Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu

Nabil kinda told the truth about O Muay.

Watching this fight today. Two insanely skilled 9 year olds. The beating heart of trad Muay still alive.

Reading Berardi, I become convinced, that we must find a way to island the knowledge, protect it from its encryption. The only thing I can think of...is a place...not a means of expression or communication. A topos. But these are at most gyms or museums. It does not come to me yet. But, we must prevent or forestall, retard encryption.

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.

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.

I recognize that I have loved you through the art of Muay Thai. I used its script to speak beneath surfaces.

"Thai fighters are lazy"...think about all the things implied by this statement.

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.

Recommended.

An "ontology of positions"

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.

Kem's Muay Thai in the Khaoyai Mountains below Korat would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for someone in your position I think.

Positioning the extraction of techniques from Thailand's trad Muay Thai, into a globalizing culture of technique bent toward expansion. Fredrico Campagna, Technique and Magic.

I have long thoughts on this, but I simply can't get myself to write them. The audience for this kind of information simply is crumbling in the face of waves of near-mindless, replicating "content". I sense the ability to even discuss these things is being lost on a slope of consumption.

More and more I am convinced. You fight exactly how you train...which does mean you execute the strikes you have trained.

Yesterday I was quite surprised to hear Chatchai Sasakul telling us that people problematically slowdown their punches, and lack the natural acceleration that is necessary at the end. The "shape" of their punches is all wrong. I was surprised because this validated what I wrote 2 years ago, exactly that. I got a lot of flack from internet authority types.

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.

Two recent photos with the Blade Runner Aesthetic:

This thread relatedly expands on the cultural aspects and difficulties of shooting in Black and White in Thailand, and reflects on the history of Muay Thai photography in the country:

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.

From Yodnaksu magazine 1985...

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.

Making a Note. Need to write about this. How Fatigue and Time Travel relate.

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

The West vs Thailand The more I think about it - and I've thought about it a lot - the huge difference between most combat sport conceptions in the West vs Thailand's Muay Thai is The Burst vs The Continuity. Short Wave vs Long Wave...with the exception perhaps of Western Boxing, which has a tremendous history of long wave fighting. With the advent of the "combo" (which helps people who are not fluent, teach and disseminate) and of the "highlight" (which increasingly becomes the narrative lens through which fighting is digested and understood), The Burst concept has accelerated...to everyone's detriment.