The protracted last few weeks have been pinpointed by gradually diminishing sets of binaries wrought with tension, spectacle and amazing footwork. Of course, for the less than fanatic, it may be easy to toss it all off to them and let them deal with their own battles. It’s not on our turf, where the West’s enormous chatter of the postcolonial “have not planted roots in the deep soil of Chinese culture (没有在中国文化的深厚土壤中扎下根).” But Brother GAO still loves football, and he broadcasts every game he can, live from his home simultaneous to his daily stereo sounds of Teresa TENG at Xiaojingchang number 6. Chinese football may not show as much signs of promise as its art world, yet both are intertwined with “an unprecedentedly complex cultural atmosphere flooded with paradoxes (一个空前复杂、充斥着悖论的文化境遇)” and conflict. Binaries, perhaps? Is it the East vs. West question that critics such as 许江 XU Jiang and 高士明 GAO Shiming are tired of, or simply the West? Who wears the jersey of the “monotonous cultural other (一个单调的文化他者)”?
Tonight is an exception of the third option. Old man ZHANG says it’s too late to party, but our longitude outside of prime time means that the spectacle must find other subjectivities. The third place is runner up in the exceptional case, when winners are unable to fulfill their duties. To play this role is a flailing response to the call of face, unavoidable obligation whether anybody cares or not. Spectacle unseen, it can only be personal. QU says that desire is the necessary first step that he can admire due to his own lack, but inefficacy mated with desire is a flailing third place, one can do no other.
Documentation is a justification for the things that do not appear, or do not appear to be so. We may enter the space of the event, but what takes place? Is this personal or public (her questions explode artistic catharsis as a question of an indifferent socius)? I watched the third place game of the World Cup alone in the street in the middle of the night as a sort of subjective gesture of out-of-placeness. What Pelin TAN calls this “un-relation to space” is still a question of relation, however, albeit one with increasing suspicion of its rupture. “…what needs to be accomplished can fail. Micropolitics, affective politics, seeks the degrees of openness of any situation, in hopes of priming an alter-accomplishment.” (Brian Massumi)
Is the third place an alter-accomplishment? Is being out of context a monotonous cultural alterity? Are you really happy about that?
——
时间 posted on: 11 July 2010 | 
发布者 author: 
分类 filed under:
July 14th, 2010 - 07:51
context is not only a spatiotemporal phenomenon, but a (matrixial) psychic phenomenon as well. context suggests an increasing tendency towards harmonized (and dare we say synchronized?) co-resonance. it seems to me that context itself constitutes the stasis of monotony and that the coming-into resonance of and through alterity is what creates the openness.
how does third place, the “runner up in the exceptional case,” change the relation between numbers one and two (“the best winners”)? the ontogenesis of the third is an alter-accomplishment in its own right, no? how do we understand the third in terms of multitude and the very being-in-language of which virno, agamben and nancy speak? how does the third come into resonance of and through alterity? is openness created?
or am i flailing?
July 14th, 2010 - 07:56
there was a public outdoor screening on a restaurant wall a few nights ago at the end of the street where i live: bangladesh defeats england in historic cricket victory. it was not projected through the partition, but rather reflected upon the building’s facade. closer, yet further away.
context is not only a spatiotemporal phenomenon, but a (matrixial) psychic phenomenon as well. context suggests an increasing tendency towards harmonized (and dare we say synchronized?) co-resonance. it seems to me that context itself constitutes the stasis of monotony and that the coming-into resonance of and through alterity is what creates the openness.
how does third place, the “runner up in the exceptional case,” change the relation between numbers one and two (“the best winners”)? the ontogenesis of the third is an alter-accomplishment in its own right, no? how do we understand the third in terms of multitude and the very being-in-language of which virno, agamben and nancy speak? how does the third come into resonance of and through alterity? is openness created?
or am i flailing?
July 15th, 2010 - 01:26
a vocal comment made today in regards to this post pointed out that i may be mixing up this concept of thirds, for the third option, in the vitanzian sense (as i understand), is still somewhere further than this third place in the sporting sense, which is still highly embedded in the competitive hierarchy, and perhaps simply arbitrary to a naming of the fourth place position, or the tenth, depending upon how far down the line naming is publicly announced.
i think this is correct, but somehow i was probably leaning myself moreso to this questioning of the subjectivity of the thirds, especially when third place in World Cup fashion is granted also the spectacle of its own game (not simply a reductive naming). The visual attention that is warranted by such a match somehow felt like a strong contrast to the harsh personal subjectivity that must be felt by players (i wonder)—-the Germans did not look so happy as they shook hands down the line to greet their win. This comes across to me as a highly affective non-resonance of subjectivity and space, something that I was trying to think about as i stood out there sleepily by myself.
the question continues with the proposition that i could or should embrace this alter-resonance of my own subjectivity. here is the hutong, and where is everyone else? what is applicability but a possibly overbearing slapping on of content? or would we rather the openness of a lack of content?
July 16th, 2010 - 14:45
interesting and coincidentally am doing quite some work around it’s declinations, post-capitalist understanding, failure, neverending suspended-ness.
Xijing – one of the reason why the cultural diversity v/s difference interests me – represents to me the surpassing of the time-worn oppositions that Third Space as post-colonial remedy keeps on relegating into the unresolved territory of negotiations – beyond that? I like better Moufee’s idea of contamination, still, struggle and resistance are often too dominant in that picture too, linguistic and non.
Have you noticed this grand return to early century heritage of ridicule, buffoonery (see burlesque making a comeback everywhere!, dada, etc)?
Intriguing
See you next week!
B
July 17th, 2010 - 22:20
the comment about third place on the hierarchy is a fair one, but i would argue that the position is *more* correct if we only understand the hierarchy of the tournament as a fixed architecture that is not mutable in any way.
but can we not understand a relational third that is somewhere between the fixed tournament bracket and the vitanzan third you are referring to? a third of a third? can we understand the fixed architectural form as a topological transformation, which locates moments of fixity in the striations of the tournament bracket and the folds of vitanza?
bi: i rather like third spaces and contaminations as agents of change. the problem in my opinion, isn’t if one or the other “works” or not, it is the continual creation, inventory and replenishment of abstract machines that is the problem, as it necessitates we understand which one to deploy in a particular context.
third spaces? contaminations? ridicule (paolo virno refers to the “joke”)? let’s keep building others……..