Imaging Met Landing – a biotopological romance – Read by Alan Prohm – min: 09:30
This text is the product of a single pauseless improvisation (so the time of its production is close to the time it takes to read) on the notions of landing and imaging in the landing site theory of Arakawa and Gins. Landing, the originary live intake of world through perception, corresponds here to A+G’s “perceptual landing sites”, while imaging stands for the rest of what goes on as landing sites, “imaging landing sites” and “architectural landing sites” each being degrees of imaging. To get a better feel for these terms, and the theory they animate, I engaged them in vocal/written performance as characteristic actions/characters acting in consort and/or in conflict at the basis of our world-making. Playing the two words off each other as names, terribly intimate, but empty of content other than the abstractest of imagined relations, and the fruits of chance in language, yielded this epic story of love and phenomenological striving. I dedicate it to Arakawa and Madeline.
Warning: In the sentences that follow, it is not always clear who is who.
imaging met landing
Alan Prohm
imaging met landing in the fall of
evidence on her retinas & upped
the ante of everything in-taken &
sold for granted
down river there was building
& landing supplies the chains learned
a suppleness early elegant
in relinquishment all water or amber in
angular freeforall
i takes input & i builds with it
i’s good at that
i begins with imaging but
landing’s where the there’s always actually at – will ya
get outta my way says
imaging to landing in her impatience I’m a
meaning something landing says
landing does imaging never answers she just
go figures everything dust of dubious
drumming onto the fabulous
castle windows of what it
really was or supposed to
landing felt taken for granted of at times &
used for wasteful purposes
imaging plays cute & gateful to
redirect some of that earnestness into an edifice for herself
landing adds van
tage for imaging to fill with
the hole weft open at the beginning was
left open long thin lines
filter out from the infra
sifted dusty ether of infinity
skim milk powder dust rubber masked basketry matrix & appear to begin
landing winces & repins
stutter shatter cycles, skips & misses
masks things out with the intentional distractions neglects
resists some of the most fabulous impingements
or misses them by just failing to stay that long
& worst, truffles things up
you don’t want laying around on the earth that long
the way imaging did imaging sometimes wishes
this would all just go away
landing & imaging went
west together forever
an edifice of sunset
a windshield of rushing onward off into it
a fore-scaffolding & an evening in the air
fort setzung stood there
in their way for ever
land
guage
land
guage
scatter pal pate
the impingeing upstraction
landing lands, imaging &
imaging take it in & build
ping
when the line trips wen
sometimes it gets a little thin
between them
landing lands & imaging aggregates
pre-tensile it front-loads &
she pro motes landing
is a thing in the eye &
imaging beams & removes it
landing has & imaging holds
landing makes the difference &
imaging knows it
imaging builds wholes en
semble assembly & a path from
presence to knowing what a chain
landing is always at home
but imaging has to grow things
imaging kept landing on a
leash of plain thinking landing
reacted by planting the inkling of a hand on the
heart in his head shed
thirteen layers of accumulates
& articulated onward into the
infra-thin wavey grain
stream shag all round him she in-
clined to make something of her experience
landing landed and di-
verged from her
the wavey grain streamt onward &
imaging mirrored the stream
a slim particulate
a scant anthill of heaped awareness
a shiver in the reminiscence
this was all triggered up by imaging
landing was out collecting the wood
innuendo & infraspection are
all imaging’s business landing, well
landing lands
imaging expands
the territory for landing that’s something
landing fails to acknowledge just because
landing’s always constantly abandoning blur-
less puddle drunk born & re-lands
when of the fine in relevance
when of the very fit for matching
when of the insistence of resemblance one would
wish to speak to then what a
wonder of a word or a
week or an architecture one would need to
organize & do so then
see what in the image of
this seeing you seem to discern
seeing meaning, seeing means as much as the next guy & what
this leaves us with again is
landing reboots what imaging upends
but in truth it’s imaging
decides the terrain landing disputes
this at every return but imaging
has learned that if she insists
landing whinces — but landing whirs
landing skims the fine edge of a blade
lips pursed and fleshly peeled splitting
but only imaging ever gets wise to it or hurts
her view of the things is in itself enticing
but really it’s his ride, landing
stalls & causes pauses landing
breaches gaps & bridges rippings
to split-second switch & for imaging’s
sake make it seem seamless
landing prances, but imaging preens
landing strikes a chord
but doesn’t know it imaging
‘s already onto something
& landing keeps it going landing
feeds the fire but only imaging
gets the glow of it you know said
imaging to landing in the dark
you really get where you’re going don’t you
no we just look like that to you
landing snatches but it’s imaging choosing
a long shot whip lash fly cast caught
on the rim of the difference between
hitting the needle thin thing or missing it
landing looks but only imaging aims
sees the same thing again & again & everything
again & again & gradually a pattern
emerges & imaging goes red in the
face & her chest heaves &
lurches
she loves landing so she
seams so she says landing
hears & so landing seems to,
still, if
landing leads
attention by a nose centripetal
on a scent that’s yellowing already &
alert to the enter
prises imaging gets the point
imaging holds the door
prizes at the end of every night but
the only one who’ll ever know what it’s like outside
is landing
landing sort of
sighs about it sometimes but
imaging notices
landing localises
thing- & self-hoods in dispersive mass
imaging is the accumulate’s strategy
to sustain itself – like capital
landing is the unalienated contact
imaging can’t help but run amok with
landing is touching the ontological stuff
in a quantum fluffy sort of way
imaging is the capitalization of that
into a universe of derivatives
but then this universe collapsed as
quickly again into the thin
end of an endless wedge,
whence
landing is concomitant with the
world while imaging is in fact
where most of the action’s at
landing can’t stand the way
imaging keeps trying to pass
landing grabs but imaging always ends up with the bag
days & months go past as landing
never seems to happen
imaging just goes on without asking
little infinitessimal deflections deferring
the eventual return
it was a long time coming & landing
caught it but only imaging could
appreciate the relief a whole train
wreck of impending implications filigrane wake
mirroring itself forward in a vane as far as
landing is concerned landing isn’t imaging
is its memory & its anticipation, if
you don’t like the weather imaging kept
saying just wait for a minute & it’ll
change it
landing wasn’t listening and landing wasn’t waiting
PROCEDURES Journal 