Dasniya started with some (gentle) bootcamp warmup, and then spent the first two or three hours teaching basic tying and harnesses for hips, legs, torso, then going on to full-suspensions and showing some more painful possibilities like the single-bound-leg inverted hanging. Dinner was all us around the table, which is why Alte Kantine is so perfect for these classes and workshops, with much talking about philosophical, social, feminist and gender issues in BDSM and shibari.

And so on to February, more yoga and shibari classes every Wednesday evening in the Alte Kantine, and a trip for Dasniya at the end of the month north and east to Finland to teach in Helsinki.

Jeden Mittwoch Yoga & Shibari im Wedding.
1., 8., 15.,22., 29.  Februar, 19-23 Uhr.
Ort: Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt, Alte Kantine, Teatris, Uferstr. 8-11, 13357 Berlin,
U8 Pankstr/U9 Osloerstr.
Kosten 20/15 Euro
Workshop Text Deutsch

Every Wednesday there will be Yoga & Shibari in Berlin-Wedding.
February 1., 8., 15., 22., 29.
Location: Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt, Alte Kantine, Teatris, Uferstr. 8-11, 13357 Berlin, U8Pankstr/ U9 Osloerstr.
Costs: 20/15 Euro
Workshop text english

dasniya self-suspended and reading

So much of what is written on China is in fact only a small part thereof — Beijing as China, Shanghai as China, the eastern core. Other parts of the country are so distant as to be other countries, and despite the ongoing Han homogenisation programme, these other parts still retain their individual histories.

Paul A. Van Dyke’s The Canton Trade seemed like a good place to continue, after reading Julia Lovell’s The Opium War a few months ago, and now, more than half way through reading, I can say he hasn’t skimped on thoroughness.

Paul A. Van Dyke — The Canton Trade

We had a long discussion about what we are doing before the lunch-ish break – no dinner break it was already 17h – which resulted in a final couple of tasks where things started to coagulate.

On Saturday we talked with Ivo for a while about dramaturgy, or the perceived necessity of having an external dramaturge. I had been trying various things from Dasniya, and finished with an un-shibari experiment that had something worth repeating, yet was also empty. I think the issue is neither one of dramaturgy, as we are both well-versed in the milieu within which shibari, bdsm, and all the other facets of rope resides, nor is it one of direction – as in stage direction. What isn’t clear is what this work is about.

We have a lot of ideas, topics of research, small things that have become entire processes for working with rope; we’ve discussed from feminism and identity theory to physics and knot theory along the way, and obviously these things somehow fit into the work, along with the specific Japanese aesthetics of traditional shibari and so on, which we also play with. The question of what the work is about is perhaps better understood if this was a theatre work, if there was some text to work from and characters who must arrive in the room. Coming from working with Daniel Schlusser on Ophelia Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, also with shibari, possibly my thoughts are a little this way.

It’s also for me the need to have something to hang on to, that helps in pushing a work along; that I can use as a reference point to criticise and justify my decisions. Obviously working in a collaboration changes this and might even make it the not-possible way to continue. So, we talk, maybe for me to be able to make sense through words what is allowable so I can do things with conviction.

There are some almost formal things – flicking to uncoil ropes, the sliding walk of the tea ceremony or kyudo archery … – that will probably recur throughout, and cause a rupture in the mess of ropes. Other things – at least in what might be construed in my head as the section we’re working on at the moment – need a day or two refinement before I suspect they can be deemed coherent enough to make a remark on.

It pulls between an abstract, close to formal dance or movement and another that is perhaps a metonymy or representation, and yet another, lurking beneath, that is … neither of these. Maybe corporeal, sensorial, coming from rendering a character as much as an own internal emotion …

It seems likely we’ll be working all weekend. After all, it’s only two weeks, so twelve days instead of ten counts for something.

Michael Garza –the principal Bassoon in the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and one of the first people I met when I landed in that city close to ten years ago – and I have been talking about doing something there with a chamber music wind quartet. This led also to thoughts of taking ourselves south-west to Bangkok. So, Dasniya and I will spend two weeks working on some ideas, and making some kind of performance for the last Friday.

We also hope to wander up to Amsterdam to see some of Cinedans next weekend (no Lewis, sadly), and on the final weekend we have a Shibari Bondage workshop in Bains.

In the meantime, here is some text for an idea of what we may be doing.

The anarchy of knots or the n+2 dimensional space for n >1 or the rope was a plant

By Frances d’ Ath and Dasniya Sommer

The two week residency at Bains Connective in Brussels is the first phase to work on raw material based on the following ideas.

The cultural history of ropes goes back to the Mesolithic. It is a tool for binding, tying, restraining, lifting, fixing or lashing. It can lift cargo onto a ship, or a person off the ground. We tie our shoes every day, and bind damaged limbs or bodies with cloth bandages. At whatever level of consideration, our relations towards, and knowledge about this material, exist in thoughts in countless quotidian moments.

In topology knots are mathematicised. There is knot theory and tabulation itself, which leads to braid theory and physical knot theory, relating more practically to the real world. Back in abstract calculations there are ‘unknots’. A string with its ends joined together, creates an un-undoable loop. Or a wild knot, which is not tame, because of its so-called ‘pathological’ behaviour.

Rope is for justice. In tug-of-war games a collective has to act in concert. If they do well, an inch may decide their triumph. In Japan during times of war, prisoners were suspended and tortured with horrifying rope techniques. The status of the prisoner could be signified with the colour of the rope, and the degree of artistic ornament. Medieval rope was used for similar injustices. Ariadne’s thread, in contrast helped Theseus to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

Neuroanthropological thoughts invite us to perceive the rope as a tool, like a hammer is, or a pair of chopsticks, or a musical instrument. There is a dexterity added to the ability of the hand by it which it is not simply an addition. That is to say, ‘I’ am not merely ‘using’ a tool, but the ‘I’ that gains familiarity with an object, ceases to delineate between ‘me’ and ‘that’. These objects become part of us and in turn we extend ourselves into them.

In this way, the rope is my fingers, or perhaps to say the rope is my tactile organ, somewhat prehensile also. I do not merely feel through the rope, acting as an intermediary, with sensation being communicated along it towards or from me; I feel through the rope as its qualities are to touch what my skin is also.

It is almost as if we do something close to forbidden by taking this object of use and turning it to (sensual) play. Shibari, Japanese rope bondage does that. Because of its origin as a strand in martial arts technique, it needs to decisively dissociate from real methods for punishment. Instead it goes with consenting intensities of BDSM play or contemporary performance.

Between two people the rope allows for a degree of deferral, both for and against communication. Depending on the actions and intentions at either end however, the deferral in itself is somewhat neutral. It causes a possibility of communication that, by its tangible intermediary status, is not what or how one would commonly interact with another. It instigates a pause in thinking, a space for interpretation.

We work into an improvised dismantling of traditional tying rules and the logic behind these. While tying the body and the room, we bring in theories of Taoism, ‘Wabi-Sabi’, ‘Ma’, which allow us to be slightly less perfect, and impermanent. A rather european analysis of bodies, gender identities and role assignments in Shibari culture accompanies our experiment.

Musically, we are collaborating with Michael Garza, principal bassoonist of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. This is for a performance/installation with his wind chamber music group in Guangzhou and Bangkok in 2012.

tea ceremony shibari

I’m not really sure why I decided to read it, thought I’m pretty sure it was a post by Nicole Barnes at The China Beat that was responsible, and feeling a little daunted by Gail Hershatter’s monograph, as well as somehow feeling drawn to this unfinished one, have instead spent the last few days immersed in one of the most beautiful scholarly works I’ve ever read.

Coincidentally, some of the names that appear in Julia Lovell’s The Opium War recur here, though from the opposite side; through the lens of late-Qing Dynasty literati and scholar-civil servants.

What draws me to this book now, and to much on my upcoming reading list, is the centrality of women in the historical narrative. I notice this near-total absence especially in Central Asian and Afghanistan scholarship, as well as in a significant proportion of Chinese writing — the history, culture, art of these regions as commonly presented is in fact the men’s history, and for no good reason.

Perhaps to say, in praise of this work and the author, that I have already put her other works on my reading list, and it is very unlikely I will not be writing about The Talented Women of the Zhang Family again. Also that it has unexpectedly rekindled my love of Chinese history and culture, and her passion for the subject has reminded me of this which I’d forgotten.

Susan Mann — The Talented Women of the Zhang Family

Another time, after a climbing trip on Hong Kong island, I went with a group for dinner in a Pakistani restaurant. Once more up elevators and along corridors. As we departed, I glimpsed through another door momentarily opened and saw groups of serious islamic men eating their own dinners around wooden tables.

I stayed there because of course living in Guangzhou and having a fascination with the Pearl River region how could I not hear of this place with the dangerous reputation — especially given my taste for Wong Kar-wai’s films. Were I to get stuck again in Hong Kong now, I’d likely stay there again, given at least it’s a name I know.

There is a compulsion in accounts of globalisation and the developing world to make the story about us, we who live in the global north, who either speak english, are of european descent, or both. That there could be a parallel yet predominantly disconnected globalisation, a flow of trade, people, ideas and culture is often seen as irrelevant or incomprehensible to the central narrative, if even addressed.

Gordon Mathew’s anthropology of this building, Ghetto at the Center of the World — Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong appealed to me for more than just what goes on in the confines of its seventeen stories and five separate blocks. As he points out in the introduction, the history and culture of the building is also one of low-end globalisation. This is not a narrative of the developed world’s arrangement with China in providing cheap, off-shore manufacturing, but rather that of a globalisation in which Europe and America are at best ancillary nodes on multiply-layered and discrete trade routes that span from Africa to South-East Asia by way of Dubai, India, and Guangzhou, and more often simply don’t occur at all in the narrative.

I’ve already spent much of the morning perched on the windowsill in the sun, having knocked off half the book in a sitting, which should give an idea of how fascinating I find the topic and book.

Gordon Mathews — Ghetto at the Center of the World

There are familiar names again — thinking here of science-fiction, ones I know I will buy whenever a new something arrives from them, whose publication dates I note down and await with increasing excitement. New names also, whose discovery has caused much pleasure.

Changes also. When I first began this documenting of whatever I’d opened to the first page, I explicitly chose not to say anything, not to review or write any words — except in very rare cases when moved to do so. I didn’t and don’t want to be in the thrall of feeling obliged to write a review or criticism. What did change though, was to write some paragraphs about how a particular book came to be discovered or acquired; why I was reading, or about to read it.

For me, this seems to give a slight sense of completeness that just posting the title and author, along with the cover didn’t quite manage. Especially also as there have been some books this year which I’ve felt very happy to have begun.

As with last year, I’ll start with the disappointments. Last year it was William Gibson; this year, Neal Stephenson. Reamde could have been exquisite, if it had been anything comparable to the Baroque Trilogy. Instead it was tired, riddled with clichés, endless hyperventilating over gun-tech and battles … It’s the kind of book that would appeal to a specific North American white hetero male type, who is still angry at the (perceived or real) slaps in the face from Islamic terrorists, Russian Mafia, United States government, Chinese in general … In the same way the content and premise of the book read as though it should have been published six years ago, this type fails to realise the rest of the world doesn’t really care about him or find much interesting in his self-absorbed world-view. A pity, because Stephenson’s writing can be beautiful, yet there was scant substance here; nothing that inspired me to turn over new thoughts.

Last year  said much the same about William Gibson, with the caveat that I would nonetheless likely read him again. This year, when there are so many truly brilliant  science-fiction writers I have yet to read, I don’t see the point, especially for some long-past fondness. To be plain, I’m not wasting my time on white, North American hetero male writers whose vision has become increasingly small, when there’s the whole rest of the world.

Contra that, Charles Stross’ Rule 34, which covered similar territory to Reamde, is close to being re-read. The difference perhaps is that Stross, along with China Miéville, and unlike Gibson or Stephenson understands the point of shifting the attention and point-of-view away from the above-mentioned, and when he does so, it reads believably.

Along with Rule 34, Miéville’s Un Lun Dun and Joan Slonczewski’s The Highest Frontier both remain in my mind. All three have females in the leading roles, or are written from their perspective, and all of them have this believability that is necessary for me to say, “Oh, you should read that”. Miéville also published Embassytown, which also has remained swirling in my head; thoughts of language and meaning; science-fiction as written by Derrida.

A critical thing for me in books — fiction and non-fiction — that transcend being just a good read, is that I can see the world imagined or written about through the words. It is visible in my mind’s eye as clearly as any other imagination. Without this, it’s rare that I can finish a book. Perhaps it is something of a representation of the writer’s empathy for their subjects; for the people who populate and live their written words.

I’ve been fortunate to have read several science-fiction works this year that have had something of this; Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief, Reza Negarestani’s Cryptonomicon, and (still reading) Chingiz Aitmatov’s poignant The Day Lasts More Than One Hundred Years, as well as the others I’ve mentioned. What separates the books of the year from these — all of which I’ll probably re-read at some time — is a specific imagination they instil.

I remember these as I do a colour or feeling or texture. The thoughts and ideas they generate seem to recur over time, as a spring or well. China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun and Joan Slonczewski’s The Highest Frontier both have these things in abundance. I can’t really separate them even though they are completely different works, one set a hundred years from now on a space-hab at the end of an anthrax tether hooked to Ohio, the other a parallel world of objects beside/between/against London; one speculative sci-fi written by a professor of biology and Quaker, the other speculative horror written by a Phd in Marxism and international law.

What is perhaps curious, Miéville’s is probably aimed at readers around 12 years old, and Slonczewski’s late-teens to early-twenties. Perhaps to say, given the minds behind both it’s no surprise they are deceptively subtle and thoughtful. And they are both superb.

Away from science-fiction.

As usual, my non-fiction reading has been China, Central Asia, Afghanistan, with some theatre and ‘other’ thrown in.

The biggest disappointment, given it was based on the monumental research of Joseph Needham and his Science and Civilisation in China, was Robert Temple’s The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention. Without wishing to say too much, the sycophancy in this book (notably towards the Chinese Government) makes for difficult and biased reading, and while China does have a long history of invention, the scope covered by this book is only possible and true if the border of China was to extend to the farthest cumulative reach of all dynasties across the entire 3,000 year duration.

Thankfully, I have read some very strong scholarship on China in the last year: Vera Schwarcz’ The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, Frank Dikötter’s Mao’s Great Famine, Julia Lovell’s The Opium War. Richard Wolin’s The Wind From The East stands out for the analysis of Maoism and the Cultural Revolution and their influence on the ’68 movement. It’s a compelling and conflicting read, for the disgraceful romance of some European philosophers with Mao who should and did know what was really going on in China under the communists, and for the unequivocally positive influence the idea of a ‘cultural revolution’ transposed to Europe had post-’68.

A book I started before last year’s anniversary, Nazif Shahrani The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan, is another superb work, and has really been responsible for pushing my interest into a very specific region where Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Tibet, and Tajikstan all meet. A conflicted area certainly; one also replete with mountains, and for a long time the passes of which formed nodes of long-lived trade routes. I expect to be reading a lot more on this region in the coming years.

Liao Yiwu’s God is Red – The secret story of how Christianity survived and flourished in Communist China, despite the religious focus of which I have a visceral aversion to, is as profound as The Corpse-Walker, and there is little I can say other than he is the most important writer I know of in China. Or rather, now in exile in Berlin. Had I been making a book of the year when I read The Corpse Walker, I’m fairly sure it would have been that. As it is, God is Red is very near.

Returning to Afghanistan, I’ve just finished Rodric Braithwaite’s Afghansty: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89. Perhaps the timing of its release, when the United States and allies have reached their own ten-year anniversary of war in Afghanistan is not coincidental. I wonder if it will be in twenty years from now a similar work will be written on this war, with a similar epilogue. The feeling for me throughout, deeply unsettling at the parallels, one which I suspect was intentional on the part of Braithwaite. is there is little doubt the shape of the coming years for Afghanistan will be found as a repeat of the years after the Russians had left.

And so, how do I choose? Different works, different fields of study; no work alone or springing fully-formed from nothing. Paul Hockenos’s Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin should also be mentioned, as with others … is this book of the year making a competition out of my wandering reading? Maybe to say that what this is, is an attempt at a description of the works that have lingered in my thoughts. To that then, Nazif Shahrani’s The Kirghiz and Wakhi of Afghanistan is a fitting examples.

china miéville – un lun dun

richard wolin – the wind from the east

frank dikötter – mao’s great famine

hannu rajaniemi — the quantum thief

paul hockenos – joschka fischer

vera schwarcz – the chinese enlightenment

china miéville – embassytown

charles stross – rule 34

julia lovell – the opium war

chingiz aitmatov – the day lasts more than a hundred years

liao yiwu – god is red

rodric braithwaite – afghansty

nazif shahrani – the kirghiz and wakhi of afghanistan

Joan Slonczewski — The Highest Frontier

Iain (M.) Banks I discovered next, and in truth, love the man. Some of his books don’t quite make it to the transcendental state I associate with him, but even the few I haven’t been so taken by, I’ve read at least twice. I don’t remember who came next, Charles Stross, China Miéville or Neal Stephenson, but the first two, though superficially different from each other and Iain Banks, I associate together. Certainly for their politics, which forms the core of their works.

Neal Stephenson is for me closer to Gibson: American, of a particular style and age, though equally not reducible to or interchangeable with. His Baroque Cycle was exactly that, the most colossal and ostentatious works of fiction I’ve read. It was very influential on me around the time I was first thinking about monadologie. Anathem I enjoyed not so much. Perhaps to say the colour of the work — if one could imagine the contents of the pages and their affect on my imagination being homogenised to an identifiable tone — was one I wouldn’t want a room painted in.

I was reading guest writer, Joan Slonczewski at Charles Stross’ blog, who has a new book out, and being quite taken by her ideas promptly went and ordered it. In the process of which, I discovered Neal Stephenson had a new bookshelf out, Reamde. I began it after class today. It’s uncomfortably large and will certainly cause anguish when it falls on my nose as I nod off. Still, if it’s anywhere within the universe of Cryptonomicon or The System of the World, I shall be quite distracted this weekend.

neal stephenson — reamde

Published on Sunday, October 2, 2011 by NYC General Assembly
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
by NYC General Assembly

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011, with slight adjustments in wording on October 1, 2011:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

New York City General Assemblies are an open, participatory and horizontally organized process through which we are building the capacity to constitute ourselves in public as autonomous collective forces within and against the constant crises of our times

Please read the Principles of Solidarity working draft

Interested in starting your own General Assembly, here is a quick guide from Takethesquare.net