Rachel de Joode’s show in Dallas

Berlin artist Rachel de Joode has a show up right now at the Oliver Francis Gallery in Dallas, entitled “Real Things.”

I have an essay in the catalog entitled “All Space is Real, All Time is Sensual.”

Click HERE for a review of the show.

Below: “A Peanut, Half a Horse, a Chicken Foot, a Burning Cigarette and a Black Hole,” 2011

Perhaps the “Latour Litany” approach to visual art.

new issue of New Literary History now available

It is HERE.

You can read my piece, Tim Morton’s piece, and Jane Bennett’s response.

I read Morton’s in draft form, but we weren’t sent Bennett’s response ahead of time, and I won’t be able to read it until a bit later today. Knowing Jane, it is probably warm and fair, but also tough on a few points. She is pro-holism and my article (and Tim’s work as a whole) is ardently anti-holist, so I would anticipate that this would be one of the points of dispute.

Gothenburg in October

Prior to the “Matter Matters” conference in Lund, Sweden in October (Lund is close enough to Copenhagen that you can take the commuter train between the two places) I’ll be headed up to Gothenburg further north to give some lectures and seminars on October 11-12.

In 1991, as a graduate student tourist, I passed through Gothenburg twice by train, but didn’t have the chance to get out and look. I’m looking forward to seeign the city itself.

It’s been a very busy year presenting object-oriented philosophy. In 2011 there were 14 lectures, which felt like a lot. But in 2012 there will be a minimum of 41 keynotes, invited lectures, and seminars– probably not quite Žižek territory, but still a busy year.

another point about the Spanish team: Sergio Rodriguez

Sergio Rodriguez is mainly getting American media coverage today for elbowing Tyson Chandler in the ribs, leading to technical fouls for both of them.

But I’m very interested in Rodriguez as a player, due to a rather amazing live performance I saw from him one night. While visiting my brother in Portland in early 2007, we decided to catch the Portland-Denver game.

Rodriguez came off the bench for Portland, and he was instant energy, only 21 years old. I think Portland was down by something like 17 points, and Rodriguez brought it back to a tie game, or close to it.

Allen Iverson was playing for Denver at the time, and was still not that far off his peak. But Rodriguez was every bit as good– distributing the ball, slashing down the lane, faking people off balance.

If you look at Rodriguez’s career stats before he finally left the NBA in 2010 (only 24 years old) they are quite mediocre. But for one night in Portland in January 2007, and perhaps on other nights, he was as good as anyone I’ve ever seen on a basketball court. I was pleased to see him playing for the Spanish team, having lost track of him for awhile.

Basic Writings of Heidegger

I was killing time in a São Paulo bookstore tonight before dinner, and ran across the Basic Writings collection of Heidegger pieces. My main interest on this occasion was in seeing how well D.F. Krell’s introductory material would hold up today (it was written in 1978, and apparently retained for the 1993 edition, of which tonight’s copy was an instance).

And I’d have to say that it still reads pretty well. Some people are very fond of George Steiner’s book on Heidegger, but I always have the sense that Steiner’s book feels incredibly dated– as in, not a bad effort for the 1970’s, but way behind the curve now.

Krell’s effort seems much more digestible in 2012. True, the material on Heidegger’s politics may strike a slightly sour note today, since it now reads too much like an official apologia. Krell was also struggling against the fact that most of the Marburg Lecture Courses were not yet published in 1978. But his account is surprisingly detailed when it comes to the Early Writings collection. And considering that he must have still been under 35 at the time, the writing is worldly and sophisticated.

In other news from the bookstore, the Brazilians obviously adore Vilem Flusser. His books are everywhere.

reader mail about the Olympics

A reader inquires:

“I don’t know why I’m mentioning this, but you didn’t mention the Olympics once on your blog, not necessarily expectable on the basis of your sporty personality. Why? Just too busy in party central?!”

Sheer coincidence. The 2012 Summer Olympics, running from July 27-August 12, coincided almost to the day with my Brazil lecture trip from July 28-August 13.

And that meant that I had almost no time whatsoever to watch the Olympics this year. On trips like this, it’s not as if you’re just giving a lecture for an hour every third day and then are free. You want to listen to the other lecturers. There are usually social obligations, and indeed most conference organizers (the ones in Brazil in particular) are very generous in the dinners and tours they arrange.

The upshot was that I didn’t see a single Olympic event until yesterday’s Brazil victory for the gold medal over the USA in women’s volleyball. And even that was only because I happened to be invited to lunch at a Curitiba home where the match happened to be on.

Then I caught a bit of Russia’s men’s volleyball win over Brazil. And part of the first half of the USA over Spain in men’s basketball, though I missed the second half due to my flight back to São Paulo.

I’m a huge NBA fan, but not a fan of recent U.S. Olympic men’s basketball teams. Whenever I watch them, the conventional critique seems to be right: lots of individual stars not playing effectively as a team, and a bit awkward when playing by international rules. Spain frankly looked more impressive in the part of the final that I saw today. The U.S. is simply fortunate to have some incredible athletes on that team.

Also, credit where credit is due: I was expecting the London Olympics to be a catastrophe, and they were not. Between missiles on rooftops and security company breakdowns, it looked like this was going to be the biggest embarrassment for the UK in decades (Mitt Romney was rude and clumsy to say so, but many people were quietly thinking so). But from what I could tell through my ultra-casual following of the event, it seems to have come across very nicely. Well done, London.