~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Never the same river ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Part 2 of the exhibition Never the same river is at Anna Schwartz Gallery until 21 December 2019.


 Theatre of the Actors of Regard                                 John Nixon

                    wall installation by Denton Corker Marshall                  

Never the same river is a thought that flows to us from the Western side of the mountain, from Greece, Heraclitus of Ephasus.

 
Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ἡράκλειτος, Herakleitos; c. 535 BC – 475 BC) was a Greek philosopher, known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, and for establishing the term Logos (λόγος) in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the Cosmos. - Wikipedia

Heraclitus believed the world was somehow in accordance with Logos (literally, "word", "reason", or "account"). He also believed the world was ultimately made of fire. He was committed to a unity of opposites and harmony in the world. He was most famous for his insistence on ever-present change, or flux or becoming, as the characteristic feature of the world, as stated in the famous saying No man ever steps in the same river twice as well as Panta rhei, everything flows. This aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of Parmenides, who believed in being, and that nothing changes. Both had an influence on Plato and thus on all of Western philosophy. - Wikipedia

FIAPCE (-2019-)  

Flowing down the Eastern slopes, from Lao Tzu through to the present Hong Kong anti-Beijing resistance movement, Be as water. From the 
Tao Te Ching :

        Nothing is weaker than water,
      But when it attacks something hard
      Or resistant, then nothing withstands it,
      And nothing will alter its way.


Let the rivers flow ] to the see ( a Daylesford Community Banners Project : carried in the 1982-83 Daylesford New Year's Eve Parade in support of the Franklin Blockade and against the proposed damming of Tasmania's wild Franklin River.

  from Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari, written in pencil
  on one of the canvas panels :

     Desiring-machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or set of rules governing associations: one machine is always coupled with another. The productive synthesis, the production of production, is inherently connective in nature: "and . . ." "and then . . ." This is because there is always a flow-producing machine, and another machine connected to it that interrupts or draws off part of this flow (the breast—the mouth). And because the first machine is in turn connected to another whose flow it interrupts or partially drains off, the binary series is linear in every direction. Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented. Desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows. "I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecund."* Amniotic fluid spilling out of the sac and kidney stones; flowing hair; a flow of spittle, a flow of sperm, shit, urine that are produced by partial objects and constantly cut off by other partial objects, which in turn produce other flows, interrupted by other partial objects. Every "object" presupposes the continuity of a flow; every flow, the fragmentation of the object. Doubtless each organ-machine interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux, from the point of view of the energy that flows from it: the eye interprets everything—speaking, understanding, shitting, fucking—in terms of seeing. But a connection with another machine is always established, along a transverse path, so that one machine interrupts the current of the other or "sees" its own current interrupted.

*Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Ch. 13. See in this same chapter the celebration of desire-as-fully-expressed in the phrase: ". . . and my guts spilled out in a grand schizophrenic rush, an evacuation that leaves me face to face with the Absolute." 

     Hence the coupling that takes place within the partial object-flow connective synthesis also has another form: product/producing. Producing is always something "grafted onto" the product; and for that reason desiring-production is production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine. We cannot accept the idealist category of "expression" as a satisfactory or sufficient explanation of this phenomenon. We cannot, we must not attempt to describe the schizophrenic object without relating it to the process of production.


  Richard Lindner, 'Boy with Machine' (1954)

      ... The satisfaction the handyman experiences when he plugs something into an electric socket or diverts a stream of water can scarcely be explained in terms of "playing mommy and daddy," or by the pleasure of violating a taboo. The rule of continually producing production, of grafting producing onto the product, is a characteristic of desiring-machines or of primary production: the production of production. A painting by Richard Lindner, "Boy with Machine," shows a huge, pudgy, bloated boy working one of his little desiring-machines, after having hooked it up to a vast technical social machine—which, as we shall see, is what even the very young child does.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
before and after 'Boy with machine' (Lindner)  

 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...
  
 LOGOS/HA HA