Τέχνη στο συγκείμενο : αμφισβητήσεις της δεξιότητας στη νεωτερικότητα

Τέχνη στο συγκείμενο  ( Art in context ) 

Καλλιτεχνικές πρακτικές, μεθοδολογία έρευνας και θεωρίες της σύγχρονης τέχνης

 

ΑΣΚΤ Χειμερινό/ Εαρινό Εξάμηνο

Αμφιθέατρο νέας βιβλιοθήκης,  Πειραιώς 256

 

 

            Η διαμόρφωση της “επίσημης” ιστορίας της μοντέρνας τέχνης χαρακτηρίστηκε από την επιμονή της να συγχρονιστεί με τις επιστημονικές, τις τεχνολογικές  αλλά και τις ιδεολογικές  προοπτικές  μιας ντετερμινιστικής  αντίληψης του κόσμου, συνυφασμένη με την έννοια της  προόδου.  Αυτό τουλάχιστον υποστηρίζει στην πλειοψηφία της η ιστοριογραφία  της  δυτικής τέχνης. 

            

Στις παραδόσεις  θα δοθεί έμφαση σε μια παράλληλη,  αν και λιγότερο εμφανή τάση  αυτοκριτικής  της νεωτερικής συνθήκης  μέσα από το κωμικό  στοιχείο στη  πραγματολογική, τη σωματική  (slapstick)  και  την υπαινικτική  του μορφή.  Το κωμικό  θα αναλυθεί  με την πρόθεση της ανατροπής της ρητορικής  μιας συνεπούς αφήγησης,  είτε στο εννοιολογικό πλαίσιο φέρνοντας τη ρήξη με το λόγο του διαφωτισμού και της επιστημονικής αντικειμενικότητας,  είτε μέσα στο πεδίο της συγκρότησης της φόρμας. Δεν χρειάζεται να μελετήσουμε  μονάχα  τις χειρονομίες  των ντανταιστών  και των  φλουξιστών  για να εντοπίσουμε τις εμφανείς απαξιώσεις του ρασιοναλιστικού μοντερνισμού. Με την υπόγεια νύξη του κωμικού και την ειρωνεία,  θ’ αναδείξουμε  πως οι  κυρίαρχες αφηγήσεις  μετατρέπονται  σε  φορείς παρωδίας, αγγίζοντας και τις πιο απρόβλεπτες  και απαθείς ως προς το χιούμορ πρωτοπορίες (προντουκτιβισμός, σουπρεματισμός, art informel, abstract expressionism) . Η κωμική διάθεση θα γίνει ορατή και στις πιο σεμνές αναφορές  της μεταγλώσσας  της πρωτοπορίας  στη σύγχρονη παραγωγή   και η  οποία  μαζί με την  αιρετική επανάχρηση της επίσημης  γλώσσας θα στοχεύει στην διάψευση των προσδοκιών της avant garde.  

 

            Αν  σ’ ένα σημερινό θεατή,  κάθε ουτοπία  στον  20 αιώνα (από την λατρεία της μηχανικής στους Ιταλούς φουτουριστές  μέχρι τα προπαγανδιστικά βήματα και περίπτερα των  Ρώσων κονστρουκτιβιστών )  προκαλεί  εντέλει το  φαρδύ χαμόγελο,  εμείς  θα εστιάσουμε  στις λεπτομέρειες- εκεί όπου βρίσκεται ο θεός, η ο διάβολος  σύμφωνα με κάποιους άλλους- οι οποίες προδίδουν το ειρωνικό μειδίαμα του δημιουργού, έστω και τεχνηέντως κρυμμένο  ή απωθημένο.  Αυτή η  ελλιπής, ελάσσονα αφήγηση  σε σχέση  με την κυρίαρχη ανάγνωση  του έργου,  είναι σχεδόν κρυπτική,  με την έννοια του αινιγματικού αντικειμένου –παιχνιδιού στην ψυχαναλυτική  του προβολή  αλλά και με την χρήση  της αποκρυπτογράφησης στο συμβολικό του πεδίο. Εφόσον  το κωμικό υποβόσκει σε όλες τις φιλόδοξες φράξιες  της νεωτερικότητας,  το επίκεντρο αυτής της έρευνας  θα ενεργοποιήσει τις «ατέλειες»  της  τεχνικής στη μεταφορντικη οργάνωση της παραγωγής : από την slapstick σωματικοτητα των γλυπτών της μεταπολεμικής περιόδου, την  λανθάνουσα χρηστικότητα των DIY  έργων, την φιλόδοξη επινόηση σχεδιαστικών λύσεων άμεσης ανάγκης αλλά και πιθανής γκάφας,  μέχρι την συνειδητή αποχή από την γνωστική διαδικασία της χειροτεχνίας (objets trouvés, ready mades)  όπως και το συνειδητό πέρασμα από την εξειδίκευση στην αποειδικευση (deskilling). 

 

Στην ακμή της τειλορικής οργάνωσης της εργασίας  και  απέναντι  στις υποδείξεις ενός  πειθαρχημένου  και  ελεγχόμενου  περιβάλλοντος, η αδεξιότητα,  η γκάφα, η σύγχυση, η αντιδιαστολή,  η αίσθηση ανεπάρκειας  καθώς και η  αμηχανία  που προκαλείται από  το «ατσούμπαλο» υποκείμενο ενάντια στον εαυτό του, θα εμπνεύσει τις πρώτες στιγμές της πρωτοπορίας (Les Artsincohérents, Dada, μεταϊμπρεσιονισμός, συμβολιστές ). Ανάμεσα σε άλλες γκάφες, ατυχίες και δυσλειτουργίες θα εξετάσουμε  την ασσυμετρία  σε ορθολογικά κινήματα όπως  το Bauhaus, την περιφρονητική περιγραφή του Barnett Νewman   για  την εμπειρία  του  σκοντάμματος στα γλυπτά,    τη φάρσα που κρύβεται πίσω από το Μαύρο τετράγωνο»   του Kazimierz Malewicz ,  την σύγχρονη επιστροφή  της γλυπτικής  στην αρχαϊκή αδεξιότητα του ξόανου. Σε επιμέρους ενότητες  θα εξηγήσουμε  την εμμονή του σουρεαλιστών με τις κωμικές παραγωγές του Mack Sennett,  την προτίμηση για το θέατρο του παραλόγου, όπως και θα επιβεβαιώσουμε την διαχρονικότητα της παράδοσης της commedia de l’arte και του κουκλοθέατρου  στις παραστατικές τέχνες  αλλά και στη ζωγραφική και τη γλυπτική  του 21 αιώνα. 

 

Η εικαστική πρωτοπορία  δεν  θα μείνει ανεπηρέαστη  από τις χειρονομίες και το γέλιο των  Clowns  του τσίρκου και των θεατρικών παραστάσεων  και θα ανανεώσει   τη θεματολογία της  εμπλουτίζοντας την με  παλιότερους και νέους αντιήρωες, καρικατούρες σαλτιμπάγκων,   αναρίθμητους  τρελούς Πιερο (Pierrot le Fou) αλλά και παρανοϊκούς αστούς όπως τον Ubu Roi ανάμεσα σε άλλους(evil clowns)  νευρωτικούς  και ψυχωτικούς κατοίκους  των μητροπολιτικών κέντρων. 

Αυτές οι περιγραφές της  διαταραχής  της προσωπικότητας μετατρέπουν  το κωμικό σε μια αντεστραμμένη τραγωδία, στην οποία οι ίδιοι οι καλλιτέχνες  ταυτίζονται  με τον περιθωριακό και θλιμμένο γελωτοποιό,  ο οποίος  ‘χαμένος» στα προσωπικά του αδιέξοδα, ζει  αναμεσά στο όνειρο και  την πραγματικότητα. Ο καινούργιος «αφανής» ήρωας στις μοντέρνες κοινωνίες δεν είναι πια ( η τουλάχιστον όχι μόνο)  ο πολύτροπος Οδυσσέας αλλά ο έσχατος στρατιώτης, ο απερίσκεπτος και γκαφατζής Ελπήνορας ο οποίος γκρεμοτσακίζεται από την στέγη του ανάκτορου της Κίρκης και κάνεις  δεν τον αντιλαμβάνεται.

 

Αν και το πλαίσιο των ομιλιών κινείται εντός του πεδίου των «ιστοριών» της μοντέρνας και σύγχρονης  τέχνης  η επιλογή κάθε  μαθήματος θα ορίζεται  κυρίως  με κατεύθυνση  θεματικών και εννοιολογικών συσχετισμών και λιγότερο με  χρονολογικά κριτήρια.  Συσσωρεύοντας τις αποτιμήσεις της κλασικής αλλά και σύγχρονης  βιβλιογραφίας για το παράδοξο και το αυτονόητο της εμπειρίας  του  κωμικού θα αγγίξουμε το πεδίο   των επιστημολογικών διασταυρώσεων με την ψυχανάλυση (Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Sarah Kofman, Julia Kristeva)  τη φιλοσοφική σκέψη και την ηθική  (Vladimir Jankélévitch, Henri Bergson, Schopenhauer,  Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Martin Heidegger, John Gray, Λουκρήτιος) τη θεωρία λογοτεχνίας (Αριστοτέλης,  Heinrich Von Kleist ,  Gianni Rodari, Umberto Eco, Robert F. Storey, Μαρία Οικονόμου, Jean Starobinski, Δημήτρης Πολυχρονάκης, Simon Critchley )την κριτική θεωρία  (Adorno,  Siegfried Kracauer , Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Κarel Kosik, Jean Baudrillard) , τη φεμινιστική θεωρία (Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray), φιλμικές σπουδές (Lotte Eisner, Laura Mulvey,Gilles Deleuze, Berger John, Malcolm Turvey),  τη  συσχέτιση της αισθητικής με την πολιτική σκέψη (Leon Trotsky, Jacques Rancière, Chantal Mouffe, Bruno Latour, Giorgio Agamben)  την ποιητική πρακτική (Friedrich Hölderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ezra Pound, Jules Laforgue, Διονύσιος Σολωμός, CharlesBaudelaire, Amy  Lowell,  Sylvia Plath, Ρώμος Φιλύρας, Γιώργος Σεφέρης)   την ιστορία και θεωρία της τέχνης (Jean-Yves Jouannais, Christine Buci Glucksmann, Γιώργος Τζιρτζιλάκης, Steven Connor, Jean Clair,  Rosalind Krauss).

 

Το περιεχόμενο της εικαστικής παραγωγής των φοιτητών είναι το κύριο μέρος  της ερευνητικής διαδικασίας. Η τεκμηρίωση θέσεων των σπουδαστών  ενθαρρύνεται να γίνεται  με  τη χρήση  συγκεκριμένων παραδειγμάτων μέσα  από την   ιστορία της  τέχνης, στοχεύοντας  στο να αντιληφθούν στο έργο τους μια πιθανή γενεαλογία. Οι φοιτητές οφείλουν να γεφυρώσουν το συγκείμενο με την πρακτική, μέσα από κοινές παρουσιάσεις της εικαστικής παραγωγής τους στην οποία θα καταγράφουν και θα αναδεικνύουν τους προβληματισμούς τους. Στην συνέχεια θα συμμετέχουν σε συλλογικές ανοικτές συζητήσεις, όπως και σε εξατομικευμένες προσεγγίσεις  ώστε να δοθεί στον καθένα ξεχωριστά η δυνατότητα μιας ποιοτικής εξοικείωσης με το αντικείμενο. 

 

 

Το μάθημα είναι και εργαστηριακό,  δομείται  ως  εξής :

Παραδόσεις

Εικοσιπεντάλεπτες παρουσιάσεις του έργου σας

Δεκαπεντάλεπτα tutorials σε κάθε μάθημα 

Υποχρεωτική εργασία που αφορά στη σύνταξη ενός  αναλυτικού  και σύντομου καλλιτεχνικού σημειώματος στο πρώτο και το δεύτερο εξάμηνο αντίστοιχα.

 

 Λόγω της ιδιαιτερότητας του μαθήματος καθίσταται αδύνατη η διεξαγωγή της εξεταστικής του Σεπτεμβρίου και προϋπόθεση για την παρακολούθηση είναι η συστηματική παρουσία σας στο μάθημα. 

 

Κωστής Βελώνης 

Pierrot Lunaire

Pierrot Lunaire, 2020
Plaster, wood,acrylic,clay, marble
155x 43x 14 cm
A Ghost Beggar Show @kalfayangalleries 
Cur. by @falida 

#sculpture #pierrot #lunaire #moon#moonstruck #benito #kostisvelonis#albertgiraud #ghost #beggar

Tuol Sleng

 

Monica Sok, A Nail the Evening Hangs On, 2020

Flower Girl (After Kazimir Malevich’s Rectangle and Circle)

 

                                                                                         

Flower Girl (After Kazimir Malevich’s  Rectangle and Circle, 1915), 2018

Wood, plywood, clay, acrylic, oil

150 x 74 x 14 cm

Υπόμνημα

Από τη δύση να μπαίνεις στην πόλη
να χαμηλώνει το κάστρο
κι έπειτα να βλέπεις κομματάκι κομματάκι
ανάμεσα από τα κτίρια
και στο τέλος μερικών δρόμων
λίγα από τα τείχη
έναν-δυο πύργους
κι όταν ανοίγεις τα παράθυρα
πριν ξεκλειδώσεις
πριν μπεις στο δωμάτιο
να παύεις λιγάκι

 

 

Paul Cendrier, 2017

Black Pierrot ( After Malevich’s Rectangle and Circle)

Black Pierrot ( After Malevich’s Rectangle and Circle) 2020
100 x 70 cm

A #ghostbeggar show @kalfayangalleries 
Curated by Efi Falida @falida 
#black #pierrot #drawing #kostisvelonis#pierrotnoir #rectangle #circle #malevich

 

cité-sur-fil-

Guy Rottier, Cité sur fil, 1965
(maquette en balsa, soie, carton)

https://razekite.wordpress.com/2020/02/20/cite-sur-fil/

The Love Boat

 

We invite you for a unique onboard experience of romance, blue waters, music and sunset on the maiden voyage of “The Love Boat“. Our mission is to provide our passengers with high quality services for their ultimate relaxation. Exclusively for this September's inaugural trip, our venture will be the fantastic unknown and its exotic, unexplored destinations. A three-night cruise that will make you explore and rejuvenate... Your senses will be stimulated through the wandering in the multiple levels of the hyper-modern ship and its advanced facilities. Take delight in the unique amenities of the specially designed pool area, the beauty & spa club, the ballroom, the shopping center. Enjoy unique tastes of international cuisines and delicious cocktails and leave it to our qualified staff for a journey of style, luxury and pure comfort. Departure from Pier 151 of Iera Odos Street in the center of Athens. Musical departure accompanied by the City of Athens' Philarmonic Orchestra. Our crew wishes you in advance a pleasant stay!  

Participating artists: Marilena Aligizaki | Margarita Bofiliou | Campus Novel | Errands | Florent Frizet | Greece Is For Lovers | Lakis & Aris Ionas / The Callas | Yorgia Karidi | Εric Stephany | Naira Stergiou | Valinia Svoronou | Iris Touliatou | Kostis Velonis | Eriphyli Veneri 

Concept-curated by: Naira Stergiou, Eriphyli Veneri  

 

Friday 18 September 2020 @ 20.00 p.m. 

Municipality of Athens  / Municipal Garbage Trucks’ Depot  

 

quiet sorrow: a cento

 

can you read?
 Sorrow cannot

like not reading the garden snake 

crawling up to the door saddle to die

don’t be afraid 

 

 

can I find you in the dark?

Sorrow does not say

nor is Sorrow happy to see me 

I am happy the world

is breaking open 

 

 

Evelyn Alfred

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant

 

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

Why did Keynes' promised utopia—still being eagerly awaited in the '60s—never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn't figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we've collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment's reflection shows it can't really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the '20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.

So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ‘professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers’ tripled, growing ‘from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.’ In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be.)

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world's population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the ‘service’ sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza delivery) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call ‘bullshit jobs’.

It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the sort of very problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don't really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organizing or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.

The answer clearly isn't economic: it's moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the '60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.

Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don't like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done—at least, there's only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there's endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it's all that anyone really does. I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy.

Now, I realise any such argument is going to run into immediate objections: ‘who are you to say what jobs are really “necessary”? What's necessary anyway? You're an anthropology professor, what's the “need” for that?’ (And indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) And on one level, this is obviously true. There can be no objective measure of social value.

I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless? Not long ago I got back in touch with a school friend who I hadn't seen since I was 12. I was amazed to discover that in the interim, he had become first a poet, then the front man in an indie rock band. I'd heard some of his songs on the radio having no idea the singer was someone I actually knew. He was obviously brilliant, innovative, and his work had unquestionably brightened and improved the lives of people all over the world. Yet, after a couple of unsuccessful albums, he'd lost his contract, and plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, ‘taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school.’ Now he's a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist.

There's a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call ‘the market’ reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.) But even more, it shows that most people in these jobs are ultimately aware of it. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever met a corporate lawyer who didn't think their job was bullshit. The same goes for almost all the new industries outlined above. There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely (one or t'other?) Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is.

This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one's job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it's obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It's even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It's as if they are being told ‘but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?’

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it's hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc.)—and particularly its financial avatars—but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3–4 hour days.

 

                         David Graeber

                        Strike  Magazine

                        August 2013

 

                        https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/

 

 

 

Receiver

                                               


                                          

Receiver, 2020

Cypress Trees

DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse.

Ὁ βυθός

Ἕνας ναύτης ψηλὰ
στὰ κάτασπρα ντυμένος
τρέχει μέσ᾿ στὸ φεγγάρι

Κι ἡ κοπέλα ἀπ᾿ τὴ γῆς
μὲ τὰ κόκκινα μάτια
λέει ἕνα τραγούδι
ποὺ δὲ φτάνει ὡς τὸ ναύτη

Φτάνει ὡς τὸ λιμάνι
φτάνει ὡς τὸ καράβι
φτάνει ὡς τὰ κατάρτια

Μὰ δὲ φτάνει ψηλὰ στὸ φεγγάρι

 

Μίλτος Σαχτούρης 

“You and I are Earth”

“You And I Are Earth”, 1661. Artist/Maker Unknown.  
#mementomori #tinglazed #earthenware#pottery #plate #earth #love #1661

 

Untitled

O stay where you are! Here
in the uncertain hour of a late afternoon
looking outward and looking in
I see this beauty
all I see is beauty.
Something that convinces, asks to be seen,
though it does nothing, just stays where it is,
and merely by existing wins me over.

 

Patrizia Cavalli, My Poems Won’t Change the World 

The little sculpture affixed to your house: Anton Fazekas and the making of a midcentury San Francisco sensation

Most houses in the city have numbers on their fronts; there are a small part of the house’s exterior decor and often escape notice. On my recent socially distanced neighborhood walks I’ve been looking at them. Many houses in Sunnyside, as well as neighborhoods all over the city, have numbers encased in little frames like these.

 

 

Posted on 15 July 2020 by Sunnyside History

https://sunnysidehistory.org/2020/07/15/the-little-sculpture-affixed-your-house-anton-fazekas/

Hallasan

Stone flung to crater: we gather what we can of the dead, but they remember us in our entirety, filling our pockets with bones and pink rhododendron. 

We pass the pavilion, toward the wooden skiff, its nets suspended in loam. You winnow through the ruin of the porous shore, your hands murky with sea urchins, palms stung with their dying stars. The basalt gods gaze on, graved full of moon. They eclipse dark at dusk. They are not our gods.

You move among them, a constellation of absence threaded through the fractured lights. 

Leah Silvieus, from Anemochory