#self-built

From the series “Arquitectura Libre” 

Segal Houses

I once saw a TV movie which the main character is a Doctor and doctor of heart. She’s a strong woman with exceptional intellectuality. She had a husband from military. You can watch the movie yourself it’s titled Annihilation on Netflix. There you go.

In the movie there is a quote that still lingers and will forever disturb my mind and mental state. It goes like this, 

“Lena: Then I have to ask: why did my husband volunteer for a suicide mission?

Dr Ventress: So you're asking me as a psychologist?

Lena: Yes.

Dr Ventress: Then, as a psychologist, I think you're confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they're very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. Somehow. In some part of our lives. We drink, or take drugs, or destabilize the happy job... or happy marriage.

[Lena startles, uncertain whether this was targeted at her]

Dr Ventress: But these aren't decisions. They're impulses. And in fact, as a biologist, you're better placed to explain them than me.

Lena: What do you mean?

Dr Ventress: Isn't the self-destruction coded into us? Imprinted into each cell”

self-destruct.

After that movie, I began to think about all aspects of life I have had until today. Family, friends, job, wealth, health and so on. It’s uncountable and unmentionable, its vast and infinite. Yet, why are there still knots that are begging to be entangled? Spot of bother that is itching to either be scratched or medicated?

self-destruct.

My current self-destruct problem came exactly when I am so ready to accept myself as I am. I am enough and decent. I live. But then a self-destruct device came out of nowhere talking about the presence of another person in my life that probably has nothing to do with my life but might able to complete myself. The whole lot reading about love from my previous post crumbles down when I lost myself to a self-degrading situation where I am ready to be someone else for another person. Just because I truly want to be accepted by that person. Crushed and fell.

They’re impulse.

As just like another impulse, it happens, comes and goes. When you are ready to self-destruct, sometimes you ain’t ready to rearrange those pieces that crumbles. But as human being that has all those cells that decisively do something to our body with or without our consciousness, we also has the ability to self-built.

The movie didn’t really say much about that part about self-built. We do have the ability and capability to shape ourselves. However whatever we would like it to be. Still about reality, we are able to perceive reality how menacing or however encouraging it is. And sometimes we need other people to encourage us to be as hopeful as we are.

A crazy fool that hopes.

May 2013

John Nixon - a primarily visual/conceptual Australian artist, celebrated internationally and lauded by later-generation artists for his work across painting, sculpture, print, conceptual work and even the art of curating. Indeed No Brow listeners may already be aware of his painted work when we had art historian Rex Butler discussed John’s painted and visual material in terms of a philosophical take on Communism. But what is under acknowledged and has relatively recently become appreciated in John’s career is his work with music and a project called anti-music.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s as John became influenced by experiences in the London punk scene and the premise of do-it-yourself culture – making your own record labels, shows, fanzines, records – John began the Anti-Music project, a series of one-edition only cassettes created by trained musicians, untrained musicians and artists the world over. Almost all Anti-Music material produced over a five-year period – most productive in 1980 and 81 – were created by bands formed and named for nothing other than that single recording project. What resulted was a whole spectrum of different approaches to sound and music-making which has been noted by underground and avant-garde music fans the world over.

More recently John has been practicing in his band The Donkey’s Tail, performing on instruments he has built himself – including spring guitars, lagerphones, paintings with bells attached, home-built hurdy-gurdys and the like. Sitting somewhere between composition and improvisation, the Donkey’s Tail is very much John’s project but calls upon a revolving troupe of different musicians and non-musicians to feature on recordings and in concerts.

Andrew McLellan and Joel Stern visited John at his home outside Melbourne early in 2013, spoke about his involvement across different musical and anti-musical projects and heard some of his home-made instrumentation…

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SiSmAA_Auto-Aggregative Simulative System 

by Gabriele Molfetta