My ideas so far for a topic...

...centre around two (fairly distinct) themes.

1.) FIRE

Not really sure how this idea came about, other than I recently bought a book called 'Burn: Artists Play With Fire', or how we could enact an intervention to do with it, but I think fire is a pretty interesting theme. To start with, there are the obvious connotations to it as 'the first mark of civilisation' - thus, it represents man's inventiveness, and in some ways we still rely on it today (albeit in a diluted form)

In other ways though, isn't civilisation kind of at odds with fire? It's incredibly scared of it, as it represents the prospect of destruction. We live 'plastic lives' - at odds with our origins, so now fire in many ways fire could represent authenticity, and closer ties with nature. Western Societies are obsessed with risk prevention, fire safety etc... But in nature, sometimes fire is needed in order for plants to rejuvenate, re-grow.

Perhaps, tied in with this, but equally potentially a separate idea, is the process of meditation/mindfulness: It's having somewhat of a resurgence recently, the stress and liquidity of day to day life in cities means people are constantly searching for ways to relax, de-stress. Meditation represents a good way to re-connect with the self, the Goffman reading for example, quoted the famous passage from Sartre in which he suggests that everyone in Modern times is forced to 'act out a part' (the waiter who is 'playing at being a waiter')

'Fire dreaming' is a form of aboriginal art, a kind of meditation on fire with creative results...

I've read bits of Jane Bennett's book 'Vibrant Matter' - and can't help thinking that fire is a very good example of this 'power' she attributes to things, a good reminder that man is perhaps not at the centre of the earth, and is reliant on other things.  Also, as the flames move, we can see things within them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia. Rather than today when everything we see literally just means one thing and is highly utilitarian, stripped of any significance.

I can't find pictures of any of the pieces from 'Burn:...' online but, there was for instance:

• a piece called Ark, an 11-foot tower of over 100 glowing electric fire logs. It can be seen as a critique of society's need to have everything in an 'acceptable' easily digestible form. 
• and Thomas Kettner's painstakingly created drawings from tiny burns made with a magnifying glass...

I'll show you guys on Friday.

2.) CUT UP
My second idea focuses around some of the surrealist techniques I've been researching. I suppose it stems from the same starting point of the play project - visual bombardment and the virtuality of our day to day lives. Another way to achieve tactility - touching/holding/moving/playing/interacting with things (which is most definitely on the decline) might be to....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique. The idea of cutting up and reordering  things that shouldn't be reordered seems interesting, it sort of ties in with one of the other readings about 'not-knowing' and 'anti-reason'.

Just for example, if we consider some of the factors that most characterise our everyday:

• news (both political+celebrity)
• social network updates/youtube comments
• marketing/adverts
• Hobbes/other treatises that form the basis of 'civilisation'

What if we were to work as a group to reconnect with texts such as these, reorder them and see what happened? Or perhaps, in line with what Bennett is arguing for, we could ascribe a narrative to objects - as their voice is currently missing (if we are to believe her point that they require, need a voice...)

A method such as this challenges the current pace of life (immediate, easy consumption, a clear message) and I think this is also tied in with another point from the lectures I've found inspiring... sticking at something, almost to a ridiculous degree. I.e. George Perec and his insistence on not using the letter 'e' in 'A Void'. There are also many 'outsider artists' who take a highly fastidious approach to their medium:

Artists like Achilles Rizolli 'plan the ludicrous'. He would spend ages carefully sketching, planning one building to 'symbolically represent' something else... Creating something with no aim of selling, displaying it, but perhaps because the process of creation was itself calming, meditative. This idea of being fully absorbed and concentrating entirely on something is definitely on the decline, see for example, Marshall McLuhan's 'The medium is the message'.

Perhaps this could be tied in with what Anna and Jody have been suggesting, we could achieve something we wouldn't be able to on our own, a communal project that challenges ideas about immediacy and promptly moving on from one thing to the next...?

William Burroughs famously said 'When you cut into the present the future leaks out' - and many surrealists talk about 'cut-up' techniques in terms of revealing the 'true meaning' of a given text... The result would probably look a bit like a stream of conciousness writing, and if anyone has ever read any Modernist literature (there's a great collection of Virginia Woolf's short stories I can lend out...) they'll know that the incorporation of chance + ephemerality is a powerful thing, especially now, in a society which so often banishes it:

“That’s an early Mozart, of course——”
“But the tune, like all his tunes, makes one despair—I mean hope. What do I mean? That’s the worst of music! I want to dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine. Or an indecent story, now—I could relish that. The older one grows the more one likes indecency. Hall, hah! I’m laughing. What at? You said nothing, nor did the old gentleman opposite.... But suppose—suppose—Hush!”
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight. Woven together, inextricably commingled, bound in pain and strewn in sorrow—crash!
The boat sinks. Rising, the figures ascend, but now leaf thin, tapering to a dusky wraith, which, fiery tipped, draws its twofold passion from my heart. For me it sings, unseals my sorrow, thaws compassion, floods with love the sunless world, nor, ceasing, abates its tenderness but deftly, subtly, weaves in and out until in this pattern, this consummation, the cleft ones unify; soar, sob, sink to rest, sorrow and joy.
Why then grieve? Ask what? Remain unsatisfied? I say all’s been settled; yes; laid to rest under a coverlet of rose leaves, falling. Falling. Ah, but they cease. One rose leaf, falling from an enormous height, like a little parachute dropped from an invisible balloon, turns, flutters waveringly. It won’t reach us.
“No, no. I noticed nothing. That’s the worst of music—these silly dreams. The second violin was late, you say?”

From 'The String Quartet' - In which the reader reads both the 'outer' narrative of the musical concert as the piece develops and the inner thoughts that the music inspires in the author. http://www.bartleby.com/85/5.html

Would reverting texts to a sort of 'gobbledigook' phase in some way solve the gulf between the everyday and the abstract political theory which attempts to define it? A message felt, but not entirely understood. I'm planning on heading to this, soon: http://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/whats-on/hannah-rickards1/about/. And I guess it's discussing a similar thing, so it's obviously a theme contemporary artists are concerned with... I'll report back once I've been if it's relevant!

A final thought on interventions:

In my opinion, the interventions enacted by past students on this course are problematic. Surely what really needs to happen is for this 'culture of immediacy', this 'society of the spectacle' to be challenged itself, not added to... Perhaps a subtle approach is needed?

Conversely, there probably is something to be said for actually just 'telling people the facts', getting in their face a little, 'jolting them'. The Bauman reading had this great extract from a poll which revealed the sheer scale of misinformation in the wake of the Iraq War for instance.

There are definitely problems with intervening and 'putting the facts out there', though, the level of apathy is so great, how could we really aim to change this, to make people think again? Would any attempt just be dismissed in the same way that we are convinced we would dismiss a group if they confronted us, acting outside of social norms?

If we were to exhibit, for example, a video, either to the class, or find a way of playing it 'out in public', would this solve our problem? There's some really great video art out there, for example the quite-obviously political ones we've seen in the lectures, as well as the more subtle:

I hope all this makes some kind of sense. Sorry for the length, might be easier to talk about in person, but should give people some time to formulate some responses.