stirring around , words that come and attack  from all sides, the future, the past, the present

getting up

no sleep, old age, will I soon be sitting and wait for the great sleep to come ?

putting  words in the google machine:

“Words beyond Grammar” Boris Groys
Human life can be described as a prolonged dialogue with the world. Man interrogates the world and is interrogated by the world.

This is what came up in the net when I put in the words that circled in my head in the attempts to find sleep. Is this a miracle ? Is it always just asking questions and the right answer for your situation will come up ?
“The dialogue with the world is regulated by the questions we ask and the answers we may find….
If we believe that the world was created by God, we ask questions and wait for answers that are different from those that we ask if we believe the world is an uncreated “emprical reality”……Today we practice our dialogue with the world primarily via the internet. If we want to ask the world questions, we act as internet users. And if we want to answer the question the world asks us, we act as content providers.”
Boris Groys

The essay is essentially about Google and the its rules of dialogue with the world.

Google as the first philosophical machine.

“Google dissolves all discourses by turning them into the word clouds that function as collections of words beyond grammar. ……As a philosophical machine, google is based on a belief in extragrammatical freedom and the equality of all words and their right to migrate freely in any possible direction.”

As Groys points out this development has aready been predicted by the Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in his text of 1912 on the “destruction of syntax” and he proposed already an early version of word clouds in “Parole in Libertà”

So what is Google in our dialogue with the world? Is this dialogue anymore thinkable without Google?

“The subject of a Google search becomes a struggle for truth, that is on the one hand metaphysical and on the other hand political and technological. It is metaphysical because it is a struggle not for a particular “worldly” truth or to put it in other words – for a particular context. Rather, it is a struggle for access to the truth as such – understood as the sum total of all materially existing contexts. It is the struggle for a utopian ideal of the free flow of information- the free migration of liberated words through the totality of social space.”
Boris Groys

This text which is again part of the Dokumenta 13 documents is available at Hatje Cantz Verlag and can be bought and downloaded for really little money.

Born in 1947 in East Berlin, Boris Groys is currently Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University for Arts and Design. He has authored multiple books, including Art Power (2008) and Going Public (2010), and curated various exhibitions, such as Medium Religion at ZKM, Karlsruhe (with P. Weibel) (2008–09) and the Russian Pavillion at the Biennale di Venezia (2011).

lost in space and time,

almost total silence, some old ladies buying

a small bakery with wonderful bread. Places you only pass because they are on the way to somewhere else.
And because you don’t have a car anymore and go everywhere by bike !!!!!!!

no special neighbourhood, shops that sell anything from catfood to pressure pots
somekind of spell is present

I cannot name it,  but I can feel it, smell it and see it

then I understand: It is the dwarf calling me to dance with him

as I did so many years ago !!!!

This evening I went to see Blade Runner, the 1982 film directed by Ridley Scott in the directors cut version.
I had seen it in 1982 when it was released but not in this version with open and ambiguos ending, much nearer to Philip Dick’s novel
“Do androids dream of electric sheep?”

Blade Runner is a film about surfaces,  but  not always recognizable as such. They conceal themselves-like mirrors in the act of reflection.
Surfaces are anything but superficial, we could say there is nothing else than surface, when we try to go deep what we see is surface again.
We need to  admit the relativity and subjectivity of perception of any perception.
What we know depends on what we see; and whether we like it or not, we look at the world through our tinted glasses.
And it makes little difference whether our view is colored by our ethnic origin, gender, ideology or our most personal desires.

The purpose of this story as I saw it was that in his job of hunting and killing  replicants, the human hunter becomes progressively dehumanized.
At the same time, the replicants are being perceived as becoming more human.
Finally, the hunter must question what he is doing, and really what is the essential difference between him and them?
And, to take it one step further, who is he if there is no real difference?
Philip K. Dick

If you ever get the chance to see this film in a cinema, don’t miss it !!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel
looking as though he is about to move away
from something he is fixedly contemplating.
His eyes are staring, his mouth hangs open, his wings are spread.
This is how the angel of history must look.
His face is turned toward the past.
Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one catastrophe,
which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage
hurling it before his feet.
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead,
and make whole what has been smashed.
But a storm is blowing from Paradise;
it has got caught in his wings with such violence
the angel can no longer close them.
This storm irresistibly propels him
into the future to which his back is turned,
while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.
This storm is what we call progress.

— Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940).

This painting was owned by Walter Benjamin, the famous philosopher, one of the leading thinkers of the last century. Walter Benjamin committed suicide in 39 in France not succeeding to leave the country before the Nazi invasion. After Benjamin’s death it got in the possession of Theodor Adorno another important intellectual of hebrew origin and since the 80ies it is part of the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

I ran about it reading an essay by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (the curator of dokumenta 13) titled : “On the Destruction of Art-or Conflict and Art, or Trauma and the Art of Healing”
I think there is nothing to add and I will sure come back to talk about Dokumenta 13, an event that has shaken my conscience and gave me more than one esthetic emotion.

good night

Ephemerals is the title of my project, until now in papermachè but to develop in porcelain.
Small figures, to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct for large scale sculpture – this is my workplan

hundreds of figures I want to make

and maybe the cat will help me.

The process  of making in this case resembles the mnemonic process of my brain, my attempt to remember,
the impossibility to do so totally,
the nebulous and foamy images that come back to me and the capability I have to create new figures and representations out of them.

The fear of such inevitable incompleteness, as well as the beauty of it is what attracts me the most.
Especially today where the velocity and amplitude of information, makes any experience brief,
any recollection more difficult, any remembering more volatile.

Tutto senza intendimento facevano,
sinch’io loro insegnai la nascita
ed il tramonto delle stelle difficili.

Prometeo
Eschilo

It is the fourth dimension that I am trying to explore.
Through the repetition of an impulsive act I want to channel the action of forming in a performative endurance, aiming to master the senses and intellect of the spectator in a ‘hic et nunc’ continuous encounter.
The one ephemeral act in the density of its perception can suspend and transform the experience of time.
The inhabited form may live on or fade from existence.

a wonderful Sundaymorning I wish to all

Setting rules was the theme of Christoph Zellweger’s  summer workshop at Alchimia.

Setting rules is of primary importance in any creative work.

I need rules to free myself from the infinite…

I need rules to stay  on the surface…

I need rules to break out…

I need rules to go deeper…

I need rules to discover the unexpected…

I need rules to reach the infinite…

I need rules not to become crazy…

I need rules to overcome my limits…

I need rules for measuring…

I need rules to play…

I need rules to live my life…

I need rules to jump over my fences…

I need rules to stop thinking…

This summer I was invited to the Turnov Symposium, a gathering of jewelers, we stayed together for 10 days in a wonderful town in the Bohemian paradise.
Each of us had to make a piece for the museum.
We had four days to work on it.
A big problem, four days to make something to remain “forever” in a museum. You want to be good, you don’t want to leave a “bad” record of yourself in a museum.
I searched for a concept, something deep and intelligent which I knew I could not find not like this in four days under the pressure to be “good”.

I searched for the rule: four days of crochet with iron wire, without stopping eight hours work for four days.

I would ask each of my 10 colleagues

to give me something
of their choice

to work into my piece;

like a spider entrapping the victim

I would not stop and had to accept

every gift I got, no choice.

It turned out as an almost mystical journey. I got very unsure on the way.
What am I doing ?
It is getting horrible;
I have to change something, it is getting too ugly;
How can I ever get this tiny granat in ?
Maybe I should just stop it and admit my failure,

But I did not give up I resisted, I made no esthetical decision I just followed the rules and the result has the size of a heart with eleven mysteries in it.

 
each side is different and even the tiny granat sits on a piece of wax ( a gift because I could not add or choose anything )

and now it sits in the museum and I am proud of it!

see you tomorrow

Where should I begin ?
Big question, big answer; I tell it over and over again to my students: “When you don’t know where to begin begin anywhere” beloved quote by beloved John Cage.
By the way, this year is his 100 birthday.

here are two photos of John Cage which I got from the beautiful blog Slowmuse, where you can find a lot about him and his writings.

here some quotations also copied from the blog

What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude – that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.

Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

Art’s purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.

What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.

One shouldn’t go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.

Out of the work comes the work.

If you want to know more about him this is a really beautiful book: John Cage: Where the Heart Beats, by Kay Larson

OR BEGIN RIGHTAWAY TO READ HIS BOOKS

see you tomorrow; I promise!

Beautiful and very big space to fill with hundreds of small material experiments

first step: spread it all out……..and then try, try, try…….

fortunately we had this construction foam matching perfectly the colours of the floor and the walls, practically a miracle….

And then there was a glue gun, many, many pins, quite a number of intelligent and creative minds and the will to work it out together !!

the “Cerveza” was maybe also of help

and so we did it very fast, really professional teamwork

the result was fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!! an amazing exhibition.

lots of people came and all were interested to know about  our working and teaching

the Operations Team members explained everything, and the visitors were happy to able to touch, feel and smell all the experiments spread out in the show

and then after the work we had also some relax

as suggested by Pablo in one of the many amazing graffity paintings we discovered all around Valencia

at every angle some surprise could turn up, and going the same street I could discover something new each time

some more violent,

some very poetic,

others amazing and funny

Peter Bauhuis, Valentina Caporali, Chiara Cavallo,
Ha Na Choi, Anna Drexel, Lena Grabher,
Doris Maninger, Enrica Prazzoli, Lavinia Rossetti,
Yu Qi Tan, Nur Terun, Francesca Urciuoli

To know more about the whole project please see the blog: hazardousexperiments.eu

I will begin here with the documentation of our arrival in Valencia and the start of the exhibition set up.

where are we and how will we get anywhere ?

found it let’s go……

first obstacle, getting through the barriers

seems easy………

sometimes all went well

but YuQi got stuck

Peter made it at the end

The first Cerveza in Valencia, Spanish Air, how wonderful

the hazardous box

first attempts to organize the mess

then the hunger took over, fortunately in Spain you can eat also at midnight, if we were in Belgium no chance…….
Starvation would have been our fate!

I know I am very late, a quite bit of time has passed, but too much work was on…..but I still want to share my really amazing experience there.

First of all Dubai, it was the first time and the impressions are strong.

Imperial, contemporary, surreal,  theatrical…………………..dusty, lonely, sad………….exaggerated, imposing, expensive……………………..

The conference I attended was extremely interesting, and I got a completely new outlook on the Emirates and on the Middle East. Nothing was as I had expected…..

The flights were tiring, I have no idea how come the arrivals and departures at Dubai Airport are mostly at night. I arrived at three in the morning and left at two, so the stay of three nights and conferences all day were a real challenge.

but I made it followed practically all the presentations on the lost city of Arabesque and this thanks to the quality and rythm of the speakers and the treated themes. There was practically no boring presentation and all but one  in English.

I thank Azza Fahmy and her Nubre project, without her I probably would not have known about the organization and history of Nuqat and would have missed the acquaintance with many wonderful people and a completely new outlook on many questions regarding this region.

There were many things that touched me because I could feel questions and answers very near. I discovered that questions  vehemently discussed in Europe as loss of identity,  preservation  against the dangers of the global village and similar were discussed equally here.

Sentences like: the moment we think we have to defend our culture against change and outside danger this culture is already dead.
” we don’t have to be afraid to loose our culture, we are our heritage, our present and our future – if we live our life with heart and passion.”
were really good to hear

I learned about the importance of calligraphy, about the feeling you have if you live in a country torn apart by civil war, about what it can mean to live in a city threatened by bombs in any moment, I learned about what can be behind the veil Muslem women…….

I saw beautiful men and beautiful women……

I saw horrible shopping malls, a lot of dust, elegant construction and just next to it trash and desert……

I felt a lot of energy, passion, curiosity, desire to act and to count…….

and I had to wait again at the airport at night tired but full of impressions to work over….

I want to thank the Nuqat team for organizing this…….