i can feel my hair strewn on the pillow it is dirty i can feel parts i have all my essential organs my heart my lungs my brain my stomach my liver my gut

      but that’s not me

      i have my toenails cleaned i wash my hair i wash my face i suck my thumb i close my eyes

      i’m getting closer to me

      my face is on your skin

      i feel the blanket on my bare skin

      i am behind in words

      so behind

      i am trying hard to shed judgement like an old dry skin

      i like air cold

      it’s so hot your clothes stick to my skin and i fall asleep

      i wake up covered in sleep wrinkles deep, sweaty, my hair is dirty

      you are pure and light and you never smell and i notice every day you stand up taller and taller i am so proud

      i know a man who is covered with spots

      i know a lady who lives alone and has spent thousands of dollars to reupholster her body and she wants to take me to see a movie but i don’t want to go she wants to examine me ‘i’d like to know how the spiritual experiences you’ve had affect your perceptions of what has happened’ but i don’t want to tell her

      too much time has passed

      i know a lady who wants to sit with me i don’t want to sit with her she wants to kiss me on the lips i don’t want her to kiss me on my lips she thinks it is okay it is not okay she wants to kiss my husband on the lips he does not want her to kiss him on his lips it is not okay she needs to find some other outlet i am not her outlet i am not her friend she is afraid to lose me i am not available i am not to be had

      i build secrets in a cave to define me to fortify me to make myself more than what anyone can take of me i will not let myself be lost i will not let myself be taken everything taken from me is slough is molt is dry it crumbles like dry earth you can try you can beg you can ask you can try to seduce you can tempt you can cajole but your hands will be empty when you are gone from me

      *********

      http://williamblakethoughtcollision.blogspot.com/2010/08/ive-lost-arm-ive-lost-leg-ive-lost-few.html

  129. mimi

      “The teacher’s task is not to implant facts but to place the subject to be learned in front of the learner and, through sympathy, emotion, imagination and patience, to awaken in the learner the restless drive for answers and insights which enlarge the personal life and give it meaning.”
      Nathan M. Pusey

      Nathan Marsh Pusey (4 April 1907-14 November 2001) was a prominent American educator. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and completed his education at Harvard (B.A., 1928, M.A., 1932, Ph.D., 1937), where he studied first English literature and then ancient history. He taught at Riverdale Country School, Lawrence College, Scripps College, and Wesleyan University. He served as president of Lawrence College (1944-1953), and later as the 24th president of Harvard University (1953-1971)

  130. Steven Augustine
  131. deadgod

      Nicely-chosen quotation, mimi – ‘not to impose, but rather to enable discovery’.

      I’d only wonder whether the ‘awakening’ that a good teacher catalyzes or inspires or somehow causes can be entirely free of direction, of government. Even simply in choosing the coursework, the teacher is ‘implanting facts’. I think teaching’s a matter, rather than of ‘either implanting or awakening’, of a judicious and affectionate mixture of sowing and making-growth-possible. (Judicious and affectionate in the sense of gauging the needs of each student’s self-propulsion – in classrooms where teachers interact with individual students – .)

  132. Steven Augustine

      Start your own blog, Mimi, and we’ll Paypal good money to comment on it

  133. Pemulis

      Here’s some Allan Bloom:

      “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”

      BOOM!

      Old school.

  134. mts

      Start your own blog, mimi, and Steven will pay good money to comment on it

  135. mimi
  136. mts

      Mimi, pay me good money with paypal and I will read your boring links.

  137. Steven Augustine

      Mimi-

      I just zipped through the mimilog and was pleased to discover some poetry of closely-observant intelligence and aesthetic clarity near the middle of the August posts (the pictures are okay but not perverse enough to grab me) and I will dig and lurk more tomorrow (am enforcing today’s rule to get to bed before 3am). Most of the poetry I’ve read this past year has been utter shit (even when not entirely retarded, the stuff is too cluttered or twee or under-worked to exert any force) so finding not-utter-shit is always great!

  138. mts

      I think I hear wedding bells!

  139. Steven Augustine

      Nah, I’m married to a fox who resembles the Foreign Film heroines of my teenage dreams. But I appreciate not-shitty writing wherever it rears its sleek rare head, so my praise of those poems was sincere.

  140. mts

      Ok Steve!

  141. Steven Augustine

      Here’s my wife making an appearance in a Soap Opera (go to the one-minute mark)…

  142. mimi

      I too am happily married. My husband is a goofy, affectionate puppy; also a gainfully-employed brainiac who gourmet-cooks my dinners! To each his own.

      and Thanks, Steve-er-roooooo!

      although I don’t consider anything I’ve written to actually be poetry –
      just musings –
      it is, after all, ‘just a blog’
      and tame rather than perverse, oh well

  143. Steven Augustine

      Oh I disagree, Mrs Mimi! THIS is a pome:

      *************

      i’ve lost an arm i’ve lost a leg i’ve lost a few body parts i’ve lost an eye but i can still feel your hand across my back i can feel my hair strewn on the pillow it is dirty i can feel parts i have all my essential organs my heart my lungs my brain my stomach my liver my gut

      but that’s not me

      i have my toenails cleaned i wash my hair i wash my face i suck my thumb i close my eyes

      i’m getting closer to me

      my face is on your skin

      i feel the blanket on my bare skin

      i am behind in words

      so behind

      i am trying hard to shed judgement like an old dry skin

      i like air cold

      it’s so hot your clothes stick to my skin and i fall asleep

      i wake up covered in sleep wrinkles deep, sweaty, my hair is dirty

      you are pure and light and you never smell and i notice every day you stand up taller and taller i am so proud

      i know a man who is covered with spots

      i know a lady who lives alone and has spent thousands of dollars to reupholster her body and she wants to take me to see a movie but i don’t want to go she wants to examine me ‘i’d like to know how the spiritual experiences you’ve had affect your perceptions of what has happened’ but i don’t want to tell her

      too much time has passed

      i know a lady who wants to sit with me i don’t want to sit with her she wants to kiss me on the lips i don’t want her to kiss me on my lips she thinks it is okay it is not okay she wants to kiss my husband on the lips he does not want her to kiss him on his lips it is not okay she needs to find some other outlet i am not her outlet i am not her friend she is afraid to lose me i am not available i am not to be had

      i build secrets in a cave to define me to fortify me to make myself more than what anyone can take of me i will not let myself be lost i will not let myself be taken everything taken from me is slough is molt is dry it crumbles like dry earth you can try you can beg you can ask you can try to seduce you can tempt you can cajole but your hands will be empty when you are gone from me

      *********

      http://williamblakethoughtcollision.blogspot.com/2010/08/ive-lost-arm-ive-lost-leg-ive-lost-few.html

  144. Steven Augustine
  145. blahblahblah

      Hey thanks for sharing the reading list — this looks like a great class, and like everyone else here, wish I were in it.

  146. blahblahblah

      Hey thanks for sharing the reading list — this looks like a great class, and like everyone else here, wish I were in it.

  147. Linus

      Are there any decent commentaries on Hegel’s Aesthetics? It seems the actual lectures run to over 1000 pages. . .

  148. Christopher Higgs

      Hi Linus,

      Here is a link to Hegel’s Aesthetics:

      http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/index.htm

      For a more condensed/abridged version, the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory has a few key passages — although one would not want to rely on those excerpts for a clear understanding of his overall approach to aesthetics b/c it’s too truncated — but it will introduce you to his ideas about the three ages/movements of art, etc.

  149. Linus

      Are there any decent commentaries on Hegel’s Aesthetics? It seems the actual lectures run to over 1000 pages. . .

  150. Christopher Higgs

      Hi Linus,

      Here is a link to Hegel’s Aesthetics:

      http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/index.htm

      For a more condensed/abridged version, the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory has a few key passages — although one would not want to rely on those excerpts for a clear understanding of his overall approach to aesthetics b/c it’s too truncated — but it will introduce you to his ideas about the three ages/movements of art, etc.

  151. Andrew Zornoza
  152. Andrew Zornoza
  153. jennyschlief

      love ryan trecartin. saw his work over 6 years ago and was grossed out and excited at the same time – brain vomit.

  154. jackie wang

      you teach at FSU? that’s funny, i almost went there. they offered me like $12,000 on top of free tuition and financial aid, but i went to a little liberal arts school in sarasota instead. you could have been my professor!