The Palotin's Library of Educational Texts

Ubu under surveillance

Second Congress of the Third International Gathering of ’Pataphysics. 1922.

Delegates at the Second Congress of the Third International Gathering of ’Pataphysics. 1922. Tunbridge Wells.


Manifesto of the Second Congress of the Third International Gathering of ’Pataphysics. 1922.

1. Delegates agree that ’Pataphysics, with its variations, is one of the most wonderful things, and is always present everywhere.
2. Delegates agree ’Pataphysicians aim to improve the minds of the young in our acrimonious and utilitarian world.
3. Delegates agree that thought processes grow out of the technology of writing and that therefore ’Pataphysic writing must be a vehicle for introducing new ideas.
4. Delegates agree to abandon the Socratic pursuit of truth for its own sake on the grounds that the world is fundamentally unknowable and the Socratic pursuit of truth is biased towards established paradigms.
5. Delegates agree that ’Pataphysics can never be certain of both position and momentum and that the fundamental assumption that two parallel lines will extend indefinitely and never meet is counter intuitive.
6. Delegates agree to ’Pataphysic implementation using technologies with a predictable, transparent maximum aggregate cost which will drive global adoption and foster the social and economical growth of illuminated popular literature, church Latin, erotic books without spelling, novels of our foremothers, fairy tales, little books for children, old operas, silly refrains, naïve rhythms.
7. Delegates agree that within the current framework the fundamental mystification of ’Pataphysics is to associate ideas of fulfillment with objects (televisions, garden furniture, automobiles, etc) so that social action takes the form of the action of objects.
8. Delegates agree that to change the world and society the life changes that limited the liberatory possible want. Possible that these changes, all actions by using this information so that things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy.
9. Delegates agree that working with ’Pataphysics, psychology and art, more or less safe and the risks. The current idea that a successful, modern thought away from such positions and varied, with many disciplines and years about the time maintain new and exciting events that undermine.
10. Delegates agree the rejection of the project to cover the absurd result of sensitivity? Both cheap original and creative book is nearly everything, Jarry, as the force and, in particular, Ubu, a sentence, a song book, printed as an exact contemporary new direction in the future, they see only shadows.
    
    
    

Lower Hope Point Japanese Temple, Kent, Engand

Keishin seikatsu no koryo

Recent archaeological research on Cliffe Marsh has discovered the site of the Lower Hope Point Shinto Temple founded in 1839 by Japanese monks. The existence of this Shinto Temple is well documented but the exact location had been lost since the monks abandoned the site in 1953 as a result of the destruction wrought by the great flood that affected the eastern seaboard of England.

Today, Cliffe Marsh is a low-lying grazing marsh forming part of Kent’s north coast and part of the many low-lying areas that stretch around the outer Thames estuary. What the area looked like in 1839, when the monks first arrived, is best described by Charles Dickens, a resident of the area, “Ours is the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wends, twenty miles of the sea. This bleak place overgrown with nettles and brambles, the dark flat wilderness, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, are the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, is the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind is rushing, is the sea; and inbetween the marsh and river, sea and sky, the desolate temple sits”.

Today the area is less bleak; being better drained and protected from flooding, still populated by cattle and sheep as well as migrating wetland birds, ornithologists and ramblers. The lack of research at Cliffe is at odds with the Thames Estuary as a whole but the recent Archaeological Research Agency’s Framework of Understanding has identified key areas for research and a consistency in approach has ensured and encouraged both site based and wider focused work. Inter-agency co-operation has provided a holistic understanding of the natural and cultural issues of Cliffe Marsh. To ensure the long-term preservation of landscape features and preservation of organic and inorganic archaeological remains and to develop an overarching management framework specifically for the cultural landscape of all the North Kent and Thames estuary Marshes is the Archaeological Research Agency’s prime target.

A brief description of the remains.

The Torri Gate marks the entrance to the shrine, near this gate would have been bowls of water where worshippers would symbolically purify themselves by rinsing their hands and mouth. The temple buildings are traditionally raised above the ground and, here on the Thames, this tradition would have been reinforced by local conditions. Buildings within the shrine enclosure would have been built according to tradition interpreted by the lie of the land, but the inner shrine would always be built on an east-west axis. The inner shrine was here flanked by two subsidiary buildings on the east-west alignment. An open pavilion was used in times of inclement weather to perform the ceremonies. At low tide painted plaster can be found in the river sediments and indicates that the building was highly decorated, possibly with dragons and other mythical animals.

The Torri Gate

The Temple was sacred to the Kami, which is respect for nature and naturalness and is expressed through the materials used for constructing the shrine, the main material being timber. Harmony with nature being the most prized element in the shrine, the predominant colour used in decoration was a dark green that a century later became synonymous with English motor sport teams.

Rudyard Kipling, on a visit in 1900 from his home in Rottingdean, wrote to his son John Kipling, “The temple itself, reached by a wooden bridge, was nearly dark, but there was light enough to show a hundred subdued splendours of brown and gold, of silk and faithfully painted screens. The ceiling was of panelled wood, with the exception of one strip at the side nearest the window, and this was made of plaited shavings of cedar wood, marked off from the rest of the ceiling by a wine-brown bamboo so polished that it might have been lacquered. Two sides of the room were of oiled paper, and the joints of the beams were covered by the brazen images of crabs, half life-size. Save for the sill of the tokonoma, which was black lacquer, every inch of wood in the place was natural grain without flaw. Outside lay the garden, fringed with a hedge of dwarf-pines and adorned with a tiny pond, water-smoothed stones sunk in the soil, and a blossoming cherry tree. It was only when I stopped to examine the sunk catch of a screen that I saw it was a plaque of inlay-work representing two white cranes feeding on fish. The whole was about three inches square and in the ordinary course of events would never be looked at.

Site of the Open Pavilion

(Kipling and his party entered further into the monastery), with our hats in our hands, through a small avenue of carved stone lanterns and wooden sculptures of devils unspeakably hideous, to be received by a smiling image who had grown grey among netsukes and lacquer. He showed us the banners and insignia of daimios long since dead, while our jaws drooped in ignorant wonder. He showed us a sacred turtle of mammoth size, careen in wood down to minutest detail. Through room after room he led us, the light fading as we went, till we reached a tiny garden and a woodwork cloister that ran round it.”

The Inner Shrine

It is unusual to find Japanese architecture in Kent and the loss of this little known building has only partly been redeemed by the discovery of its remains, now standing in the Thames.