weak methods by Alina Popa- Teach Back...
The weak method (Greek methodos from meta- "after" (see meta-) + hodos "a traveling, way") is a vague travel guide, a shape-shifting map to navigate a shape-shifting terrain. Written or drawn in a language reaching beyond itself. The weak cross the limit not by going forward but by falling through.
The direction is weak when the arrow that points to somewhere loses its head (a headless arrow) and drifts towards nowhere with determination.
If a method is a way, a direction to travel, the weak method re-draws two maps: Lewis Carroll's map of nothing, the notation of an empty landscape (finding your way by vague means) and his map of everything, the notation of all, which once laid down on the ground darkens the whole world it has hitherto mapped (finding your way by dark means). The weak method finds ways by no means.
Weak travelling: you go somewhere between everywhere and nowhere.
All across the weak spectrum, the method is an approach of darkness with darkness.
The weak method solves a situation by means that are oblique to the situation. Obliqueness is another name for weak.
A weak method constructs distraction and distracts construction.
A weak method is an abductive practice. It is only interested in that which exceeds the conditions of possibility of its emergence. The weak method recognizes that this event is most of the time not recognizable.
A weak method finds solutions without a problem.
Self-referentiality is weak. If something refers to itself, then it points to the weakness of the language/system that proposition is a part of. Liar's paradox: this sentence is a lie. If it is true, then it is false, and vice versa. Language cannot make truth statements about itself. Or at least not through us. Only if we let it go. Paradox is weak. It is when the system tries to close in on itself and shows a wound, a weakness.
A weak method would cure a wound with a wound, devour emptiness with emptiness, and indulge in circular arguments and autophagy. Abstract and sensual homeopathy.
A weak method may be at times careless. Like setting up a piece where the performance is busy with itself and the audience is busy with itself. Inhabiting the same space, who knows what permeates the boundary.
Or too megalomaniac. Monomanic and still far too complex. To go the megalomaniac way: an impossible task solved through means pertaining to the possible. A cosmic pretense made real through an all-too-human stance. To work from behind the bars of the real in order to reach beyond. A weak beyond.
A silly idea to reach the outer space, to drift into the outside, a sensual rocket. To become a star by literally giving your name to a star (like the Afro-futurist band whose name I forgot).
To be weak is not to be slow but to reach a different velocity than that of the medium you inhabit.
A weak method indulges in fog construction (and fog therapy, who knows what this means?), cosmic pity ("I am sorrier than I have ever been in my whole sorry life" Written on the Wind, D. Sirk) and makes dances out of involuntary movements.
A cosmic melodrama flattened down with a single contingent gesture. Or uttering your most affectively engaging preoccupations in a low, monotonous, equal voice.
The practitioner of a weak method indulges in doubt as the affect of ramifications, oscillating between options in a loosely structured manner. I cannot decide and I don't have to.
Weakness is more dynamic than strength. Weakness embeds strength and is embedded in strength. But it needs to be affirmed in order to break the dichotomy.
The axe of mathematical thought cuts nature into meaningful chunks by way of abstraction, which is a mutilation. A weak thought is a knife with a dotted blade, it cuts with a line that longs for immaculation.
The weak method is a corrupt method. It breaks signification and lingers in the asignifying gaps. It embraces futility, incompleteness, glitches, inconsistency, paracoherence, boredom. A town without weather, a room without doors, a dance without the body. A dance that happens in a place and time different than where and when it takes place.
A weak method relies on function and structure only in order to enhance the potentiality of weakness. A structure emerged only as that which holds vagueness together.
