Memory Work I: Freudian Slip
November 3, 2006
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In it Freud examined the psychological process of forgetting the name of the artist who painted the Orvieto ceiling when his conscious thinking process was abruptly interrupted by memories of the recent suicide of one of his patients who had an incurable sexual disorder. He forget Signorelli’s proper name during this conversation with a stranger while traveling in Herzegovina. They had been discussing the Turks in Bosnia and Herzegovina when Freud’s thoughts turned to contemporary [racist] beliefs surrounding the sexual moeurs of Turks who allegedly valued sexual pleasure over life itself. From there Freud thought of Death and Sexuality. As one theme interrupted and replaced the other, he associated the series Signorelli. Botticelli, Boltraffio, Trafoi and could not recollect the proper name.
This is significant to me as it reveals unchallenged western prejudices about the East at the turn of the century.
Layers include a .jpg of Renaissance artist Luca Signorelli’s (1445 – 1523) masterpiece, the massive frescoes of the Last Judgment (1499-1503) in Orvieto Cathedral. The copyright on his work has expired since he passed away more than 70 years ago.
There is a topographical map of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a small iinsert of Freud’s museum which is itself th subject of controversy as rrevealed in Derrida’s book Archives Fever (1996). The uppermost layer is the diagram from the Freud’s article explaining how he made a Freudian slip.
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Uploaded by ocean.flynn on 2 Nov ’06, 4.23pm MST.
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Space invasion with fireplace and PC (1998-1999)
November 2, 2006
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2006. Digital image of: 1998-9. “Space Invasion with Fireplace and PC.” Acrylic on Arches Paper, 30″ x 22.5.” Lac Gauvreau, Québec, Canada. BY-NC-SA.Uploaded 2006/11/02
I was looking for an old website I had built in 2000 when I came upon Stefano Cazzella’s elegantly designed blog entitled, caccio’s blog: Building WORLD 2.0.
Using the Creative Commond license Stefano Cazzella had hosted text and image from my Flickr album or my WordPress blog on his site. It looks very good there so I hope he does not remove it. However, I have asked him to put my name on it. The digital signature is barely visible on the snow through the window of our A-frame cottage but I had not written my name in my Flickr description of the page. So I sent it to Stefano Cazzella and will wait to see what happens. Fewer than fifty people have viewed this on WordPress but over 200 visited the same image on Flickr since it was first uploaded on November 2, 2006.
I began making my first web pages when Dave and I lived here on Lac Gauvreau, Chemin de la Baie Ste. Anne, Ste Cécile de Masham, Québec. I had already taken my first contemporary social theory courses with Rob Shields. From that time onwards he has been a valued mentor for my grad studies. I was working on the year long PhD seminar course with Professor Wallot at the University of Ottawa. This Canadian Studies PhD was a life-transforming experience. It was education as its best. The institution provided everything a grad student could need including access to a super coach and computer lab. As always Dave and I were squeezing as much as we could with bare bones technology. I was using our first digital camera and this flat bed scanner. My son Dan, who was studying at the Cite collegiale in Ottawa, taught me just enough .html coding so I wouldn’t make too much of a mess for him to clean up. He was a bit of a purist.This acrylic painting was painted over the Christmas holidays in 1998-1999. I had already painted the tree outside our cabin by Lake Gauvreau. The next day the branches were so burdened with snow I had to repaint them entirely. I decided to let them invade the inner space of the cottage since their presence was so insistent.
The painting is 30″ x 22.5″ on Arches paper.
It was shown in March 1999 at an exhibition on Bank Street in Ottawa, ON and again in a gallery on Great George Street , Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in the summer of 1999.
Space invasion with fireplace and PC was one of the first images on my Carleton University home page and on the collaborative, innovative virtual space called artengine. It is one of my favourite images and after our chaotic move out west I really don’t know where the actual physical painting is or the great high resolution digital images the professional photographer took of my work in May-June? of 1999.
One of the challenges for me is to find the kinds of sites that provide me with ideas I can build upon. For example, currently I am unable to simply use a search engine to find useful information on the concept of memory work. I have kept track of this concept over the years using my EndNote bibliographic database. My sister Sharon introduced me to EndNote c. 1992?, an authoring software for creating digital databases with a powerful cross-referencing ability. Thousands of useful entries later and numerous upgrades later I continue to thank you Sharon.
The Creative Commons actually builds on a way of sharing, adapting, building knowledge claims that has been a part of teaching, learning and research for time immemorial. What I can illustrate in an image is difficult to argue in text. Basically we are all using communal memories, communal archives to build our own original creations. Creative Commons acknowledges that and goes against the current where academic capital has become a jealously guarded commodity, knowledge bytes are the new virtual gold. We are in the middle of a virtual gold rush.
I think this is my first complete reference blog-to-blog and I am touched. I had a professional photographer take slides of this series of paintings in 1999 and had Kodak produce a CD-ROM of them all in high resolution. (I lost the CD in our last move unfortunately but I still have the painting.) A lower resolution version of Space Invasion became my avatar for my first web page in 1999. It is was my first acrylic painting completed in the first few days of 1999 for my first exhibition in Ottawa, Ontario and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
I have written somewhere else on one of my blogs that working with Web 2.0 is like being trained by a cat to be at least minimally presentable to be associated with cat royalty. Feed owners learn what Web 2.0 tools like or not very quickly. Bricoleurs learn by trial and error not only how to design spaces that connect, but also how to frame and protect our content. This is a delicious example of how to learn-by-doing.
Maureen Flynn-Burhoe. 2006. “Space invasion with fireplace and PC (1998-1999).” speechless. https://oceanflynn.wordpress.com. BY-NC-SA
The Creative Commons license 2.5 that I use with all my work,
Technorati spider release
November 1, 2006
In my attempt to understand how Frimr reached its scores I found sites called blogjuice? which led me again to Technorati. I had visited their site before so this time I decided to register. I now have a Technorati Profile. I am now trying to use Technorati to refine searches for key concepts such as memory work, answerability, post-national, ethical topography of self.
I continue to find so many free, useful and fun internet services. Flickr is by far the most entertaining. For keeping track of bookmarks, which I call my webliographies, del.icio.us and swicki offer much more than I could ever have imagined. Swicki even does it with image collages of your individualized tag clouds. I have been learning how to interconnect my Flickr with WordPress and Blogspot. That is also amazing.