Robin Parmar FAQ

What's going on here?

This is a FAQ of sorts, where you can find out a thing or two about me.

When you've got water stuck in your ear, how do you get it out?

Drill a hole through from the opposite ear.

What are your interests?

Subversions, inversions, coversions, dub versions.

What are you seeking?

The ineffable.

Why do you have so many websites?

Besides those listed on my home page I have also, at one time or another, had a presence on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and other social networking sites. Plus I am active on many internet fora, Yahoo Groups and newsgroups. Since even before the web I have been a (virtual) social animal. Fragments are a good thing.

What are your favorite films?

Last Year in Marienbad, Spirit of the Beehive, I Walked With a Zombie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Alphaville, La Jetée, Gamera: Revenge of Iris, Solaris, The Last Wave, Touch of Evil, 3 Women, Paris, Texas, Meshes of the Afternoon, Blade Runner, The Double Life of Véronique, The Trial, The Manchurian Candidate, Vertigo, Local Hero, Wings of Desire and many more.

Novels?

These are emblematic: Destroy She Said, Hopscotch, The Atrocity Exhibition, Days Between Stations, The Man In The High Castle and Nausea.

Albums?

Dalek I Love You: Compass, Kum'pas, Joy Division: Closer, Martha And The Muffins: This Is The Ice Age, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: Organisation, Skids: Days in Europa, Ultravox: Systems Of Romance, Wire: 154 and the rest of these.

Artists?

Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Gerhard Richter, Jack Chambers. And pretty well all the rest.

What is a koshatnik?

A Russian dealer in stolen cats.

What is a "faction"?

In an attempt to find a new space for creative writing in the late twentieth century, I began creating what I call "factions", fictional texts composed predominantly of found factual content. Early works include "The Field Guide to the Insects" (The Blue Arm, 1997), a fanciful treatise that mocks the language of scientific catalogues, and "The Genomachine Project" (Cornell University, 2001), which drew on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the desiring-machine to critique the Human Genome Project.

What is an "archipelago"?

An archipelago is a sea containing scattered islands. I use this term to mean a scattering of texts embedded in a particular context; a cluster without overt pattern but with some as-yet-not-fully-determined connectivity. The context the reader brings to this collection is the axis about which the islands spin. For an example, read "Complementarity: An Archipelago" in the book Framemakers: Choreography As An Aesthetics Of Change.

Three papers everyone should read...

"The Precession of Simulacra" by Jean Baudrillard (read), "Tools For Conviviality" by Ivan Illich (read), "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin (read).

If you wrote yourself a memo, what would it say?

"Be less self-reflexive."