<eyebeam><blast> LOCAL IS ACTION

[Milton Machado <mmachado@dircon.co.uk>]

some contributions:

site, situACTION...

Nothing is off-stage, everything is part of the site. The site is THE
EXPERIENCE, the experience is THE SITE, and this is the situation. This
site, then that ACTION, and that OTHER SITE: this, again, is the
situation, an ACTION THAT CONTINUES and TRANSFORMS MODELS that do not
just sit, there, here, in front, neither after nor before ME, YOU, in no
clearly distinctive FIXED space, in no SEPARATE duration of time. "There
must be a lack of referentiality for the whole set of experiences"
(Lyotard), for EACH experience to establish a point of view and/or
speech, so as to be viewed and/or spoken from that OTHER EXPERIENCE,
from THAT OTHER point of view. And this is the situation.
............................
 Adapt ACTION. "Our intellectual and social procedures will do what we
need in the years ahead only if we take care to avoid irrelevant or
excessive stability, and keep them operating in ways that are adaptable
to unforeseen - or even unforeseeable - situations and functions"
(Stephen Toulmin). It is necessary to think in the terms, not of a
GEOMETRY of coordinates that MEASURE AND DELIMIT the site (the ORIGIN,
the FIELD, the NATIONAL, THIS gender, THAT gender, THIS OR THAT
genre...) to locate it in fixed space and time, or in the fixed
ordinates of whatever THE DOMINANT REGIME DICTATES, but in the terms of
THE DISTANCES ALONG, WITHIN which the site, the experience, the
experiment, the ACTION, THE WORK, WILL make its INTENSITY, its FORCE
reverberate, as PRESENT RELATION AND DIFFERENCE, to resonate as FUTURE 
MANIFESTATION. Eventually COMMON MANIFEST ACTION. Lyotard's
"infiniteness of the system of stages" implies that systems - FINITE
sets of ESTABLISHED points of views and/or speech - become but
INTERVALS. Passages and modulations of the "prose of the world". But if
the world is POLIS, POLITICS is the prose of the world. Eventually,
POETRY.
................................
... OF THE WORLD, global identity, GLOBAL IS ACTION...

Globalization is surely a SITE for the PRODUCTION OF MEANINGS. But that
does not mean that THE GLOBE is ONLY ONE site, or that the meanings
being produced in its NAME are global. Global heating, for example:
surely an issue for general concern. But to argue, in particular, that
the Amazon rain forests should be protected from LOCAL DESTRUCTION,
because they are, as some like to say, the "lung OF THE WORLD", is not
consistent with the logic CENTER x PERIPHERY which historically explains
the logic of GLOBAL EXPLOITATION REGULATING  LOCAL DESTRUCTION. Unless
the logic is one of lung TRANSPLANTS, which implies the death - economic
death - of the peripheric DONOR for the sake of the CENTRAL SURVIVOR,
both victims of some fatal, global respiratory disease.
................................
"Sorry, periferia" (Brazilian (!) popular saying)

"A space is something that has been made room for, something that has
been freed, namely, within a boundary, Greek 'peras'. A boundary is not
that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the
boundary is that from which something begins its essential unfolding.
That is why the concept is that of 'horismos', that is, the horizon, the
boundary" (Heidegger).  

"At the boundary one transgresses one's identity... It is only in
crossing a boundary when people can see others as if for the first time"
(Richard Sennett) 
.................................
Local, LOCAL IS ACTION 

To be granted permission to shoot his clip in the favelas of Rio,
Michael Jackson had to pay a special "fee" to LOCAL, internal
organizations. Like I had to pay, to stay in this country (UK). In many
ways the moviemaker/writer Arnaldo Jabor was right when he wrote (Folha
de Sao Paulo) the "favelas are foreign countries". To climb the hill -
SUBIR O MORRO - is like entering an OTHER country, and the demands to
the visitor are alike: 
- "What is the purpose of your visit?" 
- "To help YOU climb the hill, by GLOBALLY appearing on MTV" (as some
like
to say)
 
"...La' vai o Brasil, subindo a ladeira..." 
"...La' vem o Brasil, descendo a ladeira..." (Moraes Moreira,
singer/composer)
SUBIR O MORRO, as if for the first time.
...............................

- The first time, 19th century: the first favela originated from WAR.
Soldiers returning from WAR (Guerra do Paraguai, a dispute over
geographical, national frontiers), homeless, built their "barracos"
(shanties, shacks) on Morro da Providencia (Hill of the Providence) (!),
in Rio. Rio first favela is still there. 
- 1906, year of the completion of Avenida Central  (today Avenida Rio
Branco): for the opening of this modern Hausmanian boulevard in the
center of Rio, people had to be removed from their old houses,
demolished. Also, it has been decided (by sanitation authorities) that
these people should be massively vaccinated, for they could spread
diseases. This generated the "Guerra da Vacina" (Vaccine WAR). 
Protesters used construction materials (bricks, stones, tools, machines,
scaffoldings, cranes, etc) to dig trenches and to fight the police on
the modern boulevard. A significant number of these people climbed the
hills where they built their barracos. By the end of the 19th century,
Brazil had a huge external dept (to England, mainly. Trams there are
called "bondes", because passengers had to pay 'bonds', to use them.
They were imported from England, and the company was English). Avenida
Central is a successful example/application of Keynesian economical
principles. I read a text once describing the avenue as a kind of red
carpet for the foreign capital to circulate.   - gangs fight for the
control of drug traffic. Favelas are constantly at WAR AMONG THEMSELVES
(as some like to say).

.................
Carla Sinclair: BBC1 News dedicated some time and attention to the bomb
in Colombo, Sri Lanka. About 5 seconds to show a map (localization),
about ten or so to show some filmed images. 
.................  

Milton Machado


 

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