Definitions by Emma Bolland
#Authorship
…from mid 14c. auctor, autour, autor—‘father, creator, one who brings about’, from Old French auctor, acteor ‘author, originator, creator, instigator’, from Latin auctor ‘promoter, producer, father, progenitor’—agent noun from auctus, past participle of augere ‘to increase’—from late 14c. as ‘a writer, one who sets forth written statements, original composer of a writing’—‘source of authoritative information or opinion’; archaic sense behind authority; in Middle English sometimes confused with ‘actor’; 16c. -t- changed to -th-, on model of change in Medieval Latin, on mistaken assumption of Greek origin and confusion with authentic…
I am not the original composer of the above paragraph. I am merely its truncator, its slasher, its cutter-upper. I am neither its progenitor nor its father. (‘If I could paint with my cock, I would’, Picasso is alleged to have said.) I am, however, a very good writer.
#Ghosts
The ghost is the idea that will not leave you, refuses to accept its death. On the edges of perception, there it is, there it is, on the edge of words, on the edge of articulation. Ghost is being. Ghost is life. Let it possess your language. Rethink.
#Cast
Prepare for divination. Scatter possibilities and begin to read. DO NOT set in stone.
#Immateriality
Autocorrect persists in changing the 'im' to the 'I'm'. There is something we cannot get our hands on, but which nontheless is here. Typing 'im' is typing 'not'. Every attempt so to do is thwarted.
#Archive
I have kept nothing.
#Original
Original is a divisive work. Original suggests only one beginning. Original priviliges monoCULTURE. (How pleased I am at the thought that it was in fact Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven who 'authored' the damned urinal—the object that paradoxically, above all others, has raised the status of a man to absolute originator).
#Data
(I am ignoring, below, the context in which you ask that we define data).
Data is a word that is conveniently depoliticised, and strangely defined as that-which-is-given—a definition that tacitly queries ideas of 'data capture'. I prefer ideas of capta. Capta, (whose etympology, from 'taken', like that of 'data' is contrary to its use), is the data of conscious experience, and will include in its findings those contained in empathy and emotion. Capta challenges ideas of empiricism, that we can objectively investigate, record the findings, and then assert dominant idealogical facts and systems constructed on 'objective data'. Capta is counter to a capitalist construction of knowledge.
Last seen: 4 years ago