Solar eclipse as seen from the moon

“The matador is gored; the shark breaks surface and wreaks havoc; a real of the type that I suggest we should embrace and celebrate punctures the screen or strip of film, destroying it: a real that happens, or forever threatens to do so, not as a result of the artist “getting it right” or overcoming inauthenticity, but rather as a radical and disastrous eruption within the always-and-irremediably inauthentic; a traumatic real; a real that’s linked to repetition; a real whose framework of comprehension is ultimately neither literary nor philosophical but psychoanalytic: the real that Lacan defines as “that which always returns to the same place” and as “that which is unassimilable by any system of representation.” The challenge, for the writer, would never be one of depicting this real realistically, or even “well”; but of approaching it in the full knowledge that, like some roving black hole, it represents (although that’s not the right word anymore) the point at which the writing’s entire project crumples and implodes.”

— Tom McCarthy - 'Get Real, or What Jellyfish Have to Tell Us About Literature'

Krapp's Last Tape →

A late evening in the future.

Remains a moment motionless, heaves a great sigh, looks at his watch.

Ten seconds. Loud pop of cork. Fifteen seconds. He comes back into the light carrying an old ledger. Strong voice, rather pompous, clearly his at a much earlier time.

Looks at his watch, gets up, goes backstage into darkness. Ten seconds. Pop of cork. Ten seconds. Second cork.

Ten seconds. Third cork.

Motionless starring before him. The tape runs on in silence…

CURTAIN.

Roman Opalka

 Letter to Carl George from Felix Gonzalez-Torres, May 12, 1988

The Number 2 Mirror Incident

The 3rd of November 1970 was scheduled to be a routine monthly maintenance shutdown. The East Auxiliary #2 mirror was being lowered down the telescope when its hoist cable slipped off of the drum. The carriage raced down the tunnel incline about 30-meters before impacting the main #2 mirror carriage! The East Auxiliary’s 0.9-m aluminum mirror broke free of its mounting and fell another 5-meters onto the main #2 carriage. The 1.6-m main imaging mirror was seen to “jump about 2 inches”. When the mirror settled back into its support, the clips at the mirror edge broke a roughly 15-cm round chip from the front edge (Figure 11).  

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