through europe

A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words but their tasks

(G.Battaille, in Athey, 1997, 'Visions of Excess', p. 31)

May 2007, Titnore, West Sussex. Let me begin with a reflection on a series of key terms, written whilst I was resting on a couch, suspended 30 feet off the ground, hoisted on a tree; attempting to analyse the functioning of a treesitting protest site through it’s vocabulary:

There’s a haunting image that’s grabbed my attention like no other. It’s been circulated frantically and has appeared on countless newspapers and websites in the past weeks. Its’ focal point is unclear, the colours are faint and muddy, the lens has bloated the centre of the frame, distorting the portrait. The image undercuts our current habits as viewers, used to a form of direct unequivocal communication, to clear rhetorical symbolism: the protester high atop the vandalized police van, the politician admonishing, protected by a forest of microphones, the young hooded student, arm high and tense, throwing an object overhead; something in this photograph resonates beyond this imaginific regurgitation of 68, yet it is happening now, amidst the rest of the rhetorical scenarios.