Dexter Sinister presents ``Getting Something Into One's Head''

[open-reading-group at o-r-g.com]

Dexter Sinister presents ``Getting Something Into One's Head'' tomorrow 
night FRIDAY JANUARY 29, 7 PM at Fillip, 305 Cambie Street, as part of the 
exhibition An Invitation to An Infiltration at the Contemporary Art 
Gallery, Vancouver. To celebrate the publication of Sternberg Press book 
Portable Document Format, we will screen excerpts from Gilles Deleuze's 
``ABCprimer'' with live approximate translation. This is the fourth of 
five consecutive evening events. Details for each will be announced the 
night before together with a brief preparatory text:

In ``Abecedaire'', a testimonial interview intended for posthumous 
screening on French TV, the philosopher Gilles Deleuze discusses his 
experiences as a teacher. In the first of three distinct moments of 
unscripted insight, he describes the enormous amount of preperation 
involved in ``getting something into one's head'' just enough --- to a 
teetering degree of comprehension --- to be able to convey it with the 
inspiration of live realization in front of a class. The preparation, 
then, amounts to a kind of rehearsal for a performance, at best a form of 
planned improvisation. If the speaker doesn't find what he's saying of 
interest, no one else will, and so there must be an element of mutual 
education in which he (the teacher) is stimulated by learning something 
at the same time as conveying it. Deleuze insists this shouldn't be 
mistaken for vanity: it's not a case of finding oneself passionate and 
interesting, only the subject matter.

Later, Deleuze makes a distinction between schools and movements. A school 
is a negative force, he suggests, because it is heavy, fixed, and 
exclusive. It implies rules, leaders, administration, hierarchy, and 
bureaucracy. A movement by comparison is light, flexible, and open. Less 
easily defined, it is characterized more by intentions, attitudes, 
diversions, and the passage of ideas. He gives an example from art 
history: Surrealism as an example of a ``school,'' with Breton its 
headmaster imposing rules, excluding personnel, and settling scores, as 
opposed to Dada as a ``movement,'' a flow of ideas involving many people, 
places, and forms without apparent hierarchy.

See http://www.fillip.ca
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