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Re: Tampa, Florida
2002.01.07 21:58
Your preferred use of the word/concept surreptitious says more than you might have thought. By your own admission, you are "taking back secretly" a primitive human existence when/where land was not privately or governmentally owned, albeit with all the (ironic? unavoidable?) "conditioning" of modern technology. [Granted, use of the word primitive should be in quotes.] Although I won't insist on it, the notion of reenactment can still be used to describe the essence of what you do when you "recreate".
Like you, I desire reenactment to be a more deliberate process, plus I desire a broader understanding of reenactment's workings, both conscious and unconscious.
For me, reenactment has become a powerful learning process. For example, my reenacting Piranesi's drawing of the Ichnographia Campi Martii (albeit with modern technology, i.e. CAD, surely unknown and very likely even unimagined by Piranesi) has taught me much about Late Antiquity, paradigm shifts, that Piranesi's original drawing itself represents a reenactment, that "modern" humanity has for the most part lost touch with reenactment even though it still clearly exists (e.g., the funeral of Diana as a true/real reenactment of ancient Rome's Triumphal Way), and even that a truly innovative understanding of Piranesi's overall work can come from reenactment.
In interesting contrast to your surreptitious activity, I now wonder what I might be reenacting by just staying in exactly the same spot on this planet for what is becoming the greater part of my entire existence. I'm doing this because I can as well.
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