Week 4: 20-26 January 2020

I corresponded with some new people relevant to my project, both research participants and a professor interested in my research. Things are falling into place for the Japan trip, although the general unplannedness of it is killing me.

I started reading Ingold’s Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, and became quite absorbed in his wondrous thinking. I quite unorthodoxly (for me) jumped to the last chapter which was on lines, then read the introduction to Lines: A Brief History and two random chapters in The Life of Lines. Whatever seemed relevant and interesting. It was more of the latter, maybe, but even so, Ingold’s perspective is so liberating. I remember his “church” text from Space and place back in May 2019, The Temporality of the Landscape, which I often think about. It was probably then that we were recommended Making, or was it in Theory and history? So much to read.

I also started Marks’s The Skin of the Film (recommended by my supervisor), but fail to see the relevance for my project so far. It’s a good complement to Eddo-Lodge though.

I watched The Celluloid Closet with S, it turned out we had both watched it before. I liked what the screenwriter of Rebel Without a Cause, Stewart Stern, said:

People talk about whether that was a homosexual relationship. The intention wasn’t that. But any film is at the same time an expression of a writer, and it’s an offering to an audience to create their own film.

The weekend was spent with two Japanese books which I hope to come back to soon.

In the boring admin parts of life, which I try to minimise, I managed to switch broadband providers. Out of one two-year contract, entering another. Two years. We ordered it together when we moved in together. Broadband subscriptions as milestones in one’s life.

Master’s thesis

Method

• Ingold, Tim. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge.
  • 1: “Knowing from the inside”, 1–15.
  • 9: “Drawing the line”, 125–41.
• Ingold, Tim. 2007. Lines: A Brief History. London: Routledge.
  • “Introduction”, 1–5.
• Ingold, Tim. 2015. The Life of Lines. London: Routledge.
  • Part III: Humaning
    • 22: “To human is a verb”, 115–19.
    • 23: “Anthropogenesis”, 120–24.
• Pettman, Dominic. 2009. “Grizzly Man: Werner Herzog’s Anthropological Machine”. In Theory and Event 12 (2).
• Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • “Preface”, xi–ixx.

Japanese

• Try N2
  • Chapter 1, 18–29. (Test 12/17.)

Film

• The Celluloid Closet (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, 1995, 107 min)