From dark into light in Newcastle

Wall art world

On my way to work -and from- I often see this interesting piece of grafitti art.

Light box 'window'

From the chapel at Marygate House on Lindisfarne.

An apparatus is a Power?

I'm back into more actively building on the notion of the Powers in a way that could or should help chaplains in institutional ministry (and others). Partly this is because I have 'a paper' to give on the matter in October. I have recently been reminded Agamben's little essay 'What is an Apparatus?' This blog post Faith and Theology: Introducing Giorgio Agamben: what is an apparatus?
gives a way into why I think it is significant:

Agamben uses Foucault’s concept of the apparatus to classify all beings in two groups: “living beings”, and “apparatuses in which living beings are incessantly captured”. In theological terminology, these two classes denote an ontology of creatures on the one hand, and on the other hand the oikonomia of apparatuses that seek to govern these creatures (13). Between these two classes lies a third class: subjects. Agamben understands a subject as that which results from the relation between living beings and apparatuses.

That certainly appears to me to be a fair statement of what Agamben is saying in this essay. It seems to me that in describing something that is a "creature" and that "captures" living beings and plays a part in governing them is very congruent with Wink's characterisation of the Powers. What is interesting is the idea that subjects are produced. I think this is important and true: that human beings are instated as subjects in part by the influence of these other creatures. Our subjectivity (if I'm right in interpreting Agamben's 'subject' as having something to do with subjectivity -I recognise I may be jumping the gun a bit there) is at least partly constituted by the social context which I take to be the constituent 'field' of apparatuses or the Powers.

It is here that the importance of the Powers /apparatuses in Fall and Redemption becomes apparent. They produce subjects (and, btw, are produced in turn by them) and so play a part in the production of sin. Thus they have to be dealt with in liberation from sin.

These apparatuses can be resisted – we can intervene in their process of subjectification – only through profanation.

Agamben's idea of profanation, I think, is a way of describing 'unmasking the powers': exposing their pretensions to usurp what belongs to God. It is interesting that Agamben traces this back to theologies of Trinitarian oikonomia; there is an even older kind of language available; that of principalities and powers.

Sunflower poem

Here's a poem what I wrote on Good Friday ... (and for those who don't know me and British popular culture the grammar pertaining to the relative pronoun in that sentence is not my own, it is used for allusive effect -in this case a Morcambe and Wise reference).


Sunflowers.
Like  doxalogical refractions
the sun flowers forth
in
earth-tethered
green-girdered
growing
aspirants to light
postulants to glory.

Techno posthuman curated from a future: the art of Elizabeth Price

I've just been to the Baltic and seen Elizabeth Price's video triptych (my designation of the three works). I loved it/them. The pieces spoke to me in ways I'm still going over in my head and trying to piece together. That in itself is very satisfying: I like artworks that grab me 'behind' my conscious thinking and which I then have to think over and ruminate on to unpack the experience.

It seems to me that the description of Skye Sherwin captures it well:

post-human worlds that seem dedicated to the preservation of museum rarities, pound-shop tat, designer appliances and modernist furniture, all glimmering with a cold allure. The objects have taken over: these groomed rooms bear no trace of people's lives. Our guides to these worlds take the form of a vaguely threatening "we" that speaks through disembodied captions popping up silently on screen, as techno rhythms pulse or choirs call out in numb harmonies. (from: Artist of the week 147: Elizabeth Price | Art and design | guardian.co.uk:)

I  am  finding it hard not to see some theology in one thread of this collection. I suspect the artist would be intrigued or horrified to discover a theologian relating to it so. But I found the central piece 'Choir' seemed to counterpoint the eternal matters referenced in the cathedral quires of the first part of the video with the fire-destroyed consumer goods of the second part. It seems to me that there is a comment somehow on the bonfire of the vanities that is consumer culture. This ironic look at consumer culture seems to come through in the trio of works. As if the putative view from the posthuman future manages to radically relativise consumer values in a way that is akin to the transcendent perspectives that we (try to) connect with in theology.

In Choir, according to the interview with ms Price, there is a gesture which connects the various parts: a piece of sculpture in a quire and a gesture made by one of the evacuees of the Woolworth's fire and a dancer in the disco footage. but the more enduring images in terms of arrest and memory are of the plans, the rectilinear rooms within a room of the quire, the furniture store and the fire-experiment forensic room.
I just found it hard not also to be hearing in my head 'our God is a consuming fire'.

Ms Sherwin says she likes Price's " fevered User Group Disco, which imagines a museum where we're told monsters still exist." So do I like it. Though, as I recall, we weren't so much told that monsters still exist so much as that monsters had not all been eliminated. In the follow-on context of the video, the transhuman-futurist perspective was redolent of Alien; almost making the present world of domesticity look like a place that could harbour the beasts that remove us (Prometheus?). Perhaps, in this way, there is a warning...

I found the collection and composition also very witty. I laughed out loud at various points: I loved the ironic and satirical juxtapositions and commentaries. -Again, I'm assuming that I'm reading it something like aright. I think I might enjoy this artist's sense of humour in real face-to-face encounter.

What else am I unpacking? The borg-like voice and typographic presence (often speaking in corporate-advertising soundbites as if phrases have been picked up as the basic building blocks -a Star Trek Next Gen allusion, perhaps) The shiney metals and 60's visual styling which along with the upbeat music somehow comes over all Pearl and Dean cinema advertising -thus increasing the sense of been sold too. Then there is the poignancy of the cars which seem to be designed for all sorts of things that they will never, at the bottom of the see, 'experience'. If that's not a study in Qohelethic vanity, I'm not sure what is.

Despite my usually-better half reckoning it 'arty farty nonsense', I'm hoping to return to ponder further before it moves out of the Baltic.

A church in a basement

A little while back I visited and worshipped with a church that meets in a basement attached to a cafe. During my time there I took a few notes of things I noticed and I pondered.

I liked that there were candles around the room. Though they weren't lit. Though interestingly, they were later in the service where they related to the bread and the wine towards the end of the service -see further on.

It was a shame no one told me that the idea is to hang around in the cafe area that you have to walk through to get to the worship area: I guess that may point up to a potential development on their part of a welcome team who can intercept people as they go through the cafe and help us to know how things work round there. It's an interesting reflection in itself of the assumptions that pertain to such things as entering a space and a group of people for the first time. The space and the group have evolved a way of relating and being used that is not necessarily transparent to the newcomer and it is good to have people around to help and to interpret.

The space where the worship takes place has a stage at one end; it has something of a night club or comedy club look to it. I'd arrived about 5 minutes before the published start time but was the only person in the room apart from the music group rehearsing on the stage. It struck me afresh that the message of this arrangement is 'performance' rather than 'fellowship'. The seats collude: they're arranged to spectate. The music was quite loud and I became concerned for the baby someone was by this time carrying around, though it didn't seem so bad once more people were in.

I ended up feeling a bit embarrassed about sitting in the space almost alone, so I didn't go back to cafe area which voices told me was where I should have been. I watch the group rehearse and then they comment to one another that everyone is late (presumably to come through to worship room). that's 10:38. On the seats, at the end of many of the rows, are coats. I take it that these 'bag' seats, perhaps rows? Someone has now said 'hello' to me, though I guess writing notes for this on my phone is probably giving "busy: don't disturb" signals... !?

There is evidence of stational prayer artefacts: a big map in one corner, a table in another. Someone next door calls people through. They come. Some still have coffee cups. Couple of songs, open prayer (unannounced: so a bit of a shock but not off-puttingly so), couple more songs. They focus on praise and thanks and are in an easy to follow soft-rock style. Then the pastor spoke from tall stool. He's wearing jeans and hoody and has an American accent: talks about next week's baptism. Then about the coming church retreat. He then led us in prayer. I reflect that the main addressee of prayer is "Jesus", Though the pastor's prayer ended addressing "father" (having started with Jesus).

Text for preaching is Mark 5 :21ff. He notes both women share 12 years: one in age the other ill for 12 yrs; I'd not noticed that before and I wonder what to make of that -but the rest of the sermon doesn't really explore that... Jairus' desperation overcomes other considerations, probably means the interruption for the bleeding woman (whose name we don't get to know) was very vexing. The bleeding woman seems insignificant (and acts like it). Issue of uncleanness and knock on social effects. sees v.30 as showing deity (power gone out) then humanity of Christ (who touched...). V.34 conveys change of identity: no longer 'woman with issue' to child of God. V.33 whole story: implies details, minutely.

Interesting thought: Jairus: is likely impatient with the delay. And there's a poignancy in that he's likely to have been involved in 'outsiding' the woman from synagogue and polite society. Note Jesus has concern but tells Jairus to hold on: We often focus on 'end' but God often concerned with process. Removes doubters. Note calm rather than dramatic approach (it was good that someone in a charismatic church played down the religious drama of healing!) -Even matter of fact.  In our lives we need to note that some people need to press through the crowd and some to wait like Jairus.

After the talk: songs and communion. "Communion" was simply bread and wine on table brought discretely to front (candles lit!). There was no prayer over elements: doesn't really feel like 'doing this n remembrance'. Trying to work out whether this is my habituation showing or whether there is something missing. I think that I'm not sure I'd want to encourage this way of doing it to continue. I do feel that elements of the 'do this in remembrance' seem underrepresented: the blessing of/with the elements was absent. I noted that we'd praised God for God's acts, goodness etc and particularly for the Cross, but I can't help feeling that to properly link this up with 'do this...', there should be an associating of the bread and wine with the thanksgiving. The taking was, if we interpret the moving of the table on which the bread and wine were placed as such, after what I've interpreted as the 'blessing'. The breaking was done by individuals as and when they went forward to take the bread to eat it. The effect was to radically individualise the communion and really to emphasise a memorialising approach. I think that really something which more fully recognises the body in the sense of the corporateness of the church would be needed really. I'd really also suggest that somethinng about the action that points towards the idea that God might meet with us (together) in the action might be included. I suspect that the low-key and individualised way this was done tends to reduce the formative possibilities of the action compared with how it is when we explicitly and corporately go through the actions.

Aware too that no intercessions took place.

We were told that a meal was to be served in cafe after. I didn't feel I could stay, though if someone had encouraged me I might have.