By Michael Taussig
For me this was a fun presentation, bringing back strong memories of my time in Bogazici University in Istanbul. The talk is called “Fairy Castles Gliding Like Swans,” a title suggestive of the talk’s playfulness and poetry exploring what could be called “two handed” writing, one hand belting out straight prose concerning my research in northern Colombia palm oil plantations guarded by armed paramilitaries, the other hand using a grease pencil to draw impressions and afterthoughts of looking out the window of my room in Istanbul above the Bosporus.
The question that arises is how might these two discrete activities usefully coalesce as inspirational force and what does this combination tell us about text/image collations—a topic I developed earlier in a book called I Swear I Saw This?
In other words this talk is both fiction and non-fiction, a work of art and fiction layered over non-fiction—ie the research in northern Colombia. This layering I call ficto-criticism.
Sketch by author
Looking back now three days after the talk I appreciate the opportunity to present as live performance a text that not only lends itself to such a modality but thrives in a lecture hall (especially the Orangerie!) more than on the printed page.
This raises the issue of academic praxis as an activity going beyond the book or the journal, towards a multi-media sensorium generally unavailable to our illustrious ancestors.
And there’s context, spatial and temporal!
The scene was the beautiful Orangerie set in the handsome park of a princely schloss with its tall trees and moss covered statues (now there’s performance, for you).
Then there’s the temporal aspect tied to the text of my presentation which was printed for me in the afternoon by a friend.
When I looked at the text twenty minutes before the talk was to begin, I suddenly noticed that the printing was full of problems, letters were squeezed against the letter before making the words unreadable, quotation marks had become squiggly “s”s besmirching words, and so forth. What mayhem.!
What panic!
As the audience filed in a group of people tried everything to resurrect the text. The clock ticked. Nothing worked. You can imagine how we felt.
Someone had a copy of my text on their cellphone an was wondering it if I could use that?
Unbelievably, at least 20 minutes late, my talk appeared on an iPad and we were ready to roll. Strangely the waiting audience was unperturbed. But what nerve-shattered Self was I? It was like surviving a car crash, making the text and its delivery a form of catharsis as the strangely beautiful imagery floated across the screen, fairy castles gliding like swans as thoughts unfolded like the opening of a flower.
The text lends itself to a performative rendering especially because of the numerous filaments connecting day-dreaming, drawing, and writing.
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Prof. Michael Taussig is Class of 1933 Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Columbia University, and author of several books including The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America; Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing; Mimesis and Alterity; Defacement; My Cocaine Museum; I Swear I Saw This; and Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown.
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Image 1: Sketch by author
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