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TELIC ARTS EXCHANGE

Last minute, I know, but I thought some of you might be interested in "Neoliberalism and Human Capital," starting today at 3 PM at TPS in Chinatown! Info here: http://la.thepublicschool.org/class/1897.

Sorry guys wrong link earlier! Here's the right one: http://la.thepublicschool.org/note/2158. !!!

For what its worth I'll be at both days of the drift where I am sure issues of ambivalence will be discussed. I hope everyone else from this will we be there as well.

Hola class,

Due to personal inclinations and lack of responsiveness I am officially, here and now, deciding that as many of us as desire to do so attend the Continental Drift at TPS this weekend in lieu of a final Ambivalence class on Sunday. I'll be at TPS all day Saturday and Sunday and encourage each of you to come by at any point during the Drift. Again, more info here: http://la.thepublicschool.org/note/2120. Hope to see you there! And of course contact me with any questions. And thanks again for a truly lovely three weeks:)

S

Just checking in to see whether anyone has strong opinions about our final class (or lack thereof) this Sunday! Please, if you do, speak up! Otherwise I'll be forced to make a decision one way or the other:)

Best,

S

Hello,

I wanted to specifically let the "Ambivalence" and the "Cinecultural Practice" classes know about the screening that we'll be having on Sunday of "Facs of Life." You can read more about it here (http://la.thepublicschool.org/note/2120) but in a few words: it traces the legacy of Gilles Deleuze's thought through the lives of some of his students from the mid-1970s. The filmmakers might be coming to our class and they said to me that "Facs of Life" had a strong relationship to ambivalence. Is this true or are they selling it? Come and find out! Sunday at 6pm (discussion) / 7pm (screening) at The Public School, 951 Chung King Road..

Hi all,

Two things:

1) Is everyone set for this Sunday at the MAG? With readings and such? I imagine the excerpts I scanned are acceptable but wanted to check in and make absolutely sure. Karen is excited to join us and I am very excited for this third installment of the class! And again, if you have any questions/comments you'd like to share about "Alchemical Mercury" before Sunday, post post post. Or just come to class with questions and comments:)

2) Our final session is scheduled for 3-5 PM on Sunday, February 28th. This conflicts with some pretty rad events that are happening at TPS that day, detailed here: http://la.thepublicschool.org/note/2158. Most notably, there is a lecture at 4 (smack in the middle of our session) that will likely be awesome. I am wondering: how would you all feel about either changing the timing of our session (maybe moving it a little earlier in the day on Sunday, if the MAG folk don't disapprove), or collapsing our session into the Continental Drift events at TPS in Chinatown? I brought this up in our first class session and there was some ambivalence, so I'd like to try to wrench opinions out of you all before making an "official" decision! Let me know what you think, or if you have other ideas. (More info about the Drift on Brian Holmes' blog: http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/).

See you soon!

S

Hi again, all,

Thank you for a fantastic class yesterday - I found our discussion pleasurably wide-ranging! Thanks, also, to Jane for keeping it going online; anything any of you've got and want to share, keep it coming.

This coming Sunday (February 21st), be sure to make your way to the MAG for our much anticipated discussion session with Karen Pinkus. We'll be focusing on her new book, but I'm sure that anything else you'd like to ask her about ambivalence is fair game, too. I'll make it a point to let Karen know what we've been reading and thinking about thus far in the course so she has some idea where we're at and what our interests are. To this same end, after you've read the excerpts from "Alchemical Mercury" uploaded to aaaarg, feel free to post any questions/comments you may have about Karen's work to get us started (if you so desire).

I just scanned Karen's introduction, which is now available for download here: http://a.aaaarg.org/text/9857/alchemical-mercury-theory-ambivalence-exce.... I'd like us to read this as well as her first chapter, entitled "Visibilia," which I'll upload later tonight or early tomorrow. For those who want to read more, I'm also going to upload her second chapter, as well as the book's conclusion, and if that's still too much of a tease just let me know and I'll keep on scanning.

Oh yes and, in case you've spent all day wondering about Freud's final line on ambivalence in Totem and Taboo: "We know nothing about the origin of this ambivalence. It may be assumed to be a fundamental phenomenon of our emotional life. But the other possibility seems to me also worthy of consideration: that ambivalence, originally foreign to our emotional life, was acquired by mankind from the father complex, where psychoanalytic investigation of the individual to-day still reveals the strongest expression of it " (T & T 202). Unsurprisingly, he ends the book, five pages later, with the disclaimer that he can't vouch for the "absolute certainty" of the conclusions to which he has just come.

More soon!

S

the youtube clip is absolutely fantastic! i propose that we watch it today in class, in addition to discussing everyone's favorite passages/textual fragments each of us find illuminating. very excited. so much to work with here. we will certainly not "get through" everything, but i do think we're headed somewhere awesome! see you all soon!

hey guys,

thanks for the additional readings. i think we are definitely headed somewhere. i think that pinkus' reading was a good place to start with the etymology of ambivalence historically and i think reading more texts using this term (if not primarily on the term itself) is a good way to uncover a possible common definition, if there is one. perhaps we can each bring in a text using the word and layout the common threads and differences between their uses. maybe just a paragraph or two from the text that you feel most connected to in terms of "ambivalence."

things that i have been thinking about/things that i would like to explore/random junk....

i think that many of the binaries in our world today seem to be crashing in, but there is a constant push from the outskirts (and too often supported by the media) to uphold these standards, i.e. any form of fanaticism. is there a way, by means of ambivalence, to practice the rejection of these binaries without calling them back into play and thus reestablishing their existence? is there such thing as ambivalent rhetoric? can you take a stand by not taking a stand? i.e. can ambivalence be political? are there ambivalent politics? can ambivalence be practiced at all? can it only be temporary or can the "continual fluctuation" be maintained?

something i like...

"The need to lend weight to the concept of ambivalence and the discussion of some of its applications point to the remarkable absence of social-scientific theoretical models of ambivalence, even though the (distinctly modern) term ambivalence has become common currency in the humanities, social sciences and in everyday language. The relative lack of theoretical conceptualisation is all the more surprising given current epistemological challenges, such as the acknowledgement of difference and diversity and the call for multi-perspectival approaches in the analysis of the contemporary condition. Indeed the necessity to go beyond ‘a bivalued logic incorporating an either/or model’ (Simon 1998, p. 217) in favour of both/and models that allow for the simultaneous presence of opposed ‘valences’ (emotions, thoughts, motivations) has long been recognised in such diverse fields such as philosophy, cultural studies, attitudinal research and family therapy, albeit more often than not without exploring the analytical power of the concept of ambivalence." Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer

and now some fun with winona ryder...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmVnIRgfngc

sean, all the stuff you posted is awesome. maybe we should read the serres chapter too, if we have time? it's only ten pages! again: http://a.aaaarg.org/text/1023/theory-quasi-object. relatedly, bruno latour (who is also into the quasi-object) is speaking at UCLA next wednesday. more details soon!

i think the summaries and new readings look excellent! i also think sarah + everyone at the MAG knows how i feel about the skype situation for future classes (i'm definitely NOT ambivalent...ha), so just whatever everyone else decides is best... i'll go with. thanks and see you guys soon!

Thanks, Sean! This is a fantastic summary. Makes me wish we had all been able to meet in the same place, while simultaneously I'm glad we met in separate locations, thus producing two (as opposed to one) interesting lines of inquiry.

That said, would anyone like to chime in on the plan for this Sunday's class, technology-wise? A few members of the MAG class were totally opposed to doing Skype again, but my thinking is that we attempt it a second time, this time with a much better setup at the MAG - screening room, speakers & c (I'll speak with Edith about this). If we become too frustrated, we can always split up, then come back together. What does everyone else think?

Lastly, I've looked at Gender Trouble again and think the most relevant part for us to read would be the short, ten-page section in Chapter Two entitled "Freud and the Melancholia of Gender" (pp. 73-84), since this section not only ties in with our direct reading of Freud but specifically concerns ambivalence and bisexuality. Those who like can read around the section for context, and/or read one or both prefaces (1999 and 1990) for more context. But pp. 73-84 seem most relevant, and leave us room for the Freud (M & M and the chapter from Totem and Taboo I mentioned in my previous post). Bhahba remains optional, as a friend reminded me the other day that reading 7 pages of Bhabha is like reading at least 30 pages of some other book...

So, happy reading! And let me know of any strong feelings (or ambivalences) about the tech aspect of Sunday's class.

Here's one thread of conversation I recall from TPS side of our in-class break-up:

One example of ambivalence might be the feelings of guilt, anger, and sadness while watching the images of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, occurring simultaneously with a certain comfort or pleasure in one's own lifestyle, even though these realities are connected. This could apply to our recent wars or to life under capitalism more generally. We wondered if a lack of ambivalence might actually be a horrible thing - to feel absolutely and totally right in one's position, to be unmoved by suffering, etc. In this context, we discussed whether ambivalence might be a necessary precondition to empathy (the ability, or at least desire, to project one's self into an other).

And I also remember that we posed a difference between "two choices" (for example, what's your favorite animal, a zebra or a cougar? can you be ambivalent about that?) and ambivalence, which might actually refer more to "the one" that immediately produces its outside, or other, or "opposite". For example, "good" and "evil." In this sense one could never be ambivalent about three things, because the choices aren't functioning like objects (that can be counted). Rather, because our languages tend to drift towards *things* and *not-things*, maybe ambivalence is our complicated body of thoughts and feelings when put alongside this dual tendency of language.

I don't think we really thought about texts for next time

hello again, all,

a brief rundown of what we at the MAG discussed when technology impeded cross-geographical communication even while making it possible:

we began by expressing the frustrations arising from our attempts to talk in person while also interacting with the TPS group on a small computer screen. some of us felt unable to adequately divide our attentions; it seemed as though there was a choice to be made - either flesh and blood humans or diminutive virtual screen humans. i'm exaggerating the terminology, but this very real discussion of the difficulty of being presented with two simultaneous points of focus led to the question - initially posed by luke (not luke f at TPS but luke at MAG - there are two lukes in the class!) - of whether the increasing media-saturation of contemporary life leads us into more ambivalent territory, generally speaking. is "our time" somehow more ambivalent than times past? has it become more difficult to make choices? and (a personal question) how could such questions feasibly be answered?

we then spoke for a while about different directions the course could take, and some of the ways in which ambivalence rears its head in psychoanalysis (where the term was first coined), queer art and academic work, and postcolonial theory. which leads me to next week's readings (about which i remain ambivalent):

there was a strong interest at the MAG in reading freud on ambivalence, so i suggest we all read "mourning and melancholia" (http://a.aaaarg.org/text/9349/mourning-and-melancholia) and however much of "taboo and the ambivalence of emotions" (from totem and taboo) we can muster (http://a.aaaarg.org/text/9350/totem-and-taboo-excerpt-taboo-and-ambivale...). the latter is a book chapter but the pages are small and i think it will be very interesting reading. freud is always so entertaining.

those at the MAG also expressed interest in reading judith butler on ambivalence and drag. all of gender trouble is on aaaarg (http://a.aaaarg.org/text/5207/gender-trouble-feminism-and-subversion-ide...); i'm going to take another look at the book tonight and will shortly recommend pertinent sections to read before sunday's class. will look at what she writes about bisexuality as well (another one of the MAG class' interests).

lastly, i've linked homi bhabha's the location of culture to the "ambivalence" aaaarg issue (see aaaarg tab above) - in the first half of the book is a short chapter (pages 85-92) where he discusses "the ambivalence of colonial discourse;" since it is only 7 pages long i thought it worth throwing into the mix.

it strikes me that our discussion (at least at the MAG) about technology and ambivalence is not represented at all in the above reading list. if anyone has suggestions for readings on this front, please speak up! i'll make it a point to look around.

lastly, if you didn't make the first class, please feel more than free to participate in the second or third or fourth! we are resolutely non-linear!

more tomorrow,

sarah

hi friends!

a quick note, with more to follow later today:

1) great class/es yesterday! even the technological hoop-la couldn't shut us down! TPS group, what did you end up doing during the unplanned breakout sessions? can someone update those of us who were at the MAG? i promise to send an update from our end later today, unless someone else from the MAG group beats me to it:)

2) if anyone was planning on sending me texts to upload for our next session, please send away! i won't be able to put anything up until later tonight, but want to get everything in order ASAP so we have time to read. MAG suggestions included: freud on mourning and melancholia and lack and loss, butler on drag, and queer work on bisexuality (or lack thereof). TPS group, anything to add to that list?

more coming soon soon soon,

uncertainly yours,

sarah

Oh yes, one final addition/suggestion: Heather Love, who I'm hoping we'll read later down the line, has a funny review of Judith Butler in The Women's Review of Books that I happened upon while researching her work on ambivalence: http://www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/archive/2004/11/highlt.html#love. If you do decide to read "Ethical Ambivalence," Love might serve as a nice counterpoint.

Also, I was thinking that if people were into it we could maybe work some Kafka into the syllabus, or perhaps some Beckett. Other ideas along this line?

Good evening!

A few notes in preparation for Sunday's class:

1) Class will begin promptly at 3 PM and end promptly at 5 PM. The session will be facilitated from one of two locations - either the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (4800 Hollywood Boulevard, LA 90027) or The Public School (951 Chung King Road, LA 90012). I won't decide upon the *official* location of the session until Sunday right before class starts, so you should go to whichever location seems the better choice to you. If you get to one of the locations and I'm not there, you'll be able to connect remotely to the other location (where I am) via Skype and witness/participate in the class that way. Questions? I may be too ambivalent to answer them but fire away!

2) Reading for the first session remains Karen Pinkus' "Excursus: Ambivalence" (http://a.aaaarg.org/text/9123/alchemical-mercury-theory-ambivalence-exce...). (If you like, feel free to read Judith Butler's "Ethical Ambivalence" (http://a.aaaarg.org/text/9382/ethical-ambivalence) as well - it's pretty heavy on the Levinas but maybe there's something in there you'll find useful for you/us.)

3) Please please please also bring various definitions/representations of ambivalence to class (textual excerpts, images, video clips, etc.) for group discussion. If you bring video might be good to bring a laptop or some other easy viewing device (my laptop will be indisposed). Also, if the choice is between this and reading the Butler, do this instead! Very interested in your particular investments in the topic and hope that you will facilitate the course as much as or more than me:)

Again, questions, you let me know, OK?

Very much looking forward to Sunday,

SK

The key reading for the first session of the class (Karen Pinkus' "Excursus: Ambivalence") has been posted to AAAARG. Download it here by clicking "text": http://a.aaaarg.org/text/9123/alchemical-mercury-theory-ambivalence-exce...

The AAAARG issue for the course is here: http://a.aaaarg.org/issue/9121/ambivalence. All relevant course texts will be added to the issue as they become available!

Still working on Butler. More soon!

Hi all,

Below is a preliminary *syllabus* for Ambivalence, starting one week from today! Take a look and feel free to barrage me with feedback. As you can see, I'd like us to read Karen Pinkus' "Excursus: Ambivalence" for the first class session. "Excursus" will be posted to a.aaaarg.org later this eve and I will let you know about the Butler ASAP (if it doesn't work for the first session and we desperately want to read it we can surely fit it in somewhere else).

Looking forward!

S

***

Ambivalence (subject to endless renegotiation)

February 7th: Ambivalence: Definitions, Representations

- How might we define ambivalence (what does ambivalence seem to signify)?
- Is ambivalence an affect? An intellectual state? An ambiance? A process?
- In what ways is ambivalence represented?

Reading: Karen Pinkus, “Excursus: Ambivalence,” from Alchemical Mercury: A Theory of Ambivalence. Possible second reading: Judith Butler, "Ethical Ambivalence," in The Turn to Ethics.

Also: Please, if you like, bring various definitions/representations of ambivalence to class (textual excerpts, images, video clips, etc.) for group discussion.

February 14th: Ambivalence: Psychoanalysis and/or Queer/TGS

- How does psychoanalysis construct ambivalence?
- How do various queer & trans writers & scholars elaborate ambivalence?

Possible Readings:

- Eugen Bleuler, excerpts on ambivalence and schizophrenia
- Dianne Chisholm, Queer Constellations: Subcultural Space in the Wake of the City, excerpts
- Erik Erikson, excerpts on the “psychosocial moratorium”
- Sigmund Freud, “Taboo and the ambivalence of emotions," from Totem and Taboo
- Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”
- Melanie Klein, excerpts on the “good enough mother”
- Heather Love, Feeling Backward, excerpts
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank, Shame and its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, excerpts
- Kath Weston, Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship, excerpts

February 21st: Ambivalence: Alchemy ~ Group Discussion with Karen Pinkus

Reading: Karen Pinkus, Alchemical Mercury: A Theory of Ambivalence. Selections TBD. Possible additional reading: Derrida, “Plato's Pharmacy,” excerpts.

February 28th: Ambivalence: Modernity, Capital and/or Continental Drift seminar with Brian Holmes

Possible Readings:
- Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, excerpts
- Karl Marx, Grundrisse, excerpts

More information on the Continental Drift:
- The Drift at TPS: http://la.thepublicschool.org/class/1985
- Brian Holmes: http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/
- Past Drifts at 16 Beaver in NYC: http://www.16beavergroup.org/drift/

FYI ambivalent ones:

The opening reception for Actions, Conversations, and Intersections is this Sunday, January 31, 2-5 pm at the MAG. Just wanted to give you the heads up!

More shortly,

S

Exciting news! Karen Pinkus has agreed to join the class on February 21st! If any of you are interested in ordering her fantastic book, check this out: http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=16330. And if you're not in book-buying mode, I will of course speak with Karen about finding other ways of making the text available.

Readings for the first class session (February 7th at 3 PM) as well as logistical instructions will be posted by early next week. And again, if you have suggestions for materials you'd like to read or bring in, please let me know! I'm open (and ambivalent).

S

Links relevant to the "Actions, Conversations, and Intersections" exhibition:

Blog: http://www.actionsconversationsintersections.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000640472910
Flickr Group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1336119@N23/

Initial reading list coming soon!

http://disagreement.wordpress.com/

felt this related to our "topic" somehow...

:)

s

Hi all,

Below is a little more information about this course's connection to the "Actions, Conversations, and Intersections" exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. When the MAG invited us to participate in this exhibition, "Ambivalence" had not yet been proposed; when it was, we decided it should be offered as our contribution.

For more information on "Actions, Conversations, and Intersections," visit http://www.actionsconversationsintersections.com/.

More information re: texts and speakers coming soon!

Best,
Sarah

Our course on "ambivalence" will be meeting simultaneously in two places - the Municipal Art Gallery (the site of the "Actions, Conversations, and Intersections" exhibition) and Telic Arts Exchange (where The Public School regularly holds classes). Each group will be able to see and hear the other through a commonplace video conference call (Skype, iChat, etc.). Teachers, speakers, and other guest presenters will go to whichever location seems more appealing that day and no one will be informed of their decision until the last minute.

We often wonder what happens when participatory art projects are brought into the gallery, particularly when they already regularly function without an exhibition space. This question is amplified when the project and exhibition are in the same city. Does the project migrate to the exhibition, leaving its "normal" site closed? Does it announce itself as nomadic, settling temporarily in exhibition space after residency after biennial? Does it produce an exhibitable double of itself to accommodate the requirements of the gallery? Does it refuse any mutation or compromise in order to preserve its singular authenticity?

This class has been scheduled!

Brief note: This course will soon be scheduled for four consecutive Sundays in February (i.e. one meeting will take place every Sunday in February). The course will be held at The Public School and/or the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall. More information to follow, and in the meantime, please feel free to send any ideas regarding ambivalent theories/practices my way!