DC's

 

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Aliona van der Horst Boris Ryzhy (2009)
‘The Russian poet Boris Ryzhy was handsome, talented and famous. So why did he take his own life at the age of 26? A quest to find the answer takes the filmmaker to the criminal neighbourhood in the cold industrial city of Yekaterinenburg where Boris grew up. Through conversations with family and friends, she pieces together a picture of passionate and complex life of the poet. What emerges is a penetrating portrait of the perestroika generation, who lost all certainties, becoming a generation of criminals and bodyguards. Above all, it is a haunting film about Boris’love for life. Through his poems, pain is transformed into grace. Directed by Aliona van der Horst. Cinematography: Maasja Ooms. In co-production with VPRO.’ — VPRO

the film

 

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Jonas Mekas Scenes from Allen’s Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit (1997)
‘This is a video record of the Buddhist wake ceremony at Allen Ginsberg’s apartment. You see Allen, now asleep forever, his close friends, and the Buddhist monks conducting the cere- mony, preparing Allen for the travel into the spirit world. You also see Allen being wrapped up and removed from the apartment to the Buddhist Temple. I talk to Peter Orlovsky about Allen’s last days. Later I tape the final farewell at the Buddhist Temple, 118 West 22nd Street, New York City, and many of Allen’s friends, Patti Smith, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Le Roy Jones- Baraka, Hiro Yamagata, Anne Waldman, and many others who came to say last good-bye to Allen.’ — Jonas Mekas

Excerpt

 

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Kate Crash Eruptions of Poetry: Anna Homler, LA Woman (2011)
‘Anna Homler is a poet and vocal, visual and performance artist who has been known to invent her own languages; she often plays her collection of antiques, toys and curios thru a variety of digital delays/FX. She is included in Kate Crash’s current interactive documentary created with EZTV’s Michael Masucci. The film, LA Woman, (2011) premiered as part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative sponsored by the Getty Research Institute.’ — collaged

Excerpt

 

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James Brih Abee Full Blossom: The Life of Roberts Blossom (2000)
‘Despite his long legit career, the poet and actor Roberts Blossom is probably best known for his role as Old Man Marley in the Chris Columbus film Home Alone. He also appeared in Slaughterhouse-Five, The Great Gatsby, Escape From Alcatraz, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Quick and the Dead, Always and The Last Temptation of Christ. He also starred in a horror film, 1974’s Deranged, that was based on the life of serial killer Ed Gein. He was also a published poet, writing every day for 60 years. A documentary on his life, Full Blossom: The Life of Poet/Actor Roberts Blossom, was made in 2000 and featured Ed Asner, Peter Brook and director Robert Frank, as well as members of Blossom’s family.’ — Variety

Trailer

An excerpt can be viewed here

 

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Aristede Craig Jr. Aristede the Poet Documentary (2013)
‘Aristede Craig Jr. uploaded a video.’

the film

 

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John Dullaghan Bukowski: Born into This (2003)
‘Director John Dullaghan’s biographical documentary about infamous poet Charles Bukowski, Bukowski: Born Into This, is as much a touching portrait of the author as it is an exposé of his sordid lifestyle. Interspersed between ample vintage footage of Bukowski’s poetry readings are interviews with the poet’s fans including such legendary figures such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Fante (wife of John), Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton. Filmed in grainy black and white by Bukowski’s friend, Taylor Hackford, due to lack of funding, the old films edited into this movie paint Bukowski’s life of boozing and brawling romantically, securing Bukowski’s legendary status.’ — Top Documentary Films

the film

 

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David Hoffman Michael Yetnikoff: Child Poet (1968)
‘This 30-minute documentary that reveals the life and poetry of a ten-year-old poet, Michael Yetnikoff. Michael says that he has been a poet since he could write. He shares his thoughts and his poems with veteran documentary filmmaker, David Hoffman. The result is a tale about a ten-year-old boy whose poetry contains way with words and intelligence way beyond his years. Michael reads his poems and offers insight into what created them. He even writes a poem about the documentary.’ — DH

Excerpt

 

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Melanie La Rosa The Poetry Deal: A Film with Diane Di Prima (2012)
‘She remains the most famous women poet of the Beat Generation; her friend Allen Ginsberg calling her “heroic in life and poetics”. THE POETRY DEAL: A FILM WITH DIANE DI PRIMA is an impressionistic documentary about legendary poet Diane di Prima. The most well known female writer of the Beat Era, di Prima is fierce, funny, and philosophical, still actively writing in her late 70s in San Francisco, where she is poet laureate. She is a pioneer who broke boundaries of class and gender to publish her writing, and THE POETRY DEAL opens a window looking back through more than 50 years of poetry, activism, and cultural change, providing a unique women’s perspective of the Beat movement. THE POETRY DEAL puts di Prima’s life and work on screen in a unique, beautiful portrait using rare archival material, impressionistic scenes shot in Super8 and 16mm, stories told by friends and colleagues—and di Prima’s powerful writing.’ — WMMNYC

Trailer

The film can be viewed here

 

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Ron Mann Poetry in Motion (1982)
‘To say that Poetry in Motion, Ron Mann’s 1982 documentary, is the greatest poetry documentary of all time doesn’t really quite give the film its due. Thirty years on, the film still holds up as an anthology and time capsule, one that’s on a par with or even surpasses its print inspiration, Donald Allen’s New American Poetry: 1945-1960. It arrived in theaters and video stores at a time when poetry was reasserting itself as an oral and performance-based art, a synthesis of previous countercultural movements with free jazz, punk rock, and theater of cruelty cabaret. The 24 poet performers portrayed in the film read like a who’s who of late 20th-century American countercultural poetry: Helen Adam, Miguel Algarin, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, John Cage, Jim Carroll, Jayne Cortez, Robert Creeley, Christopher Dewdney, Diane Di Prima, Kenward Elmslie, Four Horsemen, Allen Gingsberg, John Giorno, Michael McClure, Ted Milton, Michael Ondaatje, Ed Sanders, Ntozake Shange, Gary Snyder, Tom Waits and Anne Waldman.’ — collaged

Excerpt

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Matthew Furey Red Poet (2009)
‘The film was accepted into 8 film festivals including the Rome Independent Film Festival in Italy & the Bradford International Film Festival (hosted by the British National Media Museum). Film Maker Matthew Furey’s Red Poet paints a soulful picture of San Francisco’s own Jack Hirschman and brings to the silver screen the singular life of this troubadour for modern times. A modest Bronx childhood first gives way to a shooting star career in academia. Controversial teaching stints at Dartmouth and UCLA make him anathema to the academy; he is fired for his opposition to the Vietnam War. Soon Hirschman finds himself penniless and homeless on the streets of San Francisco. Through it all, Hirschman perseveres, continues to write his poems and publish over 100 books of poetry. Red Poet recounts a tale of a life lived on its own terms: against all odds, a unique poetic talent finds personal redemption through his art and his poetry.’ — MF



the film

 

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Sara Sackner Concrete! (2006)
‘Concrete! is documentary about the Sackner-Archive, in Miami, the largest private collection of concrete and visual poetry. Over sixty-thousand objects from around the world speak volumes about a compulsive and joyful life of collecting art, poetry, and artist books. Founded in 1979, this “archive of archives” initially focused on concrete and visual poetry—including rare manuscripts and published works by international luminaries such as Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Oyvind Fahlström and Eugen Gomringer. The collection subsequently grew to encompass a broad array of historic and contemporary works that synthesize word and image. Rooted in the early to mid-20th-century European avant-garde, the collection provides a unique lens through which to examine the foundational movements of modernism, including Italian Futurism, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada and Lettrisme, among others. The Sackners’ contemporary holdings are also expansive, with special strengths in artists’ books and “assemblings” (limited-edition groupings of materials by numerous contributors), as well as various subgenres such as typewriter art, performance poetry and micrography (abstract or representational designs comprised of minuscule lettering).’ — Ubuweb

Trailer

 

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CrimeTV William Bradford: The Death Row Poet (2003)
‘William Richard “Bill” Bradford (1948–2008) was an American murderer who was incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison for the 1984 murders of his 15-year-old neighbor Tracey Campbell and barmaid Shari Miller. In July 2006, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department released a compilation of photos found in Bradford’s apartment in the 1980s, depicting 54 different women in modelling poses. As Bradford had used the promise of a modelling career to lure his victims, and taken pictures of Miller before murdering her, police believe that Bradford was in fact a serial killer and that the photos depict Bradford’s other victims in the moments before their deaths. Bradford died at the Vacaville prison medical facility on March 10, 2008, of cancer. In 1998, Bradford dropped all of his appeals, claiming that life in San Quentin had become unbearable. Having had no legal representation for the past 10 years, Bradford hired a lawyer to help speed the process of his execution, and began writing poems about life in San Quentin. His poetry attracted attention from the press, who dubbed him “Death Row Poet”. Five days before his scheduled execution, Bradford said that he had changed his mind, professing his innocence and declaring that he wanted the execution process to be halted.’ — collaged

The film can be viewed here

 

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Gustave Reininger Corso: The Last Beat (2009)
‘Although hailed by Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg as an exceptionally gifted mind and poet, Gregory Corso is, by comparison, the unsung Beat, never achieving the same renown as the movement’s three most celebrated icons. But he probably was the most colorful of the bunch, and Gustave Reininger’s 10-years-in-the-making documentary, Corso: The Last Beat, finally brings him to the big screen. The film’s somewhat uneven style — at once an artistic documentary, home movie and sometimes overly conventional for such an unconventional subject — might hamper its chances for traditional television platforms. But Corso should be seen, not simply because Reininger’s respect and love for his subject obviously run deep, but because the film is a moving portrait of an artist of unwavering loyalty to his artistry.’ — Hollywood Reporter

Trailer

 

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Bradley Gillespie Frick (2014)
‘Roughly a year ago, I had the opportunity to meet one of my idols, Steve Roggenbuck. Steve is an alt-lit poet that is actively embracing new techniques of spreading his awe-inspiring words across the globe. Gaining popularity through use of his quick, comedic videos via YouTube, Steve disorients you to a point where you’re not sure how to take his art, but regardless, leaves you with a deep feeling in your stomach to better yourself. My deepest apologies for taking so long on getting the video out. Thank you Steve for taking the time out to make this video, which turned out to be one of my favorite I’ve shot in my entire career as a director. Boost!’ — BG

the film

 

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Richard O. Moore USA: POETRY, FRANK O’HARA (1966)
‘USA: Poetry was produced and directed by Richard O. Moore for National Education Television. The twelve part documentary series which was produced in 1965-66, showcased many poets including, Anne Sexton, John Wieners, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, John Ashbery, William Everson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Kenneth Koch, Ed Sanders, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Richard Wilbur, Denise Levertov, and Louis Zukofsky. The program featuring Frank O’Hara was filmed on March 5, 1966 and originally aired on September 1, 1966.’ — poetry foundation.org

the film

 

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Barbara Hammer Welcome To This House (2015)
‘Welcome To This House (2015), a feature documentary film on the homes and loves of poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), about life in the shadows, and the anxiety of art making without full self-disclosure. Hammer filmed in Bishop’s ‘best loved homes’ in the U.S., Canada, and Brazil believing that buildings and landscapes bear cultural memories. Interviews with poets, friends, and scholars provide “missing documents” of numerous female lovers. Bishop’s intimate poetry is beautifully performed by Kathleen Chalfant and with the creative music composition by Joan La Barbara brings Bishop into our lives with new facts and unexpected details.’ — bh

Excerpt

 

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Robert Mugge Black Wax (1983)
‘The films of Robert Mugge engage crucially not only with the sounds but also the philosophies of the artists whose work they explore, and it is difficult to imagine two more philosophically engaged artists than the incendiary poet/songwriter/vocalist Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011) and the exploratory keyboardist, composer and bandleader Sun Ra (1914-1993). In two classic documentaries, newly remastered for Blu-ray and DVD by MVD Visual, Mugge mounts the stages on which these ineffable creators plied their deeply felt trades. In 1982’s Black Wax, Mugge captures a Washington, D.C., performance featuring Scott-Heron and his Midnight Band (under the guidance of bassist and “Secretary of Entertainment” Robert Gordon), interspersed with casually graceful scenes of the vocalist guiding the viewer on a “tour” of the nation’s capital. Scott-Heron puts caustic verbal thumbscrews to iconic figures of the American past and, in poetic verse, excoriates the poverty thriving in the inner cities while “Whitey’s on the moon.” Scott-Heron is leftist in his views, but he declares himself merely a member of the “Common Sense Party,” his cultural role that of a “bluesologist.”’ — Jazz Times

the film

 

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Matt Wolf I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard (2012)
‘This inventive biography of Joe Brainard gives an immediate and visceral sense of his humour, self-deprecating personality, and gentle demeanour. Brainard’s drawings, collages, assemblages and paintings, as well as his short essays and verbal-visual collaborations, were celebrated during his lifetime before he stopped making art in the mid-1980s. The film is an elliptical dialogue about friendship, nostalgia and the strange wonders of memory.’ — IFFR

Trailer

The film can be viewed here

 

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Mark Pellington The United States of Poetry (1995)
‘Originally aired in 1996 as a five part series on PBS, “The United States of Poetry” is an excellent presentation of twentieth century poetry. This two-part series includes a wide variety of poets, such as Czeslaw Milosz, Rita Dove, and Allen Ginsberg, alongside actors and musicians such as Johnny Depp (reading Jack Kerouac) and Lou Reed. Former President Jimmy Carter also makes an appearance, reading his own work. The series has been praised for its inventive and artistic camera work and its refusal to be boring: “USOP tosses aside the textbook approach to poetry and drags it, kicking and screaming… into this wired world… it’s poetry as you’ve never experienced it” (TV Guide).’ — poets.org

Excerpt

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Ryan White Come See Me in the Good Light (2025)
‘In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.’ — Letterboxd

Trailer

Excerpt

 

*

p.s. Hey. Today a kind and investigative reader of this blog named Brian Willis has curated a lustrous program of short documentary films about poets both known and unknown. It’s a beaut of an array, so please give it your attention as you see fit, and, if you’re so inclined, give some kind of shout out in thanks to Brian, who may be a member of the blog’s silent majority audience but who will surely be looking in to see how his program came off. Thanks so much, Brian! ** Adem Berbic, Apologies for the blog’s starvation. Okay, the Stigs, I think I get it. Guessing the book hasn’t made it into English, but I trust you, obviously. Naïveté can assuredly be a virtue. Maybe the biggest. Interesting pet theory there that I of course will never be able to confirm. Hong Kong-like, interesting. When I was in Hong Kong, I simply could not get a bead on it, or I should not a very positive bead. Merzbow proved to be worth the truncation? The last time I saw him live it was a duo thing with Keiji Haino who characteristically hogged the stage reducing Merbow to doing essentially background drone washes. Very disappointing. The azure parts are all over the place in quality and levels of interest. ** jay, Oh, good, a fellow fan! Haha, see, I feel like filtering Proust through Guattari is more than sufficient, but, yes, I would think that, wouldn’t I? My memory of the ‘Equus’ movie is that it didn’t quite manage to be either a movie nor a document of the play. And, yeah, the ‘dreamy’ horse intercut footage spurts were pretty yawn. As I recall, mind you. Thank you, my pal! May your day unlock the next level. ** _Black_Acrylic, It’s no more difficult than, oh, Autechre, if you catch my drift. ‘Milk & Serial’: I’ll be googling that shortly. Thanks, B. ** Bill, It might still be playing in SF when you get home. It seems to be quite the hit. When I found that opening essay, said photo was the illustration, and I did take it be an author photo, but I have been prone to wishful thinking, goodness knows. I just saw an announcement of a gig you’re doing in SF in later June with Bob Ostertag and someone else. Sweet. Barge concert, nice, how was it? I think the only barge concert I’ve ever seen was Einsturzende Neurbauten in Amsterdam in the early 80s when they were still mind-blowing. In that case, the barge wasn’t docked. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Missed opportunity indeed! I hadn’t realised the mood/doom thing either until I pretended I was God for that moment. I should do that more often clearly. I think the answer to love’s question is that people who only or mostly watch multi-million dollar blockbuster movies are very easily amazed when they get a little quirky. Love pretending he’s a poet and being filmed by some random person on YouTube, G. ** Carsten, That does sound busy. But the guest apartment sounds pretty goddamned sweet. Score. Excellent about the Ariel Resnikoff blurb. People are good. Temperatures in Paris are so dessert-like they’re practically edible at the moment. Won’t last, but yum. No, I’m still waiting for Zac’s hopefully final notes on the script, and then we’ll start the dreaded producer hunt. Hopefully next week. Thanks for asking. ** CS, Hi, CS. Well, I’m very glad you leapt into the commenting arena because it’s very nice to meet you. ‘RT’ will start streaming and come out on BluRay in mid-summer, so there’s that, at least. Thanks for wanting to see it. I want you to. I like that you found ‘Assisted Living’ fun. Me too. Surreptitious high five. Thanks, it’s cool to talk with you. Don’t hesitate to reopen the door and step in whenever that option feels like an opportunity. Do say more about you and yours, if you want. I’m interested. ** HaRpEr //, It’s an excellent read, and not just because it has a stellar title. Thanks for the link! Everyone, HaRpEr // found two short essays by Guattari called ‘I Have Even Met Happy Trannies’ and ‘Woman Becoming’ and you can read them for free if you like. Poke this. I did not know that about Deleuze’s fingernails, wow, huh. Of course I will now do a google image search. How can John Waters be so relentlessly wise. It’s an inexplicable fact. ** Uday, Hi. I’ll listen to more PC Music and see if I see a connection there too. Cool. Semiotext(e) was such an instructor back when theory was the bulk of its metier. I found so much valuable stuff only thanks to it. What’s your grandfather like? ** Okay. You already know the drill re: what Brian has constructed for you today so have the loveliest time you can here, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

* (restored)

 

‘I just wanted to throw out there that I have finished the bulk of translating Guattari’s The Machinic Unconscious: Essays in Schizoanalysis. Now begins the revision stage of my project, and a few interpolations of quotes from Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (I’m using the new Penguin editions, which are fabulous translations btw).

‘I hope this excites some people. I, too, am pretty thrilled about this work appearing in English. It has been a difficult work for me to translate, let alone read, but I feel that it is infinitely more valuable to me for all the efforts I have put into it. This book wasn’t necessarily received well in France (one of his interviewers mentions the obscurity and difficulty of this work specifically), perhaps because it is so closely tied to A Thousand Plateaus in scope and timeframe (it was published about 6 months before the latter, being a sort of work book for A Thousand Plateaus, as Gary Genosko puts it). But I hope that this is different for the English, especially with all the work that has gone into translating much of Guattari’s work already, and the Deleuze phenomenon, etc.

‘Let me just note in passing that this work has helped me overcome one of my own crises. As an English graduate student-dropout, I sort of rebelled against literary criticism, rebaptizing my field of research as philosophy. I gave up on its uses to evoke radical political change, and I felt like it played with the binary oppositions of established culture, not to truly dismantle the phenomena, but to reify them and sediment them more thoroughly.

‘I can only note with great fervor that the second part of the Machinic Unconscious, which is dedicated to a reading of Proust’s novel, is really something extraordinary, because it takes the obscure theoretical conceptualizations of the first half and propels them into concrete situations, deducing the abstract relations from this reading. But it goes further because it is not just an intellectual exercise: Guattari’s thought, if anything, is so radically enrooted in the outside that every phrase has a rhetorical-micropolitical bent to it. He proves the validity of literary criticism to really illuminate the inner machinisms of reality, bearing out its political potential in a systematic and pragmatic way.

‘This book has changed my life. I hope you get a chance to read it.’ — Taylor Adkins

 

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Further

Félix Guattari @ Wikipedia
Félix Guattari @ Semiotext(e)
Transdisciplinarity Must Become Transversality
Guattari’s Machinic Unconscious and Proust as Schizoanalyst
Assemblages: Félix Guattari and Machinic Animism
PRAGMATIC/MACHINIC: DISCUSSION WITH FÉLIX GUATTARI [BY CHARLES J. STIVALE]
Micropolitics of a Recommender System – Machine Learning and the Machinic Unconscious
Une intuition de Félix Guattari
Félix Guattari and Post-Media Arrangements
A Reflection with Miguel D. Norambuena on Félix Guattari’s Trip to Chile
Assemblages: Félix Guattari and Machinic Animism
Book: Schizoanalytic Cartographies
Félix Guattari @ goodreads
MACHINE AND REALITY: CYBERNETICS, AUTOPOIESIS AND PRODUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITY IN FÉLIX GUATTARI
Book: Félix Guattari, A Critical Introduction
Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction
Two’s a crowd
Tactical Media
Buy ‘The Machinic Unconscious’

 

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Extras

Félix Guattari – Université de Vincennes 1975

Félix Guattari (1986) by Gérard Courant

Félix Guattari – O Divã (1985)

Félix Guattari on Drugs

Joséphine Guattari et Félix Guattari (1986)

 

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Graeme Thomson & Silvia Maglioni In search of UIQ (2013)

‘The opening sequence of Graeme Thomson and Silvia Maglioni’s new film, In Search of UIQ, looks out from a hidden bunker onto a desolate, terracotta beachhead, below which a plane of azure sea stretches toward the horizon, while a lithe, raven-haired woman – the only visible human presence – strolls, Monica Vitti-like, across the frame. A voice-over reads from a letter Félix Guattari wrote to Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni in the early 1980s, on the then-current status of his new film treatment: ‘[I want] to give you the outline of a science-fiction screenplay I’ve written, Un amour d’UIQ … it would be a great joy for me if you should be interested in becoming involved.’ The sequence mimes the oceanic imagery of Antonioni’s classic film L’avventura (The Adventure, 1960), but also establishes the fascinating conundrum inherent in Guattari’s great cinematic adventure: if the philosopher was requesting Antonioni’s collaboration on a science-fiction film, its unconventional aspirations can be assumed.

‘Despite UIQ’s sci-fi trappings, its speculative focus resides in its analysis of modern epistemology, at the moment when the collective screen of the counterculture was being replaced by the shrinking interfacial screen of the digital (i.e. the computer), the laptop and the pda. A rupture was clearly visible by the conclusion of the 1980s. As Guattari writes in the script’s initial treatment: ‘The drama evoked here runs parallel to the one our societies are currently undergoing, where […] the digitalization of a growing number of material and mental operations is not always easy to reconcile with the existential territories that mark our finitude and desire to exist.’ While the character of UIQ is not human, its desire to access and embody human subjectivity mirrored the evaporating gradient between technology and ecology in the post-human world.

‘‘UIQ’s tragedy is that it wants to be recognized, individuated,’ explain Thomson and Maglioni, in a recent email exchange from Paris. ‘It wants a face and then a body. Power needs to facialize everything […] The question of whether one is a one or a zero in any given social field. It’s one of the core elements of the binary system that structures our access to reality.’

‘In the absence of any extant film footage, In Search of UIQ endeavours to not only reconstruct Guattari’s aborted attempt at filmmaking – with voice-overs from the script and Guattari himself, protracted sequences on computer screens and a noir-ish procedural on other recent UIQ-inspired productions – but to meditate on the political, social and cinematic milieu of the late 1970s through the mid-80s, when the possibilities of financing and realizing such an abstruse film on an international level were deemed feasible.’ — Erik Morse, Frieze

Excerpt

 

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Interview
from Blackout

 

CHARLES J. STIVALE: In terms of capitalism in the world, I’d like to consider the question of the Americanization that penetrates everywhere, for example, the “Dallas” effect. There is even a French “Dallas”, “Chateauvallon” . . .

FÉLIX GUATTARI: It’s not bad either. It’s better than “Dallas,” I find.

CS: Of course, for the French. But when you like J.R. . . .

FG: That’s true. J.R. is a great character, quite formidable.

CS: But what strikes me in your writing, especially in Rhizome, is the impression of a kind of romanticism about America, references to the American nomadism, the country of continuous displacement, deterritorialization . . .

FG: Burroughs, Ginsberg . . .

CS: Right, and one gets the impression of a special America, and we Americans who read your texts, we know our America, and here in France, as a tourist this time, I see the changes, the penetration of our culture that has occurred over the last few years, the plastification, the fast food restaurants everywhere . . .

FG: Ah, it’s incredible. And in the popular social strata, among the youth, they babble this kind of slang, they’ve completely identified with it, it’s incredible. It’s all over Europe, everywhere, the linguistic phenomenon of the incorporation of American rock. It’s really surprising.

CS: So there are two conceptions of America: this nomadic conception which you present in your works, but that is finally a romantic conception in light of the practice of Americanization, the penetration of America and, of course, of capitalism. It seems that one does not go with the other, so how do you explain this difference? It’s not really a contradiction, but simply a distance between two conceptions of America.

FG: Well, that’s complicated. I’m not very clear about that because . . . I went to America occasionally, especially during the ’70s, and then afterwards, during the ’80s, I’ve gone to Japan, to Brazil, and to Mexico a lot, and I’ve no longer wanted to go to the United States. I haven’t considered it well, I haven’t understood why.

You know, it’s not certain that this is a romantic vision. Americans are often jerks; they have a pragmatic relationship with things; they are dumb, and sometimes, this is great because they don’t have any background as compared to Europeans, Italians, but there is an American functionalism that makes us pass into this a-signifying register, that transports a fabulous creationism, fabulous anyhow in the technical-scientific domain, because they are really a scientific people; they don’t look for complications, it works or it doesn’t, they move on to something else.

I met an American last summer, I was in California, at Stanford, I don’t know where. I was on a tour to study the problems of mental health, a mission for the Ministry of Exterior Affairs. Americans are people who receive you very well, who take time to talk, which isn’t the case here, not the same kind of welcome. So, each person that I met gave me an hour for discussion, and there, this young psychiatrist explained what had happened after the Kennedy Act, the liquidation of the big psychiatric hospitals and the establishment in his sector of half-way houses, a kind of day hospital to replace the big hospitals. He made a diagram chart, I remember, there was a graph with double entries, there were all the dimensions of these establishments, a remarkable organization of what had been developed. So, he finished presenting all that to me, and then the conversation finally ended, but there still remained ten minutes because we had an hour for our discussion, so there was no reason to leave. And I asked him a final question: “And so, how did all that work? What was the result?” He broke out laughing: “Nil. Zero. It didn’t work at all!” I said: “Oh, really?” He said: “Yes, it’s just a program we made, but it didn’t work at all!” That was like a thunderbolt for me that this guy had made this entire development, and then it didn’t work, so let’s do something else. We see this well in Bateson’s work: he makes a program on something, it works, but that doesn’t matter, they move on to something else because they were on contract.\20 That’s what I find to be the marvelous a-signifying freedom, going on to something else, going on to something else. They massacre Vietnamese for years, then afterwards, oh, well, no, that was stupid, let’s go on to something else.

So I wonder if that isn’t the rather invading, yankee side of Americans that makes us ask what they’re up to, what they’re looking for. But one shouldn’t try too hard to discover what they’re looking for or what they’re up to. It’s the same for the Japanese, but with an entire background of mysticism, of religiosity, that also exists in the United States, but without being structured the same way.

CS: But where could we insert this question of nomadism? We have this “go on to something else” nomadism, so perhaps that’s it, Kerouac, going on to something else . . .

FG: And next, and next, and next, constantly, constantly, and now, and now.

CS: . . . but his kind of incessant deterritorialization only exists in extreme cases, so to speak.

FG: But, no, that’s not true. Jean-Paul Sartre, when he made his trip to America — that must have been in 1947 or thereabouts — wrote a magnificent article about American cities. He explained that American cities aren’t cities in the European sense, i.e. they have no contours. They are crisscrossed by avenues, they have no limit. In my terminology, this means that these are deterritorialized cities. America is entirely deterritorialized. “Deterritorialized” means that instead of having obstacles or having land, things, curves, there are lines, trains, planes, everything crossing, everything sliding, demographic flows sliding everywhere, and on top of that, there are extraordinary reterritorializations. Henry Miller in Brooklyn, Faulkner in a certain sense, because for Faulkner, to what extent isn’t it a misreading to situate him as an archaic writer of American life? Isn’t he rather a mythical reterritorialization about deterritorialized America? We’d need to debate that; I’m not able to undertake it about Faulkner. Anyway, how does one make oneself a body without organs, how does one make oneself a little territory, a life, a warmth, a childhood, in this American mess, in this whole mishmash spread out all over? Look at the extraordinary poetry of shop windows in New York! You know the shop windows in France or in Italy. But there, in New York, most of the windows speak, even on the main streets where you have side by side expensive windows and then places where you find piles of any old thing; one finds there a kind of accumulation of vistas like that, where there are marvelously beautiful things from an architectural perspective, and then there is a dump, a maximum and then a mess.

CS: I do understand the difference between cities, the constant sliding across territorialities between city and suburb. But quite simply, this invasion, the body snatchers, America as body snatcher, the grip of capitalism in other countries, for me . . . well, perhaps that all belongs to the same process of deterritorialization: there is no territory, either in individual existence or in capitalistic flows: they invade everything, everywhere, everybody, everywhere in the world, without limits, without borders, crossing and invading France.

FG: But don’t you think that this deterritorialization, catastrophic from many perspectives, is precisely the occasion for extraordinary reterritorializations? That is, it’s difficult to make oneself a territory on the moon, really; it’s more complicated than going out to the French countryside. America is a bit like the moon, it’s very complicated, and precisely these traits create a difference from the Japanese as well because the Japanese have means of reterritorialization, a very ancient civilization, they have insignia, emblems of this reterritorialization, corporal techniques, etc. Whereas there, in America, they are forced to re-invent everything, these kinds of continental Galeries Lafayette, anything. So that becomes a formidable exercise: to create music with a tradition of religious music is difficult, but creating music with just anything, like that, with these piles of metal, it’s something else altogether. And when they succeed, it’s fantastic. But look: take the American mystery novel whose basic material is all this deterritorializing trivia, and look at what warmth of intimacy, of suspense, of subjectivity that you grab to stay warm, to sleep, to feel good, to feel sheltered; it’s really something. With what do they create that? What are they talking about? These aren’t tales of chivalry. American cinema as well has a lot of that: look at the power of American culture to produce a more than tolerable and comfortable subjectivity, warm, passionate, exciting, in this pile of metal, this heap of shit, this load of stupidities, as I said earlier. Isn’t that really quite a feat? It’s nonetheless a civilization that has created some extraordinary forms of subjectivation. Jazz … do you realize? Jazz has a great impact on the level of world culture. Line up cinema, jazz, the mystery novel. I’ll leave painting aside because I find that, in the long run, it’s not a very noticeable success because it really belongs to capitalistic deterritorialization, seriously, with some exceptions, but for me, it’s really a lot less convincing.

CS: I think that the problem for me is that I’m too close to daily life in the States, and I see so much stupidity in all these areas. In cinema, one constantly sees exploitation of the body, of the individual. In music, there is so much shit . . .

FG: That’s true; when one hears the classical music that people listen to in the United States, it’s overwhelming. Won’t you ever get fed up with Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and all that . . .?

CS: I was really thinking about popular music, where all that might happen, where changes did occur during the ’70s. But what always strikes me is that the music comes from England to invade America, and then America reterritorializes what the English do, and they lose everything. That began with the colonies and continues today. But, perhaps its my own problem, being too close to this daily life, and not being able to see this abstract machine which you are outlining. But, on the other hand, the reproach made by friends who read A Thousand Plateaus and other works is really that in regards to American nomadism, this deterritorialization, they’d like to believe in it, but isn’t the general schizoanalytic enterprise in the long run a utopic dream without any future?

FG: I’m sorry to interrupt you, but in any case, the idea of a utopic dream just doesn’t hold water. A dream is necessarily utopic, in any case. We participated a little in that America, that kind of New West. It was our dream, our very own America. You are telling me that it’s not yours! I find that fascinating, but you aren’t going to reproach me for having dreamt my dream! You have a whole generation of American writers who created a dream about Europe, about Greece, who landed here like these were colonies, but I’m not going to reproach them for having perceived in their own way, “what is this Europe you saw here?”, that’s just not possible! What one has to know is: has it been useful for you that we had that dream? has it been useful for us that you had that dream, that some American writers had a particular dream about Europe before the war? For me, yes, that certainly was useful. I haven’t looked at Europe in the same way because there is this deterritorialized vision by relay from American writers. Miller’s vision of Paris, for me, is enormous, is fundamental! I’m sorry that Deleuze and Guattari’s vision of the United States hasn’t been at all useful for you, but we can’t all have the same talent as Miller! (Laughter)

 

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Book

Félix Guattari The Machinic Unconscious
Semiotext(e)

‘In his seminal solo-authored work The Machinic Unconscious (originally published in French in 1979), Félix Guattari lays the groundwork for a general pragmatics capable of resisting the semiotic enslavement of subjectivity. Concluding that psychoanalytic theory had become part and parcel of a repressive, capitalist social order, Guattari here outlines a schizoanalytic theory to undo its capitalist structure and set the discipline back on its feet. Combining theoretical research from fields as diverse as cybernetics, semiotics, ethnology, and ethology, Guattari reintroduces into psychoanalysis a “polemical” dimension, at once transhuman, transsexual, and transcosmic, that brings out the social and political—the “machinic”—potential of the unconscious.

‘To illustrate his theory, Guattari turns to literature and analyzes the various modes of subjectivization and semiotization at work in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, examining the novel as if he were undertaking a scientific exploration in the style of Freud or Newton. Casting Proust’s figures as abstract (“hyper-deterritorialized”) mental objects, Guattari maps the separation between literature and science, elaborating along the way such major Deleuze-Guattarian concepts as “faciality” and “refrain,” which would be unpacked in their subsequent A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

‘Never before available in English, The Machinic Unconscious has for too long been the missing chapter from Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus project: the most important political extension of May 1968 and one of the most important philosophical contributions of the twentieth century.’ — Semiotext(e)

Excerpt

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hey, jay. Cool that so many doomsayers spoke to you. Makes sense that ‘Equus’s’ gayness is being forefronted. I only saw the movie way back but even there it wasn’t very successfully closeted. I hope you’re sharing our kind of perfect current weather. ** Dominik, Hi!!! If you mean which would I want to own I think either the talking crow sculpture or, hard to resist, ‘Lost and Sick’. I just cued up that BMtH track, and … doomy!! Love realising that doom is mood spelled backwards and somehow convincing himself that that’s an interesting observation, G. ** Bill, Coolness. Warmoestraat is even more gentrified than Spuistraat. In current day Amsterdam, a cafe with a rainbow flag hanging over its entrance seems to be a wild as things get. When I was in Berlin you could barely walk ten feet without seeing posters advertising that Anton Corbijn show. Enjoy, pal. ** Jack Skelley, That you could even type that comment after such a time change is impressive to me. Wake up in time for Thursday, whoa. Or at least by Sunday. No pressure. xo. ** voskat, Hi. Thanks a lot for letting us know, and all wishes that Laura exits the flare up rapidly and completely. You take care too. ** _Black_Acrylic, The Anna Orton print looks good even from a distance. Nothing does slop as pleasurably as True Crime. Paranormal investigation slop is pretty tolerable too. ** Hugo, Hi. Turns out ‘Backrooms’ doesn’t open here until the 17th, so it’ll be a bit. But yes. The publisher of said collection is still in the works. It’ll be a long time ’til it’s out though in any case. Usually takes a year post-contract signing. Thanks for your best. I seem to be making it through. And take my best. ** politekid, Hi, O, old buddy! 1) I’m good. Not much news, just film screening stuff, but that’s been tops. 2) Amazing if you can make the Leeds screening. I’ll share the specifics when there are some. Like I think I said, tentatively July 31st. 3) Thank you, and my personal guess is that, yes, she just bisected it with her scissors, but I don’t know why that’s my guess. A relatively rare bit of cynicism creeping out? Catch me up on you and yours as soon as typing personally enlightening text here becomes an enticing thing. xo. ** laura w, Excellent! ‘Lancelot du lac’ is the film that introduced me to Bresson and consequently changed my life. And it’s still tied for my favorite of his. Hm, I’m a bit suspicious of ‘The Green Knight’s’ supposed Bressonianism. But I should peek. Maybe. Yes, year of the Youtubers coming to save mainstream movies possibly. I still haven’t seen ‘Iron Lung’, and I still want to. Like I said, ‘Backrooms’ isn’t hitting theaters here until the 17th, so I have to be patient. Biggest up to you! ** HaRpEr //, Hi. Is it possible to go too far? Hm. I guess it must be, but I can’t think of an example. I guess I think one should probably keep an eye on the presentation itself and ways to measure that without neutering the extravagance. My guess is that you are/will inherently ace the borderline. I’m going to give ‘Lifeforms’ a listen. I tried it some years ago and felt like maybe its romanticism dated it, but things weren’t as generally horrible then as they are now, so that quality could be a total rush now. No, I haven’t heard the Iceage yet. I’m stuck on the new GbV, but that’ll wane. Just listening to Elias’s voice is always a real pleasure, so there’ll be that at least. ** Steve, Luck with the legs, obviously. Are said senior citizens veterans of youthful bands? What do they play? Your cousin will be their sex symbol by default. ** Uday, Where or what is your grad school? Sorry if you said and I forgot. ‘Crawlspace of the Pantheon’ is really good. It’s kind of all over the place, and for me that’s when GbV are at their best. Enjoy whatever today is constructing around you. ** Okay. I haven’t spotlit a theory book in a while, and that’s a fault in my book, so I brought back the spotlight that fell/falls on one of Guattari’s biggies. Please make it count. See you tomorrow.