Part of the Unbound Libraries Documentation
Urgent publishing. That which is immediate, error-laden, published FEVERISHLY, without peer review, as gray literature, meant to be circulated internally within institutions/communities yet EXITING (and nesting within) them through organizational fissures, a form of extra-curricular distribution (or exhalation) that varnishes what is published with a clandestine sheen, increasing the already-urgency of what was released under duress, in a state of undress, for the sake of entering a pressing conversation that couldn’t and shouldn’t abide by institutional timings of legitimate knowledge production as, if it did, it would be talk (or text) dead upon arrival, outdated before it ever dropped. A sentence that is urgent can be short. Telegrammy. A meme. A tweet. A hasty note. A one-pager, as in those trafficked by NGOs when urgently fundraising. A recipe. Also, it can run on enthusiastically unencumbered by the unoxygenated limits of one English, amplified instead by a heady choir of them (Englishes). A white paper. A situationer. A manifesto. A cookbook. A raw transcription.
THE BODY PUBLIC #3 Spine
The Secretarial Spine
Audio excerpt
WORKSESSION: Unbound Libraries
Research
Performance
Multiple Lectures
Organized by Constant
Active Subcell
Andrea González Garrán
Clara Balaguer
Czar Kristoff
Dante Carlos
Jessica Gysel
Kristian Henson
Loraine Furter
Maria Mazzanti
Matthew Stadler
Mia Melvær
Sami Hammana
THE WEEK IN SUMMARY
Unbound Libraries Worksession (May 31–June 5, 2020)
TBD
The Secretarial Spine
FIRST CONVERSATION
PRELIMINARY
WITH CONSTANT
BEFORE THE WORKSESSION
Preliminary Conversations (TBD)
long distance + removed from context & landscape where she was publishing
position of recent migrant
shift the dinamycs of the collectivity, depending where components of the collective are situated..
‘Publishing as bloodletting’
how a book object reflects parts of a (human? animal?) body
the body public, published body
circulation between body-book parts. as ideas circulate in collectives
what happens when these ideas are synthetized in ‘quote/unquote’ academic format
how to pay homage to all people that participate in conversation
piercing the membrane of the institution
how to redistribute abundance
manage the privilege you have as a way to undermine it
Overseas Foreign Workers, 11% of the Philippine population, OFW
in saudi arabia, europe, etc. set in a situation of bureaucracy+banking quite complex..
wiring money back home through alternative banking structure
this accounts for 9.3% of the GDP of the Philippines
the one that can get the visa becomes the vessel of abundance that can flow back to the family.. some sort of kinship responsibility
kinship, balangay, a boat with which you traveled precolonially with your kinship cell
not necessarily all blood family
now translated to barangay, borough
neighbors as kin
collective authorship.. how does work when physical proximity is not possible?
I’m closer to the microphone, have to adjust my volume
different form of presenting, writing, publishing, circulating it
tactic of transcription, of conversations with other collaborators, using those voices in writing and make specific that they belong to others
different roles
visibility & audibility: you can turn individual voices into a collective voice without flattening them
veil identities if necessary
record individual voices, read them back to a group, and understanding it as collective writing.
collective dictation, automatic dictation
removes many difficulties of collective writing (the ego)
.. transcription seems a less violent method
exchanges of generosity and solidarity
non-friend based networks is case to case ( maybe they become friendships in the process :) )
pain that comes from collective authorship for people of colour women, you’re invisible/not aknowlegded
unless there could be a repercussion to your writing
signing with pseudonym, anonymous authorship
solution is not always the collective names. can also become a way to avoid accountability..
case-to-case solutions, what does signature mean in this particular case?
[pause]
FIRST WRITING ABOUT SPINELESSNESS, AFTER SPEAKING WITH BAL Brussels Almanack Lesbian (https://www.balbrussels.be/)
(This conversation is a monologue)
Questions: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibrary_questions
unbound can exist as a state, not as an action or behavior
to have this space, unbound by rules of engagement of physical interaction
where multiple layers can exist without a spine that binds
do you have any of those command line tools? it's what i was thinking of doing this week
yeahIn order to free the archive or library or publication from its restrictive bodily limitations, one must understand the limbs, organs, system, or senses that make up its entirety. And understand what happens when one limb or organ or system or sense disappears. The other(s) work(s) harder. DANTE SAYS: Books should work harder, I like it when books make me sweat. When the book has no spine, there is increased mobility in the innards, the guts work harder. When the system has no mandatory command flow, no closed menu options except for an initial suggestion of navigation, a map of cardinal points that may be ignored… how do the other systems work harder/better? Because they must, and they do. What other senses/systems/limbs are discovered when a supposedly fundamental body part is lost?
The parts of the body public I am considering: The face (cara, cover). Circulation. Guts. Spine. Foot(notes, -ers, pie de página). There are others, but for now these are the parts I have been considering. It’s maybe been a year or two. Perhaps longer if you count the time I was thinking just about circulation, in humourous and architectural and urbanist terms. And I’m not entirely sure if it’s “correct” to fleshify this question. Flesh is, nonetheless, my response to this haptic crisis.
[pause]
To be unbound, spineless. The index or the table of contents is merely an initial formation, a suggested navigation. It is not a prescriptive order with a punitive end. “You must, or else.” The order is left in the hands of the reader or visitor or owner. Mess, restructuring, disrespect to the initial intention. How can the author, collator, orderer let go of the need to insist upon a structure, despite offering it for those who need initial points for triangulation? The writer must conceive of a textual object without a spine.
To be the spine is to fulfill secretarial functions. To connect and hold. To be small articles, pronouns and connectors in a sentence clause (the a and but I you etc.), often endlessly. The nouns and the verbs, they are the large bones that get credit for the work (or enjoy the leisure of the play) that without vertebrae would be impossible. To file, to send messages to all those involved, to collate information in a single place. To do the diligence that is so often framed as menial. How to be of spinal value and come to terms (or not) with invisibility, with dwelling in the substrate, beneath the membrane? How to make peace with the responsibility of the spinal function, that of holding limbs and organs, that of being supple, that of holding the head that droops? Beyond this holding, the spine is an extension of the executive head, indivisible from it, yet perceived as secondary. If the head executes, the spine coordinates and organizes. The spine is an administrative function. The spine is the secretary, sending information throughout the body public. If the secretary is severed, unassisted mobility is impossible, not just for the executive but for the whole system. The mind is trapped within a body that doesn’t listen. Liberated as well, but only if an extra-spinal system of mobility is afforded.
Mission for the day night tomorrow if possible: Reprint 5 copies of the Unbound Libraries reader and redistribute them to 5 neighbors. Recirculate.
[pause]
CONVERSATION WITH MATTHEW STADLER
MY NEIGHBOR
WHO LIVES IN THE HOUSE I USED TO LIVE IN
Neighbor/Writer/Publisher Conversation
in 2009 when they started or when i first saw etherpad
it turned me on without an off siwtch
you could have a space of textual composition that was going overboard
abundance
pouring out
series of games writing games
to be on the same page
through sheer party energy, make the textual space suddenly be a book
just: there’s etherpad at 6 and if enough ppl are in there it’s so exciting
totally ansxiety producing to everyone you ever told about it
anyway
i love structured writing games no end to discoveries and fun and shifting everything can change
yeah
event i mentioned was probably forty of fifty people in 3 diffrent cities
beirut ams and portland doing it at once
in portland they printed it and bound it as a book
all the anxiety kicked it
it wasnt a book
it was crazy writing
is it edited
ISBN number was given, in the states it’s just an administrative process and function
the partty part was awesome and then the fact of it being called a boook
it didn’t survive
it was a problem
an ugly
did u print out the scroll
transferred it into in desgin laid it out and it was basically a5 half letter
i was so excited but it was then the site of great anxiety and great criticism
and i don’t mean people were mad
it’s arrival was problematic
parallel kind of anxiety
the claim made by a spine is similar to the claim an institution wants to make:
to set an order
[pause]
i remember that amidst your books there are fragile and unique printed things that, in fact, the wall of spines that one would imagine it’s not the case there is the unbound
it’s not the unbound, it’s the softly bound
just in the usage there are things which are in a fixed order other things that fall apart or are meant to fall apart the distinction i was trying to make is softly bound
what felt the most anchoring and precious as it arrived when my library came to me from overseas has been the softly bound fragile unique things that look like a slip of paper an envelope of cards object remembering that the weight and achoring isnt from the heavy leather spines of the lawyers office its from the delicate little thigngs that have delicate histories tied with
the softly bound
its a beautiful system
[pause]
CONVERSATION WITH BAL (Brussels Almanack Lesbian)
who is witnessing this?
think about persons we know
who could like
but maybe are less present
instead of talking about more abstract
i think the who is it for
when we talked earlier
i was only thinking about it as a question for building a system that caters to someone
i’ve separated it from the content which is not a good idea
there is a non-system
absolutely
in terms of collection, who should it be/is it for?
for me, it is very much what i hold dear
in the past bec of the protocol and how it was displayed
it was very
there’s this text about reparative vs paranoid reading
it was landing on the reparative side
(am hoooked on this text)
how do u search for knowledge, what r u looking for
material about vs material from
encouragement, wish to show under-represented groups
a place and a space in the city
a physical volume to the material
it’s for people who need to be reassured that they have a space in the public sphere of brussels
can we elaborate on the idea of volume?
this idea of volume was smth that came up a lot in the preparation for this workshop
maybe it’s
no it’s great
the thing of the secretary
volume in terms of size
at a certain scale you cannot ignore it anymore
act of opening it up
even harder to ignore
REDACTED you are using volumes in a publication sense
sound and material not only yeah
i was indeed curious when REDACTED you talked about redistribution of volume, credits, capital, and access
what u were meaning in terms of volume
volume coming close to that, how things are archived,
the boxes and all the material dimensions of an archive as it was fought and materialized at some point
maybe we can question that
how to make those materials alive
or smth like that
also smth literal volume of material that needs to be formatted acertain way to fit somewhere
crossover of volume just being LOUD as well
flattening
loss of nuance
materiality
you cannot touch the original
[pause]
CONVERSATION WITH HWGL (Hardworking Goodlooking)
CZAR DANTE KRISTIAN CLARA
MISS THEM
HWGL Interview/Conversation: NEXT QUESTION https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/HWGLInterview
spine carries information to other parts of the body
experience action
conversation will be involuntary responding to another person’s words instead of our own words
balance between a controlled and uncontrolled situation
[pause]
the spine is a cataloguing thing, if there is no info on the spine it comes on, it’s an anti-library
not anti maybe but
sequencing
non sequencing
hierarchy
it’s the idea of flattened hierarchy
once it’s shuffled back together the sequence can exist in an infinite iteration
are you thinking about waste?
poop
GIGO - garbage in garbage out
heard it from a student of chris lee’s the other day
the quality of the input determines that of the output
but in a way that’s exactly the opposite of what we do in HWGL
we refuse to acknowledge extramodernism as garbage
we metabolize the garbage
we alchemize it
[pause]
poop is gold
[parating nasa ilalim ng lupa ang ginto
gold lies always beneath the dirt]
poop
[was it eva who mentioned compost? or femke?]
book as unit of knowledge [meme?] everything that’s contained within that container
the body
what if you plugged up your butthole
jejejejejeejejejejejej
it’s what a book is, plugged up
no way for information to be revived and processed and refreshed
older books that still contain racist eugenic ideas
if there was a system in place that allowed the format of the book to evolve and change as we know more things
[the margins… marginlalia, not a typo]
would be in a world with less fucked up shit from the past
[pause]
it’s 5 o’clock…
[beat]
8 minutes and 46 seconds…
[longer pause]
REVISION
when you plug urself up you poison urself
is there a way, does that happen in some books?
closed argument and system that deteriorates
to drown urself out, ur own garbage that u wrote [and now disagree with
the only way is to publish more, push yourself way down in the feed, game the search hits with a pseudonym]
revisit
if we have time
[pause]
The answer to this interview question is written collaboratively. Each person writes a single word, in rotating order, until the sentence is completed. The question is from an upcoming research project/publication/exhibition about independent publishing in Asia, organized by The Book Society / mediabus, a bookshop and publishing house in Seoul.
Q: You produce a very small number of books. I am curious about your thoughts on the number of productions and distributions.
A: ORDER IN DISTANCE FROM MANILA: Czar, , DANTE, Kristian
Kinship OF quantity balance GLUT under constellations INDIVIDUAL bits. Small figurines DELIGHT in caves, UNCOMPROMISED arrangements. Becoming SNACKING creatures magnifies POETIC flows and FERAL bellows. Occupying REAL-ESTATE accumulations, body EXCESS methodologies, pilgrimage RELICS, unholy dimensions, .
[END, NEXT QUESTION]
ALONE TOGETHER
WITH MARIA AND ANDREA MOSTLY
Failed Choreography of Migratory Conversation
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/alonetogether
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/publishingasbloodletting
María Mazzanti Well Andrea has done 10 radio shows about vampires in the last 2 months
2oo Bee Determined tell me more!
María Mazzanti so maybe she THE expert in Blood
María Mazzanti Yess
PUB - Sandberg Instituut i cannot speak about vampires for only one second
PUB - Sandberg Instituut but
PUB - Sandberg Instituut blood
PUB - Sandberg Instituut as dracula says
PUB - Sandberg Instituut is LIFE
PUB - Sandberg Instituut and experience
PUB - Sandberg Instituut I like and we discussed that a lot
PUB - Sandberg Instituut that there is a beautiful concept of transmission and heritage there
2oo Bee Determined yes indeed
PUB - Sandberg Instituut bcs vampires suck your blood and take your knowledge
2oo Bee Determined it’s strange, this feeling of being consumed and metabolized
2oo Bee Determined it’s frightening soemtimes
2oo Bee Determined you feel like you are losing yourself, that you will become unrecognizable
PUB - Sandberg Instituut also how do you share consciousness
2oo Bee Determined but it’s not trusting the strength of one’s own blood i guess, its ability to regenerate… you can’t really share consciousness can you?
[beat]
2oo Bee Determined u can broadcast it!