IT_IS_THE_L.V.X._TRANSCENDING_REASON_AND_NOT_THE_LIGHT_OF_REASON_OR_THE_DARKNESS_OF_UNREASON_

cover of KONXOMPAX 

designed by Aleister Crowley

published 1907

The light wherein I write is not the light of reason; it is not the darkness of unreason; it is the L.V.X. of that which, first mastering and then transcending the reason, illumines all the darkness caused by the interference of the opposite waves of thought; not by destroying their balance, and thereby showing a false and partial light, but by overleaping their limitations.

LIBER

AL VEL

LEGIS 

27. Then the priest answered & said unto the Queen of Space, kissing her lovely brows, and the dew of her light bathing his whole body in a sweet-smelling perfume of sweat: O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it be ever thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous!

°

29. For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.

•

39. The word of the Law is Θελημα.

40. Who calls us Thelemites will do no wrong, if he look but close into the word. For there are therein Three Grades, the Hermit, and the Lover, and the man of Earth. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

•

65. To me! To me!

°

7. I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. « Come unto me » is a foolish word: for it is I that go.

•

27. There is great danger in me; for who doth not understand these runes shall make a great miss. He shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason.

28. Now a curse upon Because and his kin!

29. May Because be accursèd for ever!

30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought.

31. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.

32. Also reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite & unknown; & all their words are skew-wise.

33. Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!

°

51. Purple beyond purple: it is the light higher than eyesight.

•

4. Choose ye an island!

5. Fortify it!

6. Dung it about with enginery of war!

7. I will give you a war-engine.

•

It is by freeing the mind from external influences, whether casual or emotional, that it obtains power to see somewhat of the truth of things.

º

Let us, however, continue our practice. Let us determine to be masters of our minds. We shall then soon find what conditions are favourable.

There will be no need to persuade ourselves at great length that all external influences are likely to be unfavourable. New faces, new scenes will disturb us; even the new habits of life which we undertake for this very purpose of controlling the mind will at first tend to upset it. Still, we must give up our habit of eating too much, and follow the natural rule of only eating when we are hungry, listening to the interior voice which tells us that we have had enough.

The same rule applies to sleep. We have determined to control our minds, and so our time for meditation must take precedence of other hours.

•

Memories of the events of the day will bother us; we must arrange our day so that it is absolutely uneventful. Our minds will recall to us our hopes and fears, our loves and hates, our ambitions, our envies, and many other emotions. All these must be cut off. We must have absolutely no interest in life but that of quieting our minds.

°

Finally something happens whose nature may form the subject of a further discussion later on. For the moment let it suffice to say that this consciousness of the Ego and the non-Ego, the seer and the thing seen, the knower and the thing known, is blotted out.

There is usually an intense light, an intense sound, and a feeling of such overwhelming bliss that the resources of language have been exhausted again and again in the attempt to describe it.

It is an absolute knock-out blow to the mind. It is so vivid and tremendous that those who experience it are in the gravest danger of losing all sense of proportion.

By its light all other events of life are as darkness. Owing to this, people have utterly failed to analyse it or to estimate it. They are accurate enough in saying that, compared with this, all human life is absolutely dross; but they go further, and go wrong. They argue that "since this is that which transcends the terrestrial, it must be celestial." One of the tendencies in their minds has been the hope of a heaven such as their parents and teachers have described, or such as they have themselves pictured; and, without the slightest grounds for saying so, they make the assumption "This is That."

1. Sit in a chair; head up, back straight, knees together, hands on knees, eyes closed. ("The God.")

2. Kneel; buttocks resting on the heels, toes turned back, back and head straight, hands on thighs. ("The Dragon.")

3. Stand; hold left ankle with right hand (and alternately practise right ankle in left hand, etc.), free forefinger on lips. ("The Ibis.")

4. Sit; left heel pressing up anus, right foot poised on its toes, the heel covering the phallus; arms stretched out over the knees: head and back straight. ("The Thunderbolt.")

FUNCTIONS_SO_SOMETHING_CAN_FUNCTION_AND_BECAUSE_SOMETHING_ELSE_FUNCTIONS_

Inger Christensen's It (Det), published by New Directions, translation Susanna Nied.

Suzanne Treister's  Hexen 2039 published by Black Dog, London

WAYS OF LOOKING_THE ONEIRIC CITY_

THE OBJECT_WORLD BECOME BEARER OF CONSPIRACY_THE EXISTENTIAL FURNITURE OF DAILY LIFE FINDS ITSELF SLOWLY TRANSFORMED INTO COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY_THE LOCAL ITEMS OF THE PRESENT AND THE HERE_AND_NOW CAN BE MADE TO EXPRESS AND TO DESIGNATE THE ABSENT UNREPRESENTABLE TOTALITY_INSTRUMENTS OF COMMUNICATION_THE SURREALIST ONEIRIC CITY_BRUSHING AGAINST AN INANIMATE OBJECT SUDDENLY FEELS LIKE BEING TOUCHED BY SOMEONE'S HAND_PLANTS BECOME MACHINES_EVERY OBJECT CHANGES AND BECOMES A HUMAN SIGN_THOUGH SHE KNEW EVEN LESS ABOUT RADIOS THAN ABOUT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THERE WERE TO BOTH OUTWARD PATTERNS A HIEROGLYPHIC SENSE OF CONCEALED MEANING_OF AN INTENT TO COMMUNICATE_TWO INCOMMENSURABLE LEVELS OF BEING IMPOSSIBLY INTERSECT_SOME LARGER VIRTUAL NIGHTMARE_THAT OF THE LATE 60S GONE TOXIC_THE DRUG AND SCHIZOPHRENIC COUNTER_CULTURAL BAD TRIP_PSYCHIC FRAGMENTATION RAISED TO A QUALITATIVELY NEW POWER_THE STRUCTURAL DISTRACTION OF THE DECENTERED SUBJECT NOW PROMOTED TO THE VERY EXISTENTIAL LOGIC OF LATE CAPITALISM_

[EXTRACTS FROM FREDRIC JAMESON'S THE GEOPOLITICAL AESTHETIC AND ONE FROM THOMAS PYNCHON'S VINELAND ]

THRASHING_SEEMS_CRAZY_BY_JULIANA_SPAHR_

this is true

a man in an alley grabbed my arm

this is true

someone called me an left the phone dangling at the post office

this is true

a man stalked me

someone tells a story

someone tells a story to another person

another person says I don't believe this

someone tells the story again in an attempt to convince

someone tells

as disbelief is easy

belief is difficult, supported by constraint

but a woman knows a man stalked her

knows this is true

a woman knows her own address

her own body

her lost domain, her desires, her confusions

someone tells a story

there are things people can do to themselves

they are:

leave molotov cocktail on own yard

set fire to own house

leave a glass of urine on own porch

leave envelope of feces outside own door

send a butcher knife to self at work

send letter to health department that self is spreading VD

stab own back

someone tells this story

says this is true

self turns on self

the knife enters at a point that the self could not have reached

         but did

someone tells and then repeats and she stalks herself several

         times to convince

someone tries to enter into the information

to pass words back and forth that have meaning

fails, resorts to this is true

this is true

a woman calls her stalker The Poet

this is true

a woman describes a stalker in terms that describe herself

this is true

a woman stalked herself to kill herself

this is true

a woman is at times a man

when a fish is hooked

other fish don't see the hook

thrashing seems crazy

the hook could be the branding of a woman at a young age

         by a man

or an older male neighbor spending too much time with a

         child

or the boring nature of life

in the story the hook is the artist's rendering of the stalker as

          described by the woman

it is the woman in a man's face

she does not know this man

thrashing seems crazy

later she realizes it is herself

her knife

her hook

her own face she was always drawing male

this is true

as thrashing is not crazy when one is on the hook

NOTES: This poem draws from an Oprah episode on the case of Ruth Finley, a woman who, because of "disassociative personality disorder," was stalked by a male persona of herself.
Juliana Spahr, "Thrashing Seems Crazy" from Response. Copyright © 1996 by Juliana Spahr.  Reprinted by permission of Green Integer.

Source: Response (Sun & Moon Press, 1996)

i find microscopic analogy in stagnant water (cybernetics poem after norbert wiener)

an almost buddhist
banality
to the fact
and it is a fact
that sooner or later we shall die.
it is, in fact, wholly probable that the universe will die the heat death.
the world will find itself reduced
to a vast
temperature
equilibrium
and nothing new will ever happen.

nothing will be left
or what will be left –
a drab uniformity from which you can expect only minor and insignificant local fluctuations
– will not be worth your time
or mine

regardless, these last stages –
what we call the world's death
or the heat death
– can have no spectators.

our lives are insignificant fractions
of eternity
stages so small
they would be dwarfed by even the
smallest minor local fluctuation in the heat death

these pockets of
organisation
form the negative
of the mould
entropy

which is never insignificant

so rejoice while you can
if you can
i find comfort and microcosmic
analogy in stagnant water
and soggy
bits of old bread
which appear to me
very much like the end

I envy you the ordered flesh from which they unfold

"Gaudi began the park in 1900," Virek said "Paco wears the period costume. Come here, child. Show us your marvel." "Señor," Paco lisped, bowing, and stepped forward to exhibit the thing he held.
Marly stared. Box of plain wood, glass-fronted. Objects. "Cornell," she said, her tears forgotten. "Cornell?" She turned to Virek.
"Of course not. The object set into that length of bone is a Braun biomonitor. This is the work of a living artist."
"There are more? More boxes?"
"I have found seven. Over a period of three years. The Virek Collection, you see, is a sort of black hole. The unnatural density of my wealth drags irresistibly at the rarest works of the human spirit. An autonomous process, and one I ordinarily take little interest in."
But Marly was lost in the box, in its evocation of impossible distances, of loss and yearning. It was somber, gentle, and somehow childlike. It contained seven objects.

The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuit boards, faced with mazes of gold A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A finger-length segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin but the thing's face was seared and blackened. 

The box was a universe, a poem, frozen on the boundaries of human experience.
"Gracias, Paco." Box and boy were gone.
She gaped.
"Ah. Forgive me, I have forgotten that these transitions are too abrupt for you. Now, however, we must discuss your assignment."
"Herr Virek," she said, "what is Paco?" 
"A subprogram."
"I see.''
"I have hired you to find the maker of the box."

Joseph Cornell, Boxes, various dates.

She took a deep breath. "Herr Virek, what if I fail? How long do I have to locate this artist?"
"The rest of your life," he said.
Forgive me," she found herself saying, to her horror, "but I understood you to say that you live in a vat?" 

"Yes, Marly. And from that rather terminal perspective, I should advise you to strive to live hourly in your own flesh. Not in the past, if you understand me. I speak as one who can no longer tolerate that simple state, the cells of my body having opted for the quixotic pursuit of individual careers. I imagine that a more fortunate man, or a poorer one, would have been allowed to die at last, or be coded at the core of some bit of hardware. But I seem constrained, by a byzantine net of circumstance that requires, I understand, something like a tenth of my annual income. Making me, I suppose, the world's most expensive invalid. I was touched, Marly, at your affairs of the heart. I envy you the ordered flesh from which they unfold."

William Gibson, Count Zero, 1986

Paul Thek, from the series Technological Reliquaries, 1964-67

Paul Thek, from the series Technological Reliquaries, 1964-67

fig-2

41/50

FOS

12 – 18 Oct 2015

At ICA Studio

in association with Outset

Opening Monday

6 – 8pm

FOS, 2015

FOS, WEEK 41/50

For his week at fig-2, FOS brings together his two prolific practices within art and design. His solo show ‘Maggie Margaret lives’ is a juxtaposition of artworks and design objects, produced for his recent solo exhibition in Copenhagen and for fashion brand Céline. ‘Maggie Margaret lives’ emerges as a constructed interior that initiates dialogue between art and design, displaying their malleable yet distinctive natures. The premises is inhabited by a character performed by actress Joanna Bergin, who appears and disappears at random. Her script, written by the artist in collaboration with Deborah Birch, oscillates between the pragmatic and the abstract, which attempts to disseminate the public memories left against objects, in this specific case within art and design. The installation becomes a site where objects are activated through the relationship between them and their owner, the character, as well as through their relationship with the audience who act as witnesses.

FOS CV

FOS or Thomas Poulsen (b. 1971, Copenhagen, DK) lives and works in Copenhagen. Recent solo projects include: Porthole, Charlottenborg Copenhagen (2015); Always happy new year, The Royal Theatre, Copenhagen (2015); Small White Man - Echo (LP) (2015); Still Waters Run Deep, Odense Kunsten, Brandt’s Odense (2014); Agora, Athens Biennale, Athens (2014); Declaration of Unsolid Memories, Camden Arts Centre, London (2012); Osloo ⋅ Danish Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice (2011); One Language Traveler, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2011); Another Place Yet A Place ⋅ Andersen’s Contemporary, Berlin (2010).

JAILBIRD JERKY

One day, he says, I will hold all -nesses in my hands

Bright white whiteness 

All wildernesses

They form, in spectacle-circus-ring cant, coils

we can no longer decipher each other

The lion faces in his mouth the possibility 

of a head, likely hatted

in all likeliness

and go

Clusters of neurones pass each other monoamines 

in order to say, this time it’s different

One day, he says, I will hold you in my hands

Through seventy pushups with Dougie on his back

he wheezes I will hold you

A crosslegged yogi is the closest thing in this cell to a redeemer

Dougie says, will you bend your body in prayer?

They’ve taken his pictures off the wall

Bodies bend and build

Dougie calls and Pavlovian methods answer — can’t you hear it? 

The chiming of bells

Dougie yogi on his back,

crosslegged chewing — i am a savoir bind my eyes — a tattooed finger

jailbird jerky 

First-homeowner’s rebate in seven instalments

Dougie says, the body is a temple in another temple 

and that temple in another

A myriads myriad of palaces in which to store your mind, upon whose walls are inked 

the names of those who own you 

bind my eyes i do not need to see the name Dougie glisten with sweat

Seventy more

Seventy more

He has drawn in the place of the photos what the photos depict

One day, he says, I will crumble before you

Such a fine temple does not lie 

about its own destruction

Dougie allows him one cigarette a week on her back 

while Dougie does two hundred pushups

He must learn to cross his legs like maharishi mahesh yogi and not slip off on sweat

Agility is the prima ballerina assoluta, Dougie says

A voice that sounds like bells rings out in his dreams, the circus-ring draws closer,

a kindness to his skin

thank him thank him

In this cell hide suggestions to be inked for those who cannot read without glasses

He will know enough is enough when his cell 

calls to be crumbled

upon whose flag will I lay down my life?

The lion’s head answers for Saint George, his teeth are ciphers 

shaped by the bones of dragons

don’t you see will you never see?

We can only be read through our great sadnesses

They are the marks on all the walls of all our temples, the only marks

One day, he leans against her forehead,

I will hold all -nesses in my hands

It is for blindness that Milton wrote and Homer sang out to be sung to

What is limp and wretched in my wake will give you 

the answer

See, you will not find signs of weakness looking at my strengths

Dougie never slips but is the first to admit slipperiness as possibility 

and therefore as friend

In the second before death with Dougie on his back 

He understands the possibility of sightedness in blindness

The muse feeding Milton drops of milk from her coffee-coloured breast 

and him reciting milk-pearls to his scribe

Will you promise to see truth in the many-coloured glass?

We come through the door in seven ways if it is open 

and three if it is locked, Dougie says

He is given the art of facelessness and the gift of monoamines 

when inside the lion’s maw

I will reimburse no-one

nothing

One hundred days of potters potting will not suffice for what is to come

The jury has reached its decision

Unanimously, we will amend the law of the dead

and so it is done

Fires lay waste to impeached bodies

Ashes scatter through olive trees while the living drink wine from funeral urns

He is still inside the circus-ring cat as his own exequies turn traitor

obsequious to the authority of those who own him

It is not the lion’s body — tauthaunched plinth-bottomed overriding sand —

that knows Dasein but its teeth, sharpened on the myths of dragons 

and the grinding-bones of sacked mutton

his being-toward-death is not his own but another’s

says Dougie as the first and last cigarette of the week is smoked on his back

In the wild he would attack hessian sacks lumpy with victuals and brawn

— or with sand, slumped over 

aluminum frames, signalling construction —

never having known, caged-creature, the slow-eyed wet-roiling peace 

that occurs after a kill

Dougie does not partake in tobacco

Je ne mange pas de ce pain là, he says

The lion does not know the myths under whose sole aegis he acts

says Dougie and his cross-legged almost-but-not-yet maharishi mahesh yogi, 

who slips not in the condition of sweat, 

acts under the star of Dougie

He covers vast and holy ground each millisecond spent 

interfacing feline teeth, 

dialoguing in a household à trois

Only vastness and holiness can achieve a two-way conversation between three

Who is carrying who? Am I carrying you, god?

His priest does not dare recognise the humanity of his femme de ménage 

Her dermis welted red-black-blue signals a reimbursement 

by needles and condomless congress for hundreds of bad daddy cheques

He ministers her sacraments from afar 

touch-shy 

shy of everything

he who has known no love since childhood, smile

Our muse will come from among the downtrodden 

There is no other way to inside out the vision of the world 

whose veil is café au lait and stock prices soothsaying 

I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; no mortal can lift what is not there 

See in your orange juice sein und zeit, says Dougie

A vast interest network — electron-filigree in permanent 

lowest-price exchange — in exchange for an ordinary glass of OJ 

You must break your breakfast apart in contempt of comfort 

And fait attention that sympathy with the degraded 

does not become love for what degrades them

Dougie chews jailbird jerky 

to remind him of frailness

It is Dougie now holds all -nesses 

— as sweat to the warrior, as sight to the seer — 

it is love without need that leads us there, 

fury that returns us snapping awake 

as the lion unlocks his jaw

_______________________________________________________

The Eight of Swords and the Nameless Arcanum (Tarot de Marseilles) from Derek Jarman's In the Shadow of the Sun (1981); music by Throbbing Gristle.

Eight of Swords: Critical position, censure, crisis, chagrin, examination, research, control, condemnation, judgment, sickness, calumny. Reversed: Difficulty, obstacle, accident, treachery, fatality, adventure.

Nameless Arcanum: Death certainly is only relative and the death of the form may mean the commencement of life on another plane. Birth down here may be seen as a sort of death of a higher existence. "The veil and mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher . . ." (Waite) Higher to lower as well.

song of dolores (2008, 1937, 1640)

   

It’s tru c vrai 

Each night she casts her runes

In standard three tense formation;

All that is, that calls, that will be.

If he calls her baby, he might feed 

Her goat and tattoo his name on 

Her thigh. If he does, if he calls.

She rocks slowly as the 10 pisastre

Lido spins slowly to a gentle halt;

Le Dix de Deniers, her first sign.

Someone is singing far away

Hall-i-day's lay-dy, 
he-heey Johhhnny's girl, 

itsa no goo-od business t’kill a man, 

but little girl, ‘ow could you have known?

Danny is at the door telling her

To zip her boots, hitch her shorts,

And pack those things away before

She walks

Or hears clapping in her head 

From 1937, sees an English general,

The Kit Kat club, a girl called Amra

93% humidity

His body shudders as he sinks

Down through wet Cairo in June.
Wipe me down, baby, with a towel.

Amra wipes



The Suez canal, l'Eve future, his

Face an antenna in a storm,

Coming into and out of reception.

She just goes through his eyes.

You alone makes you alone;

Lune à l'envers, your second sign.

Halliday's lady lifts her skirt for

Our Johnny of the Bare Thigh,

Patrons, punters, future's Eve.

A man who says Y'can't read Dee,

Agrees that he don’t quite care to,

Says, they’ll only break yer heart.

She walks the corridor to blue,

The pole to pink, sings Johnny

softly singing Juh-Johnny's girl. 

While

Dolores walks on blanket ground

Mottled purple by the flower that

Several countries claim their own,

Huana, the new girl, spins around,

an ouroboros tattooed on her hip bone.

Le Jugement, Dolores, your third sign.

I am fourwalled with myself

thinking of Egypt : Athanasius,

give it up, I hear the voices say.

Brothers, I cannot.

At school, Dolores wrote names,

Circled them with hearts drawn

In metallic mint rollerball pen

First 

Steph, then Paul, Gil, Jackson;
and even her brother once, Yul,

When he spent the night in jail

But strong-like,

Huana sips gin to herself,

Snarls Fuck Off to all the johns,

Asks Dolores your rising sign,

hon?

It’s pisces, isn’t it? you’re swimming

Inside the ouroboros' ring where

Space stutters and does but remains

Time to be herded in circles.

Huana in metallic ball point pen.

Huana too is water, she could order

Oh-nly pickles, Jay y’hear?! for tea.

Huana says, I do not like Other 

Girls, I am jealous of all women,

Even my granma, and she knew it.

I look at their hair and think of 

Touching their lips, of their faces

On pillows, and compare my own.

Dolores is number 4 on her speed

Dial, Huana calls to ask about His 

Past and where they all are now?

Dee, did y’hear 

A two-headed snake was born here, 

And its got both *looks down nods*

It’s a no good sign, Dolores, uh-uh.

It is not quite as you might think:

Hieroglyphics, your honour, in 1650.

We didn’t even have the cartouche.

Inside the ouroboros' ring 

Space stutters but remains 

Time to be herded in circles.

If it does, if it falls.

If it is, if laid thus.