KD seminar by prof. Line-Gry Hørup

On restrictions, descriptions and (non-)analysis.

21.10 2025 – 3.2 2026

AG: “No ideas but in things”. Does anybody not understand what that means? — “No ideas but in things”? Is there anybody that doesn’t get that? [Student raises his hand] — Okay, is there anybody else who doesn’t get that? Please raise your hand if it isn’t perfectly clear what that means, because it’s a phrase I’m really fond of and I know what it means and I can explain it. So if anybody is not sure — [more students raise their hands] — okay, it means “no general ideas”.

Student: Nobody understands what it means.

AG: Nobody? Alright, it means, in your poetry, don’t put out any abstract general ideas about things but present the things themselves that gave you the idea. In other words, observe. Instead of saying, “all animals are related in their biological intelligence”, there’s that Basho poem about the baby mice squeaking to the sparrows, the baby sparrows in their nest: “Baby mice in their nest / squeak in response / to the young sparrows” — you see?

Student: Babies?

AG: Yeah …

AG: […] Okay, so, he’s proposing a general way of writing, but first, let’s understand what a general way of writing is, then we’ll decide whether we like it or not. It’s the same thing as I was talking to you [turning to one student] about your poem — that you’re representing, plastering a lot of general ideas or epithets or adjective descriptions or insults on the girl in the pool-hall, the pinball-machine store up there, but you don’t describe the girl or her actual clothes or any details about her. Yeah?

Student: That’s very difficult for me to do. In a sense I understand, but, in a sense, it’s like I think of, like the sun — there’s this luminous object out there doing something. And it’s like, for me, it’s like, by definition, anything I’m going to put down on the page is not going to be that object.

AG: Right. No, it’s not going to be that object.

Student: It’s not going to be that object. So it’s got to be what my mind is doing with, or perceiving, that object.

AG: Yeah, Yeah. That’s true. That’s true. The words are not identical to the things that they represent. That’s basic semantics.

Student: So for me the function of what I’m doing … well, it’s trying to clarify what the thing is. There’s this luminous thing. Are we going around it? Or is it going around us? What’s happening? And, for me, the words are part of exploration in discovering the thing per se. So, what … why I sort of ramble on … these fantasy things, it’s more to try to sort out, well, what is a fantasy and what is the thing?

AG: Anybody else … relate to that?

Student: I do, too.

AG: Yeah?

Student: If all of us here … if Allen put a couple of objects on the table and we all sat here and did a still-life with words, we’d all come up with something that was different but expressed our own personality. We couldn’t help but do it. And trusting that that would be an explanation of your universe, I think, is what makes poetic accuracy — that you can emote through a piece of writing about, you know, a still-life of fruit, just by describing it, because, simply because, you’ve got a different angle on it, it’s individual. It necessitates that. And that doesn’t mean you can’t have general truth too. See what I mean?

AG: […] Or, as Williams says, what’s “close to the nose” — that’s his phrase — “close to the nose”. Start close to the nose, with your mother’s salami or something, something everybody can eat. So he just wants that. He’s just pointing to that reality as some place where everybody really is, or can be, if they’ll accept it. Let’s work from there and we might then be able to build another universe, but at least let’s begin where we are.

Schedule from 10:00-16:00 at Seminar Room 222

1. — 21. oct: (9:00-15:00) Introduction to Dogma 95 + screening.
2. — 4. nov: No Ideas But in Things.
3. — 18. nov: Oblique Strategies.
4. — 9. dec: fivehundredplaces (w. Jason Dodge).  
5. — 16. dec: X-mas manifesto special.
6. — (new date!) 7. jan: Wild Magic 100-sided dice.
7. — (new date!) 30. jan: Insomnia Drawings.
8. — (new date!) 10. feb: Last review + presentation prep.

Works / Syllabus

— The Five Obstruction dir. Lars von Trier, 2003
— Low and Heros by David Bowie w. Brian Eno, 1976
— Writings by Agnes Martin, 1991
— The Insomnia Drawings by Louise Bourgeois, 1994-95 (physical copies will be available in class)
— fivehundredplaces by Jason Dodge, 2012-ongoing (physical copies will be available in class)