This week, we're reading Chapter 1 of *Unruly Speech* by Saskia Witteborn. Witteborn frames transgression as a way of defining the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. Beyond that, she argues (through those she references) that it is necessary for maintaining social order.

“[To] transgress is to go beyond the bounds or limits set by a commandment or law or convention, it is to violate or even infringe. But to transgress is also more than this, it is to announce and even laudate the commandment, the law or the convention”

Here, Witteborn is quoting Chris Jenks’ 2003 book, Transgression. The idea is that transgression affirms the rule as much as opposes it.

How Does this Impact My Project?

I started thinking a lot about Tarnschriften (literal translation “camouflage writing”), **specifically the anti-Nazi writings that were illicitly published and hidden in plain sight disguised as chess pamphlets or make-up adverts. They were often quite small so as to be hidden inside of other books. I love the idea of a guide being passed around inside a sort of literary Trojan Horse, so I think that’s what I’ll try to do.

Ironically, the more I read about these beautiful pieces of morally upright literature (mostly written by the communist party), the more tempted I am to make a guide to installing a puppet regime.

Conversations with Margaret

I had a great conversation with Margaret, the Tisch librarian, about puppet research. On a technical level, she showed me how to do advanced search with multiple variables and constraints. This would be helpful for clamping down on the number of results coming back for something like “sock puppet”.

I was struggling to connect transgression and puppets and Margaret was able to introduce a few new concepts (Bread and Puppet Theatre), as well as jog my memory about some old ones (Spitting Image, Punch and Judy). It seems the UK has a particularly interesting history of political puppetry, with the word “poppet” (a term of endearment to me) previously referring to a kind of voodoo doll.

Possibly the key takeaway from our conversation was when we discussed what I thought to be a completely esoteric family history. My paternal grandfather had trained as a medicine man in his remote Nigerian village and came from a family of people responsible for the local masquerade. The pre-Christianity local deity of the village was someone my dad had once described as being the equivalent of Hades in the Greek pantheon. I assumed this was something that may not have happened elsewhere but Margaret was convinced there would be ethographic studies on similar practices across the country. Sure enough, we were able to identify the Yoruba masquerade as (almost definitely) Egungun and the deity as Eshu (it turned out I actually wrote this down somewhere a few years ago). Coincidentally, my classmate Eric whose theme is “Trickster” came across Eshu in one of the books he was looking through.

By the end of this conversation, I had two clear directions (literal puppeteering as a metaphor for political puppeteering) and the Yoruba masquerade. Now I just need to pick one and run with it.

Guide References

Jay Foreman on London’s Boroughs

• Tone (wacky, nerdy, sarcastic)
• Visuals
• Pacing

Capoeira

This one fits my notion of a “guide” the least, but “combat training disguised as dance” is the vibe I’m going for.

David Drake’s Pottery

The Enslaved Artist Whose Pottery Was an Act of Resistance (Published 2021)

He made pots and wrote (”catination”) on them (or at least one) at a time when slaves were being forced to be illiterate. A “guide” to reading—literally—and maybe to liberation.

Tarnschriften

Tarnschriften: Covert Resistance in the Third Reich - The Wiener Holocaust Library

OK, all of my examples are about resisting oppression and I want to make a guide to installing a puppet government?

That said, I think this is my form. Risograph?

It seems they were often palm-sized and not too long (one example is cited at 22 pages) so they could be hidden in another book or easily pocketed. This one’s in the form of a pack of tomato seeds.

Here’s a French example.

Thoughts

• I imagine this guide as being a sort of capoeira—a Trojan horse designed to escape the prying eyes of some evil overlord.
  • Although I can’t find definitive support that Capoeira was actually a way to disguise combat training as dance. Here’s something from Smithsonian. It is possible…
• Are there other examples of covert guides, cultural objects or materials? Subliminal messaging? Green Book? That was openly a guide to staying safe on the road, and probably well known by Black folk but not outside.
• TARNSCHRIFTEN!

OK, so how could I disguise a puppety thing?

• Maybe a guide to social media marketing that’s actually about sock puppet accounts?
• Or a guide to maintaining and using your puppet (I need to finish actual puppetry research)

Naming Exercise

• Puppetmaster: A Guide to Controlling
• Become a Puppetmaster!
• Puppets: A Practical Guide
• Social Media Marketing for Milennials (really stop people from touching it)

Our summer intensive is over and a new semester begins. Whereas this summer we had five weeks in-person to do and make everything, we’ll be spending 15 weeks on Zoom, going deep. Here in Critical Experiences land, we’ll be sharpening our tools for research, systems thinking and experience design.

On Emergence, and Things as Events

To begin the class, we’re reading (bits of) Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown. Emergent Strategy is a new concept to me and discusses emergence in a slightly different way to what I’m used to, although on reflection, not that different. To quote Brown (quoting Nick Obolensky):

Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.

She describes the way cells interact to create complex organisms, saying they may not necessarily “know” what is happening at the macro level, despite causing it.

This connects—in my mind, at least—to something I read by Carlo Rovelli:

The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events. A stone is prototypical 'thing': we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an 'event'. It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones. On closer inspection, in fact, even the things that are most 'thing-like' are nothing more than long events.

Rovelli goes on to explain that, viewed across a long enough time horizon, a stone is just a bunch of atoms that came together for a while and will eventually disassemble. In this way, a stone is a “happening”, a verb as much as a noun.

This is how I think about emergence. A way by which the thingness of a thing is defined in the activities of that thing. Does that make sense?

One more example—drawing. When I was younger, I was told not to start with details, to rough out general shapes instead. But I could never see general shapes. I saw blobs of light and dark, lines and planes. And only when I stepped back from the drawing would I see a still life or a portrait. I guess that’s an emergent approach to drawing.

Principles of Emergent Strategy

1. Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)
2. Change is constant. (Be like water.)
3. There is always enough time for the right work.
4. There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.
5. Never a failure, always a lesson.
6. Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.)
7. Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass — build the resilience by building the relationships.
8. Less prep, more presence.
9. What you pay attention to grows.

I struggle with 3, 5, 6 and 8. I don’t understand 7.

I rarely feel like my self-regulated schedule leaves enough time for anything, which is to say nothing of external expectations and pressures. That said I do want to learn how to protect valuable things from those pressures.

With regards to failure, I increasingly disagree with any push to rebrand or remove it from the palette of life experiences. Yes, it is often instructive. But surely sometimes, you just have to take the proverbial L. Is this not a valid perspective?

On trust, ha. Far too nihilistic for that, soz. Maybe one day.

On prep vs presence, why are these things being versused in the first place? As a card-carrying member of the Extremely Awkward, Nervous and Uncomfortable club, preparation is how I calm the three-headed dragon. Don’t get me wrong, learning to roll with the punches/surf the wave/insert metaphor here has also been a gift, and I thrive on chaos when I’m the only person involved. But the moment others are involved, bust out the calendar invites, sticky notes etc.

Transgressive…Puppets

For our first major project of the class, we’ve been “randomly” (right, Sarah?) assigned topics. We’ve then been placed in small groups with their own overarching topic. My group looks like this:

Me	Transgression	Puppets
Jaiden	Transgression	Trickster/Trickery
Annika	Transgression	Permeability
Chucen	Transgression	Placebo

The word “transgression” has particularly religious connotations to me—maybe that’s the catholic school peeking through. In other spheres of life, you’re more likely to hear words like “offense”, “crime”, “wrongdoing”…my friend said it almost felt like “treason” to him, which gives me connotations of either a monarchy or pirates. Transgression feels in line with sin and sacrilege.

Puppets, on the other hand…my first instinct was to reject a literal interpretation. To think about manipulation, representation and proxies. Puppet politicians and the like. Then I thought about shadow puppets and how it might be fun to combine a Leap Motion with some sort of gesture recognition/GAN and create images based on hand signs. The more people I told about this assignment, the more puppet-related things appeare—sorry, emerged. So now, I’m thinking I’ll look into puppetry at large and go from there.