Jean Baudrillard Did Not Take Place.
But is he REALLY dead
?>
:(I ever tell you
about the time I met Baudrillard
?Baudrillard came
and lectured at Emily Carr in Vancouver, I believe it was 1999 or so. The hall
was full and the administration refused to open these massive doors which would
have allowed the hundreds of students outside in the concourse to listen and
see. But they wouldn't do it. So they began pounding on the walls. Baudrillard
encouraged them, but the administration wouldn't relent. He talked for two hours
about the image, photography (he was there for an exhibition of his
photographs), the real and the simulacrum, and the way the image is the measure
of the distance -- it was unclear how close this was to a decline -- from tribal
society. I have it on minidisc somewhere. At the end, he struggled through a few
English questions -- mainly reiterating what he had said, as most of the
questions were poor, of the "I don't get it" variety -- and eventually just
translated each question into French and responded in French. This being
Vancouver, an audience of about one thousand was ignorant of his far more
fascinating answers voiced in his native
tongue.At the end,
I went up to get his signature on a library copy of _The Gulf War Did Not Take
Place_ (I still have it -- I ripped the page out, which I thought was
appropriate).
While I was doing this, an impish professor from SFU was trying to get
Baudrillard to come and talk to his seminar. He said something like, "Are you
saying that it is becoming too late? I really feel that you're really saying
something about the whole state of things, where we
are...." It was
kind of embarrassing, this posturing, this pleading. Baudrillard turned to the
prof and said, perfunctorily and with an air of resignation, "It is too late."
The circle of
administrators ready to cater to his every need and gloating Emily Carr
professors that had been filling the air with laudatory chit-chat paused to
listen. Was this the Meaning of his
Talk? "It is too
late!" said the prof, eyes wide, taken back, leaning toward Baudrillard with
alarm sketched across his face. The Answer had arrived. "Do you really mean it
is too late?!?"
"It is too late," says Baudrillard, casually, eyes downward, and in a way only
the French can manage, he pulls back the sleeve of his brown jacket and glances
at his watch.
posted. Thu - March 8, 2007 @ 02:42 PM
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..ziP:
./them.hallucinates./.
.this blog sketches patterning / [tV] -- everything here is in-progress, often a mess of thoughts and poorly edited grammar.
past.projekts
.. @rchives //
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numbers that mean little:
absolut numerosity..:
...puplished 0n: Mar 10, 2007 12:03 AM
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