Everything Else is Rethorics

by Oshin Thakkar, Ilona Stutz

R/R is currently split into two parallels, working across media and continents, learning from and experimenting with tools and methods offered by the discipline of rhetorical criticism and practise. Consider this an invitation to some of our dialogue and process.

This thing contains extensive amounts of thoughts which were not our own, slightly edited, entirely changed or preserved as evidence of what happened. You may find the most important references in the back.

I

They distinguished between many sorts of rhetorical devices and gave them each a name. Each term had a slightly different and very specific meaning. It was difficult, however, to agree on how the terms really were different from one another and what their meanings were.1

* * *

“It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin'. The first one asks, 'What's a MacGuffin?' 'Well,' the other man says, 'it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers, 'Well then, that's no MacGuffin!' So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.” 2

* * *

"We are on an essentially uncharted and insecure route. There are no prototypes, no models, to examine the specific dynamics of our interactions. Yet this interaction can affect all the other matters. It is to scrutinize that very interaction that I write now, and I have come to see that it means picking my way through our similarities and our differences, as well as through our histories of calculated mistrust and desire."

II

working together across difference means

extra communication

and i had massively underestimated it.

i had to get some rest over the summer to be able to judge whether it was just that or how and what.

after you left, it took me a while to realise that we are not just different but working together would mean bridging those differences. this kind of bridging is what was most challenging to me during our time together.

i would not want to force these bridges because it would require us to find some kind of consensus. finding consensus under the circumstances takes a lot of words.

i guess the answer to your question all depends on what is meant by “working together”.

there is something i would be interested in.

i feel that the way we create art or perceive whatever is around us may differ but

i also feel it might be interesting to find out what these differences are and where we have things in common.

i also think that you and i have a facility with language and an inherent interest in putting things into words.

we like to reflect on things a lot.

i see this as a strength in our relationship and i was thinking about how we could build on it while cutting off all the exhausting stuff.

what i came up with the way i imagine it is

we would write to each other, if “working together” can mean .that. of course, it also takes a lot of words but that’s really all it takes.

these words won't need to convince anyone to act in a certain way or pull towards a certain direction.

III

i have been trying to abstract the whole situation from the question of thinking about what i intrinsically would like to do with you somehow it came to me i would like to base the discussion the three of us could have on the work here.

it would of course mean that we work on the same thing in some way after all. it would also mean that you would bring in your use of language, education, never ending stamina in questioning everything and ability to re-contextualise. wherever this would lead, it might be interesting to all of us.

this is something i can envision and i think it might work without being draining to any of us.

let me know what you think

looking forward to reading your thoughts

III

I

Fx Office: The Event of Universal Interest

OR

“the crocodile and the elephant”

II

I figure at this point that some very direct conversation is long overdue. I’ve been told I’m often too blunt, but it seems as though the bluntness too seems all too subtle in another context. This is uncomfortable for me, but I will try to muster all of my straight-forward this time. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in how I understand what you’re trying to say.

AUDIO

III

ah yes!

its good

i will now sit down to play with the thing.

how did you edit?

i cut off surroundings

and one sentence at the end

not much

Is it mainly interesting to you because of the image?

you're such a weirdo

i like the content

i would like to display these i think they are gold nuggets and we should use them

but i prefer it with this visual rather than a face

on it's own or with other things?

Let's talk soon though.

I will probably try doing this.

But would be interested if you want to do it?

argue about it?

hmm i might

Or just respond to it. I'm still confused about why you find the content interesting.

i am listening again will answer in text form

Okay.

IIII

I went through the whole recording several times again-trying to set aside the jarring feeling of being that person whose voice had been.. “captured”.

This became harder to do while trying to see it as something to be displayed.

When you pointed out to me that you thought it was interesting and worth sharing with others.. It was uncomfortable.

It was familiar. It reappears between us. This thing.

It re-"appears" .. but is veiled, sometimes invisible. I know it’s there, but I cannot refer to it,

it does not seem to have a name.

I try to find a name for it to make it appear. It demands to be made visible, so that it can be addressed – by either of us.

To find the words for it, is uncomfortable too, still the better alternative to resignation though, as for now.

Everytime I find myself or others in situations where it feels like this is something that starts where language ends, I insist that there is a possible vocabulary for everything. For all our pains, hopes, desires, discomforts, for acts of violence and gestures of resilience, there are names. We just do not know them yet. If the story persists on being told and language refuses to accommodate it, we can try and shift the limits of language. These limits will be blurred and redrawn, twisted, stretched and warped, taken to strange places and brought back to a changed home, nagged, heckled and softly persuaded, played with, made and unmade again regardless of whether we contribute to this.

And so, coming back to the recording – which does seem to take my words out of context;

I have a feeling you find it interesting as a specimen.

That is the idea coming to mind the minute you suggest you want to use it for display.

It is the picture-maker that decides what is left out of the frame and what is included. In the act of looking at the picture and 'reading' it, there is yet another layer of abstraction. Again, no picture-maker can ever absolutely estimate all the ways in which a picture can be read or even taken out of context. It may be taken apart and re-used again. It may die out with our conversation or float across minds a little longer than we can. It may find itself with someone not immediately or literally present in this conversation and then to someone somewhere else and they may not realise this.

The possibility scares the life out of me at times but it seems to be the way of language. The word does not exist in a static vacuum, it lives in other peoples’ mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions4: and every time we speak, we borrow and steal, draw from, take, alter, take apart and put back together again.

If there is one thing I have come to understand from the work we have done so far, it is that context is always relevant, and just like power, is neither static nor determinate. This context includes both you and me as a part of our conversation. We read and we make at the same time.

As always, I wait for your response. Meanwhile, I also consider my own agency in regards to how this abstraction is made. As I’ve said before, despite how things have been lately, I still feel that it still matters to you what I think. I am writing to you, because these things are messy, and sometimes get misplaced. I am also writing to you because the way I see it, I can only bring myself and my agency to the table, if we find a way to really talk about it.

IIIII

so about the letter you wrote about the question what i find in the voice recording it is very simple and there is no letter to write about it

it is the way you speak clear and eloquent rich in content but always in flow and the feeling there that what you say comes from somewhere real

anyhow. i am aware that the taker of the picture is the one who "frames“ it its just sometimes you have these moments of sparks where things come together somehow why not catch them.

that being said the actual frame of the picture is obviously a matter of shared concern.

IIIIII

IIIIIII

It's just that when one hears about events occurring within another person's interior, they may appear as distant as deep subterranean facts, invisible geographies with no reality yet manifested on this planet.

As far away as the speech of a scientist as she refers to interstellar events and freshly detected intergalactic screams or categories of objects in which violent events of unknown nature occur from time to time. This is a sign of the split between two realities, existing inches away from one another. 5

I

in this very second, that’s in the newspaper: a heap of stars by the name of M13.

II

Bear with No Name

M13, the problem bear, is what they call ‘inquisitive’.

He breaks into a holiday home while owners are away, smashes the door, then eats a large quantity of potatoes and wreaks havoc inside. He knocks power poles into trees, starting fires, gets hit by trains and walks away undamaged, climbs barriers and saunters around in traffic, kills goats, robs beehives in a school yard aviary. He digs up the corpses of missing men, breaks into sheds, gorges himself on stale bread before trashing the place, wrecking a generator, a vacuum machine and a water pump before passing out for a day-and-a-half.

The difference between here and many other countries is that authorities want the bear population, all that remains after the creatures were hunted to near-extinction, to be able to coexist with humans as a part of the national environmental heritage.

SPIEGEL ONLINE:

You carried out a five-year project aimed at making life possible for bears along the border. There are now bear-resistant trash containers, beehive protection measures and educational hiking trails in the very area where M13 has now been spotted. How would you feel if the bear had to be killed?

Schoenenberger: We should have learned from JJ3. If it’s not possible for a bear to survive there now, it would be a total defeat for me and our culture. 6

III

Update: M13 was destroyed by forestry officials two days after emerging from hibernation.

IIII

I

Rhetorical terminology is a catastrophe and a mess; a result of the act of naming and renaming each figure of rhetoric while subsequently questioning the definitions of each name and redefining it in a constant process. There are several scholars who try and sort out the matter, although to no apparent end.7

I

I’m searching for words.8

I

I'm looking for nothing more than a figurative image to serve as a landmark.9

I

Landmarks don't fully explain themselves, but they offer a reference point that can be shared. In this they are like the tacit assumptions contained in popular proverbs. Without landmarks there is the great human risk of turning in circles.10

II

ok so here‘s my argument with regards to the audio specimen

May 6, 1981

Dear Dennis Cooper,

Thank you for your letter. I don't know who recommended me to you as someone who would know what art is about but I will try to answer your question as briefly as you have asked. There is only one thing that gives art a lasting importance; it must provide for an image or a message that you have never experienced before, thus extending your experience, expanding your imagination and adding a dimension to your life.

Most sincerely,

William S. Copley

I still don't get it.

well

i think one cannot get there with words the argument stops where language stops or the argument cannot be made using language so it is circular

i guess

you see if you see

III

ok let me try old school

“if i want to say something i try to find the words and just say it. everything else is rhetorics."

implicit assumptions: i. wanting to say something is about transmitting information

ii. any information may be translated into linguistic propositions

iii. anything that exceeds the propositional content of a transmission is to be dismissed as „everything else" / „rhetorics" /„wishy washy bubbly bub" my question would be: what percentage of communication is about the transmission of propositional information? how much “the rest"? why does “the rest" exist? what is the function of it?

IIII

a few days ago as i was taking a shower something clicked.

after following some artist’s practice for a year or two and by following i mean loosely observing their doing in general, not only the art works, it suddenly and unexpectedly clicked.

there was most likely an actual clicking sound happening under that shower which even the neighbors would have heard had they not been spending the week in the mountains.

what happened when it did?

i dont know exactly, it is like understanding something or falling in love, things suddenly appear that were not there before, even though the information was.

now: was i invited to this work that took so long for me to unfold? and was the thing that clicked even intended by the artist?

i dont know. all i can say is that the work has been there and made visible for me and anyone to see. i never asked about it and also was never asked about it myself.

i just took an interest and through time and attention it unfolded.

i believe it would not have unfolded in the same way had that person explained themselves to me in writing and had i spent a focused effort to read and understand this writing at the library.

it’s similar to meeting someone. you get a first impression. maybe you are curious, maybe not. maybe the not-being-invited makes you more curious and acts as an invitation to you, and maybe not.

maybe you are the kind of person who needs to be explicitly invited so that you want to join. maybe a part of that is putting some accompanying text to help gain access. maybe there is an english translation of the text so you feel invited to be part and understand. or maybe you are a local and the english translation will make you feel like the whole thing is aimed at something larger than yourself, going right past you.

maybe it is enough that your name is remembered by the host.

there are many things which i do not feel invited to. usually these are works which heavily rely on style and certain references. the reason why i do not feel invited to them is neither the style nor the references per se. i even sometimes feel attracted to those and get curious.

yet, i keep a distance, because i do not feel invited on an emotional level and i get stubborn because of that. i still follow (because i want to know whats cooking), but i dont surrender.

i do believe there is a difference in heavily or less heavily coded works in terms of accessibility. but so there is in people.

the question is how to judge whether something is worth digging into.

until that’s sorted, i usually invite myself.

IIIII

In drawing, an edge is where two things come together, a shared boundary, a line. The point of "realistic drawing'' is not simply to record data, but rather to record perception, producing a kind of knowledge that demands a slowing down.11

This knowledge also seems to require a certain kind of ignorance, asking that to really be able to see, one must temporarily ignore, or lose awareness of the already known.12

Of course, it is impossible to rid ourselves of all that is known. Our personal characteristics are all too shaped by our social and historical circumstances than for them to be seen as something that may be stripped off and left at the door. Maybe it does make sense to speak of a “veil of ignorance” after all, as the desired ignorance is but a semi-transparent layer and will never fully cover what lies underneath.

IIIIII

If that is one of the reasons that I seem distant, it's not the only one.

I keep a distance because I am at a distance. I do not have access to certain references or landmarks. I don't know these landscapes, and I don't know these landmarks.

There are bits and pieces where I do feel like I am one of them – the landmarks, I mean. Or something that is drawn. Not someone you're drawing to.

And sometimes, you say these things that are so familiar to me, I almost don't believe you're saying them and they're not my own.

And sometimes strange.

I want to know what's cooking but at times I simply cannot. I don't know.

IIIIIII

I

The first time I saw it, I had no education. It stuck with me because it was both strange and familiar. I think. I don’t remember at what point it ‘clicked’. I think it clicked too many times. And it seems the more clicks happen the less I feel like talking about it.

But there was that curious thing:

So many of the pieces have me in them.

It’s right there. It feels like so much of it was addressed to me.

II

When it does that, you're never really sure what it does.. so at one point i don't know if im feeling what you're feeling or what im feeling or what the dolphin or the woman or anyone else.. I am not even sure if I know what you say when you mean something ‘clicked’. But the idea is so familiar to me it’s almost hard to believe you wrote it down. That is also something that has happened before.

We often exchange clicks but for the longest time there were so many parts of the stuff that I thought I saw, but I didn’t really. And then as I continued to live as I was living I started seeing fragments of it everywhere. In my life and in his, in the city, in my home.. in his hometown.. on the train and in the tunnel..

III

It was always uncomfortable to him when I couldn’t ‘see’ it. But he kept up with it – persistently. If he hadn't, I probably wouldn’t be writing any of this.

So, second is when someone is really trying and I can see that it means something to that person to be heard. They will try again and again till I hear them out. Sometimes they’re screaming. You don’t know if it’s addressed to you and it hurts your ears – they’re a stranger. But by the sheer force/impact of the screaming you want to try and figure it out. Maybe because you want the noise to stop. Maybe because you give a shit.

Sometimes it’s not so loud but you can sense it because you pay attention.

IIII

And I don't think you can tell someone what they don't know in a language they don't know. Knowing is not a joke. Knowing has its consequences. Knowing is bearing, like secrets, silence or pain. Knowing can be scary, and if the fear is stronger than my words, I can't say anything to let you know. You know it, or you don't. The thing cannot be done using language.

You can use a language they know to remind them of what they do know.

But it's not possible, using this language to make someone know what they don't already know. Either that, or I don't know how to use this language. Either way, If we have to do it, we have to find a way.

IIIII

Like a translation into this thing that already existed of something you knew in a preverbal way.

And if you’d asked me, “What is it about?” I don’t think I could have told you. But this was the first reason for my own writing, my need to say things I couldn’t say otherwise when I couldn’t find other things to say what I needed to say.

You had to make your own. 13

on method and reference, briefly.

this here thing is titled after the audio recording of the same name, which is titled after a phrase that was used in the conversation that was recorded in the audio. the audio itself has been uttered by Oshin, and recorded and edited by Ilona. other than that we used a lot of excerpts from letters and text messages, notes, transcripts and recordings between us, all intertwined and extended with stuff found in the external world. it all started with a badger that named the sun, which is a Yaqui myth that Ilona remembered a bit differently, and popo the carpenter, a character from V.S. Naipaul's novel Miguel Street, who keeps making the thing without a name. these are not mentioned in the text. there's a passage about landmarks from John Berger's essay Meanwhile which we borrowed and split into three. there's words from Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth and from Elaine Scarry's Body in Pain. and quite a few from Sister Outsider by Audrey Lorde, all blended in. one of the letters assimilates words uttered by Mikhail Bakhtin, some by James Baldwin, but now have been rewritten in another context. both can also be found together in chapter 6 “Appropriating the word:language and voice” of the Cambridge Introduction to Post Colonial Literature in English. there's a few words from Drawing from the Right Side of the brain by Betty Edwards. the quote on MacGuffin stems from Alfred Hitcock and the drawing made of Dr. Frank Drake’s words from Ilona's Master Thesis. we found out about M13 – the bear who was killed in 2013 and shares a name with the heap of stars, which was named by a guy called Charles Messier who became famous for his listing of "time-wasting objects to avoid when comet hunting" instead of the comets he was so obsessed with – through a blog called Champaign Whisky. we have also been spending time with “identitti”, a book by Mithu Sanyal, and “identity”, a video essay on youtube by Abigail Thorne. we, that is Ilona and Oshin, respectively. apart from this, there's a documentary called Meeting the Man, James Baldwin in Paris directed by a guy called Terence Dixon, but Oshin thinks it was both of them. also Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hasan Manto and The Black Sheep by Italo Calvino have been in mind. the image called 'Fx Office: The Event of Universal Interest’ or ‘the crocodile and the elephant’, was created by {F_x Office}, that is Elza and Ilona and given another name to by Oshin.14 the image going by the name ‘niam niam niam’ is Ilona’s and has been created as an outro blurb for Elza’s Master Thesis some years ago. it still holds true. that's pretty much it. we either talked about all this stuff, or with all this stuff in mind and it should be in there, somewhere. if you’re looking for a bibliography of published references in alphabetical order, you will find it at the bottom, thanks to Oshin. that being said, everything you’ve read so far was brought to the page by

yours sincerely Oshin and Ilona

Endnotes

1. Forsyth, Mark, The elements of eloquence, 185 2. Gottlieb, Framing Hitchcock, 48 3. Lorde, Audre, Sister outsider: Essays and speeches, 192 4. Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’ pp. 293–4. 5. Scarry, Elaine. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world, 3 6. READ, M13 – Bear with no name.” CHAMPAGNEWHISKY 7. Forsyth, Mark, The elements of eloquence, 185 8. Berger, John. Landscapes: John Berger on Art. 295 9. Berger, John. Landscapes: John Berger on Art. 295 10. Berger, John. Landscapes: John Berger on Art. 295 11. Edwards, Betty. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.,122 12. Thorn, Abigail, Ignorance & Censorship. Youtube. 13. Lorde, Audre, Sister outsider: Essays and speeches, 95 14. *as it turns out, the image is not the one originally renamed the crocodile and the elephant. It's another one. (also, I don't know if the animal is a crocodile or an alligator, because I don't know how to identify one from the other, really.)

Bibliography

Berger, John. 2016. Landscapes : John Berger’s writing on art / John Berger ; edited with an introduction by Tom Overton. Edited by Tom Overton. Brooklyn: Verso.

Edwards, Betty. 1999. Drawing on the right side of the brain / Betty Edwards. —Definitive, 4th ed. N.p.: Penguin Books Ltd.

Forsyth, Mark. 2013. The elements of eloquence: How to turn the perfect English phrase. N.p.: Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

Gottlieb, Sidney, and Christopher Brookhouse, eds. 2002. Framing Hitchcock: Selected Essays from the Hitchcock Annual. N.p.: Wayne State University Press.

Ignorance & Censorship. 2021. Featuring Abigail Thorn. Philosophy Tube. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATITdJg7bWI&t=450s.

Lorde, Audre. 1984, 2007. Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. N.p.: Ten Speed Press, Crown Publishing Group, Random House.

Mikhail, Bakhtin. n.d. . "Discourse in the Novel." Literary theory: An anthology 2.

Pablo Carlos Budassi, Messier13, 2020, MIME type: image/png, (1,536 × 1,536 pixels, file size: 1.1 MB), WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Messier13.png

READ, P. K. 2012. “M13 – Bear with no name.” CHAMPAGNEWHISKY Never cry over spilt milk. It could've been champagne. Or whisky. https://champagnewhisky.com/2012/11/16/m13-bear-without-a-name/.

Scarry, Elaine. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford University Press, USA, 1985. 1985. N.p.: Oxford University Press.