7 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2022
    1. Joris also cautions that we not limit Celan’s poetry to a “revenge play,” but I don’t consider it a limitation. Like the artwork of witness, the artwork of vengeance could be its own genre

      I think discussion of the "vengeful” vibe in Celan' s poetry is a great inspiration for writers, or just people that eager to express. It’s ok to refuse forgiveness, it’s ok to keep the negative feelings, because they are powerful and valuable in recording reality, and may evoke reflection and improvement in the future.

    2. “The appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked.”

      This and the following paragraph focus on ethics of creative nonfiction. Sometimes witnesses treat other people's pain like watching a horror movie, scared but excited; At other times, though the witnesses feel sorrow and compassion for the sufferer, the awareness that they can empathize with others also stirs appreciation for themselves, and attention is again distracted from the real pain. Both in creating and viewing works related to real events, we need to avoid landscaping true suffering and self-projection. The artists that appear in this article achieve this by constructing a sense of dissociation.

    3. anti-monumental

      Such a diction echoes the situation of Celan's poetry later on, which becomes a literal monument, causing it to somehow lose its own voice and be manipulated by others to express their ideas.

    1. Is it better to choose between a few things that everyone knows, or between 100 things that share a fundamental similarity, algorithmically sorted into a you-may-also-like category? The latter may not be that much more authentic, original, or diverse than the former.

      The new age monoculture come with the appearance of offering a wealth of options, which may be more exhausting because users now need to wade through hundreds of choices that are not inherently different. This is why frustration and emptiness often emerge after spending too much time browsing through media.

    2. Art’s deepest impact comes when it is least expected.

      Art aims to break the mold, to point out subtleties, shocks, beauty and reflections that the public cannot see or imagine currently. Yet contemporary media steers people to stay in their comfort zones, making inspiring art unwelcome.

    3. In September 2019, the country music star Martina McBride attempted to create a country playlist on Spotify. The platform can automatically recommend songs to add to a playlist; in this case, it suggested 14 pages of songs by male country artists before it came up with a single woman. McBride was shocked, posting on Instagram: “Is it lazy? Is it discriminatory? Is it tone deaf? Is it out of touch?”

      Algorithm is created by humans and used by humans, thus its imperfection reflects and may deepen bias in current society, which allows people to write new recommendation programs that brings bias, forming a vicious circle.

    4. If Twitter controls publishing, we’ll soon enter a dreary monoculture that admits no book unless it has been prejudged and meets the standards of the censors,”

      Recommendation algorithm of the platform not only blocks people and new possibilities, but also frustrate artists that haven’t got enough attention. They may stop creating or give in to the more likely exposed types. If it does happen, even people try to break their information cocoons, they will find they have no new world to explore.