I bundled everything into my bag and soon it was heavy again. As ever it was a race against the clock. I checked to see I had picked up everything (the usual feeling, in such a hurry, of having forgotten something crucial lingered). But, I had all the bits and pieces I needed to read in preparation for teaching and of course Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude (the title set by R. in preparation for my trip to Bogota, the page quotas by our reading group of two!)… There was just enough time, I thought, to get to the library to get that book about blogging (again for teaching), which I’d not been able to get last week because of such early closing times.

I hurried up to the first floor and headed straight to the shelf location 301.231. I spotted it finally down on the bottom shelf and swiftly plucked it from its position. I was all but away again when I noticed a title along the thin tall spine of a neighbouring book: The Digital Film Event. Interesting, I thought and shifted the weight of my bag slightly to be on my way again. Yet, no I couldn’t quite leave it there for a ‘next time’ (and so allow it to be lost to those spaces of lost volumes that ever haunt me). I let my bag down to the floor to free myself to collect up this second book. The pages are glossy I thought. Pictures, some in colour. And what is this, a filmscript in the middle? Could not compute. I was definitely intrigued. Could be a red herring, maybe a little self indulgent (though who am I to talk!). But the back cover did it, ever aware of the ticking clock, my eyes skated over the top few lines:
 

FILM / VISUAL STUDIES / POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

Endless travel in cyberspace, virtual reality, and the dream of limitless speed: technology changes our sense of self. In her new book, Trinh Minh-ha explores the way technology transforms our perception of reality. 

Yes the word travel appeared I thought, a good omen and cyberspace, which would seem to help knit together our wandering plans and the insistence with which I write this blog. Suddenly the book became such precious cargo. Still with little sense of what it actually contained (and what does it really matter when set against the inspiration it offered), I hurried down to the library desk as if someone might reach out of the shadows and take it from me before I had the chance to have it issued to my name… As I ran the book’s barcode through the machine I became aware of a whole host of new possibilities (if only I could write them down here as quickly as I thought of them). Only yesterday as I half described the plans (or at least their moods/modes) R. and I have dreamt up for my visit, you said to me (as you sat perfectly, cross-legged upon that massive bed) ‘…and you could do more films’. The suggestion startled me for a moment (but that is hardly new) and I think I gave a non-commital reply, but it went quick and direct to my other mind (the one that can’t function in real-time).

R. … I think we have been thinking too small. Let’s not just look to the films and books of Robinsonesque adventures (and other associated Species of Spaces), let’s make our own. In our ever best attempts to refashion Bovard and Pecuchet for the 21st Century, I think we ought to turn our hand to being media artists. We’ll go the whole hog and invent a globalised installation.

I have been writing this, trying to archive my thoughts, as I travel back on the train. As I step off at the station and enter the usual commotion of commuters, I sense all the connections in my head dissipate (a desparate feeling under the circumstances). Still, I hang on to these words saved. It could be a real turning point. I really sense it could be a turning point (something we must discuss during our next skype call). Of course in previous literatures, this remark, which issues as if literally ensconced in the hurlyburly of modern life, might seem to reveal a contrived attempt, or re-presentation, of the transient. Yet, since I am able to type and transmit these words upon my mobile phone, we can’t so easily judge one’s verisimilitude.

…and this simply all feeds into the ideas of the author of The Digital Film Event, Trinh T. Minh-ha. As the backpage blurb continues:

“We are all engaged in social rituals in our daily activities,” she writes, ” and by remaining unaware of their artistic ritutal propensity, we remain ‘in conformity.’” Her goal, as a thinker and an artist, is to transform our understanding of technology and speed so that we are able to “turn an instrument into a creative tool and to step out of the one dimensional, technologically servile mind.”

The paradoz that “stillness contains speed within it” is central to Trinh’s concept of the digital apparatus. With her signature amalgam of feminism, postcolonial theory, Eastern philosophy, and practical understanding of filmmaking, Trinh Minh-ha presents a much-needed advance in our understanding of the real in a technological age.

R. … welcome to The Letters in Red 2.0…