Κασταλία Πηγή

Κασταλία Πηγή, 2022

110 x 100 x 4 cm

Wood, acrylic, oil, chalk paint, gesso

CastalianSpring#Τοημερολόγιοτωνβοσκών #Almanachdesbergers #Apollo #delphi #kostisvelonis#sculpture #πηγή #Κασταλία #ShepherdsAlmanac #Almanac #weathering#Spring #Fountain#δελφοί

Places of Residence for Accused Witches

https://witches.is.ed.ac.uk

Places of Residence for Accused Witches With Timeline

Xάρτινο Πιρπιρί ανάγνωσης και εξάσκησης της μνήμης

Δε θα μιλήσεις ποτέ αν δε θυμάσαι διαρκώς'
Xάρτινο Πιρπιρί ανάγνωσης και εξάσκησης της μνήμης
(Αρχιτέκτονες της φάλαινας σε διάλογο με τη Φοίβη Γιαννίση)

Ξαναφτιάχνουμε το πατρόν του Πιρπιρί αλλά αυτή τη φορά από μόνο μία συνεχή επιφάνεια, η οποία κατασκευάζεται από περίπου 1000 ρόμβους. Οι ρόμβοι επιτρέπουν την πτύχωση της επιφάνειας του ενδύματος. Φοριέται κανονικά με το γιλέκο μπροστά ή αντίστροφα σαν ποδιά, με το γιλέκο στην πλάτη. Τα σχεδιασμένα σύμβολα χρησιμοποιούνται ως ‘κείμενο’, σημειογράφημα (ή παρτιτούρα) για αυτοσχεδιασμό απαγγελίας. Ανάλογα με τον τρόπο φορέματος διαβάζουν και αυτοσχεδιάζουν οι γύρω σου κοιτώντας σε ή διαβάζεις εσύ που το φοράς ως ποδιά. Ο ρόμβος είναι το σχήμα που κυριαρχεί στην υφαντική λαϊκή τέχνη σε όλον τον κόσμο, εξαιτίας του τρόπου που εξυφαίνεται η επιφάνεια πόντο πόντο. Οι ρόμβοι όμως την ίδια στιγμή γίνονται ‘ομιλούντα’ σύμβολα, αναπαριστούν τον κόσμο και τις κοσμοαντιλήψεις των κοινωνιών που χρησιμοποιούν τα υφαντά, όπως για παράδειγμα το μοτίβο του Ασπροπόταμου, το οποίο είναι κάτι παραπάνω από τον παραπόταμο του ποταμού Αχελώου και τον τόπο γέννησης του παππού μας. Ο Ασπροπόταμος είναι και ο ουράνιος θόλος με τους 12 αστερισμούς στα μάτια της/του εξασκημένης/νου αναγνωστριας/τη. Τα σύμβολα που φέρουν οι ρόμβοι μας είναι βασισμένα σε ποιήματα της Φοίβης Γιαννίση. Κοπάδια, πλυντήρια, τραίνα, φτέρες, κατσίκια, αυτοκίνητα, μοίρες, τυριά, σιδέρωμα, δουλειά, λεφτά, στρατός, γάμοι και διαζύγια, βουνά, πλαγιές και πεδιάδες, εξωσωματικές γονιμοποιήσεις και άλογα μπλέκονται, επαναλαμβάνονται και ξανα-αποκτούν νόημα όπως όταν ανακαλούμε στη μνήμη τα συμβάντα του παρελθόντος προκειμένου να λύσουμε το γρίφο του μέλλοντος. Το Πιρπιρί ανήκε σε μόνο μία γυναίκα. Τη συνόδευε στον επίγειο βίο της και στο επέκεινα. 

Peacocks: The Pomp of Power

Peacocks: The Pomp of Power presents a display of artworks and objects from the Nottingham City Museum and Art Galleries fine art, decorative art, lace, costume and textiles, and natural history collection. The selected works are inspired by the beautifully elegant peacocks that grace the grounds of Newstead Abbey, the ancestral home of the Romantic Poet Lord Byron. Byron was both a sartorial peacock and lover and keeper of these extravagant creatures; hence the title of this exhibition has been taken from Don Juan: Canto The Seventh, a poem by the poet and great eccentric.

Peacocks have taken on important roles and various identities in many countries and cultures: their vivid feathers or designs resembling their shape and beauty continue to feature heavily on interior décor, garments, ceramics and accessories.

The Henry the Seventh’s Lodging, situated along the East Gallery from the Charles II Room, is one of the main bedrooms at Newstead and is also known as the Japanese Room. The upper walls are fitted with screens and painted panels that were brought back to Newstead by the Webb sisters, who travelled to the Far East in the 1890s. They depict the beauties of the natural world and date from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.  They are hand-painted on gold leaf with peacocks, cranes, ocean waves, pine trees and cherry blossom.

The peacock and its colours are synonymous with Indian identity and in 1963 the peacock was declared the National Bird of India because of its rich religious and legendary involvement in Indian traditions. The bird is indigenous to India and Sri Lanka, but now features in countries all over the world and is as much a part of the country-house tableau as fountains and parterres. Taken from its homeland by traders thousands of years ago, the Indian peacock eventually reached England, where it became something of a country house status symbol. A number of vibrant and detailed Indian textile items are included in Peacocks: The Pomp of Power along with a beautiful wooden plate with a copper inlay and a ceremonial sword.

In Russian folklore the peacock carries a lot of meanings, it symbolises the spring and the sun along with its many attributes such as warmth, light and power. In the 11th century, the peacock motif appeared in Russian embroidery, and is thought to have come from Byzantium art to Russia, along with Christianity. Different regions developed their own depictions of peacocks and some of these stylized peacock designs can be seen within this exhibition, used by embroiderers on a number of 19th century linen bobbin lace borders.

The exhibition is open alongside a display of Japanese Woodblock prints from the Nottingham City Museums and Galleries collections in the Charles II Room.

http://www.newsteadabbey.org.uk/50662-2 

Το κίνημα αναβίωσης της βυζαντινής (λαικοβυζαντινής) παράδοσης στις αστικές εφαρμοσμένες τέχνες την περίοδο του μεσοπολέμου

Ανάτυπο από τον τόμο

«Β΄ Επιστημονικό Συμπόσιο Νεοελληνικής Εκκλησιαστικής Τέχνης

(Βυζαντινό και Χριστιανικό Μουσείο, 26-28 Νοεμβρίου 2010)

Πρακτικά»

Ευφροσύνη Ρούπα
https://www.academia.edu/2267288/_The_revival_of_Byzantine_aesthetics_in_bourgeois_applied_arts_and_design_in_Greece_in_the_Midwar_period_._In_Greek_

Songs of Labour and Pleasure, from Postpaganism to Neoliberalism

An idiosyncratic mixtape based on an impromptu listening seminar held at Labour Camp, part of Paul Chaney’s Critical Camps series at Kestle Barton, traces the relationship between work and eroticism through popular song.

Starting with a bucolic idyll of self-suffiency where labour is not yet separated from life, continuing with traditional English folk song in which collective pleasure is embedded in and resonates with the cyclical patterns of agricultural labour, the mix then traverses the industrial revolution, where the new mechanical tools are at first reinscribed into this postpagan cosmology of jouissance, going on to chart the divergence of pleasure and labour as their intertwining shifts, in early popular mass entertainment media, into mere burlesque and innuendo; remembering colonial slave labour and the appropriation of its affect and expression in Western popular music; arriving at the refusal of exploitation, the separation of work and love into mutual exclusivity, the culminating existential frustration of the commuter; and the thanatropic joy of being absorbed into the machine. It ends in the present day with the queasy rapture of a libidinal economy in which work and pleasure are once more integrated, but this time according to new meshings in which human desire no longer resonates with meadow and the cosmos, but is re-engineered and modulated by a fluid media apparatus.

https://soundcloud.com/urbanomic/songs-of-labour-and-pleasure 

Prières magiques

Ethiopian healing scroll, 19th century.

The baker with his fiancée

Genredarstellung eines Bäckers am Teigtrog (rechts) und seiner Verlobten beim Verkauf (links). Beischrift: „Johann Georg Kieß Beckenmeister – Regina Hugin – 1804“. Die Nachnamen zeigen, dass es sich nicht um ein Ehepaar handelt. Meist waren solche Kannen Hochzeits- oder Verlobungsgeschenke (ergänzter Henkel)

http://www.durlacher-stichekabinett.de/durlacher-weinkruege/fayence/

Rotten Sun

Diablos con Sol (Devils with Sun), Anonimo,Ocumicho, Michoacan

ΑΙΓΑΙ-Ω: Τραγούδια

"Το ποίημα είναι λοιπόν μία λέξη για παραπάνω από έναν, ένας λόγος που το τώρα του συγκρατεί παραπάνω από έναν μέσα του, μία ομιλία που συλλέγει παραπάνω από έναν στο εσωτερικό της", γράφει ο Jacques Derrida για την ποίηση με αφορμή τον Paul Celan στις διαλέξεις του 2002 με θέμα "Το κτήνος (σε θηλυκό γένος) και ο κυρίαρχος".

Το έργο ΑΙΓΑΙ-Ω εκπηγάζει από μία έρευνα που η Φοίβη Γιαννίση και η Ίρις Λυκουριώτη έχουν εκινήσει εδώ και τρία χρόνια με θέμα την κτηνοτροφία αιγών στον ελληνικό χώρο, ηπειρωτικό και νησιωτικό, στο πλαίσιο της νέας μετα-ανθρωπιστικής συνθήκης. Η λέξη ΑΙΓΑΙ-Ω φωτίζει την υπόμνηση του ευρύτερου αιγαιακού χώρου ως γεωγραφία αλλά και ως γη των αιγών. Το τελικό Ω, δανεισμένο από αρχαίες αναπαραστάσεις του θηλυκού αιδοίου επάνω σε λατρευτικά εδώλια, υπαινίσσεται κάποια θηλυκή οπτική. Το ΑΙΓΑΙ-Ω τοποθετεί στο κέντρο το ζώο και τον κύκλο ζωής του καθώς και τις πρακτικές της σύγχρονης κτηνοτροφικής ζωής και απλώνεται μεταφορικά σε θέματα εξουσίας (χωρικής, κοινωνικής και φυλετικής) και ιστορίας.

Στην Performance της 22ας Οκτωβρίου, "τραγουδι 1” συμμετέχουν οι:

Πάκυ Βλασσοπούλου,Φοίβη Γιαννίση, Κατερίνα Ηλιοπούλου Φάνης Καφαντάρης, Πατρίτσια Κολαΐτη, Χρυσάνθη Κουμιανάκη, Ηρώ Μαζαράκη, Ισαβέλλα Μαρτζοπούλου,Μαρίζα Νικολάου, Άννα Παγκάλου, Φώτης Ροβολής, Χαρά Στεργίου, Μάριος Χατζηπροκοπίου

Την Παρασκευή 23 Οκτωβρίου, ώρα 19:30, θα πραγματοποιηθεί η διαλογική βραδιά :

"Βιοι και πολιτείες της Αιγαιακής Χώρας' 

στην οποία συμμετέχουν με ομιλίες οι:

Λεωνίδας Εμπειρίκος

"Ο γύπας, ο λύκος και η γίδα (και ο φουρνός)"

Ελευθερία Δέλτσου

"Από τους τράγους και τα κριάρια του Α. Blok στις κατσίκες που

(δεν) μασάνε ταραμά"

Ιωάννα Λαλιώτου

"Περί μετα-ανθρωπισμού: Σημειώσεις ενός οδοιπορικού"

Κωστής Βελώνης

"H γλυπτική της αυτάρκειας και η υπαίθριο-ποίηση της πόλης"

Μιράντα Τερζοπούλου

"Μια βοσκοπούλα αγάπησα"

Πάνος Πανόπουλος

"Τα κουδούνια και οι φωνές τους"

Φοίβη Γιαννίση, Ίρις Λυκουριώτη
22 Οκτ- 20 Νοεμ 2015

Μουσείο Λαϊκής Τέχνης και Παράδοσης "Αγγελική Χατζημιχάλη"

The embracing Sky Father and Mother Earth and the Heavenly Ropevine

Meotoiwa, "husband and wife cliff", Futami, Mie, Japan 夫婦岩、三重県二見町

http://japanesemythology.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/the-embracing-sky-father-and-mother-earth-and-the-heavenly-ropevine/

Pignon de maison des hommes

Pignon de maison des hommes, Korogo.Vallee du Sepik. Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinee.

Διαδικασία από το φτιάξιμο της κλωστής μέχρι την ύφανση

Διαδικασία από το φτιάξιμο της κλωστής μέχρι την ύφανση, σαρακατσάνικα υφαντά

http://www.sarakatsani-folk-museum.gr/index.php?page=4

Pillar of Saora House

Central pillar of Saora house, Peddakimedi Maliaks, Orissa (also written Sora, they are an Adivasi - aboriginal - people of eastern India). It is a patrilineal culture whose marriage ceremony emphasizes the woman leaving her own kin, but the groom places offerings before the breasts of this ancestral woman-pillar. But they have free choice in marriage, and looser gender roles than the dominant culture. Also, most of the shamans are women, especially the funerary kuran, while the diviner-healers can be any gender. Entranced kuran hold dialogues with the dead on a daily basis. The dead become sonum, "spirit, deity, power," sometimes translated also as "memory". All this from Melinda Makai, "Shamanism Among the Soras" (2008), who writes, "The most important shamans are women: they also marry a sonum from the kshatriya caste of the Hindus (ilda) in the Underworld..." This spirit husband was once a living shaman, often related to the woman. This pattern of spirit marriage is common for both male and female shamans in many cultures.

http://www.suppressedhistories.net

Conical Hat

A piece of stiff brown cardboard cut in the shape of a conical hat. Holes have been drilled in the crown to form a decorative pattern. An additional strip of reinforcing cardboard has been attached to the base of the hat with one rivet at one end, two at the other. The costume hat is worn by Kolitiris, a character in the centuries-old Greek Shadow Puppet Theatre (Karaghiozis) tradition. Kolitiris wears it in the Introduction of every performance as part of his costume in order to change his appearance to make it more comical.

This costume hat was made in the 1960s by the Greek puppeteer and popular artist Abraam (Antonakos) in his Athens workshop, and used in performances in Greece during the 1960s. This and most of the puppets in the collection were brought to Australia by Abraam Antonakos for his performances at the Astor Theatre in Melbourne in 1977. He then left the collection with Dimitri Katsoulis who used them in all his subsequent performances in Victoria and in South Australia from 1978 to 1991.Dimitri Katsoulis migrated to Australia in 1974 to escape a regime that repressed Greek artists. He had trained in Greece with theatre and film companies as an actor and technician. A master of the traditional Greek shadow puppet theatre, his performances explored contemporary issues such as the isolation of migrant women and children. Unable to obtain funding and support, he returned to Greece in 1991, leaving his entire collection to the people of Victoria. It includes 32 shadow puppets and around 170 props, set backdrops and technical tools and stage equipment. Dimitri has since returned to Melbourne and assists the Museum to continue to document this rich art form within both local and international contexts.

http://museumvictoria.com.au

Witches' Ladder: the hidden history

1911.32.7 Witches ladder found in Wellington, Somerset

When a string of feathers was found in a Somerset attic alongside four brooms, suspicions of witchcraft began to fly. This hint of rural magic and superstition captured the imagination of the Victorian folk-lore community, however not everyone was convinced.

Hanging in the "Magic and Witchcraft" case in the court of the Pitt Rivers Museum is a strange object from Wellington in Somerset. [Pitt Rivers Museum number: 1911.32.7] It is a one and a half meter long string with a loop at one end through which feathers have been inserted along its length. The label declares it to be a:

"Witches ladder made with cock's feathers. Said to have been used for getting away the milk from neighbour's cows and for causing people's deaths. From an attic in the house of an old woman (a witch?) who died in Wellington."

This information is based on a note sent to the museum with the object in 1911 when it was donated by Anna Tylor, the wife of the famous anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor. This stated:

"The "witches' ladder" came from here (Wellington). An old woman, said to be a witch, died, this was found in an attic, & sent to my Husband. It was described as made of "stag's" (cock's) feathers, & was thought to be used for getting away the milk from the neighbours' cows - nothing was said about flying or climbing up. There is a novel called "The Witch Ladder" by E. Tyler in which the ladder is coiled up in the roof to cause some one's death."

This brief explanation is a highly summarized, and largely inaccurate version of the sequence of events that surround the discovery of this curious object. Even based on this description however, the label has embroidered the facts by suggesting that the ladder may have been used for causing deaths, when Anna Tylor's note only suggests that the plot of novel used it in this way. The history of this object seems to point to the ways in which the stories about an object may grow, allowing folk-lore itself to become folk-lorised.


Front page of "A Witches' Ladder" Dr Abraham Colles

Publication in the Folk-Lore Journal

Twenty four years earlier, in 1887, an article appeared in The Folk-Lore Journal with the title "A Witches' Ladder." Down the right-hand side of the page a hand-drawn illustration marks a change to the blocks of text that usually make up this journal, normally devoted largely to subjects such as folk-tales, myths and superstitions. The author of the article is Dr Abraham Colles, but a corrected draft that exists in the Pitt Rivers Museum, suggests that the article may have been submitted and corrected by Edward Burnett Tylor, then a Reader in Anthropology in Oxford and Keeper of the University Museum.

The article records how during a home visit, Colles had come to hear about the object. This had been found in the roof space of an old house demolished nearly ten years earlier, in 1878-9, alongside six brooms and an old chair. According to Colles, the workmen who made the discovery stated that the chair was for witches to rest in, the brooms to ride on, and the rope to act as a ladder to enable them to cross the roof. He states that he was not able to discover the grounds on which they based their assertions but that they had no hesitation in "at first sight designating the rope and feathers "A witches' ladder.""

Further enquiries revealed little about the possible function of the object, except some old ladies in Somerset mentioned the "rope with feathers" when asked about witchcraft and spells. Future issues of the Folk-Lore Journal saw a number of correspondents making contributions, including J.G. Frazer who made the suggestion about getting milk away from neighbours cows, based on traditions from Scotland and Germany. Charles Leland wrote from Tuscany, about a tradition of causing death with a feathered ghirlanda or garland.


Drawing of Tylor presenting at the British Association for the Advancement of Science. From The Graphic, Saturday September 10

Presentation at the British Association for the Advancement of Science

When Tylor presented the item to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Manchester on Friday 2nd September 1887, two members of the audience stood up and told him that in their opinion, the object was a sewel , and would have been held in the hand to turn back deer when hunting. Tylor said that he would try to get one of these to compare it, but there is no record of whether he was successful. Interestingly though, a second "witches' ladder" was donated to the museum by the Tylors in 1911 and this has much newer looking feathers. [1911.32.8] Could this be a sewel and not a witch's ladder?

The International Folk-Lore Congress

Following his embarrassing experience at the meeting in 1887, Tylor seems to have been very reluctant to exhibit the object at the 2nd International Congress of Folk-Lore when it was held in London in 1891. In the report on his talk he states that it was suggested that he bring the ladder to show it, "but I did not do so, because from that day to this I have never found the necessary corroboration of the statement that such a thing was really used for magic." However in the catalogue of exhibits for this conference it is recorded that Tylor did show the object, probably because he was persuaded to do so. Also recorded is the fact that Mr Gomme exhibited a small photograph of Dr Tylor's Witch's Ladder, perhaps in case Tylor could not be persuaded to show the original himself.

The First Fictionalisation

In 1893, the Devon-based folk-lorist Sabine Baring-Gould published a novel, Mrs Curgenven, in which a witch-ladder featured. The object discovered is a line of black wool entwined with white and brown thread, hanging by a fireplace into which cock's and pheasant's feathers were looped alternately every few inches. In Baring-Gould's witches ladder "There be every kind o' pains and aches in they knots and they feathers;" and the when finished the ladder would have a stone tied at one end and would then be sunk in Dogmare Pool and "ivery ill wish ull find a way, one after the other, to the j'ints and bones, and head and limbs, o' Lawyer Physic." In this version the water would unloose and rot the ties releasing the ill wishes, which appear in the pool as bubbles. Was this new independent evidence to support the magical interpretation of the witch's ladder?


1911.32.8 Possible sewel donated by Tylor, and recorded as a Witches Ladder

Tylor's Investigations

Tylor evidently wrote to Baring-Gould to ask him about his source for the information in his fictional story. He received a letter back in 1893 in which Baring Gould said "I wish I could give you any thing certain about witch ladders." He states "What I put into "Mrs Curgenven" about sinking the ladder in Dogmare Pool so that as it rotted, the ill wishes might escape was pure invention of my own. I felt they must be got out somehow & so created a fashion for liberating them." Baring-Gould then enquired for Tylor with Marianne Voader, a women locally reputed to be a witch and she "professed to know nothing about such a thing and thought what you got at Wellington was nothing but a string set with feathers to frighten birds from a line of peas."

Tylor, it seems never found the evidence he was looking for. By 1911, when he had retired from Oxford and the object was donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Witches ladder had itself become an item of Folk-Lore. It was re-used as a plot device of a second novel in 1911, which took its title from the object. In 1891, Tylor had suggested that "The popular opinion" was that the object had been used for magic, "but unsupported opinion does not suffice, and therefore the rope had better remain until something turns up to show one way or the other whether it is a member of the family of sorcery instruments." Whether or not the original Witches' ladder was ever used for magic, today witches ladders definitely are.
The Second Life of the Witches' Ladder

Since Tylor's day Witches' Ladders have become an item in the practice of Wicca or contemporary witchcraft, into which positive wishes may be bound. However, this tradition has drawn strongly on the works of Gerald Gardner, Margaret Murray and Charles Leland, all prominent members of the Folk-Lore Society, and therefore likely to have known of Tylor's discovery. As no other example of an old Witches' Ladder has ever been recorded, it is quite possible that much of the contemporary tradition of using the Witches' Ladder in witchcraft might derive from this single discovery in the attic of an old house in Somerset in 1878-9.

Text by Chris Wingfield

A longer article by Chris Wingfield will appear in Autumn 2010, Journal of Material Culture 15 (3) "A case reopened: the science and folklore of a 'witch's ladder'."

Bibliography
The Folk-Lore Journal:
* Colles, A. (1887). "A Witches' Ladder." The Folk-Lore Journal 5 (1): pp. 1-5. [Image 1]
* Folklore Journal Vol. 5, No. 2. (1887), pp. 81-83 J.G. Frazer letter
* Folklore Journal Vol. 5, No. 2. (1887), pp. 83-84 W.H. Ashby letter
* Folklore Journal Vol. 5 No. 3 (1887) pp. 257-259 Charles Leland letter
* Folklore Journal Vol. 5 No. 4 (1887) pp. 354-356
Books
Gould, S. B. (1893). Mrs. Curgenven of Curgenven . Lond.
Tylee, E. S. (1911). The witch ladder . Lond.
Jacobs, J. and A. Nutt, Eds. (1892). The International Folklore Congress 1891: Papers and Transactions. London, David Nutt.
Newspapers
The Graphic, Saturday September 10, 1887, Issue 928. [Image 2]
Modern Wicca
http://groups.msn.com/FullMoonParadise/witchesladder.msnw

Source:http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk
English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Folk Indian Cats

The Book "I Like Cats" emerges from the brushstrokes of the best-known tribal and folk artists of India. Silk screen-printed by hand, this book features an impressive gallery of irresistible felines across a variety of Indian tribal art traditions, and comes with a framable screenprint. Carrying on in the comic verse tradition, the witty and jubilant poetry-tales of Indian writer Anushka Ravishankar are internationally acclaimed, widely translated, and honoured with innumerable awards. Art by various artists from the finest tribal and folk traditions from across India.
Tara Books

Cowboy Hat Souvenir Stand

Cowboy Hat Souvenir Stand, Winkenburg, Arizona , 1934

The River man

Nick Drake- The River man

Displaying the American Eagle

Displaying the American eagle for the promotion of car industry.
Phoenix, Arizona, 2010.

Source: Die Zeit Zeitung