Long Duration Observation (Perspective)
Overview
“To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither question nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is not longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia. We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?
How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are.
What’s needed perhaps is finally to found our own anthropology, one that will speak about us, will look in ourselves for what for so long we’ve been pillaging from others. Not the exotic anymore, but the endotic.“
George Perec, The Infra-ordinary, 1973
Instructions
1. ‘Write a space’ as it unfolds.
With George Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris as a model, write for at least four hours on one day (or for at least one hour on at least four days): exhaustively taking an inventory of every thing, being, action, sound, climatic condition or other observable phenomenon that unfoldsw.
There can be no “etcetera.”
Perec re-constructs St. Sulpice as a text. Rather than focusing on the exotic, he attends to the ‘endotic,’ the “infra-ordinary,” and the mundane. He assumes a methodical, objective voice and is judicious in avoiding personal commentary or interpretation. Similarly, when an event in the space reoccurs, Perec’s text correspondingly repeats, and so repetition comes alive on the page. This is a poetic form of observation.
2. With the space transcribed, use the text to produce a work in another medium.
Taking the long-duration observation as a script, use it to direct the production of a visual work. This could be a drawing, a model, a play to be performed, a sound or musical piece, a film, etc.
Relevant Tutorials
If editing sound Audacity might be useful.
Required Reading:
George Perec, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, 1974.
Optional Reading:
Celeste Olalquiaga, Dust, 1998.
Rebecca Solnit, The Ruins of Memory, 2007.
Other References:
N/A