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Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

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Posts posted by Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

  1. It's crazy. Sylvie dropping knowledge from her years of experience in Thai gyms, a slowly evolved observation on the hidden dimensions of hierarchy and fighter evolution, and people in comments proposing theories on what is REALLY happening, you know, based on no connection to kaimuay culture. We live in a time when the simulation of knowledge (and perspective) is the purpose of exchange. Heading toward pure simulcrum. They haven't a clue, she gave them a clue. The internet is anti-knowledge.

     

  2. I believe we need to take an anti-knowledge stance towards Muay Thai, in this Age. This is to say, anything that measures is to be shunned. I've not always done that, but I'm coming to see that simply is not the direction. Cadence is an interesting question. Not the cadence that measures, in the sense of the unfeeling cadence, the cadence which cannot see. But also, and more importantly, every spatial coordinate, anything that maps on neutral space. Any gridding.

  3. The Knowledge Mill

    There is a very interesting dilemma that has gradually arisen, as the totalization of cognitive Capitalism takes its hold on the world, which is that so much of our information sphere has become a knowledge mill. This is to say, we all work producing knowledge and perspectives to feed into the mill, day and night, such that the meaning of our knowledge, our experiences, becomes asymptotically less and less. It just wants to be fed. And we grist it all, feeding it back in.

    As the producer of perhaps the greatest documentation of a fighting art, in the history of the planet, and art full of nuance, culture and history, as well as great efficacy, how does one keep it from just being ground up by the mill and losing all meaning? Just another set of details, coordinates of interest, to be mapped and ultimately colonized by pure consumption?

    We've purposely made much of the documentation hard to digest for such a mill. Hour long videos of narrative structure that force investment and discovery by the viewed. We've made it hard to mine...but still is lacking, other than this mode of resistance, an appropriate expression and conversation of that knowledge, something that honors its meaningfulness.

    I've felt myself grow sensitive to this milling, and feeds are populated by advice and social-credit expertise, increasingly a flood of nonsense (from a certain perspective). Just let the mill mill, I say. But, its more than that. It needs a positive form, resistant to that churning mouth of it all.

  4. 17 hours ago, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

    Simondon and the Infinite grammatical positions of Becoming

    from the same work

    I see some parallels in transition a fighter can make between gyms in Thailand, in years as they elapse, as a fighter you ARE your techniques (not of striking, but of training). Avatars of oneself unfold, in series of successions. In the passage below swap out "technology" with techniques-of-training, perhaps, to make the most sense of where I am heading.

    Simondonandtechnique.thumb.PNG.2af4bd4439df80a766a76e22fd010df8.PNG

     

     

    An "ontology of positions"

    ontologyofpositions.thumb.PNG.04bb24127e294c606f0b160a5943ef21.PNG

  5. Simondon and the Infinite grammatical positions of Becoming

    from the same work

    I see some parallels in transition a fighter can make between gyms in Thailand, in years as they elapse, as a fighter you ARE your techniques (not of striking, but of training). Avatars of oneself unfold, in series of successions. In the passage below swap out "technology" with techniques-of-training, perhaps, to make the most sense of where I am heading.

    Simondonandtechnique.thumb.PNG.2af4bd4439df80a766a76e22fd010df8.PNG

     

     

  6. Regional Golden Age Muay Thai - Khon Kaen

    Hanging with Karuhat I asked him: Are there any more good fighters from Khon Kaen (where he is from and famous for very femeu fighters like Pudpadnoi, Himself, Somrak, etc)? He shook his head. No, there was a very big stadium there, like Lumpinee. They had a big card every Saturday, broadcast on channel 4 - which I take to be a local broadcast. The stadium was the focus of the region's entire scene of Muay Thai. The stadium closed maybe 20 years ago. He said he fought in the stadium maybe 4 times.

  7. On 11/19/2019 at 6:39 PM, Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu said:

    The combination of the future alienation, and throw-back aesthetics has a deep and satisfying history in our culture, and there is a sort of sci-fi, Blade Runner experience to many ex-pat realities in Thailand, though these seem quite far from Muay Thai depictions which already turn back up on the real. The Real. But, there is in that Tech Noir history a powerful sense of figure depiction that could play a role in what we could be looking for in Muay Noir meanings. I recent read through the Japanese manga Battle Angel Alita (1993) and its connective books, and was terribly struck by the force of its action depictions, the cleanliness of the lines (Noir contains excessive contrast, purifying the subject) as well as the emotionality of its characters while in action. It is a Tech Noir work of art.

    Two recent photos with the Blade Runner Aesthetic:

    SylvieBladeRunner0distortion-fight285Sisaket-0810.thumb.jpg.8925c67b81792b2099356736b95f6a94.jpg

     

    SylvieBladeRunner20distortion-fight285Sisaket-0815.thumb.jpg.7fb15e79f3731b78e1c8d9233c1a1c37.jpg

    • Like 1
  8. On 12/25/2024 at 1:48 PM, Everturn said:

    I've already added the following to my itinerary:

    • Jor Apichat w/ Kru Diesel
    • Kem Muay Thai
    • I was going to visit Keatkhamtorn but I'm thinking of passing based off of recommendations to spend more time with Kru Diesel & Kem
    • While I'd love to Lamnammoon, the travel just isn't feasible (but it's definitely a must-go for my next trip to Thailand)

    That looks like a good list. A very toured gym for clinch is FA Group in Bangkok, but you might just be clinching a lot with Westerners? There is a very heavy Western presence, lots of Westerners trying to learn clinch. Kru Diesel is the kru who made FA Group (before it became a destination gym), so if you are looking for the deeper theory of the clinch fighting style kru Diesel is the source. Kem is very good teaching clinch, maybe take a few privates with him for that focus?

    A lot of clinch is like surfing, you need to spend time in the waves...but (who are you clinching with) the waves also matter.

    • Like 1
  9. Pallas Athena.png

    The Living Real. Goddess of warfare and wisdom.
     
    The goddess Pallas Athena was a divinity of both warfare and wisdom. Sylvie in her 285th fight, embodying both in the material world. The Greeks held ideas to float above us as inconcrete things...toward which we strive. I am inspired by my wife, as I would be by the ideas of Athena. She walks where no one else has and invites us to see. We learn from ideals. We learn from their examples. We learn as we all strive.
     
    I see this bloody photo in the corner between rounds, and I see the ideals of Athena, pressed through the mess of the human, the contorting real of bodies and wills clashing, in their techniques and arts (for we are all made of habits). Every Muay Thai fight opens with the embodiment of gods and divinities in the Ram Muay, some might say, quite literally. When fighters enter the ring they take on a role that is beyond the merely human.
     
    Athena always has been an anathema. She dictates the priorities of justice, rationality and even democracy, yet she wears the cult-like aegis which puts pure terror into enemies on the battle field. She was reportedly born virgin, from her father's thigh, is a maiden but stays the hand of Achilles with the scales of wisdom.
    • Like 1
  10. Deleuze, Guattari and the Machinic

    The "combo" or even "the strike", as it lives in the Western conception, would benefit from understanding the machine from a D&G perspective...from the excellent chapter "What is the Body Without Organs? Machine and Organism in Deleuze and Guattari" by Dan Smith. found here:

    What is the body without organs_ Machine and organism in Deleuze and Guattari.pdf << pdf
     

    ThemachineGuattari.thumb.PNG.f0da5ac840955771be94f8957e4673c3.PNG

    DeleuzeandtheMachine.thumb.PNG.4557e3e9121afeebb8d3e3d14ba57f79.PNG

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