S/Z - A Reading

SCORE CARD TEXTS:

A & B Dialog

A Self-Evident ________
A & B, a table between them, B places ________ on the table

A: What’s that?
B: {sets up another table, places another ________ .}
A: Oh, What’s that?
B: {waits} Oh yeah. {Pauses} Oh okay, this has to be another part {moves tables w/ matching objects in front of A & B}
A: Oh, what’s that?
B: Yes.
A: What?
B: {thinks about it} Yes!!!
A: Oh. {skeptically} Wait – For whom?
B: Yeah: Yes!
A: {Thinks} And they’re really there?
B: {describes the functions and roles of the objects as he/she sees them, in detail, but precluding a physically description}
A: But what about {describes the physical attributes in detail of the objects as he/she sees them}?

If any part can be or become independent what is it independent from? It seems as though this implies, necessarily, other parts which are not independent. What can independence possible mean or look like if all parts are not it, of it or as it. Independence is a contradiction in it's own terms.

The Great Gatsby

Make a model of the center point building out of paper and tape - use our template or make your own. The center point building is a building in the very center of London (refer to the map).

I think you should flat out tyrannize the audience in order to evoke a feeling similar to that which precipitated the declaration of independence being written.

One of the heads of the king of Britain is Tomas Jefferson.

Re-written Grievance 3
This Body – I will take the liberty to state, has not agreed to include in their understanding of their role in relation to the body that I am also apart of, but which is commonly thought to be separated geographically particular unspecified regulations – which you, the reader, can only assume that the specifics of which have been made available to this body, which pertain to the needs that this geographically separated body, I am claiming (or re-claiming on someone else’s behalf) that THEY(?) may be more appropriately (in relation to their needs in my view of their relationship with this Body), which is notably large in lets assume geographic scale, which these people – which I am claiming that this Body’s regulation devising agents say that it is the case, that, unless these people and this Body would commonly no-longer uphold the terms by which this relationship has supposedly been established. The potential effect of this, in my foresight, is larger than I can imagine, and the conduct of these bodies in relation to each other is conduct I would associate with an idea I have of what this geographically separated body might look like were it in a position of insensitivity or ignorance of this relationship.

Make crowns out of yellow construction paper.

Going to the West Side Highway.

Re-written Grievance 6
For amounts of time, which my colleagues and I find inordinately long, this Body has pointedly not exercised its right or the chances it has been presented with, that those chances which present themselves after the afore mentioned censures in this Body’s _____ of an assembly of agents acting on behalf the particular group that includes myself and here unnamed others, and the precedence’s and dictums for conduct of people and allocation of resources in the form of laws which these assemblies of agents make, and after this, when the time is ripe for organizing such a meeting, has failed to organize one, even one which would be comprised of a new group including myself and unnamed others have consulted, by a method I will not disclose, with a general population that I consider to be comprising the group of which I am apart, in making its precedents and dictums; this however has made the particular group which is comprised of myself and these unnamed others, and the space (physically and conceptually) vulnerable to attack of both material and immaterial nature, from both within and outside of its parameters.

These are some things which could be written on the large green piece of paper:

IS THIS WHAT WEʼRE TALKING ABOUT
OR
IS THIS WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT
OR
IS THIS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT
OR
IS THIS TOO MUCH
OR
IS THIS NOT ENOUGH
OR
I DONʼT KNOW WHAT ENOUGH COULD BE.

Bottomʼs speech when he wakes from his dream, in A Mid Summer Nightʼs Dream.

~~The Course of human~~ events
A & B stand so as Aʼs right shoulder touches Bʼs left shoulder

A: Hi
B: looks at A, waits enthusiastically Hi!

S/Z Cordially Invites You

to join us in
Reading the Declaration of Independence

1-6pm 22nd, 23rd, 25th and 26th of June and
1-4pm 24th June, 2009

Housing Works' Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10012
212 334 3324

Please join us to read and talk about the Declaration of Independence, in conjunction with the preparation for our presentation (performance) of A reading of the Declaration of Independence. Full text of the Declaration of Independence and other reading material can be found on our website.

For more information please contact S/Z.
sz@itemsandissues.org
www.itemsandissues.org

Housing Works is a nonprofit bookstore and cafe raising funds to fight AIDS and homelessness. They have generously agreed to host this project.

INTRODUCTION

Sounds like the introduction could be two different things – either we write an introduction now and we don't change it [for the duration of the development of the score/script(?)] Or we wait and write one later after [we’ve developed the score/script(?)] more and I’m more interested in the first one.I think that the introduction should delineate the parameters within which we think the score/script will function.

I think that we should probably say something about what we mean by 'A Reading'

We are talking about what we have done over the past week at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe as being 'reading' The Declaration of Independence, and what we are doing now as presenting ‘a reading’ of the declaration of independence. We have changed the title of this presentation since it was titled, to A Reading, because we –
Shut up Sarah! Geeeeze.

We have been talking about how the document that is commonly known as 'The Declaration of Independence' was written for a very particular audience, not only to King George III, but the people of the 13 British colonies of America, and has since been a text which elementary school children are asked to memorize, and the arbitrary nature of the document and the vagueness of the much of the language used I don't think make all that much sense to have as a text whjhjhjkhkhj

and I would like to venture to say that there may not be much attention paid to the document being written in a way that makes it accessible to these/those children, nor to any other reader.

(I'm not sure that we should use the microphone )

Yeah I suppose I would ask, if you would venture to say such a thing, what are you talking about making accessible? Is it a particular content? Do you mean the initial intentions of the writer, or the initial construances of the text? And isn't the use and understanding of the Declaration of Independence by school children just as valid as one which is built with the awareness of other contexts. I suppose saying that the document is inaccessible to some people because of the way that it's written is a way of victimizing these people, and simultaneously invalidating their experience and understanding of the text. Yeah, but I'm talking about this thing of the text being for a really particular audience, one which is impossibly not now, not me, specifically.

We are talking about interacting with the specific text of what is commonly referred to as the Declaration of Independence as a reading of it as one might read an object, which draws attention to the broad range of interactions with texts which might be considered 'reading'. Or 'a reading' as an interpretation/explication/explaination/making sense of something via observation and response.

Oh shucks, and we should also mention that we changed the title of the performance to 'A Reading', from 'A reading of the Declaration of Independence' Oh, I thought I did say that above... Maybe not. Maybe our intitial intention was to do a very close reading of the Declaration of Independence- or at least that was what I had in mind because of our performance 'A Reading of Being Singular Plural by Jean Luc Nancy' - but then we moved away form this idea because it seems like this particular piece of writing- well there are so many readings already on top of it- too many to account for - and it seems absurd to get bogged down in accounting for themright we're not claiming to be being a survey of all of what constitutes reading the Declaration of Independence.; we have access to what is 'to hand' and this is how we are able to interact with it now, as ourselves, specifically, because, well what are we actually interested in, here? I mean we don’t want to make another wall of text, we want to make room in the text that's already here and to 'hang out' with this text. I am not sure if I know how to articulate room for what, though, but maybe it’s not for anything.

I am feeling a bit like this introduction needs to be populated with – m m m – things, or people or representations of people? Like how do you feel about playing the We Are The World music video? Without the sound?

Oh another thing that should go in the introduction maybe is that we are interested in the furniture being moved around- because we haven't been entirely convinced about any of the arrangements that we have come up with so far.

Zayne I think we should use the microphone to say the introduction. Also I am really interested in lying down while reading, although I am not entirely sure why- maybe it's just because I'm tired?Yes, I think that we should read the introduction at the table sitting down into the small mic. Read into the small mic.

Oh yeah and I wanted to mention the those three bullets –

Proposal for an addition to the introduction:
1. You can't account for everything
2. You can't account for anything (really)
3. What do we mean when we say 'account for' anyway? OR What does it look like to 'account' for something, anyway?

Is this getting bit long for the introduction? We should just talk through all the things that we have talked about needing to say here and edit it as we see fit once it's all in here. But I feel like there are more things to say, for example like we have to say about how the performance is going to work. Right – like we want to invite people to or tell people that they may do, or have something to do with all of these things on these cards, which point to parts of our reading of the Declaration of Independence on them which we would really like to present here.

Ok. And a way in which whomever is there who we will be reading this introduction to are invited or told that they may do something or have something to do with is that we will have these cards which we are writing bits of a score on which are around to 'hang out' with. The cards are in three categories which are represented via three different colors of paper. Green cards are cards which have bits of the text of the Declaration of Independence written on them, blue cards have suggestions of things to do if you get bored and the light pink ones are all of the other stuff which I am not sure how to characterize. The pink cards – I don’t know what's going on with the pink cards. There are things written on them like "Make a model of the Center Point building out of paper and tape" and also some say things like "The Great Gatsby" and some have long umm questions on them, or dialogs, or instructions for movements etc etc. It isn’t quite clear to me how these cards are functioning- I mean we talk about 'hanging out with them' but I'm not sure what that means- I'm not saying that I'm skeptical of it, though, just that I don't know what it means. I suppose we can say we have these cards. They are what we are thinking of as a score/script for our performance. And we would like to invite anyone to do whatever in relation to the cards that makes sense or is interesting to them.

Shucks okay so now we’ve decided to nix the categories and just print the cards all on the same color of paper because the categories are really complicated and maybe problematic.

I feel ill. It is 4:15 and I don't know what the hell we're doing. I mean – this is the thing which I was telling you about before which I have difficulty with – it's not that I don't know what this thing is that we’re about to do, it's just that I don't know what it's like or if it is like anything. I am not sure why I keep trying to think of it as like something.

Hmm maybe we should do that and then break up the introduction a bit and read sections at designated times throughout the hour so that it doesn't become this thing which the actual thing- that is, the thing which it is introducing- is totally overwhelmed by.

Or maybe we could continue to read but do something else as well, for example