Month: February 2007

“The philosophical argument of this book is simple in its outlines: images are like living organisms; living organisms are best described as things that have desires (for example, appetites, needs, demands, drives); therefore, the question of what pictures want is inevitable.”

“We need to reckon with not just the meaning of images, but their silence, their reticence, their wildness and nonsensical obduracy. We need to account for not just the power of images but their powerlessness, their impotence, their abjection.”

“…when students scoff at the idea of a magical relation between a picture and what it represents, ask them to take a photograph of their mother and cut out the eyes.”

What Do Pictures Want: The Lives and Loves of Images by W.I.T. Mitchell

Urban assemblage #2. Click on the picture for notes.

Woozy drowsy from staying up too late reading and the sleeping pill I finally had to take hasn’t worn off yet. I’ve been watching Masculin/Feminin while sorting through the million emails from my students…oh, to be a french girl in the 60s. I do pretty okay though, ever since my New Year’s resolution I’ve been out out, running around and socializing, meeting people and going to lectures, art shows and DJ sets.

As far as scholarly life goes, I’ve been reading a lot of visual studies work, and I find most of it incredibly naive. Trying to link modernity and postmodernity to some kind of increase in visuality seems ridiculous to me, but I’ve been unable to articulate it in any kind of manner acceptable in an academic arena.