“The
limit of something is the limit of its action and not the outline of its figure
… You are walking in a dense forest, you’re afraid … little by little the
forest thins out you are pleased. You reach a spot and you say, ‘whew, here’s
the edge’. The edge of the forest is a limit. [Is] that the forest … defined by
its outline? It’s a limit of what? Is it a limit to the form of the forest?
[No] It’s a limit to the action of the forest, that is to say that the forest
that has so much power arrives at the limits of its power, it can no longer lie
over the terrain, it thins out … [T]his is not an outline… we can’t even
specify the precise moment at which there is no more forest. There was a
tendency, and this time the limit is not separable, a kind of tension towards
the limit. It’s a dynamic limit that is opposed to an outline limit. The thing
has no other limit than the limit of its power [puissance] or its action. The thing is thus power and not form. The
forest is not defined by a form: it is defined by a power, power to make the
trees continue up to the point where is can no longer do so. The only question
that I have to ask the forest is: what is your power? That is to say, how far
will you go?” Gilles Deleuze, Lectures on Spinoza, Cours Vincennes, 17/02/1981)
I am
currently writing a new prose-poem text, which will form part of a
collaborative publication with Katja Hock (in conjunction with her forthcoming
exhibition in Nottingham in the Autumn). The text is currently emerging as a series of
ten short chapters or sections as follows: (1) Indeterminacy; (2) Duration; (3) Absorption;
(4) Verticality; (5) Glimpsing; (6) Attending; (7) Tarrying; (8) Distancing;
(9) Re- (turning); (10) Gathering. Structured as such, this text forms part of an ongoing set of serialised prose-poems including 'Room for Manoeuvre; or, Ways of Operating Along the Margins'; 'The Yes of the No!'; 'Social Experiments'.
As part of this text, I have been thinking a lot about Maya Deren's description of the poetic as a form of verticality, that attend not to the what but rather to how something is happening:
"The distinction of poetry is its structure, is what I mean as a poetic structure and a poetic construct arises from the fact that it is a vertical investigation of a situation. It probes the moment, it probes the ramification of the moment, and is concerned with its qualities and its depth. So that you have poetry concerned in a sense, not with what is occurring but with what is feels like, or what it means. A poem ... creates visible or auditory forms for something that is invisible, the feeling or the emotions or the metaphysical content of a moment. It also may include action, but its attack is what I call the vertical attack, and this contrasts with the horizontal attack of a drama, which is concerned with the development from situation to situation... whereas a poem is concerned with the development within a very small situation, from feeling to feeling".
As part of this text, I have been thinking a lot about Maya Deren's description of the poetic as a form of verticality, that attend not to the what but rather to how something is happening:
"The distinction of poetry is its structure, is what I mean as a poetic structure and a poetic construct arises from the fact that it is a vertical investigation of a situation. It probes the moment, it probes the ramification of the moment, and is concerned with its qualities and its depth. So that you have poetry concerned in a sense, not with what is occurring but with what is feels like, or what it means. A poem ... creates visible or auditory forms for something that is invisible, the feeling or the emotions or the metaphysical content of a moment. It also may include action, but its attack is what I call the vertical attack, and this contrasts with the horizontal attack of a drama, which is concerned with the development from situation to situation... whereas a poem is concerned with the development within a very small situation, from feeling to feeling".
